Below is a rough draft of humble's rants for your Maine Private Radio show for September 18, 2016

+

1. You’ve heard me tell about the very determined vacuum cleaner salesman who knocked on a door down Harpswell way. The woman who answered said that she didn’t have time to look at any vacuum cleaners, but the salesman stuck his hand in through the door and emptied a small can of desiccated cow manure on her carpet. He said that if his machine didn’t pick up every molecule of that cow manure, he would eat what was left. And the woman said, “I’m glad to hear it. Central Maine shut off my power yesterday.”

+

2. This quote of the week comes from a man who used to run my newspaper column in his newspaper in Minnesota. John Hammer says, “I don't think you're supposed to 'understand' German philosophers or authors; you are just supposed to do what they say.”

+

3. Rolf was here for a couple of days. He is a German psychologist who works with criminals. He's the guy who tells the judge if the youth is simply misguided or criminally insane. I plan to use one of his comments in my next newspaper column so don't listen to this if you don't like spoilers. He said that many people who are insane can speak the exact same language and employ the same terms as a psychologist. It brought to mind my story about the college interns who worked with mentally ill people, hoping that those needing treatment would benefit by working with someone who was "normal." But this association thing works both ways and the following year the interns couldn't be distinguished from the patients.

+

4. Dr. Olga says, “A friend of mine was jailed for making illegal drugs. It took him 2 years to convince them he was schizophrenic. Then they let one of him out.”

+

5. One of my professor friends who is an expert on what has happened to the New England fishing industry over the past 400 years, says, “Maine fishermen are being put out of work by big corporations … whose pair-seiners can kill all the vertebrate biota in a cubic mile of seawater in an afternoon.” Isn’t that interesting? By overfishing the fishermen are putting themselves out of business. On the other hand, the Maine lobster industry is protected. Lobstering is the closest thing to a socialist system we have in Maine. It is the reason that lobstering is a sustainable industry. You have to leave a portion of the best for seed. Remove the government's regulations on lobstering (which are supported by the lobstermen because it keeps people like you and me out of the business) and the lobsters would go the way of the fish. Please remember that: successful old time farmers knew that you have to save a portion of the best for seed.

+

6. Do you know about Lyme disease and the horrible nasty ticks that live on little furry animals in the woods? When these teeny tiny microscopic ticks bite you, you can get Lyme disease. My knee is better because for a week I’ve been eating the Lyme disease medicine which begins with a d. I think. My knee, which swelled up and was as big as a softball, is still a bit tender but I can navigate on it. I've had no coffee for over a week now. Perhaps two weeks. But I will have to have the coffee drug to get my mind in a place where it will go outside and nail clapboards on the house. Yes, I’ll have to do drugs before I can work. Duane is going to help me so I have no excuse to not put those clapboards on the house. My poor wife Marsha, The APW, had a great pain in her arm yesterday. It was from writing out a list of things she wanted our friend Duane to help me do when he was here.

+

7. There was a German math teacher here last week. The other three Germans who were here laughed at everything he said because he was very funny. His wife told me that not many people understand his humor. I certainly didn’t because although I can read and speak a bit of German, humor is the hardest thing to understand in any language. And if you have to have it explained to you, it is no longer funny. You’ve been listening to this program for almost 40 years now so you know that much of my attempts at humor involve obscure references. For example, how many people in Maine would know that that without Jack Kerouac, Willie Nelson would never been able to write, "On the Road --- Again."

+

8. I was going to tell you that Evelyn Waugh wrote one of the most memorable lines I have ever read in the English language. Although I can't remember the most memorable line in the English language, it might be paraphrased thus: “Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French.” I'm wrong again. I just looked this up and found the quote and it is by P. G. Woodhouse. I've told you about this several times over the years and every time I still misremember it as a quote by Evelyn Waugh. It is good, though, isn’t it? Let me repeat it again for you to savor: “Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French.”

+

9. When I was 15 I got $2 or so for playing for dances. I’ve played jazz on Bourbon Street and on the west coast. I am, or was, a jazz musician with a clearly delineated taste. I’ve told stories and played music on the radio for my friends for 38 years. I mention this so you’ll know that I know it’s nice to have someone come up to you in a parking lot or in a store and say, “Hey, humble --- I like what you are trying to do.” --- Which is why I go out of my way to say nice things to any kind of artist or entertainer. If I can’t look them in the eye and be honest when I say something good, I don’t say anything. One day I was at an outdoor cookout not far from two dozen cows where entertainment was provided by a long-haired, guitar-playing bearded young man who sang some of the newer songs. I didn’t know any of the songs, but my wife Marsha, who was born in 1950, said she knew all of them. When he put down his guitar and walked over to get a turkey burger, I approached him and said, “I think you’re every bit as good as the Kingston Trio.” He thanked me and we parted with smiles. It doesn’t hurt to be nice to people. And I did think he was every bit as good as the Kingston Trio. I spent most of the evening in a far corner of the field with the cows where I didn’t have to listen to him.

+

10. What do you know about broadband? Radio friend Bev sent me a page that showed that the US is far behind Korea, Finland, Sweden and a dozen other countries when it comes to this broadband thing. I think that the size of the broadband determines how fast and how much you can send over the Internet in a certain amount of time. The way I understand the graph Japan has broadband that is something like 17 times faster than ours. Would you like to have the broadband that they have in Japan? Before you answer this question, take the number of emails you are presently getting from lonely Russian women and Viagra and multiply it by 17.

+

11. Well. Here’s something that I have believed for around 70 years that is not true. You certainly believe everything your father told you when you were little, so please cut me a little slack because I heard my father say this many times. It is an urban legend that turned up by chance while I was checking out something else in Snopes. You might have read the article that said that 30 percent of the people who live in Texas believe that people and dinosaurs lived on earth at the same time. Because this kind of comment sounds like it came from someone who hates Texans, I didn’t believe it and checked it out on a couple of those urban legends sites. --- Which also brought up the item that I heard from my father so many, many times. It is the story about the man who hosted the children’s radio program, who, at the end of the show thinking that his mike was turned off said, “That ought to hold the little blankety-blanks for today.” My father told me something that ain’t true. Myth dispelled.

+