Check out our B&B web page.

+

This is a rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for March 2, 2014

+

1. Did you hear that Congress is going to put a stop to the incessant amount of sex and violence we see on television. I don’t know about you, but I’ll miss the evening news.

+

2. Isn't it about time someone wrote some new scary stories for children? What 6-year-old kid who has watched television for 47,000 hours is afraid of The Big Bad Wolf? Or the Boogie Man? Forget the Grimm Brothers. If you want to see your kiddies' hair stand on end, why not tell them about the Koch Brothers?

+

3. One morning on TV we saw a police car running through a parking lot. The machine in the car was able to scan the license plates on all of the cars in the parking lot and tell if any plates were stolen or expired. We saw this same operation a year ago and now the question of privacy is back: Is this scanning of license plates to seek out criminal activity an invasion of privacy? Are the police able to learn too much too quickly? My wife Marsha posted some little ads for her cleaning business and got a call from Frank. He got her name and reputation from people in his neighborhood for whom she has worked. She didn't get his phone number written down correctly, and when I Googled to see if I could find it, I discovered that Frank had fled his home state where he would have been jailed for contempt of court for failing to pay his ex-wife $500,000 or so that he had buried in some off-shore bank. The judge said, according to the court record, that he couldn't believe anything that Frank said. Frank lies and he doesn't pay his bills; he fled to avoid incarceration and as a consequence he is half a million dollars richer. So. The fact that Frank is a poster boy for ALEC is more than I want to know about Frank, my wife's new employer, but there it is, out on the Internet for one and all to see. When he called and said, "Come clean" should Marsha have said, "You come clean with us first"? And here's Facebook, begging us every day to tell where we've spent our vacations, where we went to school, what books we read, what movies we like, what clubs we belong to. In general, our likes and dislikes of most everything. Possessing this information about a billion or so people has made Mark Zuckerburg 17 billion dollars in about ten years. Can you do anything now without everyone in the world knowing about it? What do you think about your loss of privacy? Should we just put a computer chip in everyone’s arm and be done with it?

+

4. I live with a dog so I like to learn new things about dogs. Did you know that a dog's visual acuity is approximately 20:80, compared to our 20:20? That means that what we can see clearly at 80 feet a dog can only see clearly when it is within 20 feet. When a dog recognizes a person on sight, it is more likely because he recognizes the typical movements of that person than that he actually recognizes a face. That’s why a dog might bark at someone he knows until he gets close enough to see who it is.

+

5. I miss my Roku and my Stamford lectures. But now for the time being, when I’m eating my mid-morning breakfast, I do have 800 channels and can scan them to see what media America has to offer. The only thing that looked interesting one morning was called Parole Board, so I checked it out. A soft-spoken man is serving five years in a Missouri prison for not making his child support payments. He admits to smoking dope and drinking a six-pack on weekends, but claims that his visits to his psych doctor kept him from working. He tells the Parole Board that he loves his 8 children that he has produced with the cooperation of six different women. He hopes to be released from prison soon. You must ask yourself not only what has this man contributed to society, but what is his potential to make future contributions. There are people in jail for every kind of possible crime, and the state and many of those people would be better off if they were back on the street. But you know one man right here who could never afford to have children who firmly believes that Missouri will save a pile of money if it keeps one more man in jail.

+

6. I mentioned on my Facebook page that one of the kids' cousins in Holland has a PhD and works for Shell. It was easy for the Dutch cousins to get degrees because all they had to do was be smart enough to get them. It is my understanding that money was never a consideration. An American friend who is now teaching in Europe replied with this. “I know. My daughter's only 11 but of course I'm already thinking ahead to life after high school. Austria and Germany have some top-notch universities that run anywhere from €500 to €0.00 per semester - even for non-EU students!” “The fact that she's growing up in Europe makes attending college on this side of the ocean sound less odd than if we were still in Cape Neddick, but I still tell anyone who has kids not yet in college and is willing to listen - send them to Europe.” He then continues with this. It's important to add that the EU is so integrated now that most universities offer full degree programs taught entirely in English (along with a great opportunity to learn whatever the local language(s) is/are, of course) because so many students are coming from all over the EU. These programs generally also don't cost any more than those taught in the local languages, and sometimes local students choose them just to get the immersion experience. Well. Isn’t that interesting? Anyone who knows anything about the university system in Europe realizes that The United States is way, way behind. Isn’t that sad? Can you figure out why it happens to be that way?

