Rants February 19, 2012

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1. You probably heard that a member of the Indiana General Assembly withdrew his bill to create a pilot program for drug testing welfare applicants. He withdrew the bill after one of his colleagues amended the measure to also require drug testing for lawmakers.

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2. I read that in just one year 22 percent of former students defaulted on their government student loans. Looks like some young people have promising futures as Wall Street bankers.

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3. Here’s a letter from a friend who for many years provided the substance for many newspaper columns that appeared above my name. Listen closely. “Dear humble, I read your letter in the BDN. It's a very nice example of wasting no words to convey a message...the value of which came to me too late in life. One might wonder how I ever managed to avoid learning the value of minimalism in all endeavors, given the fact that I was raised among people so frugal that they spoke while inhaling, as well as while exhaling, so as not to waste the air going in and out of their lungs. I see in today's BDN a story entitled, ‘Fires shot, begs police to shoot him.’ It seems that a man appeared in front of the public safety building and fired off a round from a shotgun, in an effort to attract the attention of the police inside. Once the attention of the constabulary had been sufficiently obtained, and police officers from both near and far had arrived on the scene, he ‘began yelling for someone to kill him.’ He must be a newly-arrived resident of this city to believe that getting yourself killed by the police will get you off the city's tax rolls. Why, if it were that easy, we'd all be doing it.”

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4. We read that when U. S. embassy personnel now move throughout Iraq, small helicopters buzz over the convoys to provide support in case of an attack. Often, two contractors armed with machine guns are tethered to the outside of the helicopters. To put this in perspective, do you think that in 1946 it would have been smart for even a Dutch prankster to walk the streets of Amsterdam wearing a German army uniform? What do you think would have happened to him? Does it take a generation or two before some people forget who it was who dropped a smart bomb on the spouse and children? Would you care to walk around in Iraq today wearing sneakers and sunglasses and carrying a camera to photograph the trees and flowers? So today we read that some 5,000 private security contractors now protect the U. S. embassy’s 11,000-person staff in Iraq, and typically drive around in heavily armored military vehicles. You might well ask how long it will be before any American can leave the land of the free to go anywhere without an armed guard. But none of this matters because we have our eye on the bottom line --- which can hardly have anything to do with creating jobs or making friends. --- But certainly entails keeping a pipeline open to Switzerland and the Cayman's.

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5. You have heard people say, “If you ask a stupid question, you will get a stupid answer.” Do you think there is such a thing as a stupid question? Are you stupid if you don’t ask questions? Some of the best things I’ve ever said on this program were answers to my questions. You have often heard me bemoan the fact that I could never afford to have children. So, knowing nothing about children, one day I asked a seasoned grandmother, “What do kids want?” She said, “Something they can throw away.”

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6. Here’s food for thought. I just came to the realization that only a man who has been married 3 times or has 5 kids CAN represent mainstream America.

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7. You might wonder how I dare invite you to my house for dinner. Unless you are from away, you realize that we are talking here about dinner: the noonday meal. I dare to invite you because there is a good chance that you will never take the time to come and I dare to do it because if you do come I enjoy your company and putting an extra plate on the table is no bother to me whatsoever. You will notice that I am not as generous with my supper invitations. This is because my wife is not likely to be home at dinner time and she most certainly will be home at supper time. I prepare dinner. She prepares supper. Only one or two friends visited all last summer and how delightful it was when those professor friends stopped in, unannounced. During one visit I remember opening the refrigerator door and finding apple dumplings which we popped in the microwave and ate without fanfare. Good company. Good food. Who could ask for more? You might, however, know people who can’t seem to let good times happen naturally. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, is one of them. When Richard and Sue came for supper you’d think they were admissions officers from Colby who were about to evaluate her grandchildren. To start with, Marsha spends an entire morning and a quarter of my social security check just accumulating the raw materials. An entire afternoon is then spent roasting chicken and baking goodies. Do you like to wash pots and pans? I would rather clean out the Aegean Stables than tackle the heap of wreckage that remains after one of Marsha’s little suppers for four people. I don’t know why, but when she knows that two are coming she cooks for 8. And when our guests have had their third strawberry shortcake with ice cream and stagger out the door, she piles the leftovers on plates puts them in the refrigerator. And whatever’s left over is what I have to eat every day until it is gone. Which is why I’m always glad when you stop in, unannounced, and say, “Here I am. What’s for dinner?”

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8. Young people today don’t know about moderation. Back when I was a kid we had neighbors who were moderate. One day Alva Harris was lying on his back underneath a car in his garage down in Tenants Harbor when he saw some boots walking around the car. So Alva hollers out, is that you George? And George says, “Yes, you awful busy today Alva?” And Alva says, “What you need?” And George says, “My house is on fire.”

