Below is a rough draft of humble's rants for your Maine Private Radio show for October 16, 2016

+

1. Years ago my cousin Truman Hilt applied for a job staging fight scenes in the movie Mel Gibson filmed in Camden. When they asked Cousin Truman if he'd had any experience, with fight scenes Truman replied, "Well, I was married for 6 years."

+

2. One day I wrote on my Facebook page: How do you know when the honeymoon is over? What made you realize that you had been married a long, long time? One morning when I woke up, before I could even groan and get my eyes open, my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, gave me a little hug and whispered in my ear, “Will you put the windows back in so I can finish painting them?” A Facebook friend read my comment and replied: “Coulda been worse. She coulda said, "Your breath stinks, would you please go brush your teeth?"” Isn't it amazing what one can learn about the personal hygienic habits of our friends simply from what they paste on Facebook?

+

3. You might have heard that the new Maine Turnpike system will let E-ZPass holders breeze through the Maine toll booth at full speed, without slowing down. We got our E-ZPass after trying to merge into the correct lane one dark, cold and rainy night on the George Washington Bridge. With an E-ZPass we could have whistled right through. Nowadays, if you don't have an E-ZPass you are probably spend your days in a wheel chair on Beals Island. Yes, the new system will let E-ZPass holders breeze through the toll booth at full speed, without slowing down. My wife will love this. She is one of the few women I know who expects toll-takers to make correct change for someone going through a toll booth at 40 miles an hour.

+

4. So your kid is going to college. Big deal. How do you know that the job your kid is training for will exist in 10 or even 5 years? In 1957 I was working in a factory in Rochester, New York making radios for an automobile called the Edsel. Great future there. But who knew it then? And how could you beat a dollar 26 an hour? I was saving $30 a week and living higher than I ever thought possible. I even had money enough to buy a topcoat and a suit. But how about your kid? The way it looks now, Walmart will soon be selling electric cars made in China and real estate and might even have a staff of doctors who would poke and prod you at cut rate prices. You can’t think of an occupation that won’t soon be taken over by big box stores. My friend, the day is coming when you won’t have to go to a world class hospital in India to have your hip replaced. The day is coming when you will have an operation at Walmart and your spouse will wheel you home in a shopping cart. But we’re talking about your kid here. How can your kids get into an occupation today that will still demand every minute of their working day until they retire? Please listen closely. If I were a kid and wanted to be sure that I was into something that would always require constant employment for a vast number of employees until I retired, I’d learn how to design our rapidly changing postage stamps.

+

5. Do you scream at your television set when they throw out acronyms that you’ve never heard before? This morning they were talking about the HOV --- I think it was HOV --- the HOV lane. Last night it was the MVP on the Ed Show, and two violations within 12 hours certainly warrants our mentioning it today. MVP. My Voluptuous Pancreas? We have learned to live with similar jargon on a Facebook page that pretends to pander to an intellectual elite who are accustomed to think in mathematical symbols and health food acronyms. But the language on television, by necessity, is geared to move to action those with the cranial capacity of a slug. Is it not true that even a five-year-old child can tell you that you should seek medical attention if it lasts more than four hours? The next time I require clarification about some acronym I hear bandied about on television should I simply ask something that lives under a rock?

+

6. The email I got said, “Defy your age. Miracle Anti-Aging Cures Now Available.” To begin with, the word cure obviously implies that aging is a disease. And if aging is a disease, babies are born sick. These ads to sell pills to cure aging are written by young people who don’t realize that most of us who are old don’t mind being old. Got that, kids? We don’t mind being old. We don’t mind looking old. The only thing that annoys us is feeling old.

+

7. For almost 30 years I have written and broadcast tens of thousands of words, describing in detail, how to survive being married to a person who must control everything. It can be done if one is wimpy enough, and, outside of not being allowed to contribute much of anything to our economic well-being since 1994, I see absolutely nothing bad about having passed my golden years in an environment resembling that of a laboratory animal For example: although I had my shower before she did one morning for the first time in months, she had to mention that I had not yet had my breakfast and that I’d better write my newspaper column because tomorrow I had to buy new back tires for the car. These controlling people are never satisfied. They are compulsive organizers and planners. They can and will tell you what they and you are going to do every day for the next week. As the years pass, you forget how to hang a wash, do dishes or make a bed. And after being relieved of the onerous burden of thinking for a few years, your ability to do simple household tasks or make a decision atrophies and becomes as useful as your appendix. You see, most discontent in households is the fault of those who are unable or unwilling to simply say nothing or respond with a smile and, “Yes dear.” In case you tuned in late, may I explain? The key to a happy marriage is compatibility. I am compatible with my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, because she is happy running the whole show and I am happy to let her do it. You have seen marriages between two laid-back people and you know they do not work. Their house is falling down around their ears, there are old lawnmowers and inoperative snowmobiles surrounded by weeds in their front yard and a percentage of their children board with grandma. You have also seen marriages between to people who promise each other that they will “share” in the division of labor in their home. Aren’t they the ones who are divorced after two or three years because of irreconcilable differences? --- The differences being that neither one will accept the responsibility of saying nothing or “Yes dear.” If with these few words I have helped you understand some of the marriages you’ve puzzled about for years, you have made me happy. To give controlling people their due, they do make excellent care-givers for those who are senile and elderly. And those of us who do marry them at a young age won’t even realize that we are senile and elderly when we actually do get there.

+

8. Everyone has now seen it on the news --- the Dallas Safari Club comprised of wealthy hunters, will bid for the right to shoot an endangered black rhino. An account in the newspaper says: "Only old geriatric bulls, which are marginalized in the population and do not contribute to reproduction, are trophy hunted." The practice of shooting geriatric males who do not contribute to reproduction sets a dangerous precedent. I would be protesting with a sign on street corners --- if it were not so difficult to get out there and walk around.

+

9. I think I’m correct in saying that there is an Olympic medalist named Bode Miller who described the act of skiing "wasted" and compared skiing to lawlessly driving while intoxicated. After reading this, I wanted to know more about a man who seems to see things so clearly. He has started a business. The way I understand it, veterans returning from combat with a leg or half a brain missing can buy into Miller’s company. He said something about helping returning combat veterans who were unable to find a job at even minimum wage. The message from Mr. Miller seems to be that Corporate America has eaten the meat in the nut and the empty shell can well fend for itself. So he is going to do what he can to help. What do you think about the handsome recruiters in crisp flashy uniforms who haunt high schools in economically depressed areas where graduates are offered a wicked high salary and an education just for joining the army --- which we might even compare to joining a labor union. And suppose someone is able to acclimate oneself to army life and serves out 20 years in this union called the army?. What does the country get out of that but a 38-year-old voter with a government pension and government healthcare who doesn’t believe in government healthcare, unions or unemployment insurance?

+

10. Do you think in quantitative terms? One of Marsha's friends replied to Marsha's letter with this: "... we live in close quarters – a 1,300 sq. ft. condo in a former church." I do understand that one gets square feet by multiplying length by width. So their place is 10 feet wide and 130 feet long? Have you ever been to our house? I have no idea of how wide our house is or how long it is. The only time you'd need to know that would be when you were going to cut down a spruce tree to saw into a 6 x 6 to replace the rotted sills on the north side. Does a 1300 square foot condo mean anything to you? When I really want to confuse people, I tell them that we live in an area about the size of the reading room at Harvard Law School.

+

11. Marty, who is a radio friend in Rockland, says, "I have always considered ATV s and the like to be Malthusian population control devices that are focused on a specific demographic."

+