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Rants October 31, 2010

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1. Have you ever lost your keys in the sand at the beach, had your credit cards stolen from your gym locker, or left your wallet at the tennis court? If these unfortunate situations sound familiar, then perhaps you ought to give up sports.

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2. Marsha and I got into a big motor home with friends and went down to Key West for a few days. I like Key West. It is different. Don’t you think it is interesting that I also like Smogen and Monhegan? Key West and Smogen and Monhegan are all islands. Marsha packed food and clothes. I didn’t bother to pack much of anything which was a mistake because I forgot to bring a belt or suspenders. Most of my pants are so small that I can navigate without a belt, but the pants I took to Key West had about an inch of slack around the waist. Yes, I know. I could have corrected the problem with a piece of rope, but I didn’t think of it at the time. So I walked the streets of Key West for two days with both hands hanging onto my pants so they wouldn’t fall off. Anyone who saw me probably thought, “Look at that old fool trying to dress like a teen aged kid.”

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3. Two accidents were reported in a news blog I eagerly read every morning. In one article we learned that “speed might have been a factor” when a woman rolled over in her pickup truck because her “brakes apparently locked up.” The only person to comment on this accident said, "’apparently’, ‘may have’; sounds more like opinion. Fact is one should have full control of the vehicle at all times.” Do you find it interesting that not one comment of this nature appeared in a companion article on the same blog --- but 12 people did express condolences after reading that a man who was not wearing a helmet died after ramming his ATV into some trees?

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4. I tuned in late but I think the fellow I saw on TV was an evangelist, and I suspect that he had been asked why his business was booming, because I did hear him say that nowadays more and more people were searching for purpose and meaning in their lives. This is easy to believe because most of the people I know who at one time or another were looking for purpose and meaning in their lives had to hit rock bottom to get there. They are people who lost everything they had by gambling. They are people who drank until their spouses and their children fled. They are people who hunkered down under enemy fire and wondered if they would survive the day. They are people who lost a needed loved one at a very critical point in their young lives and were eagerly recruited when they were the most vulnerable and were swept up into a cult by a bunch of nuts. They are people who, through no fault of their own, inherited genes that enable them to hear words and see things that are not there. They are people who were cheated out of their life’s work when their retirement funds were legislated away or simply stolen. When you see your friends and relatives and neighbors who are searching for purpose and meaning in their lives don’t you have to think to yourself, “There, but for the grace of Mother Nature, go I?”

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5. There are some very clever characters in Maine. They are people who know how to get things done. What would you do if you were annoyed by the amount of valuable clutter your neighbors were accumulating in the weeds and bushes around their homes? Would you complain to the officials in your town? Make your neighbors haul the clutter to the dump? If you were smart you wouldn’t, because then you’d be considered a nut or a crank, or even worse, someone from away. Let me tell you how one man single handedly cleaned up his entire town. He dragged stuff home from the dump and artistically decorated his yard with old bicycles and bedsprings much as someone in Camden would plant flowers or shrubs. Old washing machine here. Comfortable sofa there. A few broken chairs and a dozen or so lawnmowers for parts. Weeds in between. At last some of his neighbors couldn’t stand it any longer and got up a petition which led to an ordinance. The selectmen then came to this man’s house and said that they were sorry but because of a new regulation everyone had to haul off their junk.

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6. How often do you have a good laugh? I mean really roaring? Radio friend Richard Sassaman sent me a tape of this program for January 6, 1993 and I laughed and laughed at the things the man was saying between Serge Chaloff and Bob Baird. You understand that I can’t very well remember telling, on January 6, 1993, about the gorilla who saved a zoo keeper by performing the Heimlich maneuver, so this was like listening to 60 minutes of old-fashioned music and very funny commentary that I was really hearing for the first time. I was reading you excerpts from a paper called the Tabloid Tattler --- a paper so good that it could not possibly succeed. Years ago when I used to drive all the way to Orono to make this program --- two hours each way, I used to make myself a little cassette tape to save. I never listened to any of them but I’ve got a couple of hundred of them in a cardboard box in my office. Do you have a box of old humble tapes under your bed? Wouldn’t it be fun to burn some of those old cassettes onto CDs so I could play them when I need a laugh? In 1993 I was telling about Liz Taylor giving advice on how to be happy with your spouse. A parallel in the animal kingdom would be a fox giving a lecture on the merits of vegetarianism.

