Below is a rough draft of humble's rants for your Maine Private Radio show for December 27, 2015.

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What's going on with my body? Used to be I could feel an occasional bone sticking out of my chest. Now I can get my fingers in behind them. My friend Claire says I need to start eating at McDonald's.

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2. I miss going to my exercise class. I was usually the only man there. For years I was in the front row at the exercise class, and I never knew what the 20 or so ladies were doing behind me. I never turned around to look and see. I do know that this exercise class is like most any other exercise class you are likely to see anywhere, because the tiny little bird like ladies who attend this exercise class religiously do not look anything like the ladies who really should be there. So --- you might well ask --- what motivates ladies to get out of a warm bed early, early in the morning and then show up at a building where they try to jump out of their skins for an hour? I’m going to tell you, because one morning, for the first time, I turned and looked over my shoulder --- and saw them passing around a small tin of chocolates.

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3. Here’s your humble Farmer weekly tip for health and happiness. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, just looked up from our neighbor’s newspaper and said that the oldest man in the world had just died at the age of 115. Many of us would like to know his secret for a long and happy life --- so --- of course I asked Marsha to read more. She said, “He never married.”

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4. According to Dr. Addler, a psychologist at the college in Thomaston, many Knox County marriages that end in divorce could be saved. Addler suggests that men be content to let their wives be boss. If your wife wants to cook and clean and scrub, don’t get in her way or argue with her. If it makes her happy, don’t complain. Young people don’t seem to realize that anyone who’s careful in selecting a mate can have an ideal marriage. Suppose that neither of you ever noticed that a wet towel or a wet water glass causes a white water stain on varnished surfaces. Perhaps you both drop your clothes beside the bed or in the bathroom and leave them there in a moldering pile for days. Or you each have a cat that walks on the kitchen counters with germ infested feet and eats out of your frying pan. Great! You and no one else should be married to each other. On the other hand, suppose that each one of you knocks the other one down while rushing over to pick up a small raveling on the floor. You wouldn’t be able to sleep if there was an unwashed dish in the sink. You’d have a wonderful marriage and would probably spend enjoyable hours grooming each other like monkeys. Do not look in the personal column of the newspaper for a mate. It will give you the idea that everyone in the world wants to take moonlight walks on lonely beaches. A Port Clyde couple walked moonlight beaches for years before they discovered that they both hated it. Which brings up the topic of Mutual Suffering, which is the basis for most of the successful marriages you see today. Let’s say that you are going to buy a car that your wife doesn’t want. The Mutual Suffering system allows her to buy furniture that you don’t want to balance it out. It works the same way with meals. If you have scallops for supper and she doesn’t like them, she eats them without making a face or saying anything because the next night she gets back at you by serving pea soup which you hate. With Mutual Suffering man and wife each get at least a piece of what they want. You want to shingle the roof because the rain leaks in, but she feels a kitchen stove is more important. You end up shingling half the roof and buying a second hand stove with only two burners that work. That makes it fair. Sometimes Mutual Suffering works both ways at once. Suppose you’re going bowling. You think she wants to go and she thinks you want to go. A week later you ask her to watch a Mel Gibson and the Body Snatchers video with you and she says, “But I went bowling with you last week.” That’s when you first discover that neither one of you wanted to go. Then you have the situation where nobody owes anybody anything, so you both sit home and sulk and suffer nobly in silence while thinking, “We never go anywhere, we never do anything.”

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5. You know you’re getting old when you’re watching the TV advertisements for weight loss and the girl in the “before” picture looks a lot better than the skinny one.

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6. You know people who drive new cars without health insurance. They will tell you that they can't afford health insurance. Only you can decide if they are daring or foolhardy. I feel safer with supplemental health insurance. It costs an arm and a leg, and, as I recall, when I pay it every month I have only $109 left over in my social security check. But within the past 100 days I have been flat on my back on an operating table twice. And have slept in a hospital bed two nights. Except for a couple of $100 aspirin, my insurance will probably take care of all of it, so I don't worry. But --- if I didn't have that supplemental insurance and were obligated to pay off those two operations, it would screw up my present plans to have the mortgage on our home paid off when I'm 84 so we can retire. v 7. Haunted French pancakes give me the crêpes. England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool. Do you have friends who send you things like this? Have they really nothing better to do? I’m the humble farmer at gmail dot com.

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8. Did I ever tell you about the time my friend Priscilla Adams went off to Mexico? When I asked her if she was going to get a hacienda, she said, “No, I plan to live alone.”

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9. The advertising community has been cheating American business out of billions of dollars annually. For the past 20 or 30 years, the smiling people who appear in ads have been beanpole thin. All this will change when glamorous models who weigh 350 pounds will appear in ads. They will be surrounded by 350-pound men who are witty, wealthy and wise. In the background you will see yachts, fancy cars, mansions and a promise of romantic adventure --- if she buys what the ad is selling. Of course most people will never be able to weigh 350 pounds no matter what they eat and drink. But many will be willing to destroy their health trying to look like this new smart set. This has been proven today by the countless women who are starving themselves in hopes of getting down to the anemic 95 pound models shown in ads now. It has been estimated by the advertising community that if each woman in America gained only 20 pounds, they could sell an extra two billion dollars worth of cloth each year. Profits are expected to double in beer and spaghetti. Dry skin, which was invented by Al Peel in the 1950s, will still be promoted, however. Thanks to Al, women all over the country have discovered their dry skin. They now spend billions on creams, salves and lotions to keep their skin moist. Many men don’t want their wives to have moist skin. Here in Maine, we call it sweat.

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10. According to a landlord in Rockland, Maine things are not like they used to be. He says that 10 years ago the first question nice young couples asked was, “Does it have a washer and drier hookup?” Now they want to know if it has a lot of lights in the cellar.

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