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9. Once upon a time there was a man who went around to lawn sales buying things he didn’t need. And every time he saw a first edition book or an old blue bottle at a lawn sale he bought it and sold it on ebay at a great profit. One day he hit an old blue bottle and a genie popped out and said, “What is your wish, master?” And the man was beside himself with joy because he knew that first editions of the first Harry Potter book sold for $40,000 because they only printed 1,000 copies and if he could go back in time and buy those 1,000 copies he would be very rich today indeed. So he asked the genie to send him back in time so he could buy those 1,000 Harry Potter books the minute they came off the press and then he would not only have them all but they would be in mint condition. So the genie did and he did. And when he came back to the present with the first 1,000 copies of the first Harry Potter book he looked on ebay. But there were no Harry Potter books listed there. So he very quickly hit the old blue bottle. And the genie explained that because he had bought the first 1,000 books no one had ever heard of Harry Potter and because no one had ever hooted and ranted and raved about Harry Potter, the book had never gone into a second printing and the author was so discouraged she never wrote another word. The obvious moral of this story is that many men would be happier today if they had never hit the bottle.

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10. Speaking of elegant dinner parties, you’ve heard me say that when I lived alone between the ages of 34 and 54, I usually ate standing up at the kitchen counter. Of course I ate standing up. If you were a single old Maine man, would you walk into another room and sit down to eat a plate of spaghetti that you can finish off in two minutes, standing there at the kitchen counter, looking out the window at the apple trees? And of course you don’t even have to move your feet when you finish eating there at the counter because you can just lean to the left and rinse your plate off in the sink and leave it there on the counter where it will be handy when you have spaghetti again in three more hours. But. When there was a need to put on the dog --- when I wanted to impress some new friend with place settings that would have seemed posh even by Haverford Cricket Club standards, we ate on newspapers. Efficient? Of course. When you use a newspaper for a place mat you’re never at a loss for conversation starters: “I see that Newt has been indicted again,” or “Bain dropped a quarter yesterday.” And when you’ve finished eating there are no crumbs, no slop, to wipe up. You simply roll that newspaper into a ball and stuff it crumbs and slop and all into the stove. And now I have a question for you. If you were coming to my house for dinner, would you expect me to set the table before you got there? If you think about it, you’ll have to agree that setting a table is a tremendous and unnecessary bother, especially if your guests don’t show up. Why should my guests mind helping me set the table if I’m going to feed them? On the other hand, I have it on good authority that if the very rich are expecting people at 8 PM, they have their slaves set up the table a good 10 to 12 hours ahead of time. Have you found this to be true: can you predicate the amount of material wealth available in any household by the amount of time that place settings rest unused on a table? Tableau: A well-dressed couple get in their car, and on the way home she turns to him and says, “They must be doing better than I thought --- three desiccated flies and a cockroach in my salad.

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11. The mind is a strange and magnificent thing. While driving my car on the way to somewhere at sunrise, I started to sing a song that you probably haven’t heard for a long time:
This is our hour for love
Our hour to scheme
Said the little puppy-he
To the little puppy-she
Let us cling and sing woof-woof
You talk about the retrieval power of your two gigabyte computer. When I got home and Googled, and it was not an easy Google --- I had to Google it four or five times before I got my hands on it --- I learned that I probably hadn’t heard this song since Spike Jones and the Modernaires recorded it in 1947, which was really not that long ago unless you stop to think that 1947 was 65 years ago. Let us cling and sing woof-woof had been stored away, unused and supposedly forgotten, in the back of my head for 65 years. Imagine how powerful a mind has to be to suddenly break out not only the lyrics but the tune to a song that has not been accessed for 65 years. I sang the song for my wife and told her I hadn’t heard it for 65 years. And I said, “What do you think about a mind that can do that?” And she said, “That mind is going crazy.”

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12. I always thought I knew the difference between a comedian and a humorist, but I really didn’t. For years people greeted me at the grange hall door with, “Oh, you’re the --- the uh --- the comedian,” and I would painfully explain that I was not a comedian but a humorist --- the difference being that a comedian tells dirty embarrassing stories and the humorist doesn’t. --- Yes. I used to say that. But you already knew that this isn’t true, didn’t you? And I had to figure it out for myself because you never took the time to explain it to me. Yes. The humorist tells stories that are so raunchy they’d make a sailor blush and a comedian cringe. There is no bodily function so personal or private or intimate but what the humorist trots it out and spreads it out in an intimate portrait of verbosity. There is no bloody crime or nauseous perversion that is not expounded in eloquent detail before crowds containing prim Baptist grandmothers and wide-eyed children. But --- the humorist transcends the comedian’s blue collar Anglo Saxon and employs oblique and esoteric eschatological euphemisms to get his laughs from circumlocutions couched in Latin and Greek derivatives. His enemies might say that the humorist went to college 9 years just so he can get away with talking dirty in public.

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