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7. Have you ever heard the song Dave Berry wrote about Stephen King? Seems as they played together in some kind of celebrity rock band. The only words I remember to the song go something like this: "I wish I paid as much income tax as Stephen King." If you can find that song on YouTube, please tell me how to find it. Stephen King is to be admired. Here's a man who made himself very rich who still votes like those of us who are barely scraping by. --- Have you ever noticed that caring about others seems to be one of the inherent dangers of a good college education?

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8. The other morning my computer told me that my Microsoft Security Essentials was turned off. I clicked on the little box that said “Recommendations,” Do you believe that when I clicked on it, another little box came up that said, “Recommendation – Turn on your installed antivirus program.” But there is no little box that says it will turn on my installed antivirus program. There is no way to figure out how to do it. After a goodly amount of Googling I did work my way through a site that said it would tell me how to turn on my installed antivirus program. But, as you well know if you’ve gone this route before, it would cost me $38 for the answer. And who knows how and when the answer would be delivered up. --- Today, tomorrow, next week? We have talked about the oblique manner in which some of our friends boast of their wealth. In the old days they did it by complaining about the horrendous income tax they paid. Nowadays our friends boast of their wealth by casually mentioning that they do not have a computer. Nowadays I can’t think of anyone engaged in earning a living --- in any occupation --- who can do it effectively without using a computer. So boasting that you do not have a computer is another simple way of saying that you don’t need to work. I did find a page that would reinstall the entire antivirus program. I need to work, but I won’t be doing it until I call my computer guru friend and find out what kind of gremlins got in my computer last night and turned off my antivirus program. Oh, I should mention, when I restarted my computer the problem went away.

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9. Today we are going to talk about the difference between animals and people in general and horses and American male athletes in particular. Like so many of the things we talk about, this topic was brought to mind when I opened the Encyclopedia Britannica at random and read about horses. Did you know that the horse is ranked fourth in intelligence among the lower animals following the elephant, the ape and the dog? Horses can find their way home. If you are mean to your horse, your horse will not like you and will remember it for a long time. As you remember from reading Gulliver among the Houyhnhnms, horses are naturally friendly and seldom attack man or animal. Horses can find water in a desert, can be aware of unknown and unseen dangers, and can discriminate between enemies and friends at even long distances. A normal vigorous stallion is usually restricted to 50 to 60 mares per season, but we read that the old patriarch, Hambletonian Ten, was badly overbred and covered 823 mares in a four year period. The drain on his vitality was so great that he had to be retired from service. And that’s the primary difference between horses and many of the athletes you see on television.

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10. Because I’ve been coughing more and enjoying it less, I visited my doctor who called in a prescription for me at the drugstore. The selling of prescription drugs is one of America’s most profitable businesses, so I encountered the usual line and sat down to wait. Across from me the wall was covered with Slimfast, Dieter’s Tea, many products that burn belly fat, appetite controller, Fat Burner, Natural Fat Burner, and Triple Fat Burner. Man is the only animal that eats fast food, ice cream, cookies, cake, pie and candy, and then goes to the drugstore for a box of fat burner. But cause and effect is such a complicated concept that a lot of our friends will never understand it. The way things are today, there is so much money to be made from an uninformed public that education is discouraged. There was some problem with the message from my doctor and a young man, who was discussing this with her on the phone, looked up long enough to tell me that even with my regular health insurance and my supplemental health insurance, it would still cost me $107. Right then I should have asked if that was for a week, a year or if it would last me for a lifetime. But I didn’t, and because I only had $3 in my pocket anyway, I thanked him and left. On the way home I couldn’t help but think that although millions of working Americans have been stopped dead there at the drugstore counter when they realized that they couldn’t pay for their medicine, they would still vote for Republicans because cause and effect is such a complicated concept that a lot of our friends will never understand it. The way things are today, there is so much money to be made from an uninformed public that education is discouraged.

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11. Are you surprised to hear that $2500 worth of cocaine can be concealed in a woman’s pants when you can get $2500 worth of oil into a couple of metal containers in your cellar?

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12. The shower I use is in the cellar. We live in a house that was built in 1811 so we are lucky to even have a cellar. But we have a cellar with a cement floor and I installed a shower down there that can be used by anyone who is under five foot seven. Sometimes I remember to bring my clothes down and sometimes to get to clean clothes I walk up two flights of stairs. Because my wife is usually gone in the morning, I usually get away with it. But this morning when I came out of the cellar without a stitch on, my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect woman, was in the living room. I stopped and smiled. She shook her head in disgust and said, “I’m not even going to talk with you until you put in your hearing aids.”

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