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Rants August 19, 2012

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1. When I mentioned that I ate some mackerel, friend Sue Ann wrote, “Best mackerel recipe ever: take 2 fillets, lay them out on a piece of foil. Put a little butter, some pepper (and a sprig of thyme if you have any) on the inside surface of one fillet. Place the other fillet on top like you are putting the fish back together. Wrap the foil tightly around them and put on the grill, or even better over a campfire about 5-6 minutes on a side." This is all good and well, but I came by my mackerel cooking recipe yesterday from my brother and I’m going to stick with it. I asked him how to cook mackerel. He said to preheat water to a boil. Drop in mackerel. Set timer for five minutes. When the bell rings, dump it on a plate and stand right there at the kitchen counter and eat it. When you’re talking about an old Maine man’s cosmopolitan palate, there’s nothing better than a mackerel cooked and eaten the Maine way. Can you think of any meal so tasty and wonderful that it can’t be ruined by someone who knows how to cook? You can spot these super cooks a mile away. They don’t like the way I pronounce fillet.

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2. Did you see that the rich intelligent Romney Republicans are accusing the Ron Paul delegates who were elected at Maine’s Republican Convention of "... alleged voting irregularities and procedural violations?" Isn’t “alleged voting irregularities and procedural violations” usually another way of saying that things didn’t turn out the way we had planned.

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3. Someone sent me this story in an email and I’m going to read all of it for you except the ending, and if you listen closely you’ll understand why I’m not going to read the ending. The story goes something like this: One day I had lunch with some friends. Peter, a man about 80-years-old was among them. Everyone ordered healthy meals except Peter who ordered ice cream and lemon meringue pie. But then he explained by saying, “I’m 80. Life is short and I don’t want to miss out on anything good. I’m going to eat all the cake, pie and ice cream that I can. If I were to die tonight, I’d be happy, knowing that I had lived life to the fullest. I missed out on nothing. I accommodated my heart’s every desire.” Realizing that my old friend was right, I beckoned to the waitress…

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4. Someone wrote a letter to the editor of a Maine newspaper and pointed out that as soon as a school building is condemned and a new building is built, the old school building suddenly becomes a valuable piece of real estate. An example of this can be found not far from my home. It is part of the corporate construction con and the old Thomaston high school building is a case in point. As soon as they condemned the old building and the contractors had a new one up, the old building suddenly took on a whole new life and the contractors came back to renovate it.

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5. We read that an Aroostook County man described by a federal prosecutor as “one of the most prolific drug smugglers in Maine” for nearly four decades was sentenced to eight years in prison on drug and money laundering charges. Anyone who smuggles drugs for 40 years is a fool, because you can obviously retire with what you can earn at it in a year.

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6. We had four guests from Switzerland in our home for two days. They were impressed by the large number of American flags they saw at public events, and they talked at length about that. (If a superabundance of flags doesn't mean anything to you, please read again the Encyclopedia Britannica's definition of fascism.) One of the most memorable things they saw was in a ball park. They wanted to see an American ball game. A military person who had just returned from the wars was introduced and all of the people in the stadium stood and applauded. They told me that they couldn't understand why anyone who was part of an invading army that had bullied its way into another country and had destroyed the infrastructure and killed the people --- deserved applause. Our obvious pride in our citizens who kill women and children in faraway lands is one of the memories of America that these humble visitors to our shores will treasure for the rest of the lives. It is one that they will certainly share with their friends and neighbors when they get back home. But I wouldn't worry too much about it. Everyone in Maine knows that foreigners are ignorant. And how can you expect Europeans to know what's going on in the world anyway, when they've never listened to our talk radio or watched Rupert Murdoch's Fox "News?"

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7. A friend who stopped by today told me that this country is in economic hard shape because so many people are now collecting pensions. Pensions are destroying our economy? This seems to indicate that he subscribes to a different news service than I do, because everything I have read blames the recession on the economic failure of financial houses because Roosevelt’s regulations were removed, a war that eats half of the national budget, and the fact that the super rich are paying a smaller percentage of their incomes in taxes than some people who are earning less than $50,000 a year.

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8. Well I found out where my friend got his information about the country crumbling because so many retired people are getting pensions. And my friend is only one of us who are quite taken by this Ryan guy who just burst upon the national scene. You’ve probably seen a couple of television or YouTube clips of him saying that our recession has been caused because too many post office workers, military people, school teachers, police officers and firemen are collecting pensions from the nanny state. They call them entitlements because these old people who have worked all their lives feel they are entitled to the pensions they paid for and were promised. But Ryan says we can turn the country around by eliminating the nanny state and taking these pensions away from the old people who earned them. This will force millions of lazy old people to either look for work or live on the money in their Swiss bank accounts. Because you’ve seen Ryan on television and YouTube you know that those who disagree with him are thrown on the ground, cuffed and carted away. We read that one old guy the police threw to the ground had a broken clavicle but that didn’t save him from being manhandled. So every time we see a dissenter who speaks out dragged off in handcuffs we get a glimpse of life in the United States in years to come, what Ryan says sounds even better to us, and those of us who see the wisdom in his words will be voting his ticket this fall. I want to be outside, with no broken bones, breathing free air with the winning team, don’t you? Even if I’m in a tent.

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9. It might have been a misprint, but I think I read that a 4-year-old kid flipped over on one of those ATV things. Would you let a 4-year-old kid drive anything --- even if the kid were rich and you were the only heir to his estate? If you want to read every possible excuse for going through the ice on a snowmobile, they are posted in an on line newspaper blog at least 4 months out of the year. For the other 8 months we read every week of our friends and neighbors who have killed themselves on ATVs. It's really no more news than the fact that the sun comes up each morning. Do you sometimes get the feeling that some newspaper blogs are no more than a forum to share heart-rending stories of how this or that wonderful, loving, cousin or neighbor (after a few beers and without helmet or seatbelt) wrapped some kind of motorized vehicle around a tree or sunk it in a half-frozen pond? Name-calling and a sophomoric form of one-upsmanship runs a close second. Those who believe in the efficacy of prayer, might get back on their knees and pray that children stop driving these things. It would be a kind of preventive maintenance. If I wanted to stop Maine kids from driving ATVs or Snowmobiles, I would tell their parents that Obama owns the company and was getting rich manufacturing them.

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10. Did you see in the paper that the DOT removed some signs that told visitors about the elevator ride up in the Penobscot Narrows Bridge Observatory? Going up into an observatory sounds like a fun thing to do if you’re not afraid of riding 100 feet or more up in an elevator as I am. Anyway, these signs that tell people about it are illegal. One might circumvent this law by having signs that are not stuck in the ground and can be moved around. You see a few of them right at the edge of the road if you live near mom and pop hotels or restaurants. On the back of parked trucks or vans you also see signs that are obviously designed to get out around the regulation. I ran into this sign violation thing last month. For several years there has been a small sign on my sister's lawn saying that our B&B is just ahead. A DOT officer came by to drop off my sign and said it was illegal. He said I can post it up the road a bit on my own property if I want. He said that some people were very nasty and said unkind things when he removed their signs and thanked me for being so friendly and understanding. I looked up at this 6 foot 6 two-hundred-fifty pound man and said I had a habit of being friendly and understanding.

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11. Did you read in the paper that Maine has one of the highest rates of knife-related deaths in the nation? This can happen in a state where so many can't afford to buy a gun.

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