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Rants November 20, 2011

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1. Because for so many years so many friends have written to express their thanks for what they call the wisdom they hear expounded on this show, if you will listen carefully and if you are ready to write it down I will exude a bit of practical wisdom right now. Never cough while your wife is giving you a haircut.

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2. The TV didn’t work until we hooked up the new boxes and now that that’s done, the TV only works with two clickers. One clicker turns it on and the other one moves the channels up and down. Just before getting into bed I clicked through all of the channels in search of enrichment and finally settled on some guys with machine guns who were shooting hundreds of giant bugs that were trying to eat them. I settled on the man eating bugs after watching some people on the floor in Congress who wanted to balance the budget by spending cuts which would put 15 million more people out of work, double the unemployment rate and shrink the economy by 17 percent. Because of your extensive reading you will recall that similar dismal economic conditions in Germany were what enabled Hitler to be voted into power. So it is obvious to more than a few of us why certain folks in Washington are so eager to completely drown in a bathtub the gasping economy that barely survived a two-term president. Anyway, you can easily understand why I went with the man eating bugs. Aren’t they really much less of a threat to our society than the so-called budget balancers in Congress? I don’t know what Marsha and I would do without our television.

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3. Are you good at remembering faces? I might not be able to recognize you if you had supper at my house the day before, and I recently discovered that this is because I have a very annoying disorder that is called Face Blindness. In a German study 2.5 percent of the people tested have it. Face Blindness is more annoying than embarrassing when someone says, "I can't believe you don't remember me. I've been to your house four times." I'm not alone when it comes to having a memory that does not record faces. Doesn’t it remind you of those people who forgot to list on their job applications that they had been convicted of theft, assault, manslaughter and even cocaine trafficking? What an exciting life you must have if you can forget that you spent your last birthday in jail.

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4. Did you read about the Grandmother who was hospitalized after a pit bull attacked 3 people and killed a smaller dog? This is the kind of headline that attracts the attention of any student who seriously studies human behavior. --- Or a vet who gets paid to put down dogs. Did the picture of a dog biting an elderly woman on crutches come immediately to your mind? Or do you live in the part of Maine where proud grannies might be all of 30 years old? As a sidelight, would not this dog biting article also provide insight into the effects of education on social demographics? Here’s how you do it. First ask yourself what percentage of the 150 letters to the editor will be defending the dog. You then count the dog’s defenders and compare the semantics and orthography in their letters with the style of those other Mainers who would probably not put their child in a pen with a pit bull or domesticated alligator. Would you be surprised to find a clearly delineated dichotomy in the internal evidence? A while back some young radio friends asked me to marry them, and this pit bull story reminds me of what I said to those assembled at that wedding on that cool October afternoon on the coast of Maine. I said, “You will recall that a man who lived with wild bears and who spent all the time he could with bears was eaten by bears. Even more recently a man who loved sharks and other dangerous denizens of the deep came to a sudden and much publicized end when one of them killed him. You and I know that there are wild and uncontrollable creatures on this planet that may be toyed with for a while, but that at any time they are likely to turn on you. And yet, this afternoon, Steven and Alison have chosen to get married......”

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5. A while back a chimp bit a woman and we are still hearing about it. I’m not surprised to hear that animals bite people, are you? If it is a living thing with teeth, it probably bites. You must be very young or have lived a very secluded life if you have never been bitten by something. When I was around 7 years old I was up on Chestnut Street in Camden crawling around on the floor with a dog. And when I stuck my ignorant face in the dog’s face, the dog bit me. Never underestimate the ability of a young boy to mutilate himself. Dogs bite four and one half million people in the US every year. We read that in a recent year in the United States 33 people were killed by dogs. Every day in this country over 1000 people show up at an emergency room to be treated for dog bite. Yes -- every day 1000 people get such a bad dog bite that they show up at an emergency room. People bite people. It is so common that you won’t see it in the papers. Please permit me to say this again. In the U. S. alone in one year 33 people were killed by dogs. And every day 1000 dogs sink their teeth into human flesh so far that you end up helping to pay for it with your health insurance premiums. So please tell me why when a chimp bites someone it makes national news for years?

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6. Did you hear about the woman who said that robbers had locked her in her car trunk? It gave her an excuse for not coming to work for the previous three days. Police became suspicious when they looked in the trunk, because there were no signs that anyone had lived there for three days. Anyone familiar with the habits of bears in the woods would have become suspicious. If a bear or a fox or anything else lives in your woods --- or in the trunk of your car --- for three days, you will see signs. Why didn't that woman realize that if a person lives in the trunk of a car for three days, there should be signs? I think it's because she'd watched too many soap operas. On soap operas, they can tie a woman to a chair for a week, and if you give her an occasional drink of water and a scrap of food, she gets along fine.

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7. Did you hear the Texas governor say that we have too many government agencies? He is hoping to attract some people who don’t remember when the Austrian man with the funny haircut set up shop in Germany and gradually took over this office and then that office until just about everything was in his own hands. The governor from Texas also seems to be asking, “Do you really need government agencies when you have one capable leader willing to shoulder the entire burden?” You can see why the members of one political party will do everything in their power to corrupt good government --- the people’s watchdog agencies --- and are so eager to consolidate schools to facilitate their own brand of education. A 6 or 7 year liberal arts college education for one and all would make it difficult for them to find supporters and even obviate the need of talking about things like this. When you see people like this Texas governor on TV, have you ever wondered if the American people are asleep? Have they forgotten what happened when our financial institutions squirmed and wiggled under Reagan until, under the guiding hand of George W. Bush, they were finally freed from Roosevelt’s government regulations --- and the whole house of cards collapsed? How many times do you have to point out to the ingenuous that these government regulations on financial institutions were implemented by Roosevelt after the depression to prevent another economic meltdown? ---- And that without those government regulations, financial houses of every ilk had a license to plunder --- which is why you and I have seen so many shuttered houses with furniture in the driveway. And now we see one more presidential candidate telling us that we need fewer government regulatory agencies. In other words, “Let’s bypass the will of the people and simply give me and my rich friends a license to continue to plunder.” Because it sells with a smile some of the folk are buying it.

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8. According to a think tank at Harvard, within 200 years sexual harassment will not exist in the work place. This is because if present sexual harassment programs are one hundred percent successful, in 200 years there won't be anyone.

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9. Speaking of sexual harassment, do you think I have a somewhat oblique sense of humor? You tell me. I recently walked up to a women I know fairly well and put my hands on her shoulders. I rubbed her shoulders and then ran my hands down over her arms and said, “Do you know why I’m doing this? I’m getting ready to run for president.”

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10. Speaking of presidential candidates being accused of sexual harassment, I recently kick-started my own political career. Please listen closely. As I walked into a church pew, I noticed seated in front of me a women I’ve known for over 50 years. I put my hands on her shoulders and rubbed them and then leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “Do you know the reason I’m doing this?” She smiled deliciously and whispered back, “Who needs a reason?”

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