Below is a rough draft of humble's rants for your Maine Private Radio show for December 13, 2015.

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It’s time for No things considered here on The humble Farmer program. If you want to draw a crowd of people who will tell you how to not fall off a roof, all you have to do is fall off a roof and they will gather around your bed and tell you what you did wrong.

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2. Do you get email cards with curious sayings on them from some of your friends and relatives? A specialist in this genre of curious sayings is Marianne Williamson. I can remember the name because my mother was Marianne Williamson Gilchrest. Here's an example: "Enlightenment is the key to everything, and it is the key to intimacy, because it is the goal of true authenticity." When was the last time you went to bed at night worrying about your authenticity? Someone told me about the New Age BS Generator, and I thought it warranted your attention, which is why we are talking about it today. On this New Age BS Generator website, we read that "... researchers used randomly generated sayings from New Age BS Generator and another site called “Wisdom of Chopra” -- the last a sarcastic nod to the new age teachings of best-selling alternative medicine author Deepak Chopra -- for the study. "They found that people who are receptive to this kind of “pseudo-intellectual bs” are less intelligent than those who aren't. I’m not going to read what else it said for fear of alienating 50 percent of the American public. If you have never heard of the New Age BS Generator, I invite you to check it out on the web. Just reading about it brightened my day and I think you’d get a chuckle out of it, too.

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3. Everything happens for a reason, and even if it didn't it wouldn't make any difference because there is nothing you can do about it, anyway.

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4. When I was a little kid, there was an evil comic book scientist named Sivana who wanted to take over the world. It was impossible to keep Sivana in jail, because he was so smart he was able to concoct explosives out of his food and blow out the cell wall. Let us fast forward sixty years. This recent airport procedure where guards strip us of our toothpaste and bag balm, which I cannot live without, has produced unexpected consequences. One woman who was interviewed said that before being permitted to board a plane she had to throw her whole face away. From this we could assume that when she got home her husband and children didn’t recognize her and forced her to produce identification before they’d let her in the house. This is not a joking matter. You and I have seen women with enough goo on their faces to produce a bomb capable of taking out the Great Pyramid of Giza. But now that women can’t travel with it, they will have to find another way to disfigure themselves. You probably know that I have always considered any kind of alteration to a woman’s person grounds for divorce. A good looking woman doesn’t need cosmetics and it detracts from the appearance of a plain one. Do you remember hearing someone say that when they scraped the makeup off Tammy Faye Baker, they found Jimmy Hoffa?

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5. Thank you for permitting me to sit behind this microphone and talk with you. Because you have afforded me this privilege of being here every week, I feel that besides saying silly things that might make you smile, I am also obligated to say things that might make your life a bit easier. Or perhaps even extend your life, or the life of one of your loved ones. --- I’d like to give you or one of your loved ones an extra few happy years. Are you ready to listen? Four days ago I had a heart attack. Four days ago I got two stents put in my heart to open up the little blocked passageways. You have heard people say that a heart attack affects people in different ways. Some people can walk until they drop. Some simply experience some discomfort in the chest and arms. Mine was the kind of heart attack that felt like a mean old elephant was standing on my chest. It was 6 A. M, I had just got out of bed. I was in pain, I was sweating, I had called 911 and I didn’t think I’d live long enough for the ambulance to get to me. This does not need to happen to you and it should not have happened to me. We are talking about this now because I don’t want it to happen to you. I think of myself as being a health nut. I’ve never smoked, I’ve avoided drinking alcohol. For the previous 9 years I have not had bacon, sausage, cookies, pie, cake, donuts, ice cream or any of the other sweet goodies that make life worth living. Just because I cut out sweets, I went from 175 to 140 pounds. I have never had this high cholesterol thing that people talk about. No diabetes. My wife Marsha feeds me fruit, vegetables and salads. We eat chicken and not beef. Yes. I admit it. I’m a health nut. As long as I can write newspaper articles and make radio and television programs --- as long as I feel good and can make a contribution, I want to keep on living. Please pay close attention now. For over a year it has become more and more difficult for me to carry rhubarb from my rhubarb patch to the rhubarb stand out by the road. Half way there I had to stop and get my breath. You should understand that when I was out of breath from just walking up across my lawn, my heart was telling me --- "Hey, I’m getting plugged up with gunk. Go to a first class heart trauma center and have me checked out today. Have first-class experts take pictures of me from every angle. Don’t wait until tomorrow. Do it now." When you get tired easily, when you have to stop to get your breath when walking up a flight of stairs, that mean old elephant is just waiting to step on your chest. I’d like to see you disappoint him. --- Thank you for listening.

