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Rants November 8, 2009

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1. If you want to write fiction, you might want to be a newspaper reporter. Anyone who knows me who has read about me in newspapers knows that an inordinate number of things that have been written about me in newspapers is not true. Years ago my column was syndicated in over 50 newspapers. I was never a newspaper reporter, but I wrote about things that I had seen happen with my own eyes. Unlike newspaper reporters, I never had to even pretend to be objective, I always said that I was writing fiction, and because of that --- what I wrote was probably as close as you could get to the truth.

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2. Did you hear about the man who came upon an ugly dog biting a little boy? The man killed the dog with his bare hands. A reporter who saw the incident thanked the man and told him the headline the following day would read, "Local Man Saves Child by Killing Vicious Animal." But the man told the journalist that he wasn't from Rockland. So the reporter said, "Well, the headline will probably say, ‘Maine Man Saves Child by Killing Dog.’” The man said, "I'm from Connecticut." The reporter said, “In that case the headline will read, “Man From Away Kills Family Pet.”

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3. The last time I went to the doctor I saw a huge crowd of people working away. Well, perhaps only three of them were actually practicing medicine. The rest were filling out forms and mailing them to health insurance companies.

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4. My friend David worked for the Bangor Daily news before he graduated from the U of M at Orono. You had to be present at graduation to get your degree, so he went in and told the Dean that he had to work and couldn’t be at the graduation. Well, the Dean gave him a paper that excused him. But when David went in to the paper and asked the boss what he wanted him to do, the boss said, “Why don’t you go up to Orono and cover the graduation ceremony.”

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5. Here’s the kind of shaggy dog story that your third grade kid brings home from school. In case you don’t have a kid in the third grade and haven’t heard this one lately, here it is. A man is watching The humble Farmer on his local cable channel, when the doorbell rings. When he answers the door, a 6 foot tall cockroach punches him between the eyes and scampers off. The next evening, the man is watching The humble Farmer, when the doorbell rings. When he answers the door, the cockroach kicks him and runs away. The third evening, the man is watching The humble Farmer when the doorbell rings. When he answers the door, the cockroach gives him a karate shop and runs off. The man can’t get up but manages to dial 911. When his neighbors arrive on the ambulance he tells them what happened. The driver nods and says, "Yeah, there’s a nasty bug going around."

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6. You might have seen that dog on TV who inherited 65 million dollars? My friend Winky says that this dog lives in a fancy house. But I got to thinking that a dog is still a dog, so I said, “Would a dog worth 65 million sniff another dog's rear end?” And Winky said, “A dog worth 65 million can do anything he wants.”

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7. Friend of mine went up to Augusta the other day to make some kind of tax claim. I’m not sure if it was some kind of tax rebate old people get that was involved here or what it was. It doesn’t matter. The point of this story is that the person submitting the claim put on the counter a receipt to show that the bill had been paid. The person behind the counter said, “We can’t process that claim without a bill.” Do you agree with me that at that moment, the person behind the counter became a bureaucrat? The kind of person we all fear? The kind of fear that we manifest by hate? Does not the receipt for payment of a bill --- indicate to you --- that at one time or another there must have been a bill? Here is the receipt for payment of the bill. Why do you need to see the bill? That’s the way we do it. Argh. Is not a bureaucrat, a person, to whom, the process is more important than the end result? “We always do it this way.” And heaven help you if this “way” is written down in a book of procedures. Isn’t it possible that reasonable people might find several very sensible ways to do most anything? Don’t them old paper shufflers love to have the power to turn you away? “Your papers are not in order.” Don’t they love to make you drive 50 miles one way in a snowstorm to get the paper you didn’t think you’d need that you left at home? You should have seen the disappointed look on that paper shuffler’s face, when my friend peeled back that receipt to reveal, stapled underneath, the bill.

