April 22, 2012 Rants

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1. Do you get more worked up over little insignificant things than you used to? I seem to. One day I went to the store to buy some CD envelopes. They were $9.99 per box and I took two. When I got home I noticed that I’d been charged $10.99 for each one. I have the feeling that I was overcharged $2. Then I went to the store to buy a gallon of milk and a $2.29 pink bottle of Pepto-Bismol. At the register I was charged $4 plus for the Pepto-Bismol. I said, “I looked at the price tag on the shelf long and hard before I picked up this bottle, because your pricing was very confusing and hard to read, but I think it was $2.29.” So four people behind me in the less than 10 items lane had to wait while the very nice check out woman went up to see for herself. I said to the people who were waiting behind me in the line, “We’ll see what comes of this.” The check out woman came back and said, “You were right. Because we made a mistake, we’re going to give you this bottle of Pepto-Bismol free.” I said, “Madam, if it weren’t for this kind of thing happening to me, I wouldn’t NEED Pepto-Bismol.”

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2. This might interest anyone who likes to be able to define the different –isms and -ists. We read that "The problem with the liberal world view is that it doesn't seem to recognize the inherent flaw in allowing for the existence of giant government bureaucracies which serve merely as mafia-like 'fronts' for the corrupt and the greedy." I found this when I Googled: "Is Ron Paul an anarchist?" "The problem with the liberal world view is that it doesn't seem to recognize the inherent flaw in allowing for the existence of giant government bureaucracies which serve merely as mafia-like 'fronts' for the corrupt and the greedy." After reading this twice I raised an eyebrow because it is the same argument the early Russian communists also had against democracy. --- The communists also believed that a democracy would eventually be taken over by the rich and turned into a fascist state with its never ending profit generating wars --- a policy which we know could never happen here because you have seen with your own eyes that GWB and Cheney strenuously opposed this kind of thing. So communists as well as anarchists would also tend to gather beneath the Ron Paul banner, much as those who are opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage but are in favor of tax breaks for the very rich and the dissolution of living wages for working people would naturally vote the Republican ticket. Some of us who have lived abroad under good governments, however, don't think that government is bad. Those of us who have lived abroad under good governments realize that that only a bad government is bad. We don’t want to live abroad. We'd very much like to live here under a good government --- a government that does not pander to just the whims of evangelical Christians and the richest one percent of society. You can probably tell from my comments that I have never won a $640 million lottery.

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3. Have you heard the police telephone conversation with the guy who is watching two people breaking into the house next door? You can probably find it on the Internet. The man calls the police, who are afraid he'll shoot them when they show up, so the police tell the man to stay in the house. --- Several times. But he is not going to miss this chance to shoot someone so he goes out the door and blows two guys away with his shotgun. Now --- I'd like to have my neighbor do that for me if someone were breaking into my house, and I'd probably slip him some small, unmarked bills for his work, because I’m very liberal if they are stealing from someone else but very conservative if they are stealing from me. But you've got to admit that neighbors shooting neighbors sets a rather dangerous precedent. This guy in Florida who jumped out of his car to provoke a confrontation with a kid who was walking down the street --- talking on his cell phone, of course --- might be responsible for getting an unfortunate red-neck law off the books. What that law amounts to in this case is Chase-them-down and then Stand-your-ground. The way it is interpreted now I could see you walking down the street, jump out of the car with my gun, give you a bit of sass, and when you gave me some sass back, I could feel threatened, stand my ground, and blow you away. Twill be interesting to see how that Florida incident plays out. When my grandfather was a kid, here in the U. S. it was ok to duel and kill someone in a "fair" fight. It looks like this kind of thing is coming back by popular demand. --- Come to think of it, just like the Republican’s War on Women, which we thought was a battle which had been decided 50 years ago. --- And then we have corporate America that is adamantly opposed to the kind of healthcare that is enjoyed in almost every other industrialized country in the world. In every age in every country there seem to be individuals who, for reasons best known to themselves, do not want to live in a civilized society.

