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Rants January 20, 2013

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1. Do you have brilliant friends who send you articles to read --- and when you check out the credentials of the author you discover that the scientific community believes that he or she is a quack? It is little things like this that remind us that being brilliant and educated doesn't keep one from being crazier than a hootie owl. If you think about this, as I did in the shower this morning, you might realize that a goodly percentage of your friends and relatives behave like Robin Williams and Jim Cary in a TV sit-com loony bin. You’ll hear your mentally challenged friends say, “Am I the only one in this world with any sense? Everyone but me is so crazy.” Compare them with a rational man like me, for example. In me you have a man who could never afford to have children. humble knew he couldn’t even afford to take care of himself so he realized that he’d never be able to afford to feed and raise a nest of ankle biters. Here’s a man with a social conscience. Talk about being different. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself if it were possible that you were a bit unbalanced? If you have never wondered if you were crazy, isn’t that a good sign that you are?

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2. Do you like to laugh? You have often heard that stress kills and laughter heals. I like to believe that laughter heals because for years I stood before audiences and created an environment that was conducive to laughter. I say that I only created an environment that was conducive to laugher because you can’t “make” anyone laugh. But if I were to live my life over, I think I’d be one of those motivational speakers companies bring in. You know, to get more work out of their employees. Radio Friend Tim White says, “Motivational speakers appeal to the philosophy that the situation is serious but not hopeless. Comedians take the approach that the situation is hopeless but not serious." Motivational speakers spout platitudes that make meeting planners feel they’re earning their money and motivational speakers get paid a lot more than those of us who simply generate laughter. Yes, you knew I was going to give you an example. The basic premise promulgated by touchie-feelie motivational speakers is that there are no such things as problems but only opportunities. You see, the problem is an opportunity to profit. Here’s what we’re talking about. You might have read about the Brunswick man who was enraged when someone beat him out of a parking place. He came back all fuming and boiling and scraped the paint off the car with his key. And because this man who was unable to control himself was caught on a surveillance camera everybody knows who this man is. This is a great opportunity. Get it? Without any expenditure of effort the Maine Tea Party has found their next gubernatorial candidate.

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3. On Martin Luther King day my mind turned to a man who stopped by the house last summer to buy some Maine humor CDs to give to his friend who was "opening a play on Broadway." He told me he was a writer. I'd never heard of Taylor Branch, but bought two of his books thru Amazon and read enough in both of them to open my eyes. I don't think anyone could read Taylor Branch without having it change the way they look at the world. In the 1960's bad things were happening to a group of people who were not allowed to learn how to read or vote. And very bad things happened to people who tried to vote. --- The worst of which was being shot and having their homes burned down. --- Although that might have been easier than being hung by the arms on hooks and beaten in prisons. I suppose the hardest part of reading about these sick things that happened in this Land Of The Free is realizing that in every age and land there are sadistic goons who enjoy beating people to a pulp. Or even enjoy simply talking about the cracking of knee joints. You just find it hard to believe that they are in your neighborhood and are people you know. You've never heard me tell this story: Around 1970 a black man applied for a job in Knox County. He was, of course, hired at once --- no questions asked. Management knew that a bureaucratic roof would fall in if a black man was refused employment. He turned out to be a great worker, but quit after two weeks. The boss called him in, sweating in his shoes, for fear that someone had said or done something to offend him --- and that the company would be fined by some government agency. The boss told the man that he was a great worker, that he was sorry to see him go, and that he hoped that nobody had done or said anything to him that made him want to quit. The man said that all was well at work, but some of his neighbors in Waldoboro told him that it might be a good idea if he wasn't living there tomorrow.

