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Rants January 15, 2012

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1. Here’s an email response to that recent letter I read about the doctor who cuts off parts of women’s feet so women can squeeze them into pointy so-called fashionable shoes. Martha says, “No wonder alien space ships don’t want to land here.’

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2. For years my neighbor Jimmy Parker built boats with the Dennison boys and anyone who has built wooden boats on the coast of Maine with a man named Dennison has bathed in the font of wisdom. I have seen Jimmy Parker take a pile of oak planks and turn it into a --- I don’t know --- a 30 -- 40 foot boat? --- right in his front yard. I stopped in to see Jimmy one day because I’d just picked up an oak plank on the dump and I wanted him to have it. After giving it a professional once-over, he said, “It’s a good thing that the road to the dump goes two ways.” And while I had his attention I showed him the pine boards that I’d picked up at the same time by knocking apart a large pine shelf that might have just come out of the newly renovated Port Clyde general store and I told him I was going to use them to build shelves in the little shed where I store my gardening tools and cow fence posts. But Jimmy said something that made me change my mind and now I don’t think I will build those shelves. Right now that building is so full that you can’t get in the door. And Jimmy very astutely pointed out that if I built shelves and put everything away, it would create a very inviting huge empty space on the floor and unless I changed my way of thinking and doing things it wouldn’t be long before I’d cart home more junk to fill up that space and I’d need even more shelves. You can see that I’d be in the same situation as a state that builds more prisons. Even before your friends in the construction business who built the prison have time to contribute to your next political campaign, you discover that there is a waiting line of prisoners to get in and you need yet another prison. I’m the humble farmer at gmail dot com and if you can explain why nature abhors an empty space, I’d like to hear from you.

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3. My friend Rich says that some people who buy lottery tickets don’t have a firm grasp on what you can do with $30,000,000. Rich says some TV reporter interviewed a man who bought a lottery ticket. Of course the reporter asked him what he’d do if he won 30 million dollars. And the fellow said he’d pay off his house mortgage. Think about this. If it took 30 million dollars to pay off your house mortgage, would you be in that socio-economic class of people who buy lottery tickets at a gas station?

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4. You’ve heard people say it: “I’m losing my grip.” Of course you are more likely to hear someone say, “He’s losing his grip,” because people don’t want to admit that they are losing their grip. Radio friend George, who graduated from Potsdam State Teachers College the same time I was flunking out, sent me this: “The older you become, the more you need to exercise. … men squeezed a machine that measured the force that they could exert. They lost 20 percent of their grip strength in seven years. The older they were, the more they lost. Those who lost the most height or weight,… and those who took in the most caffeine had greater losses of strength. … No explanation was offered for the association of caffeine with loss of muscle strength.” I can remember years ago hearing my friend Julian saying, “Yup, a cup of coffee and a cigarette will get you where you want to go --- as long as you aren’t going too far.”

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5. A salesman fellow who improves web pages just called me from Buffalo New York to tell me that my web page wasn’t turning up on the search engines. If he hadn’t called me, I would believe him.

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6. During a coffee break between sessions at the Applied and Therapeutic Humor convention in Panama City, I was standing at one of those round coffee tables in the lobby outside of the meeting room when an attractive young girl pressed herself up against me and took me by the hand. Even when I was young I was so homely that girls didn’t press their bodies up against me, so I was somewhat surprised. I said to her, “What do you do?” And she said, “I’m a hospice nurse. I comfort old men by holding their hands while they are dying.”

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7. We read that one of the most devious businessmen to ever run for public office taught his employees how to make customers smile by smiling themselves. I know that smiling is contagious and wish I could walk around with a smile. One of the most amoral people I know who used to live in my neighborhood stole from his neighbors but he always walked around with a big smile on his face. I know that I would do better socially and economically if I could smile like my wife Marsha. You know that smiles even come across through the telephone and Marsha is a master telephone marketer for my speaking business --- or she would be if I could ever get her to do it. But she’d rather scrub toilets than make phone calls for $50 an hour.