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8. Pickpockets got my wallet when I was in Italy. You might have even seen that recent television documentary on pickpockets in Italy. When you travel anywhere, even to law abiding places like Kansas City or Philadelphia or Boston or New York City or Miami, carry things you don’t want to lose under your shirt next to your skin. If I can alert you to the danger of pickpockets and thereby save your wallet for you, it is worth all the time I’ve spent talking about it. Now, here is something curious that you may wish to ponder. When I lost my wallet, my driver’s license was in it, so when I got home I went into the vehicle registration building to get a new one. Please listen closely. I went into the vehicle registration office and took a number. And when my number was called and I approached the window, the conversation went something like this. “Please, I would like a new driver’s license.” And the nice young girl behind the counter said, “Ok. Please give me your old one.” And I said, “I don’t have the old one.” And the nice young girl said, “Oh, you can’t get a new driver’s license unless you give me the old one.” And I said, “I wouldn’t be in here asking for a new one if I had the old one. The old one was stolen.” And she said, “Oh, it was stolen? That’s different. I can help you right over here.”

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9. My wife’s father, Bill, was a wonderful man. He was the most laid-back man I ever met. Nothing bothered him. Now you know I’m not just going to run on about someone or something just for the sake of filling up airspace. You know that I’m going to tell you something that I think might be of use to you, if you would care to apply it. Whenever a doctor up at Togus ever asked Bill a question, Bill would give them any old answer. First thing that came into his head. Doctors would always say, “Boy, you’ve got a good memory.”

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10. Hello boys and girls. Have you heard of the ice ages? There was the first ice age and the second ice age and the third ice age. Each ice age has a Latin name that I can’t remember. And if a geologist wants to let you know how long ago something happened, he will tell you it happened during such and such an ice age. You might have another way of telling time. You might say, “Oh yes, that was the summer we had so much fun learning to ride horses at Meadowlark Camp.” Or, “Oh yes, I climbed up in a tree and got stuck in the crotch of the limb when I was in the third grade.” In Florida there is another way of telling time. If you ask a Florida man when anything happened, he might say, “Oh yes, that was the year I had my right hip replaced.” And his wife will say, “No it warn’t neither. It was right before your triple bypass. I know it was because I was laid up the week before with kidney stones.”

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11. Marsha: Thank goodness there is only one humble Farmer show.

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12. Have you been to Arizona or Florida or the Bahamas lately? More and more Maine people manage to get south for a week or two in the winter. Some of my neighbors now stay down south all winter. I talk with one of them on the phone quite often, and according to him, you’d only need to switch things around a bit to make Florida a perfect place to live in February. You see, the people in Florida march to a different drummer. It is a slower beat. Sometimes you can wait two hours to get into a restaurant --- and that’s before you give them your order. This means that those people who were sipping drinks in the waiting room for two hours very often forget why they are there. But, you send six waitresses from Moody’s Diner to a Florida restaurant, and the customers would be fed and back out on the street before they knew what hit them. On the other hand, in places like Venice or Fort Myers Florida, at least three cars go through a light after it has turned red. You’d swear you were in Boston --- or Italy. When the light turns green in Florida, you don’t go --- you’d get creamed if you did --- you sit there and wait for the cars to finish running the red light. Down in Florida people in cars are in a wicked hurry. Well, you see where I’m going with this. If --- you could take the Florida people who run red lights at 50 miles an hour and get them to wait on tables, and if --- you could get the Florida people who wait on tables to drive the cars, Florida would be a very nice place to live in the winter.

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13. Would you like to brag about how much money you have --- how successful you are, without actually saying, “I have a lot of money?” The easiest and most popular way of bragging about how rich you are is to complain about your income tax. Walk around saying, “Don’t I hate paying income tax. It’s Wicked. Wicked.” Poor people don’t pay income tax because they don’t earn any money. But, if you really want everyone to know that you make a lot of money, complaining about your income tax, or property tax or automobile tax or any kind of tax is a good way to brag about your wealth. Most people know that the higher the taxes in any country, the higher the standard of living. Another way of bragging about how rich you are is to accuse all your friends of making lots of money --- gives everyone the impression that money is all you think about and that you must be doing very well. For example, when you meet anyone on the street or in a story, shout out good and loud, “Here’s the man with all the money.” And there’s an even more subtle way of bragging about your wealth. Please, please, don’t use this method unless your grandfather left your father money that you’re still trying to spend. This is the method of bragging about wealth that is only used by people who have old, old money. Ready? Mention how much you enjoy living without a telephone. Say that there’s nothing you hate more than hearing a telephone ring. Of course, those of us who are still trying to earn a living love to hear the telephone ring. Very often it’s a customer who wants information on our products or services. So you might like to hear your phone ring anytime.

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