Check out our B&B web page.

+

This is a rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for June 1, 2014

+

1. If you don't think times are tough, drive through your town, or any town in Maine, and check out the number of junk cars in dooryards. Now only the folks doing very well can afford to keep more than three or four.

+

2. My Canon GL2 camera needs repair but before I send it to California, I thought I'd take a picture of the serial numbers on it. Several years ago I got an expensive ($100 or so) Canon A550 with which I wanted to take the picture of the movie camera. But it flashed. So I Googled and quickly found a video that told me how to eliminate the flash so I could get a clear picture. Then it was all fuzzy so I went to another video that told me how to eliminate the zoom lens. The batteries died in the camera before I could do it, but I'm now sure it can be done. The world has changed. Just in the past couple of years the way we learn how to do things has changed drastically. No matter what your question, there is an answer for it out on the Internet. I don't try to put brakes on my car or fix my pump or plaster my wall without first looking at a video on YouTube that tells me how to do it. This morning, I typed into Google, "What do women want?" And my computer crashed.

+

3. Jane, who was a recent B&B guest, told me that she has a friend in Baltimore who couldn't afford to buy a burglar alarm. So she put a sign in her window: Snakes For Sale.

+

4. Being told how to remember the difference between complement and compliment doesn't mean that everyone is capable of remembering how to remember the difference between complement and compliment. It might be one of those things you have to learn as you are learning how to talk. If you can't talk by the time you are 12, for the rest of your life you will howl like the wolves that raised you. If you don’t know the difference between compliment and complement by the time you are 12, you will never be able to remember the difference between complement and compliment and will be the object of ridicule by your friends.

+

5. Pegg listened to The humble Farmer on the radio for 30 or so years. Now Pegg is one of my Facebook friends. No matter what I post, she seems to read something in it other than what I intended to say. I should be married to Pegg. Neither one of us has the least idea of what the other one is talking about.

+

6. The date on the article was February 10, 1918. It had to do with WWI draft dodgers in Arizona. When the sheriff and his posse showed up at the ranch house, the draft dodgers shot the sheriff --- and the posse. You can see why they really wanted those boys in the army.

+

7. I don’t very often say anything of a political nature, but I’m going to do so now. I’m going to give you my definition of a democrat. A democrat is a nice guy who works hard to put a nice guy in office. And when the democrat’s candidate wins, he complains that the man he voted for doesn’t have the chutzpah of the candidates in the other party.

+

8. Have you ever noticed that whenever you ask anyone what they do for work, they usually have to repeat it? “What do I do for work?” It’s just as if they had to dig in or back up a bit and put on chains at the bottom of an ice-covered hill, just to get a little bit of mental traction. I’m not saying that’s bad. In fact repeating an answer is preferred over the one you get in some parts of Maine when a man can’t answer your question until he spits.

+

9. Did you hear about the scanning tool that would operate as a reverse infrared mapping device by reading the amount of energy people emit and pinpointing where that maximum flow of energy is? They tell us that it would help police know who was carrying a gun. But if this scanner were to fall into the hands of the kind of women who used to post personals in the Maine Times 40 years ago, I would not feel safe walking the streets alone at night.

+

10. You probably heard that a member of the Indiana General Assembly withdrew his bill to create a pilot program for drug testing welfare applicants. He withdrew the bill after one of his colleagues amended the measure to also require drug testing for lawmakers.

+

11. You have heard people say, “If you ask a stupid question, you will get a stupid answer.” Do you think there is such a thing as a stupid question? Are you stupid if you don’t ask questions? Some of the best things I’ve ever said on this program were answers you sent me to my questions. You have often heard me bemoan the fact that I could never afford to have children. So, knowing nothing about children, one day I asked a seasoned grandmother, “What do kids want?” She said, “Something they can throw away.”

+

12. Here’s food for thought. Did you ever realize that only a man who has been married 3 times or has 5 kids CAN represent mainstream America.

+

13. Young people today don’t know about moderation. Back when I was a kid we had neighbors who were moderate. One day Alva Harris was lying on his back underneath a car in his garage down in Tenants Harbor when he saw some boots he thought he recognized walking around the car. So Alva hollers out, “Is that you George?” And George says, “Yes, you awful busy today Alva?” And Alva says, “What you need?” And George says, “My house is on fire.”

+