Check out our B&B web page.

+

This is a rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for July 19, 2015.

+

The humble Farmer's TV show is now on YouTube. Google "Robert Karl Skoglund" and they should come up.

+

This program is brought to you by The humble Farmer Bed & Breakfast in St. George, Maine. Thank you for listening.

+

1. Does your spouse accuse you of telling the same story three times within the same hour? Mine does, so it is with some trepidation that I mention (perhaps once again?) that I built my career as an on-stage comic all wrong. Had I doped and ravished several young lovelies along the way, I would have long ago been acclaimed as an internationally famous humorist and now be able to pay my own heating oil and dental bills without whining to my friends. Because it is never too late to start a good thing, I am putting the general public on notice. Please let your grandmothers and great aunts know --- from now on, The humble Farmer is packing pills. Seriously, what kind of a world do some of these wimpy, insecure but famous men live in where they feel they need to give women pep pills to achieve their desires? Now that I'm well past the statue of limitations, I feel safe to confess that I, too, carried pep pills with me when I visited an occasional female friend for the first time. Without eating two or three pep pills myself, I would never have had the strength to drive home.

+

2. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, who had her purse stolen in a train station in Rome, was pleased to hear about the Italian tourist who had her pocketbook stolen while she was in this country looking at the Liberty Bell. This is good. It is a bad bargain that can’t work two ways.

+

3. Some of us tend to make life more complicated than it needs to be. You know what I’m talking about because we both have friends who see simple and straight forward solutions to everything. For example, my neighbor Don, who comes from up in the County, said that it was a waste of taxpayer money to keep people on death row for 15 or 20 years. I told Don about a man who was just released after 16 years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. Don said, “That’s what I mean. That wouldn’t have happened if they’d just shot him.”

+

4. I have too much to do. One of the first things I learned to say in Swedish in 1960 was Ja har sa mycko att gora. I have so much to do. My Aunt Sally said it all the time. I think of her every morning because I have a postcard she sent me inside the clock that I wind every morning. And in 1960 I was of the opinion that it wouldn't make a bit of difference if my Faster Sally did anything or not. So when I don't have time to get the cement or pour my footing or buy the planks to support my new solar panels or make TV programs or cut down the dead oak and apple trees and plant more carrots and organize my garage or putter with my book or visit with friends or take a shower or take a nap I know that it won't make a bit of difference if I do or not. Well, I didn’t get that quite right. Naps do make a difference and I think I’ll take one now.

+

5. What's the most difficult thing you have to do all day? The most difficult thing I have to do every day is whatever it is that I absolutely have to do. Nothing makes a project more difficult, nothing is the source of more procrastination, like a job that you absolutely have to do. It was that way when I had to write papers in school. I would wait until the last minute and then type (typing was the most difficult part of writing a paper back then. Kids with computers and printers know nothing of life 50 years ago.) it out, usually staying up all night to do so and coming into class, paper in hand, fifteen minutes late, having gone 36 or 48 hours without sleep. I remember hearing Dr. Emerson say one time as I took off my wooden shoes and tiptoed into class, "Well, here's General Grant's messenger, right on time."

+

6. Whenever I write a word Facebook hasn't seen before, it is underlined in red. If I write habitit it is underlined in red. If I write habitat, it is OK. What I'm trying to say is that the spell checker in Facebook gives me tat for tit.

+

7. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, came out to see our new photo voltaic solar panels. I had just brought them home. They were in the back of my truck which now has 303,000 miles on it. We already generate more electricity than we need with our present 22 panels, but now we will be able to use even more electric heat with all this extra power. Once installed, these PV panels will pay us at least 6% interest for fifteen years, after which they will have paid for themselves and owe me nothing. These 8 new panels will give us 37% more electric heat in the spring and fall and make us much more comfortable in our golden years. And we won't have to whine about not having enough oil. How much oil and electricity do you have to buy before it pays for itself? Anyway, we were under the apple tree looking at the panels in the back of the truck, when Marsha wistfully asked, "Do you think you can get our neighbor The Goose to help you unload them?" At that moment a man I had never seen before --- about six foot four and well over 250 pounds appeared at my side and said, "I'd like three bunches of rhubarb." I said, "That can easily be arranged."

+

8. Pegg, who is a long time radio friend --- like 35 or so years --- threw some names at me that I had never heard. Tom Brady… Amy Winehouse… Neil Degrasse Tyson… the Duggar family. I had never heard of these people. Brady? The friend of Ronald Reagan who got shot in the head? The Brady law? Tyson was a boxer. His son Neil is now in trouble? I have never heard of the Duggar family. What kind of news do people listen to, to hear these names? I do watch news clips on Roku, but there really isn't much news there. Luckily, with Roku which we do have you can pick and choose your news and eliminate football players, movie stars and Prince Harry’s children right off the bat. My friend William though I was joking. Making up a story. He couldn’t believe that I had never heard of these people. Please remember that you have neighbors who have lived such unique and eventful lives that they have no need to make up stories. I am one of them. And there is another factor that comes into play here. My friends who have total recall don't realize that there is another world out there and that most of us live in it.

+

9. Is there really any point in being a rich, handsome and famous man? Is it worth the bother? If you are not rich, famous or handsome, you don’t need to feel that you’ve missed out on something. A friend of mine in Camden, Maine, who has devoted most of his adult life to reading Hollywood movie magazines tells me, that the only advantage in being a rich man is that it enables you to find a very attractive woman who will marry you and then leave with half of everything you have. Here in Maine we have thousands of average men who have married very unattractive women who have done the very same thing.

+

10. More and more Maine women in their mid 40s are dating men in their early 20s. A local sociologist, considers this to be a most unusual and unhealthy phenomenon and is hoping to discover what the two groups can possibly have in common. He says, “You would think that a 45 year old woman would seek out a 60 year old man who could satisfy her intellectual needs. Yet we see many of these women, accompanied by no more than children, out on the town six and seven nights a week. One would think that a woman over 40 would know that you can’t trust a man until hair grows in his ears. Whatever do they find to talk about? What is it about these young men that older women find so attractive?” +

+