Below is a rough draft of humble's rants for your Maine Private Radio show for July 10, 2016

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1. When I heard my wife Marsha’s car in the dooryard, I rushed out and greeted her by the door. I said, “Mike has written a movie and if, by any chance, he is able to sell it, he wants me to narrate some of it because he needs a real Maine accent.” Marsha said, “Can you fake it?”

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2. While looking on line for a machine that would hold 10 hours of language tapes, I found this: It says: "Apple iPod shuffle 2 GB Black (3rd Generation) (Discontinued by Manufacturer)" Now we might be getting close to what I'd like to have. I see that this one was discontinued by manufacturer. Why was this machine discontinued by the manufacturer? Probably too many people were able to figure out how to operate it.

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3. Speaking of the law of inverted averages, have you noticed that every day there seems to be more and more famous people that nobody has ever heard of? You can’t turn on your TV but what they are interviewing some famous baseball player or movie star or singer that seems to have materialized already famous like Venus on the half shell. Famous people who are so young that you’ve never heard of them are now dying of old age. Thousands of people show up to see these famous unknown people perform outside in blizzards or in theaters that collapse or in other venues where people carry guns to protect themselves and end up shooting two or three of their neighbors who throw popcorn or make too much noise texting. Many of us older folks will tell you that we now live in an unfamiliar world where going to bed when the sun goes down looks more and more attractive.

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4. I really didn’t feel like I was wasting any time when I went to town for my annual physical checkup because it was a typical, cold, raw, wet summer day on the coast of Maine and I couldn’t work outside. But the first thing the doctor did when he came in the room and saw me waiting in the chair was open the window wide. The wind and the cold rain blew into the room, but the doctor smiled and looked refreshed and relieved. And it wasn’t until then that I realized I was wearing the same shoes that I wear when I go out to check on the cows.

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5. Have you ever seen the television program Cops? Cops are always pulling over cars that are full of trash and drugs and scruffy, half drunk unwashed people. Sometimes the cops chase those who are stupid enough to run and I’ve seen them snap the cuffs on some ragged bum or hungry looking woman so many times I could probably now do it myself. The Cops program features crimes of lower class, uneducated people, because crimes committed by educated upper-class people --- like robbing your company or stealing the pensions of your employees --- well, that really don’t make for good TV.

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6. One morning before the sun was up my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, kicked the blankets on our bed to the floor and, with trembling fingers, quickly removed my pajamas. She likes to have the wash on the line before breakfast.

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7. My friend Winky and his wife came out of the grocery store and bumped into a woman who was quite drunk. It seemed to bother Winky quite a bit and afterward his wife asked him if he knew her. And Winky confessed that it was an old girlfriend who had been drinking since he broke up with her years ago. And Winky’s wife said, "Who would think a person could celebrate that long?"

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8. The newspaper article was, How To Keep From Cheating On Your Spouse. I didn’t need to read the article because you know I could have written it. The best way to keep from cheating on your spouse is to be single between the ages of 34 and 52.

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9. You know that my favorite course at grad school was psycholinguistics. I watch screaming children in stores and because I know how behavior modification works I know why the child is screaming. You can read about how to extinguish an undesired behavior in children in a book by Booth Tarkington called Penrod Jasper if you Google Penrod and “papa please.” It is very funny and it is very true. Booth Tarkington knew a lot about people. I believe I can shape the behavior of a child or an animal because it is science and the difference between science and theology is that science works. You can bet money that you can make your cow paw at the ground like a dog and moo on command. And you will make a few bucks, if you can find a sucker who will bet you that you can't. But how does one shape the behavior of a machine? For weeks my computer has begged me for permission to crush up some file into a smaller package. And I have ignored the behavior. Which, in some environments will extinguish the undesired behavior in a breathing organism. But I just realized that my computer's need to remind me to compress files will never go away until I do what it wants me to do. There are deep, dark philosophical ramifications here that warrant investigation. But I have read of too many German philosophers who took on more than they could chew and went mad as a result. So I'm going to leave this one alone and let you look into it for me.

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10. Long time radio friend Peggy wrote to me about a boy who is “Nineteen years old. The cerebral cortex has not yet matured. Judgment is faulty until at least the age of 22-23." This is the best reason I have ever seen for keeping boys and girls on separate islands until they are at least 35.

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