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Rants for March 11, 2012 radio show

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1. In a small town way down in the eastern part of Maine where they sometimes don’t even count their ballots, which is Washington county, two friends were talking. And one allowed as how social opportunities were somewhat limited there. He said, “You know, I have dated every woman in Washington County except my mother and my sister.” And his friend said, “Well, you ain’t missed much.”

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2. While seated at a dinner table you have heard people say, “Would you like some more spaghetti” or “Would you like some more beans”? But isn’t that another way of saying, “You’ve had two helpings already but would you like some more? So no matter how much of a trencherman might be sitting at our table, we try to say, “Would you like some spaghetti” or “Would you like some beans,” leaving out the “more.” You see, by leaving out the more, we aren’t implying that they have already eaten twice as much as a normal person. There are other nice ways of saying things. My friend Phyllis said that her brother always asked his guests, “How long are you able to stay?” It serves the same purpose and sounds much nicer than, “When are you leaving?”

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3. Here’s something I recently learned on You Tube. In Africa they are using teams of rats to detect TB bacteria in saliva samples from four clinics serving slum neighborhoods. So far this year, the 25 rats trained for the pilot medical project have identified 300 cases of early-stage TB - infections missed by lab technicians with their microscopes. If not for the rodents, many of these victims would have died and others would have spread the disease. Forty years ago when I was a grad student at the University of Rochester I learned how to train rats. But I had no idea then that rats could be trained to sniff out land mines or to sniff out disease. Have you heard anything about using rats to sniff out disease in this country? I doubt if they’d use it here because it’s simple, nobody would make any money selling it, and it works.

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4. The young man couldn’t believe me when I told him that I don’t argue with my wife. After all, isn’t some disagreement inevitable between two people who have lived together for what seems like endless years? Yes. Of course we disagree but I don’t argue. It’s a waste of time when you’re married to a Type A woman. If you are married to a Type A person you know that they have to have absolute control and that only they can make a decision. When something new or different interrupts our usual schedule, I point out what action I plan to take and Marsha will say just the opposite, and that settles it right there. Here’s what happened on a typical morning. After hearing what I planned to do, she stated her case, giving valid and illogical reasons for doing exactly the opposite, and that was the end of it. She turned on her heel and rushed out of the house and off to work. Now, a younger, inexperienced man who knows nothing about Type A women might have tried to reason with her, but I knew better, because --- before she could even get to her car, she turned on her heel, came back to the house, stuck her head in the door and said, “You were right. We’ll do what you said.”

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5. If you have never heard of Patrick Stewart, join the club. One morning we saw Patrick Stewart knighted by Queen Elizabeth on TV. Like most everybody in America, I’d seen Patrick Stewart on Star Trek --- not one of my favorite shows but running nose and nose with evangelist preachers begging for money and a full length ahead of ads for exercise machines. Wikipedia is my tool of choice when it comes to finding out about people and on the English version of Wikipedia I read that the 70-year-old Patrick Stewart has been married twice but now dates women 40 years his junior. He is quoted as saying, "I just don't meet women of my age.” Patrick Stewart is obviously not living in a retirement community in Florida.

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6. My friend Ken asks, “What do you make of the couple that were evicted from their lot for collecting junk? Is this not the end of a long standing Yankee tradition? I would like to hear your thoughts on that matter. Is it true that a man is only as well off as the number of old fire trucks in his yard?” Thank you for sending me this, Ken because this certainly warrants our attention. Only an arrogant, presumptuous, inordinately provincial Maine native would claim that the need to collect junk originated with his tribe. Anyone who has traveled knows that one collects things that might have some value because of an innate frugality or a socio-economic system that makes collecting junk necessary for survival. You can travel over much of northern Europe and never see as much clutter as is found in one back yard in Washington County. An unbiased observer might assume from this, that there are countries in Northern Europe where people have adequate incomes. They have single payer health insurance. In these countries people have never developed the need to stockpile scraps of plywood or car parts. In parts of Africa, I am told by a distant cousin who has been there, people crouch around fires on city street corners, cooking over cut up automobile tires. In these countries it is impossible to collect junk, because your neighbor would steal it. So, although the need to save junk may be genetic, there is an excellent possibility that it is economically driven. My wife and I have lived in two countries in Northern Europe where everyone has health insurance so it is not necessary to hoard junk. There are poor countries in Africa where it is impossible to hoard junk because someone would steal it. Maine fits somewhere in between.

