+

Rants December 19, 2010

+

1. My friend David says that an unidentified American private collector paid $2.2 million for George Armstrong Custer’s last flag. David said there was no word on whether or not the flag came with its stand.

+

2. We’ve been hearing a lot of talk about illegal immigrants lately. From what I have read, when my people came to North America 390 or so years ago they were probably considered illegal immigrants. In any case, some of the folks who were already here weren't too happy with the way they trounced in, all uninvited, and set up shop. You might compare illegal immigration to cutting in front of another car in a line of traffic: you can't really feel comfortable with your new place in line until you've gone along for two or three miles and a few people have cut in front of you.

+

3. Thomas Jefferson is probably the most quoted American of all time. We are told that he was a prodigious letter writer who might have had to mortgage Monticello were he blessed with the postage rates we enjoy today. But were you to crunch the numbers you will see that Jefferson only averaged around one letter a day for 50 years. This came to mind a few minutes ago when a friend emailed me a Jefferson quote that was intended to justify a political stance embraced by fascists. I couldn’t help but think how interesting it is that Jefferson’s letters can be quoted to support the opinions of not only fascists but socialists and every imaginable shade and color of political persuasion in between. But --- after only a few seconds of reflection --- I realized that you could say the same thing about the Bible --- or most any number of venerated books and documents. While Googling to refresh my mind about President Jefferson’s politics, I read that God said sex is only to be enjoyed within the context of a marriage between a man and a woman. There is no doubt that the man who penned the Declaration of Independence was an inordinately moral man who firmly subscribed to this, which should eliminate the need for any further discussion on that particular topic right there. Should you want to follow up on this on your own, the Positive Atheism website has a page of Jefferson’s quotes. If you like to make your own Easter, Christmas or birthday cards, you are certain to find on there a suitable sentiment for most any occasion.

+

4. I got an email yesterday morning that said, “10 rules for staying positive.” Have you ever thought about this before? It would be easy to come up with 10 rules for staying positive without buying the book or tapes or whatever they were selling. Probably number one on the list would be to avoid our media. Never watch TV, listen to the radio, read an email or a newspaper. It’s taken me a long time to come to this conclusion, but I finally figured out why some people move into caves on the top of mountains, sit in the doorway, and say OM.

+

5. The email that came yesterday said that for $15 I could adopt a wolf but I’m going to pass on it. For an extra $30 I can buy a day-old calf. I wouldn’t worry if the grandchildren were to pet it --- unless you can come up with some good old story about children being chased through the forest by a pack of salivating calves. After three years I could eat my calf. And there is always the danger that a lot of people would come out of the woodwork and insist I run for President if they heard I’d shot and eaten my wolf.

+

6. My great grandfather, who was 8 years old in 1826, would not understand many of the things done in this country today. Were he to read about the 20 million illegal immigrants in America he’d quickly point out that many of the astute businessmen who eagerly hire them would really much rather have slaves. In 1826 John James Audubon was drawing pictures of birds. Today the word Audubon brings to mind an environmental organization dedicated to conservation and when we look at the pretty birds in Audubon’s pictures it’s nice to think that they sat quietly on a bush while he sketched them. But this is what we read in Audubon’s journal for 1826 as he traveled abroad to find a publisher for his book. “I have been much interested in the Dusky Petrel; the mate killed four at one shot.” “After my drawing finished I caught four Dolphins. How much I have gazed on these beautiful creatures.” “Two more noddys were shot by our mate this day.” “I tasted some, and found it to resemble the flesh of the Porpoise.” If you don’t think that times have changed, the next time you are eating with friends, look up from your chicken and say, “My, it tastes like porpoise.”

+

7. When I pick up the phone and an unfamiliar voice on the phone says “How are you today?” my answer is, “Very suspicious of strangers who call to inquire about my health.”

