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Rants October 28, 2012

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1. I wrote to my friend Tom and told him it was past time for him to go to bed because he lives in Africa. But then I remembered that what I said doesn't apply because he lives south of the equator.

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2. “Hi there. Your buddy The humble Farmer and co-host Michelle here on Channel 7, bringing you the latest tips on how to survive the killer Frankenstorm that is approaching our area. As you know, it either destroys or kills everything in its path. “Get to the store as quickly as you can and buy enough food and water to last for at least two weeks because it is likely that you will be without power for a long, long time. You and your children should sleep in the cellar because with the high winds expected, a falling tree is very likely to crush the beds in which you or your children sleep. Bring in your pets so they will not drown, be crushed or electrocuted. Have your shots. With the amount of sewage expected in the floodwaters, malaria, dysentery and the black plague is a mathematical certainty in 98 percent of our area households. “Yes, Michelle, I should also mention that you should keep your bed in the cellar up on posts and as close to the ceiling as possible because of flooding. Plan an escape route in case you feel you’re about to run out of oxygen and die a painful death by suffocation. One last reminder to not leave your home: 46 people have already been electrocuted by falling wires in areas already impacted by this killer storm. Fire, medical and police services are expected to be one hundred percent incapacitated and cell phone towers are likely to be out so don’t expect any help there. “We just got a Twitter note from Governor Romney who suggests that you immediately pack your family into the Hummer, your horses into the trailer, and quickly drive to one of your other homes on high ground. “I guess that just about covers it from my end of the desk. Michelle, will you close out our little report with a few tips on How To Keep Your Family Calm During The Storm?” “Don’t --- watch --- the news.”

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3. The other day I laughed out loud when I read a letter in the local paper saying that our state senator was a moderate Republican. I've gone on line and looked at his voting record --- that is, the bills he's voted for and the bills he's voted against, as I'm sure you have if he represents you, and noted, as you did, that he is firmly on the side of the Koch brothers. I did not see one example of him voting for small business owners and working people and not those who earn over a million dollars a year. Which is why I’m amused when I see small business owners and people on minimum wage who vote for his friendly smile and not his voting record. How many of my friends and neighbors do you suppose have any idea that he consistently votes against the economic interests of all but the wealthy handful among us? On the other hand, if I lived in a retirement home down on the St. George River and spent most of my time figuring out how to shift my several million dollars of yearly income into a Swiss bank without paying taxes on it, he would be my man. --- The next day, however, while shingling the roof of the tool shed, I got to pondering "moderate Republican" and realized that it is a relative term. In Texas a "moderate Republican" might well be any white man who does not enjoy throwing a chain around the rear bumper of his pickup truck and dragging a black man through the streets.

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4. One day I said to my old neighbor Gramp Wiley, "Why is everyone supposed to be exactly the same nowadays? I've heard that the average woman does not earn as much as her average male counterpart, so all kinds of legislation is being passed to make women equal. But everyone knows that statistically speaking, short men do not make as much money as tall men. There was even a show on TV about it the other night. They've figured out exactly how many thousand dollars more a man makes a year for every extra inch he is in height. Women make less money than men because they are shorter than men --- not because they're women. But you don't see short men crying for legislation that would get them the same pay as tall men." Gramp Wiley quickly revealed that he’d been studying the education business for years because he said, "I suppose they could cut a couple of inches out of the tall guys' legs."

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5. I’m sure you can find many books and articles on how to save energy in your home by simply changing your habits. I now try to unplug or turn off every electrical gizmo that I can. We have a nice electric stove with a smooth flat top. It is one of the few rich-kid items we have in our home and we have it because the flat top is easier for Marsha to clean. As I dropped a hotdog into the water that was being boiled on that electric stove the other day, I wondered if it would be cheaper to cook the hotdog in the micro. And then --- I asked myself why I was cooking only one hotdog when it would probably take just as much electricity to cook two hotdogs in the same water. It would be more energy efficient to eat two hotdogs. And if you think about it, wouldn’t a person who is really serious about conserving energy probably cook and eat four or six hotdogs? I don’t think I should say any more because what I’m saying seems to make sense and my stomach probably couldn’t handle it.

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6. You might have heard that there are are a few conspiracy theorists who are convinced that something called Agenda 21 is an evil globalist plan. Didn’t all this originate with some billionaire who, being somewhat constrained in his business dealings, started the John Birch Society? The last time I went on line and actually read Agenda 21 I got the impression that Agenda 21 has to do with sustainable living. You might have heard that Prince Turki Al Faisal Al Saud of Saudi Arabia said, “I would like to see Saudi Arabia using 100 percent renewable energy within my lifetime.” He’s 67 and his plan is to use solar energy so he can sell every drop of Saudi oil to the last sucker standing, and you can guess who that will be. So read about what the Saudi’s are doing with solar energy and read Agenda 21 for yourself and see if anything in either of the two terrifies you as it does our John Birch friends. Another program that also worries John Birch billionaires (who need multitudes of hungry, breeding, uneducated people willing to work for food) has another name, I believe. You can probably tell me what it is. You can see what deep pockets can do when one or two billionaires can convince millions of the working poor that population control and sustainable living are communist plots of a world government that wants to eliminate "freedom."