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6. Where did this foolishness about wondering who you are come from? When I was a kid you never saw people wandering about trying to find themselves. If you were lucky, you were out of high school before you got married and had children, and married couples 23 years old with four children didn’t have time to wonder who they were. Only the children of the very rich went to college. Then, years later around 1958, some of us discovered that you could make $3500 a year teaching school and thereby catapult yourself into the upper class. You could earn the $50 a semester college tuition in the summer and by working all day Saturday you could earn the $5 for your off campus room and the $5 it cost you for food every week. You could graduate from Gorham Normal School and buy a house with what you’d earn teaching school in Maine your first year. It took me a while to figure out this road to riches so I was out of high school for 12 years before I even got an undergraduate degree. And although I probably took psychology 101 two or three times, all I remember now is references to the normal distribution curve --- I think that’s the old name for the bell curve --- and Terman and Stanford Binet and IQ. There were no chapters on how to find out who I was. Fifty years ago people didn’t realize that they needed to run around wondering who they were. But nowadays if your wife asks you why you don’t get a job, you can tell her that you are trying to find out who you are. If you really want to know who you are ask your wife. She will probably tell you that either you are a very lazy man or you need thyroid pills. 060818

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7. You will be overjoyed to hear that the Boy and I finally hooked up my new Canon printer/scanner. Although I got it on a day when "prices were slashed," it cost just as much as any other day. --- Which wasn't much because printers are cheap and the profit is in the toner that they slam you with later. I followed the printed instructions, with illustrations, or I could never have got the thing to work. --- At least the printer works. I haven't tried to scan my power bill for you with it yet. I know you like to see how much money I save each month by using solar power. The printe is wireless, if that makes any difference. What prompts me to talk with you about it now, is that this Canon printer is much like Sheridan Whiteside: although I invited it into my home to perform a specific function, it has extended its electronic tentacles into every aspect of my life. It wants to know everything about me. It threatened to not operate properly unless I subscribed to innumerable other enigmatic services which I have never heard of and will never use or need. It wants to run my telephone. It has pasted an icon on my desktop that offers up 10 or 12 services that I neither want nor need. The bottom line is, if I don't do what it says, it says I can look forward to an unpleasant future. Have you noticed that no matter what I start talking about, I end up with a commentary on marriage?

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8. Gramp Wiley and I were fishing way up the northern part of the St. George River when we heard a small voice saying, “Help Me!” We looked around and saw a little frog hopping up toward us. Gramp bent down and picked up the frog. And the frog said that she was really a beautiful woman turned into a frog by an evil witch. She said that if Gramp would kiss her she would turn back into a beautiful woman and do anything he wanted. And then Gramp Wiley put the frog it in his pocket. And I said, “What are you doing?” “That frog said it would turn into a beautiful woman and do anything you wanted.” And Gramp said, “At my age I would just as soon have a talking frog.”

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9. It is possible to buy good books for ten cents or a quarter at a lawn sale. I can remember finding a brand spanking new book called “Caring for your baby and child.” I mentioned to the woman selling it that the book was in awful good condition. She said, “Yes, after I had the kid, I never had time to read it.”

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