+

8. I might be too far gone to profit, but I’m starting to think about what I eat. When you get older, your stomach acquires tyrannical opinions and there is a price to pay for your inattention. Fried chicken once put me in the hospital for three days. The kind of milk you get in stores will give me half the symptoms of a heart attack, although I’ve heard that I could handle milk straight from my neighbor’s cow like any baby. This makes sense because people drank raw milk for thousands of years. I like a dish of cereal before I go to bed as it keeps me from making a Dagwood type of raid on the refrigerator at 2 AM. But what do you buy when the choices in cereal are almost endless? You might have heard that Cheerios are good, but there are many imitations out there so one evening I set out to research the topic. Don’t try it. One evening wouldn’t do it, as there are probably hundreds of web sites that evaluate the numerous cereals shaped like little donuts and there is no way of knowing which ones are shills. There is nothing the press or your competitors love to print more than a false claim and this is what I read. “Eating Cheerios Reduces Cholesterol in 30 Days.” “Cheerios is definitely one of the better choices in the breakfast cereal category, as it is made from whole wheat and is very low in sugar. But don’t buy into the marketing claims disguised as scientific research. Here is why: 1. The research was conducted by Provident Clinical Research, a for-profit institute that gets paid by General Mills and other manufacturers to design, implement, and analyze tests that will always shine a bright light on the product in question.” “Cheerios definitely makes the grade, but not because of the silly paid-for science report they have brought to the public’s attention.” In other words, if you have enough money, you can set up a laboratory that will scientifically prove that a quart of whiskey and a pack of Luckies will make you immortal. But until you tell me otherwise, I’m going to ask the boss to get Cheerios.

+

9. Listen to this scrap I just copied out of Science Daily. “In conversation, we often imitate each other's speech style and may even change our accent to fit that of the person we're talking to. A recent study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that imitating someone who speaks with a regional or foreign accent may actually help you understand them better.” What do you think about that? You have heard jokes about people who had their nose flattened when they imitated the speech of another. I have taken my wife Marsha to task for imitating the English syntax patterns employed by Europeans with whom she is speaking, although I know she does it thinking it will help them understand her. Over 50 years ago while hitchhiking through Texas, I tried to imitate the speech of a man in a little store and he very subtly and cleverly let me know that I was making a fool of myself. He did me a favor because since then, unless I am working to perfect my French, I have never tried to talk like somebody else. I even speak Swedish with a Maine accent. Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là. And please listen closely to this. Way back when I was investigating the correlation between acoustic and articulatory parameters, I asked the venerable Judge Strout where he got his accent. As I recall, he said he got it among the workers in the shipyards in Thomaston, and that would have probably been in the 1880s or 90s. Although insecure young boys who move away from Maine usually come home sporting a new accent, Judge Strout was able to get a Harvard law degree without feeling he had to impress people by changing the way he talked. So. You tell me. Do you think that imitating someone’s accent would help you understand them better? What do you think of people who try to imitate the way you talk?

+

10. Listen to these quotes that David sent me. “If I agreed with you we'd both be wrong.” “All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.” “What's the speed of dark?” I said that they sounded like Steven Wright and David said that half the jokes on the internet attributed to Steven Wright are not his. Steven Wright is doing better than Obama. About 95 percent of the problems attributed to him are not his. But the way he’s been going lately with continuing the endless war and continuing the endless tax breaks to the super rich, within two years they will be.

+

11. Here’s something a retired Bowdoin professor sent me four years ago. Even if I told you about it then, it warrants repeating. He says, “You mentioned seeing Dave Brubeck in the late fifties playing colleges. About that time I was still in high school and bought a record of Mort Sahl (I think it was recorded at the Hungry I in San Francisco). At one point he described being on this “ivy league tour of New England” with Brubeck’s band. It goes something like this: “Now, I don’t want you to think we’re like this, but it had been a long tour and we found ourselves in Portland, Maine, on a Saturday night. We sort of turned up our collars and went up to a cab driver and said, ‘Where’s the action?’ — and he took us to this place where they fish illegally.”

+

12. You’ve heard me tell about my friend Winky. One day when I went over to visit Winky, I saw a new sign out in front of the house that said, “Danger: Beware of Dog.” And out there in the path that led up to the house was his old hound dog who looked like he could hardly get up and walk. So when I got up to the house I asked Winky why he had that sign out there. And Winky said, “Before I put up that sign, people kept tripping over him."

+