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7. From time to time some reporter from a Boston newspaper will call me and ask, “What’s the difference between you people on the coast of Maine and the other folks who live 40 or 50 miles up country?” And I’ll tell him about the Boston man who retired and moved way up to Livermore Falls. He said that he liked it there because the mill had shut down and the only people in town were over 70. He chuckled and said that he didn’t have to worry about a 70 year old man messing with his wife. And that is the primary difference between Livermore Falls and Camden.

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8. All I know about solar energy is that is works. Unfortunately, it took me 20 years to get around to building my own solar hot water heaters and putting them on my house. And what did it take to get me going? I could see that when nobody complained when the robber barons weaseled the price of oil up from two to four dollars a gallon, it would take even less time to drive it up to eight dollars a gallon. As you know, the ideal way to dupe the public with any product is to raise the prices so slowly that the customer really doesn’t pay any attention. But greed is a powerful motivator, as you’ve seen by your gas prices over the past couple of years, and the 40 billion profit Mobil recently posted for one year obviously wasn’t enough. Let’s look at the bright side. If they’d been satisfied to raise the price 3 or so cents a year like the post office does, I wouldn’t have felt the sudden pain and I’d still be heating my hot water with oil.

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9. How many working people who attend John Birch meetings do you think would be able to write a comprehensive essay outlining the pros and cons of the need for some kind of regulation? And, by the way, the next time you’re at a John Birch Society meeting, look around and see if there are more than three people there who teach world history. How many working people who attend John Birch meetings do you think religiously vote to make billionaires richer? Ride up and down the road this week. Look at the political signs and ask yourself how many of your friends plan to vote to lower their own wages. Getting working people and small business owners to vote against their own economic interests is a science that has been perfected in America. Luckily for the Republican party, voters do not have to write a credible thesis supporting the group that will stand to benefit by their vote --- the super rich or the working people and small business owners. Ever since men moved out of caves, in every age in every land there has been a constant struggle of the rich trying to get more from the poor. Do you think that the John Birch Society could be one of the more efficacious tools being used to that end in this country today? Nothing changes. As you have read, years ago an English farmer even had to walk his cow home from the pasture across the rich man's land --- so the rich man would get those valuable droppings. Nothing changes. Although there isn't a country where this struggle for the distribution of wealth isn't going on today, can you name a few countries where working people have successfully voted to get their fair share of the pie? Would a seven-year university system available to all enable us to become one of them?

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10. When some people fix something it falls apart again within a week. You might be married to one of these people and know exactly who I’m talking about. But there are other masters of the tool chest who are able to make minor adjustments that last forever in their homes. Their secret is called the temporary repair. When they put something up, they don’t intend for it to last. But, nothing lasts like a temporary repair. Hang a door with nails on one hinge --- just so it’ll hang there good enough until you can find some screws to do the job right, and it will be swinging contentedly there the day you die. If you’d put screws in the hinges --- if you’d done the job right, the door wouldn’t have fit, and the screws would have worked themselves out and you would have lived with a door that stuck for years until it fell off and dropped on the dog. Knock down a wall in your kitchen and put up some good solid sheetrock. Do a good job. The cat will claw it down before you ever get around to paint it. But, put a piece of plastic in your smashed out car window --- just to keep the wind out until you can get over to the junkyard to buy a window to fix it right, and that plastic will be there the day you park the old clunker out in the back yard and use the door as a target. If you really want something that will hang in there forever, the rule to remember in Maine is that nothing lasts like a temporary repair.

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11. You have heard me say that I can bring my wife Marsha home by simply thinking about stretching out on a bed or couch. Before my head has had time to sink into the cushion, she comes in the door. If you are a creative husband, you can probably think up dozens of ways to make your wife come in through the door, even though you have iron-clad proof that she is on safari in Africa or is reading seismological meters inside a volcano in Guatemala. Here’s my most recent example from the other night. My wife, the Almost Perfect Woman, went off with her daughter and three grandchildren to take a walk down to Fort Point. At five o’clock, which is supper time, she was not home, so, because I’m not a helpless child, I cooked my own supper. But, the instant my fingers released a frozen hotdog over a pan of boiling water, the driveway bell rang. Ding ding ding. Yes. She was home before the hotdog had time to hit the water.

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