Below is a rough draft of humble's rants for your Maine Private Radio show for November 20, 2016

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1. My friend William says that the whole purpose of having grandchildren is to generate new homes for all the stuff you’ve got out in the barn.

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2. I think about things. If you also think about things, it might be because you don’t have enough to do and I suggest that you find something to occupy your hands. This is why they say idle hands are the devil’s workshop. If you are busy you can’t think and thinking does not always give you a warm, fuzzing feeling of well being. This morning I was thinking about James Bond, which you might agree is about as unproductive as you can get when it comes to thinking. Because you have never wasted your time thinking about Bond, James Bond, you should know that James Bond is a good guy who zips about the globe while fighting powerful evil men. And for years I wondered how evil men like Dr. No and Goldfinger could find seemingly endless cadres of expendable people to aid them in their bloody pursuits of world domination and economic gain. I hope you won’t think about this, because if you do, when you think about the last two dozen elections you will realize that there are millions of people out there in middle America who honestly like them.

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3. The email said, “She tore her ACL this summer but still managed to travel. … in France, she proceeded to break her wrist.” If you’re a parent who has a kid involved in sports you already know what an ACL is. Because I could never afford to have children I had to look up ACL to learn that it is a ligament in the knee. If you have an opinion on sports you shouldn’t be surprised to hear that I do, too. The man who gave me the garage door I open every morning shuffled through life on injured knees. He told me he hobbled because his knee joints had been destroyed playing football in high school. This is neither surprising nor worthy of mention. But --- he said that given the chance, he would do it all over again which still amazes me. Being a spindly, wimpy little kid I was always the last one chosen to be on any team if I were tolerated at all. As a result, I was never injured by others. The only time I felt accepted by the group was when I accidentally cut off my right shin bone while chopping down the tree that had eaten my kite.

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4. Did you read in the paper that the sheriff’s department ran a sting operation that had minors attempt to buy alcohol at 43 businesses up in the County? That’s Aroostook County or all of Northern Maine. You might remember that twenty-three of the establishments sold alcohol to the minors and were issued summons. This should come as no surprise: There is something seriously wrong with a system that has not carded me for at least 40 years.

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5. Stop whining. Everyone knows that women earn less than men. But tall men on the average earn more than short men and you don’t see many articles about that in your newspaper. It is probably your understanding that taller men are able to earn more money than their shorter counterparts simply because taller people are perceived to be more intelligent and powerful. Years ago a handsome executive came to a picnic at my house and just by looking at him I would have voted to send him to Congress in a heartbeat. I later had dealings with him and discovered that he was a first class very rich dubber with the temperament of a spoiled 6 year old. You’ve probably met or even been married to others like him who can go a long way on their looks and the money they married --- until they speak. Tall people have always been chosen as leaders. If you were to climb out of a boat at Lindisfarne with a sword in your hand, it would give you a warm, comfortable feeling to have Andre The Giant leading your pack. Everyone also knows that pretty people make more money in the workplace than average looking people. Unfortunately, workers who are not at all attractive, earn even less. Ugly men are affected more than ugly women. We read that men who are uglier than average tend to make nine percent less, while below average looking women make only five percent less. I never had a son because I figured he’d have to pay just to have a job.

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6. I had to laugh at this email that said, “Take care of your pet’s bad breath” because I know a little bit about pets with bad breath. I once had a pet pig that had very bad breath, but do you know, just about the time that pig reached 250 pounds we were starting to get some good cold snaps in November and within a week that bad breath went away.

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7. Clint Eastwood portrays the most fearless characters to ever stram across a television screen. Its’ hard to get away from Clint because no matter where you click, if Harry is not meeting Sally Clint seems to be lighting up a cigar or shooting half a dozen men in living color 24 hours a day. Clint’s intestinal fortitude captured my attention in a film called High Plains Drifter in which you might remember Clint shoots three men without even getting out of a barber’s chair. No. That’s not the part that takes guts. On his way to his hotel room, some saucy woman bumps into him and calls him all kinds of names and although he has more interesting things to do, he quickly drags her into the nearest barn and accommodates her. To realize how fearless the High Plains Drifter really was you should remember that back in those days there were no antibiotics.

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8. Did I tell you that while fishing with her husband a woman in her 80s kicked a fish off the dock. A spine on the fish infected her toe and the doctor said if she had waited another day for treatment she would have been dead. That’s all I’m going to say about sports today but next week our topic will be baseball.

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9. There’s a YouTube link going around that shows a Maine State Policeman talking with a Maine man who is sitting in a red car. The closest thing I’ve ever seen to it, except for the sound track, is a 1914 Charlie Chaplin film. Just in case you like to see interesting things, here is the web site. If you Google “youtube Maine state trooper” you’ll see the officer in blue standing by a red car and that’s the clip I’m talking about. Watching this video might make you want to give every man who wears a Maine state police uniform a raise. If you take the time to watch it you might even wonder if the Maine Chamber of Commerce produced it just to get more hits on their website. If you’ve never been to Maine, here’s your chance to meet a real Maine man behind the wheel of his car. There is no question in my mind but I have seen many of the letters this man has written to the editors of Maine newspapers.

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10. This is perhaps the only thing I have ever said on the radio that not one person could disagree with. It is my answer to a question I read in the newspaper that said, “Why are teenage girls becoming pregnant?" Teenage girls are becoming pregnant today for the same reason teenage girls were becoming pregnant 4000 years ago.

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11. I just heard from Jonathan in Japan who has been there for several years doing something with software. I told him that I’d never been to Japan and that I’d have no idea of how to survive there. He wrote back, “Heck... there's a McDonald’s on almost every corner...”

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