+

7. The other night I watched a few minutes of The Da Vinci Code. Saw the part where they threw down the fanatic who was wearing barbed wire bracelets. Looked up that actor and read quite a few of his quotes, which I thought were interesting because he could be candid without losing job offers. He said, "I'm English, so I can't wear a baseball cap. I'd look like white trash, like I should have a beer and a dog called Skeeter." We've all heard of fanatics who wore burlap shirts because they wanted to suffer. But is wearing a burlap shirt or wearing barbed wire real suffering? Not really, because at any time of the day or night that you change your mind and say, "Enough already," you can cast them aside. Those really into suffering who want their lives controlled until death do us part get a dog.

+

8. Post office employees are about the only people who know how to talk on the telephone. When you call the post office, someone will pick up the phone and tell you who they are. When I answer the phone I also identify myself. I say, “Robert Skoglund, sorry to keep you waiting.” Then, instead of telling me who they are and what they want so we can have a conversation, the mysterious caller on the other end will say something like, “Hello Robert. Is that you?” That brings us back to the beginning, so I’ll repeat what I said, “Robert Skoglund, sorry to keep you waiting.” I’m polite about it. I don’t say, “You called Robert Skoglund. I answered and told you that I am Robert Skoglund. What is it about this conversation that you don’t understand?” Now -- I’m trying to be calm while I’m telling you about this although it annoys me terribly --- and you’re in impartial observer, so let me ask you. They are calling Robert Skoglund. I have already mentioned my name twice, but they’ll ask again, “Hello, hello. Robert, is that you?” Why this, “hello, hello. Is that you Robert?” I want to cry, but I control myself and never reply with “No, I’m Spiderman. Who do you think answers the telephone in my house?” Why can’t people simply tell me who they are and what they want so we can get down to business? I’m Robert Skoglund in St. George, Maine, sorry to keep you waiting.

+

9. If you’ve driven Route 131 between Thomaston and my house you’ve been past the old green Finnish schoolhouse where Gary Akers now has his art gallery. When I tell you that I went to one of Gary’s shows, I don’t want you to think that it was for the free food, because there was nothing there that an old Maine man would eat. Who should I see there appreciating art but Gerry Colson from South Casco. And Gerry admitted that he listens to this program and that he loves to go to Monhegan. So Gerry and I have one thing in common. But Gary Akers is a crafty artist and I like his stuff even more because he paints things that everybody can recognize, like the houses in Port Clyde or the lighthouse on Southern Island. But I was talking about Gary’s art show and the people who were there. Can you tell me why the only people with money enough to buy first class paintings seem to be attracted by tiny tomatoes wrapped in bacon or spinach sandwiches?

+

10. You probably heard about the man who has been trapped at Charles de Gaulle Airport since 1988. His passport got messed up so he can’t enter France and yet he is unable to leave it. It was written up in the newspaper because the reporter thought it was such a strange and unusual thing. But if you compare this unfortunate fellow to a man who doesn’t get along with his wife, yet has six kids so they can’t afford a divorce, we could probably find several hundred similar cases right here in Maine.

+

11. If you think about it, a lot of road rage could probably be blamed on a condition called hypoglycemia which means that some people snap quickly and get mad and do nutty things if they don’t eat on a regular basis. By that I mean every 3 hours. I was over 40 before I learned that if I ate on a regular basis, or every 3 hours, the chemistry in my brain would be well balanced and I wouldn’t have these little senseless rage attacks, like a spoiled child, when things didn’t go just the way I wanted. Are there some people you don’t even dare talk to until they’ve had a good meal? They go wild over nothing. You know it. You live with it. You know that when they’re hungry no matter what you say they’ll start an argument or snap at you. You know who they are. Point at one of them right now. Feed them.

+

12. When my wife Marsha, The almost Perfect Woman, came home from work and got out of her car, I greeted her in the dooryard. I was all excited. I said, “Mike has written a movie and if, by any chance, he is able to sell it, he wants me to narrate some of it because he needs a real Maine accent.” Marsha said, “Can you fake it?”

+