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7. We read that in 2010 Santorum earned $900,000 and paid an effective tax rate of over 28 percent, and that in the same year the Romneys earned $27 million and paid a tax rate of only 13.9 percent. This not surprising. We understand that GE made $14.2 billion in profits worldwide and paid no taxes at all. The more you make, the more legislation you can buy that will ensure that the more you make, the less taxes you have to pay. It’s the American way.

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8. One day I turned on the TV. It was my plan to watch the evening news. But the evening news had been put on hold. There was a football game on television instead of the evening news. What kind of a country do we live in, when a football game can take precedence over an important news program that is going to tell me in detail about the latest celebrity to say something that wasn’t politically correct, have an affair, go to jail, or die of a drug overdose? Only when it has been taken away do we realize how much we count on our national news service to inform and educate.

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9. We do things differently here in Maine. Even if you’ve never been to Maine but have only talked with someone here on the telephone, you might have noticed a difference from what you’d hear in your home town. The first thing I say on the phone is, “I don’t hear well. Please speak very slowly.” The other day I was talking with one of my friends and I understood every word she said. I thanked her for speaking so clearly. She said, “No problem, I’ve got my teeth in.”

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10. Fiction is often the opposite of what one finds in real life. When we go to the movies we often see two beautiful, perfect people who want to live together, but some silly, unspoken reason keeps them apart. In real life two beautiful people would like to escape a tedious, uneventful marriage, but some silly, unspoken reason keeps them together.

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11. If you were to read even a few of the hotel reviews that turned up on a web page called The Dirtiest Hotels in the World, you might not have to wonder where Stephen King gets material for his novels. Listen to this: “When we checked in, the Manager offered us a free upgrade to the "Honeymoon Suite". It was a set up. The "Honeymoon Suite" had a vacant room next door that was "under construction". I was undressed to get into my swimsuit and heard breathing. I looked under the big gap under the adjoining room door. I saw eyes looking back at me!” I don’t know if eyes or breathing would have bothered me. It’s the hidden camera that can come back and bite you. And here’s another review: “We were looking for a dog friendly hotel…. It was absolutely horrible! The room smelled musty” --- Probably because the last people who stayed there had a dog.

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12. The dirtiest hotels in the world. That was what the junk email said. Of course I had to Google The dirtiest hotels in the world so I could see where they were. Number one is in San Francisco. Let me read you a sample of the reviews: “First and foremost no one should ever walk into a hotel only to find prostitutes walking around the inside.” Think about this. What reason would they have to complain about a prostitute who was on her feet?

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13. You have friends who send you trash emails every day and you get to the point where you don’t even bother to open them. You and I also have friends who send us emails that are always conducive to thought and here’s one that came to me. The email showed pictures of a fast boat that could be used to combat the much publicized piracy off the coast of Africa and ended up with a “Hooray for the USA.” Is it not interesting that the people who own and profit from private prisons have conditioned a segment of the population to believe that crime can be eliminated by more police, bigger jails and stiffer sentences? --- Or that piracy can be eliminated by building bigger and faster police boats? It is possible that if young, unemployed men who live along the coast of Africa were able to make a decent living, there would be no need to build expensive boats to catch pirates? I have gone on boats between Denmark and Sweden many times and we were never attacked by pirates.

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14. Here’s a review of the second dirtiest hotel in the world. Isn’t the Internet a wonderful thing when you can use it to read things like this?: “At one point I called the front desk for toilet paper because I had run out (which was embarrassing enough) but then was told if I wanted it I have to come to the front desk and get it.” And then this: “the balcony door wouldn't lock so our 4 year old opened it and the pressure from the wind SLAMMED the hotel room door shut and we were locked in! We had to call the front desk multiple times because they would not answer the phone!” Probably afraid the guests were asking for more toilet paper.

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