Below is a rough draft of humble's rants for your Maine Private Radio show for June 5, 2016

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1. Here's the typical problem with computer information you get from gurus. They will write something like this: "go to settings > filters edit that filter and tick NEVER SEND TO SPAM , then click apply filter to matching messages that should move them to inbox " That's it. They start by saying, “Go to settings.” So how do I find settings? What's the matter with these people. Do they think they are writing directions for children?

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2. Pegg says: " at present I know of no way you can view how many views your Timeline gets or who comes to read it." I don't either. That's why I posted a rant on my Facebook page that said, "If the Man could add one feature to Facebook I would ask that it be a record of the people who look at any given page." Wouldn't it be fun to know which of your neighbors have absolutely nothing productive to do on any given day?

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3. OK. As Jack Nicholson might have said, Here's something good about me. You know that I tell it like it is. I’m the first to put myself down. I admit that I can't remember things. Never could get top grades in a test because my memory isn't good. Now that I think of it, I did get a highest or next to highest grade in a Shakespeare exam one time. But that was only because I studied together with Janice who got the highest grades. I liked Shakespeare. I did some no-fooling-around serious studying for Shakespeare. But as a general thing, I didn't do well with tests. My memory is bad. Even a few minutes ago I started the dishwasher without shutting off the electric heat in the TV room --- which blew the fuse. I had to flip the breaker to fix it. Silly lapse of memory. Always shut off the heater before starting the dishwasher. But --- here's the good part about me --- I claim to be unique when it comes to thinking up clever ways to do things. I think I'm good at it. You know that I made a Best of Show TV commercial for the Maine Seatbelt Coalition in 1988. So I'm a prize-winning Maine humorist. And yesterday I think I outdid myself in showing our B&B guest-friends that we consider them to be really welcome here. --- Like members of our family. How do you make people feel as if they are part of the family? An average person would bake them a special cake or one of their favorite goodies. But I think I've transcended that. I did something that they will remember long after all the cakes and goodies are long forgotten. After doing our wash, I broke out the clothes rack, set it up in their B&B room, and hung out our underwear to dry.

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4. Our Bed and Breakfast guests who were here three days are gone. The washed sheets are being dried by electricity that our solar panels generated months ago on sunny days. Once again it is time to make a radio program just for you. In the good old days I used to have an abundance of fresh rants, generated and pre-posted over the previous week and ready to deliver. But today I had to scour my Facebook page to see if I had, over the past week, written anything informative or even mildly amusing. If not, I have to dig into the hundreds of rants from years gone by and borrow some of them. This morning I was reading about Washington Irving. He went everywhere. It was interesting to see that no matter what he wrote, he was savagely attacked by his critics. You ain't saying nothing worthwhile unless you are savagely attacked by your critics. I've almost forgotten those long-ago years when I worried because no one condemned me for my narrow-minded provincialism. All that has changed. Thank you for constantly reminding me that I'm doing good.

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5. My Facebook friend Dr. Olga suggested that I prepare a meal. When my wife Marsha heard talk of me preparing meals it didn’t take her long to put Dr. Olga in her place. Marsha said that if Dr. Olga wanted to hang out here, she'd soon tire of rolled oats and jelly sandwiches.

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6. Do you let other people post things on your Facebook page? I do. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that very few items posted on my Facebook page are so insipid or devoid of interest but what they can’t be dressed up and used as rants here on The humble Farmer's radio show.

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7. Have you ever heard of the Gold Ring Scam? If I had, I forgot it. But one morning our cosmopolitan B&B friends told us about finding a gold ring on the street in Paris. The person trying to con the visitor puts an imitation gold ring on the ground and pretends to find it at the same time as the mark. The plot is to get a few Euros out of the innocent tourist. Anyway, our friends found the ring and went through the routine with the con artist. Later, they met up with other friends and said that they'd just been involved in the gold ring scam, and held up the ring. Their friends countered by saying, "Oh yes, this morning we collected three of them."

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8. Long about June fourth or fifth, summer comes to the Coast of Maine. The temperature soars to 58 degrees and on some days the raw, damp fog melts away by noon and leaves us with an overcast and foreboding sky. You look at the radishes you planted over a month ago and see that they are doing nothing. The carrots you planted weeks ago bring to mind garrotes --- all choked off. The weather report we get is for Tenants Harbor. Tenants Harbor is a tiny village in the town of St. George. I live in the village of St. George, also often called Wiley's Corner, in the town of St. George. Tenants Harbor, Port Clyde and St. George are villages in the town of St. George. The weather report for Tenants Harbor is only a whisker colder for those of us who live 5 miles to the north in the moderate part of town. People who live in St. George, Maine are not all that happy when the first of June rolls around. You can guess why. During the first week of June we are all thinking that in only a few days the days will start to get shorter and a cold and miserable winter is on its way.

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9. My wife watches a different weather report than I do. Hers always shows the temperature to be three degrees warmer than the one I look at. It is probably a plot to get more people to watch her weather station. At least my report is honest. At high noon on one particular summer day it says 56 degrees and foggy. One would think that the Maine Department of Tourism would pay the weather people to add ten or fifteen degrees to each Maine coast report. If people in Philadelphia and New York City looked at a realistic weather report for St. George, Maine, nobody would want to vacation here. Now my weather link refuses to open. Probably because what a potential tourist would see is too horrible to contemplate. I spoke too soon. The tourism people have already paid off the weather folks.

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10. Have you ever been invited over to a friend’s house where they walk the food right to you? Have another piece of pie. Have another piece of cake. Have some more coffee. My friend Winky has an answer for these people. He gives them a wistful look and says, “If it’s all right with you, I’ll take the rest in money.”

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11. Not many women do it, but Winky told me that on the day before their marriage his bride-to-be from down in Scarsdale told him about all of her previous affairs. I said, “That took a lot of courage.” Winky said, “It took a lot of memory.”

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12. St. George, Maine is right infested with artists so I wasn’t surprised to hear that Winky’s young daughter had posed nude for an artist all last winter. I asked Winky why in the world he had ever let her do that and he said, “Why not? He had a stove in the studio.”

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