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The week of April 7 marked 35 years that humble has made this radio program for you. --- Around 1820 shows. He was a kid of 42 when he started driving to Orono every week to make this program.

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Rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for April 28, 2013

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1. The other day my hair was so long I toyed with the idea of tying it in a knot behind in a ponytail. But, my wife Marsha, The APW, cut my hair instead. I had to have a haircut, and if you've given it any thought you already know why I could get away with a ponytail. Isn't a ponytail reserved for men who are not completely bald only because there is one little wisp of hair near each ear that they can tie together in behind?

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2. A small newspaper way off in a forgotten corner of Maine, reported earlier this week that although an elderly man died and was buried only a mile from his home, his faithful dog Shep did not lie down on the grave and slowly expire there near his master. This dog didn’t seem to know anything about what is expected of even a half-way decent Maine hound. A good neighbor didn’t have to drag this dog off and tie it up to keep it from returning to the gravesite. This dog didn’t lie out there in the snow and rain day and night, refusing to eat or to be comforted. This mindless animal didn’t wear a deep path in the dirt, walking endlessly around the headstone, growling and snarling at anyone who came near. “As a matter of fact, Old Sam’s death didn’t seem to bother the dog one way or another,” said the reporter who covered this unique story. “There was a fellow in the crowd there at graveside who must have slopped some bacon grease on his pants while frying up breakfast, and when the thing broke up Shep hung right in there beside him and jumped in the car when the door opened.” You might be interested to hear that in a sidebar someone mentioned that Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum was hoping to stuff the dog and give him a good spot next to the skull of the Piltdown Man. Although my friend Winky was familiar with the mandatory behavior of bereaving dogs, he wasn’t surprised to hear that the faithless Shep wasted no time in locating a new source of food and worldly comforts. Winky’s been married five times.

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3. Were you intrigued when you learned that the George W. Bush library contains a What Would You Do feature? It is my understanding that the library was envisioned as a training camp for young conservatives and that the most popular feature in it is a red button that enables visitors to simulate an attack on Peru.

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4. You have probably seen the list of 15 large profitable corporations that have used offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. It's wise to have your money outside of a country that is going to default on its war debt and those who will ride out that big crash the easiest will be those who have assets buried elsewhere. When the most profitable corporations in America don't pay their share of taxes, sooner or later Social Security and post office pensions will be blamed for the country's inability to remain solvent and will be slowly and painfully squeezed out of existence. A blitz by a corporate owned media will convince around half of the population that lazy people living on welfare are to blame. But please think about this rationally. How many people do you think would struggle by on welfare if they could earn $20 an hour for a forty hour week and be rich beyond their wildest dreams? You’ve heard about the cost of our never ending wars and corporations that circumvent paying taxes. But luckily, there the next administration and millions of lazy people on welfare can be blamed whenever there are hard time. At a recent meeting of the historical society we were told by a commercial fisherman that some men now fishing out of New Bedford can make $250,000 a year. Even half that income might make any person clever enough or strong enough to be earning it think --- that Americans who lost their jobs and their homes have no one but themselves to blame for being "lazy." What do you think?

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5. You have heard me say over and over again that I would never knowingly say anything on the air that would offend someone or cause trouble. But there are exceptions and right now you are going to hear one. One day I went to see my doctor. And my doctor had his assistants check me here and his assistants poked me there. He himself even poked me. And all of the data was compiled and sorted on computers and when it was printed out the doctor read it and saw that it was good. And then --- the doctor said, “Mr. Skoglund. The only thing I am going to prescribe for you is four glasses of water and a half hour of exercise every single day.” My friend. Do you realize that if I were to say that doctor’s name on the air --- if I were to reveal his identity --- within a month a coalition of pharmaceutical associations would probably have him stripped of his credentials for malpractice?

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6. Even with an uninsulated inside cellar to cellar door that permits cold air to pour through big cracks and down here into the solar radiant heated Maine Private Radio studio, it is 73 degrees which is left over heat from yesterday when I drove it up to 79. There was a point there when it was so uncomfortably hot I even thought about taking off my insulated long underwear. When solar radiant heat is pouring in, the floor under my feet actually gets so warm that I'm uncomfortable. One has to either learn how to control solar radiant heat or else pretty well let it do what it wants and then learn to live with it. It's similar to marriage.

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7. I have no idea of how to clear up clutter in my office. How do you organize? I brought home from Florida a 4 drawer metal filing cabinet I bought for a dollar and I'm simply going to throw everything into it. You might tell me that that’s like sending Trotsky to Mexico. Although it will solve nothing and certainly only make matters worse, it will give me a feeling of accomplishment.

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8. A kind neighbor passed along to me several hundred dollar’s worth of new shoes and jackets when her husband died. I now have five or six pair of shoes that I will not live long enough wear out which is four pair of shoes more than I ever had at one time in my entire life. One day I slipped into a pair of my new rich-kid shoes and was immediately filled with an unfamiliar feeling of power and self-worth. I laid out the old work shoes I’d bought years ago for two dollars --- just in case some of my working-class neighbors came by I could put them on and wouldn’t have an uncontrollable urge to lift my head and try to see my neighbor over the top of my nose. But that’s not what I wanted us to discuss here. I went on line to see what these elegant shoes cost and now instead of a terribly misshapen young woman who is crowding out of her dress begging me to learn Spanish in only three days, the side of my computer screen has been infested with moving pictures of Rockport Men’s Washington… and Rockport Men’s Eberdon dark shoes. Last week I was mystified with my shed door that opened by itself every night but what I am now seeing on my computer screen calls for an exorcist.

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9. You know that I am trying to earn a couple of bonus years topside on this planet by eating no sweets or bacon and I’ve been doing it for over eight years. In response to this, Professor Bill says, "I'm willing to shave some off the end for a little ice cream and bacon before then." Think about what Professor Bill is saying. Don’t all young people feel that way? They smoke. They drink. They do not wear their seatbelts. They ride ATV machines and motorcycles. They eat bacon and ice cream. They ski and go down mountains on snowboards. They don’t pay their local friendly heavily armed drug dealer. They take Carnival Cruises. They think their end is so far away in a misty future that it will never be here. They actually think that when they are my age their cars will still be powered by gasoline. But put yourself in my shoes. When you actually get closer to that inevitable end and see two friends who sat on either side of you in school drop two weeks apart, you are willing to fight for every extra warm, sunny, mosquitoless spring day you get. You can have my bacon and ice cream.

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10. You might have read that our governor plans to grade Maine schools from A to F. This is inevitable when you try to run a school as if it were a poultry business. Crowd as many as you can into one centralized building, feed them all the same, and the day you haul them off to become chicken burgers, you shouldn't be able to tell one from another.

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