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4. Facts might be unpleasant but facts are facts. People retire to Florida. The man dies. The woman sells off all of the stuff in his garage because she simply wants to clean the place out and get rid of everything. I bought a new wrench that was worth $48 or so for a buck one time. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, can go into a grocery store and tell me which things have gone up a cent since last week. But as soon as I'm dead she will throw out or give away hundreds of dollars worth of Model T parts without knowing or caring what they are worth. My wife has no more idea of what tools cost than I have about the price of food because I never buy any food. After 12 years of going to lawn sales in Florida (and, by the way, I don't bother with sales in Maine because stuff is too expensive here) I know what things cost --- because old people are always dying and their children are simply trying to clean out the house and workshop so they can get rid of the place. I also know that if one particular woman had any idea of what 20 pounds of 8 penny galvanized nails were worth, she wouldn’t be selling them to me for a dollar. The only person who is better to deal with than a woman when it comes to hardware or tools at a Florida lawnsale is a grandson who has inherited 2,000 books from his deceased grandfather who used to teach American history at Harvard. If you do this kind of thing long enough you know which neighborhoods in which you can find things you want and sometimes you can even tell by the sign two blocks away out on the highway if it is worth stopping or not. Lawn sale ing is something of a science. I have studied lawn sale ing techniques with the late Giant Davis, who was a master, and Alden Bent who is 88. Buying tools I don't need and screws for pennies on the dollar in Florida is my only form of winter recreation in Florida. I could never have done it 15 years ago but, like anything, bartering is an acquired skill and I think I'm pretty good at it. Oh, unlike the old hoss traders in stories who deprecate the merchandise, I always say something good about it as I hold out a quarter and drop it in his or her hand --- "That is the nicest scribbet grabber I have ever seen. I hope you will accept my offer of a quarter for it." I have seen how they dicker on everything in markets in Israel. At the time I thought it was an impossible way to do business. My first Spanish textbook has a skit in it where the maid is sent to the store to buy veggies and is told to be sure to quibble on the price. And the Italian I'm studying now has a whole lesson on offering 1,000 lira less than the price quoted on everything. It was probably the way I was brought up, but for years I didn’t think it was right to question the price on anything.

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5. My wife Marsha is young enough to be my daughter. I had problems attracting mature women when I was 42-50 --- about the only girls I could find who evinced any interest in me were 19 or so. When you are a homely old man you settle for whatever you can get. I'm glad I'm married and not on the prowl now. About the only available good looking young girls I know today have live-at-home children who are 45.

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6. Some girl confessed on Facebook that she heated the same drink three times and forgot to drink it and in her I seem to have discovered a soul mate. Sometimes I'll make myself something and find I put another one just like it in the micro about half an hour earlier. This girl is very young and can’t be more than 30. Why excuse could she possible have for boldly marching into the province of senile old men?

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7. We all have things that we can do. And there are other things that we cannot do. Perhaps an adult might be defined as: “a person who knows what he can do and what he can’t do --- and isn’t afraid to admit it.” The email I received said, “humble, Don't you remember what I thought of as Plan A?” Of course I don’t remember anything about Plan A. Because I’d like you to learn a little more about me, you might listen closely to the reply I sent to this person: “Please realize that I don’t remember much of anything. My talent is not in remembering, but in synthesizing that which I have recently heard and presenting it to you and my other friends as original material.”

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8. For over 100 years even boy scouts who have traveled to far-away lands have sought out adventure of a new and different kind. So after reading the recent news you are not surprised to learn that applications for Secret Service work have increased tenfold. Although the press is trying to raise eyebrows by magnifying an every-day occurrence, you have watched enough movies to know how agents wile away their off hours in Casablanca and Amsterdam. But the retainer is certainly a surprise. Can you imagine James Bond pulling out his Mastercard and asking the local poule de luxe, “Will a thousand rupees cover it for the evening?” On a superficial level, does money make the difference between shaken and stirred?

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9. Bill Dickey was telling me about one of the local Camden characters who used to walk around with a paper bag full of whatever he thought he’d be needing to get through the day. And every time this character would come in to visit one of the local businessmen who owned a store, the businessman would grab the paper bag and empty it on the counter to see what was in it --- just trying to be funny. Well, you don’t have to know too much about characters in Camden or anywhere else in Maine to figure out what was going to happen – sooner or later. And it did. One warm spring day this character walked into the store with his paper bag, like he did every day, and the merchant grabbed it, like he did every day, and tipped it upside down on the scale on his counter. And he looked at what he had dumped on that scale, and he looked up at his friend, and he looked back at the scale and said, “It looks like.....” And then he said, “It smells like....” And then he said, “It is....”

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10. Here’s an announcement I heard down at the Portland Jetport. “Someone has left a belt at security. Please come and claim your belt.” Does this concern you? If they’ve already got your belt, is there any question in your mind about what they’ll have next?

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