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Rants August 15, 2010

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1. Do you ever want to know more than what you see printed in the newspaper? You know very well that the most interesting part of the story might be left out. For example, we read in the paper that at 1 in the morning a Rockland, Maine man called the police because he saw a suspicious looking car parked on the street. But wouldn’t you like to know if the police asked that good citizen why he was out running around in the middle of the night?

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2. Little email here this morning trying to sell me anti aging cream. At 74 does a man care what he looks like? You got a cream I can rub on my chest that will enable me to walk up a hill without gasping for breath, you’ve got a customer. You got a cream I can rub on my foot that will eliminate that sharp pain I get in my ankle when it rains, you’ve got a customer. You got a cream I can rub on my ears that will help me hear birds cheep, dogs bark and my wife telling me what to do, you’ve got a customer. You got a cream I can rub on my eyes so I can see the wrench in my hand and the bolt up underneath the washing machine, you’ve got a customer. And --- if you can take care of all these things that do matter, I won’t care what I look like so I won’t need your anti aging cream.

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3. Andy, from somewhere down in Massachusetts, used to listen to this show 15 or 20 years ago. Last week he got off his bicycle when he saw the big humble Farmer sign in front of our house and came in to visit. He was kind enough to have supper with us and stayed the night. He’s an experienced traveler who says that traveling by bike from hostel to hostel has changed. Andy says that one morning he got up at 9 and thought the hostel was deserted. It looked deserted because he was the first one to get up. But even around noon when people started to appear they didn’t have anything to say to him or each other. The floor was a maze of wires because people had plugged in their computers. Others were talking on the cell phones. My question to you is --- why do people venture out to see the world if all they do is party at night, sleep until noon, and spend the rest of the day on their computers or cell phones telling their friends back home what a wonderful time they’re having? Andy says that nowadays too many of the people who stay in hostels are alcoholic drifters posing as world travelers. I’m humble at humblefarmer dot com. What do you know about riding around the country on a bicycle?

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4. What do you do when your well runs dry? I seek out other sources. Sad but true, but for the past week or two the little emailed headlines I get from the Bangor Daily news have done nothing to move me to insightful commentary. There are the usual articles opposing alternate energy sources --- essential if they are to hold their readership --- articles outlining the depredations of out-of-control state and national governments --- essential if they are to hold their readership, reports of car crashes and boat accidents, fleshed out by accounts of Maine’s inevitable drunken or drug induced stabbings and shootings --- just in case you wondered about the flashing blue lights outside your window last night. But isn’t that the way life should be? Anyway, there was nothing of interest in the newspaper, so I opened the Encyclopedia Britannica at random and began to read. --- You will remember that for many years you have been enriched by many wonderful and interesting things I have read to you out of the encyclopedia. Sure enough, under F we read that Pierre de Fermat was the greatest number theorist between Diophantus and Leonhard Euler. But listen to this --- here’s the man who, in over a 1400 year time span, knew more about numbers than anyone in the world. He was born in 1601. He died in 1665. On his tombstone it said that he was 57. And --- a couple of pages after that we learn that Count Von Fredrik Axel Fersen (1719-1794) was taught privately by the brilliant Sven Lagerbring and rapidly made his mark in parliamentary life. He was intelligent and energetic, and made skilful use of all possible means including bribery, to further his party’s interest. Fersen did very well in Sweden in 1755. Imagine how much more successful he would be in the United States today with the Supreme Court on his side.

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5. When you read about a proposed piece of legislation, do you ever know who’s behind it? Follow the money. Have you ever read of a new piece of legislation that doesn’t put money in someone’s pocket? Of course, the more money you make through legislation that puts money in your pocket, the more legislation you can buy to put even more money in your pocket. So --- you wouldn’t be surprised to see tobacco or whiskey or beer declared illegal substances that carried a jail sentence like cocaine or marijuana. The people who are getting rich running and servicing our already overcrowded prison system would love to see beer and tobacco declared illegal. Did you know that prisons are being privatized? Run for profit? Think of the corners that they’ll cut in a prison run for profit. And then think of all the people who make money on our prisons. The telephone companies. Prisoners want to talk with their spouses and children. Vending machines, laundry, food services, social services. The list is almost endless. So, you can believe that even today, the people who are running our prisons would love to see whiskey and tobacco declared illegal. If tobacco and whiskey were illegal, our present prison population --- which I understand has quadrupled over the past 10 years --- would double overnight, because someone modern day Al Capone would be trying to get rich selling one more illegal and therefore overpriced substance. Who do you think is behind all this --- no time off for good behavior --- business? Do the crime and you do the time? Oh, they might have a few rednecks parroting their mantra, but it is put out there by the folks who are making big money providing services for the prisons. Somewhere down the road when you chance to hear that someone is trying to make tobacco or alcohol illegal, remember that you heard it here. (080831)

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6. Do kids know how to have fun nowadays? My home town has certainly changed since I was a kid so you know for sure that what kids do must have also changed. Wilder Oakes says, “I was also thinking today of the time I took one of my high school girlfriends to the town dump for a date, and we shot rats with a .22 pistol. “Too bad you can't rat hunt anymore these days it was great for the reflexes.”