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8. Have you ever heard of Facebook? For some reason I can’t even remember, one day in a moment of weakness I established a Facebook page and I look at it every day. A Facebook page for me is like my radio program. It is not a place to exchange ideas with others but a place to unload my rants. Facebook is also a place where I can be brought up to date with what is happening in the world by well-informed friends who have time to read and evaluate informative articles. I don't have as much time to read European newspapers as I did so if it wasn’t for my friends I’d have no idea of what’s going on in America today. I'm way behind on my television programs and would like to get a few weeks ahead with my radio program, so I do appreciate the many informative articles that are sent my way. No, I don't really need Facebook, because for over 30 years a network of very intelligent radio friends has been educating me with letters and visits and now emails. So I could live without Facebook. But if someone does send me a well-thought out concept, or an informative article, I appreciate it and congratulate myself for attracting friends who are much cleverer than I am. Although it is my Facebook page, friends can come in there and say anything they want. If some poorly informed person posts things on my Facebook page that indicate that he hasn’t read all that much history, I don’t say anything but simply stop reading his comments. Is there a downside to reading the articles my friends post in my Facebook every day? Yes. One quickly learns that the unfortunate shell-shocked Iraq war veteran, who is televised when he returns home to shoot a few people, is only a diversion from much scarier doings that are conveniently ignored by the corporate media.

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9. When I meet you for the first time, I will talk a lot. I will unload my life history on you and tell you about my neighbors, past and present, for a possible 7 generations. Of course, if that was all I did, I would soon be out of business, because I count on you to say things that I can write in my notebook and pass along. In other words, I do talk a lot when I first meet you, but if you were to hang in there long enough you’d discover that without even knowing it our roles would be reversed. --- Much like the roles of the psychiatrist and the patient in my favorite movie, What About Bob? Before long you would be babbling and I would be asking you to slow down so I could get your exact words into my little notebook. My initial exuberance is no more than priming to a pump which I hope and expect will gush forth, expounding and elaborating on your life’s experiences. Sometimes the role reversal takes me by surprise and without my engineering. Listen closely. Ginny and David were sitting at our breakfast table and someone mentioned fishing. I said that the last time I went fishing was in 1942. I have not done it since because all you do is stand on slippery rocks with a smelt pole in your hand. And Ginny said, “And you have to be quiet.”

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10. When I came out in the dooryard, my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, who was standing by the rider mower, said, “I didn’t hit anything. It just stopped. I didn’t hit anything.” My brother helped me tow the mower up to the garage, I lifted it up with the chain fall, took out the rear end, took the rear end apart, took one axel over to my machinist friend in Warren who drilled a hole in the end, tapped it and put in a screw and washer rig to hold the gear on the end. I put it all back together. Took it apart because I didn’t put it together right the first time. Called my lawnmower repair man guru and found out how to do it right and put it together again. Now it’s all set to be bolted back into the mower. But first I want to write up instructions on how to do it and paste those instructions on my web page. What a great benefit that will be to the next guy whose wife says, “It just stopped, I didn’t hit anything.” Of course people who repair machinery on a regular basis don’t need the important instructions I’m about to impart to you now. Because mechanics of all kinds, whether they fix lawnmowers or chainsaws or cars know what a true professional does after he has tightened up the last bolt and presented his work to the customer. If you have ever worked in a garage or repair shop you already know the last thing a good mechanic does. He hides all the left over parts.

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11. Where did I read that some guys in state prison just got college degrees? What is a college degree but a paper that says that for a certain number of years much of your time was spent reading and listening to people talk about their fields of expertise? You could get the same education by reading at home. --- If you knew what to read. The value in a liberal arts education is that someone directed your reading and you were required to read in several fields. You were required to write papers in which you evaluated and compared. Do you think it is wise to educate people who are in prison? If you read enough and understand what is happening in this country it can make you a very dangerous person who might not fit in in today's America. So, before we educate prisoners and turn them loose on society we should ask ourselves --- is it the purpose of the state to churn out educated people --- liberals? We might well also ask ourselves, if we are going to give each inmate an opportunity to earn a free liberal arts education, why didn't we give them a free liberal arts education when they came out of high school in the first place? It might have kept them out of jail. Let me say that again because it is a very important concept: If we are going to give each prison inmate an opportunity to earn a free liberal arts education, why didn't we give them a free liberal arts education when they came out of high school in the first place? It might have kept them out of jail. Who is going to be the first to point out to me that they came to that conclusion years ago in Northern Europe?

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12. Forty years ago some people who had just moved into Gouldsboro complained about the smell from their neighbor's cows. So the farmers sold their cows. Now the people from away are complaining that Gouldsboro's not rural anymore.

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