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4. Have you ever heard of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? You can read about them in a book by Terry Pratchett. The book is called The Thief of Time, but I was introduced to it by Der Zeitdieb, the German edition which is my morning reading. Although my German has room for much improvement, I understand that when the time for the end of the world arrives, Death rides out on his white horse but has trouble rounding up his friends. War’s wife is a Type-A controlling type woman who doesn’t want War out galloping about where she can’t keep him under her thumb. Chaos has reversed the letters in his name to Soak, and Ronnie Soak is running a milk route which he enjoys. He’s thinking about expanding to include ice cream on week ends which he believes will increase his customer base and be even more profitable. So Ronnie is rather hesitant to ride off with Death and leave the good thing that he has going. Pestilence --- I can’t remember what Pestilence was doing or perhaps I haven’t got that far, but anyone who has read a couple of books by Terry Pratchett might well expect that Pestilence has become lax in his ways and will be found helping Mother Teresa cure lepers. If you’re amused by mythology with a new twist, you’d probably like this book. The name of it is the Thief of Time and it was written by the English author Terry Pratchett.

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5. You might have read in the newspaper about the teenager who “was so intoxicated that he was found passed out facedown in the snow and had to be treated for frostbite." Well, how many times have you heard your friends who smoke or drive motorcycles without wearing a helmet say, "Oh well, you gotta die from something."

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6. You have heard me say many times that if you don’t like the legislation Congress is passing for big business, go out and buy your own ongress. Radio friend Pegg says, “I understand that the tax cuts to the wealthy having expired, the Koch Brothers have had to lay off three Congressmen, so you might pick one up at a discount.”

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7. Little public service announcement here that I feel obligated to pass along to you as --- well, as a public service. I’ve been paying four dollars and something a month for my Ooma telephone service for over two years now. But I recently heard about a phone service called Google voice that claims to be free. And if this is true, the $40 or so it takes to pay for their magic box would pay for itself in Ooma savings in less than 10 months. And after that I’d be paying nothing for my telephone service. It would be like the solar hot water heaters on the side of my house and my panels on the henhouse that generate my electricity. After they pay for themselves, and they will in a very short time, I’ll get most of my hot water and my electricity for free. And so will the people who live in my house for the next 100 years. And that doesn’t even count my nice warm office in the cellar with the solar radiant heat in the floor. What? You didn’t know that with a great deal of help from my friends I single handedly put solar radiant heat in my cellar? I asked a radio friend to explain Google voice and he said: Google voice is an internet telephone service, much like ooma. Any google gmail customer can sign up for free. I signed up several years ago. You pick out a phone number from a list of several hundred or thousand within your area code. You can send and receive calls with your computer, via the gmail/google voice website. You can also send and receive calls by plugging a box into your internet connection, it's called "ObiHai." You plug your regular old-telephone directly into the ObiHai box, and it works like a regular old phone. And then he mentions several other services that go along with Google Voice about cell phones and message forwarding that I know nothing about, and care nothing about, and continues: I've never paid a penny for the Google Voice account or usage, as I call within the U.S. I spent about 40 dollars on Amazon for the ObiHai box, which is convenient because it allows me to use the phone without a computer involved. The service quality is excellent. A one-time investment of 40 dollars, and you have phone convenient phone service with no monthly or annual charges. Because you’re my friend, I pass this along to you as a public service for what it’s worth. If you have anything good or bad to say about this I’m the humble farmer at gmail dot com and we’d like to hear from you. Isn’t it great that in this free country I don’t have to be selling some product for a sponsor on what used to be the public airwaves but can help you by telling you how you can get free energy from the sun and an inexpensive way to make telephone calls?

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8. Long time radio friend Pegg, who knows more about clean living than anyone I know, says: "I discourage the use of agave nectar. There are several reasons why it's an unhealthy alternative, the primary one being that it's 90% fructose, 10% glucose. And there are a dozen + reasons why fructose is downright dangerous, and the main reason why fruit juice is bad for you. Fructose contains no nutrients (unlike maple syrup or honey), increases uric acid, reduces the sensitivity of insulin receptors, is metabolized by the liver and converts to fat more easily than any other sugar. Fructose also raises serum triglycerides (blood fats) significantly. And that's just the tip of the iceberg! Now do y'all see why HFCS is such bad news?" No, I don’t. And I don’t think there is one person in a hundred who understood what you said. If you want to educate me and teach me better eating habits stick with sweet drinks bad, water good, and you'll have an audience.

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