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7. It was probably on a dark and stormy night when, in the course of our conversation, a friend chanced to mention the techniques he employed to pick up women. Knowing that there was a ready market for this information, I immediately wrote it down. And you should know, before I say another word, that 60 or so years ago I would go to dances. Girls would be at the dances, and when I asked them to dance they would look me up and down and say, “No.” Which is why I have long been aware that there is an acute need for the kind of literature we are now discussing. My friend who freely gave me this information is a master salesman. While traveling around the United States selling things, he soon tired of spending endless evenings all alone in a hotel room. So he developed these ingenious, practically infallible, techniques for picking up women. Like pickpocketing, it is a science. But, when I had written down everything my friend had to say, I realized I couldn’t publish it. It is too powerful, and, sooner or later, it would fall into the wrong hands. And from what we see on TV those bad guys don’t need any help. Anyway, the other day when I mentioned this article on how to pick up women to some friends, a woman laughed and asked if I knew how women picked up men. She said it could be compared to patting a dog.

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8. When I mentioned that back in 1947 my parents took us out of school for the month of October so we could go up to the county and pick potatoes, a woman who was sitting at our breakfast table said that when her son was in school, there was no excuse for absence. She said, “My son wanted to go hunting for one day. So I thought, why not? He’s a good kid. He’s got good grades, He’s 16 years old. So I lied and said he was sick so he could go out in the woods and shoot little animals.”

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9. I do not watch sitcoms. When it comes to television I stoop pretty low and I watch almost everything. I can watch Mythbusters and Victor Newman and the history channel and even science fiction. But I have yet to get so desperate that I watch these inane programs called sitcoms because I live in a sitcom. Please listen closely. Every year we have the Gilchrest-Robinson family reunion the third Sunday in August in the grange hall. We reserve the hall a year in advance. But this year one of the grange members, who forgot that the hall was already spoken for, told another party they could have some kind of shower or party there. Well, we can bend, so I agreed to bring some tables and chairs out of the hall down to my house. It was supposed to be a sunny day so we could have it under one of my apple trees. The appointed day arrives, I haul the tables and chairs down to my house. And at noon I go out to the hall to tell the people who are having the shower to tell any reunion people who happen to show up just out of habit to come down to my house. But at noon there is no one there. So I rush down to a neighbor’s house. It is my understanding that his daughter reserved the hall for her wedding party. But my neighbor says that his daughter already had the party at the hall a week or two before. So the hall is empty. I carried all the chairs and tables down to my house for nothing. We can have our reunion in the hall as usual, --- so people who are just arriving at my house, are shunted out to the hall. Just as we are settling in, someone shows up at the hall and says that it wasn’t that neighbor’s daughter who was having a party there, but someone else, she wasn’t quite sure who they were or when they were supposed to be there, but a couple of wistful looking girls had just showed up on the steps and left, looking very much like injured parties. I think it was finally determined that the other party was to be at 2, so we quickly ate, swore we’d never let this happen again, and adjourned without even remembering to take up a collection. If you’re still with me, you probably realize why commercials have become the most interesting programming on television.

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10. Have you noticed that when you see a program advertised on television, more and more of them show someone pointing a gun at someone else followed by a car flying through the air and bursting into flames? Which reminds me of a classic scene on the Simpsons where a baby carriage rolls down a hill, strikes a tree, and explodes in flames. This gun thing and the car bursting into flames is not happening by chance. Can’t you easily believe that there are highly paid psychologists who have determined what the American public wants to see? --- And that we are reaping the fruits of those studies? Try this experiment --- click through the channels and for five minutes watch anything that comes up. I’ll bet you can’t do it without seeing some variation of a Mexican Standoff. Two guys with guns, or one guy with a gun and the other one with a bomb between his legs. The protagonists don’t even have to be in the same state now. They have cell phones with pictures on them, and they’ll hold up a cell phone and say, “Yes, that’s your brother we have here with duct tape on his mouth. Do thus and so or he sleeps with the fishes.” What’s going on nowadays? Why do we now have this insatiable demand for blood and violence? Don’t you miss the good old days before television when you could curl up by the fire and quietly read Hamlet or Antigone? +

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