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This is a rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for June 29, 2014

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1. I like this kind of comment that Robert in Brunswick sent me. For years Robert has been telling me what he’s seen and heard and I appreciate it. Many of his comments have been enjoyed by my radio friends over the years. Robert writes: "I just returned from supper at the 99 Restaurant in Topsham Fair Mall. The place was mobbed so I sat at the counter. The young man to my left had a empty beer stein sitting there, and the girl behind the counter took my order for chicken and asked the young man if he would like another beer. He said, "I just got my license back after six long years, and if I get into any kind of trouble it is an automatic three more years. So that's why I am only having one."

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2. One of the unfortunate things about people like my friend Winky, is that they take everything at face value. They believe everything they read. Somebody gave Winky a book of Greek philosophy, and Winky read about Simonides, and Aristophanes, Uripades and Socrates. And when he read about Socrates, he took it right to heart. One day I met Winky at the post office and I said, “Do you know what I just heard about one of your friends?" And Winky thought about how Socrates would handle someone who came in to gossip, and he said, “Before you tell me anything I'd like to know if you’re sure that what you want to tell me is true." And I said, "No, I just heard it.” And Winky said, "So you don't know if it's true or not. Is what you want to tell me something good?" And I said, "No.” And Winky said, “So you want to tell me something bad about him, but you don’t even know if it's true. Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?" And I had to admit that it really wasn’t. And Winky said, “If what you want to tell me might not be true, and it’s not good and it’s not useful, why tell it to me at all?" This explains why the great philosopher Socrates was admired by everybody. It also explains why Winky never found out that his wife was spending a lot of time with his best friend.

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3. Yes, some of us enjoy the music we heard as children and we don't like to let it go. And some of us enjoy the language we learned as children and we don't like to let that go. We resent and resist the foreign influences that would impart a different meaning to words and phrases of the idiolect of our youth. In my time we have lost "share" and “dinner” and a three others that I wrote on my Facebook page that were good words when I was a kid but I don’t even dare say on the radio today. And then there are the new words and expressions that have been added to our local patois, much as a new type of weed was introduced to your neighborhood by an ingenuous someone who thought they had pretty flowers. The next generation will take them for granted, much as the grandchildren do ticks. Only in 70 years will the young people of today understand what I'm talking about. If anyone invites me and my beautiful young trophy-wife to dinner, I will be sure to be there at 11:30 so as to not miss the noon meal. Being a practical and cosmopolitan man, I will also eat dinner before I go just in case they have something strange or exotic that an old Maine man does not eat. --- Like anything I have never eaten before. And it has happened that even though our gracious hostess might have prepared something I dearly love and enjoy, she might have destroyed it and rendered it inedible by adding mushrooms or some exotic type of spice, like pepper. Before I put in my buttercup squash this morning, may I leave you with the following sentiments that I penned some years ago. The sentiment expressed will always be valid. Only the words will change. Do you miss the good old songs you used to hear? I don’t see any sense in these rap songs they sing nowadays, do you? Back when I was a kid they sang songs like, Chickery Chick, chala chala, chekala romy, in a bananica, bolika wollica – and they made sense. This morning I got to thinking that it had been a long time since I had heard I’m a Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas. You know you’re old when you realize that you miss the good old songs. Old people have always cried that they no longer hear the good old songs. You probably recall Aristophanes’ story about the young man who sneered at his father when the old man requested someone sing one of the good old songs called Simoides' Shearing of the Ram. The kid had to explain to his father that Simoides’ Ram was a corny old song. Do you hear the same thing from your children and grandchildren? Do they listen to music that you can’t understand or appreciate? You might have seen a TV program advertised on which they promised to play the 40 worst songs from last year. Did it make you wonder how they could be sure they got the right ones?\+

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4. I've been meaning to mention this to you for several days now. Seeing this line Robert in Brunswick posted brought it to mind. "Because I could not stop for Death" I had to laugh when I read that, although I couldn't remember who wrote it. Interesting that only a couple of people saw anything she wrote until long after she was in the ground. You know that for years my bathroom reading has been the Encyclopedia Britannica. Before that, for a few years it was French, because when I was 62 I realized that by reading French every day for only a few minutes, it wouldn't take more than a couple of years before I'd be able to read French. Anyway, I open the encyclopedia volume at random and read about some place or person, and one of my rules is that when I come to a person who has been executed, forced to flee his country, or incarcerated for something he has said or written, I know I've read enough for that day. I think a great PhD dissertation would be on the percentage of people who would not even be in the book --- wouldn't even be worth remembering --- had they not written something that got them hanged or jailed or excommunicated. The other day I found three on contiguous pages before I realized I'd bagged my limit. You might be interested to hear that it could not have happened if I were not in the G's in general and Gio's in particular and that these men all lived in the territory now known as Italy.

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5. Do you turn to Wikipedia to get a quick, and probably biased opinion, of who someone is or what a word means? I wanted to know what "tweet" meant. I learned that it has to do with an operation called "Twitter" and that --- "Twitter ... has been described as 'the SMS of the Internet.'" You can't believe how relieved I was to learn that.

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6. Do you try to watch the latest TED talks? They talked about tweet on TED. Do you do the thing called tweet? I think I'll look up tweet in Wikipedia as I have no idea of what it is or what it does. You hear a lot about it but you have no idea of what it is or what its function is. It seems as I tried it one time but you have be limited to 50 or so words. Which is the only kind of letter I've been able to get published in USA Today. You have to be able to say a lot with only a few words. The people on TED are very well informed and are exceptionally good speakers. If I may elevate my pinky as I gaze into your eyes over our teacups, I'm gonna share something with you this morning whether you want to hear it or not. One of the bad things about TED is that TED and the college lectures on YouTube enable intelligent people who have never ever jumped through the academic hoops to become even better educated than those of us who have jumped through those academic hoops. You know who you are, and it ain’t fair.

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7. The dirtiest hotels in the world. That was what the junk email said. Of course I had to Google The dirtiest hotels in the world so I could see where they were. Number one dirtiest hotel in the world is in San Francisco. Let me read you a sample of the reviews: “First and foremost no one should ever walk into a hotel only to find prostitutes walking around the inside.” Think about this. What reason would they have to complain about a prostitute who was on her feet?

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8. If you were to read even a few of the hotel reviews that turned up on a web page called The Dirtiest Hotels in the World, you might not have to wonder where Stephen King gets material for his novels. Listen to this: “When we checked in, the Manager offered us a free upgrade to the "Honeymoon Suite". It was a set up. The "Honeymoon Suite" had a vacant room next door that was "under construction". I was undressed to get into my swimsuit and heard breathing. I looked under the big gap under the adjoining room door. I saw eyes looking back at me!” I don’t know if eyes would have bothered me. It’s the hidden camera that can come back and bite you. And here’s another review: “We were looking for a dog friendly hotel…. It was absolutely horrible! The room smelled musty” --- Probably because the last people who stayed there had a dog.

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9. When you come right down to it, you have never seen a man so homely but what he could get some other man’s wife to run off with him. But seeing the contested beauty bragging about the affair in front of a TV camera is something else. That said, I can see a day when only homely men will run for public office. If you will consider the many cheating men you have seen commanding the evening news, you would have to admit that they are far above average in looks, income, fame and physical prowess. Whenever they are tried by the bar of public opinion, women crawl out of the woodwork and vie to confess that, “When we were in the third grade he used to pull my pigtails.” But --- suppose the man were coyote ugly? How much would you have to pay a woman to admit that she had ever been that desperate? No, homely politicians are the wave of the future. They can cheat all they want and no woman would ever tell.

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