Maine Reality TV --- The humble Farmer's TV show on YouTube.

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On January 18, 2016, my 80th birthday, I paid ASCAP $246 for the right to run this radio show for you on the Internet. Although we are not starving, any help you might send along would be appreciated. humble

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Rants January 8, 2017

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1. What is an iPod? Look for a definition and you’ll learn that the iPod is a combination portable digital media player and hard drive from Apple Computer. Not much help there. If you can understand the definition of an iPod that I just read, you are probably looking forward to your 12th birthday. I'll bet you there aren't 10 people in Maine over the age of 75 who would bet their life they could tell you the difference between an ipod and an ipad. And if any kid thinks this is funny, in 60 or 70 years please remember what I just said when you find things like this happening to you.

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2. You know how every once in a while you read something --- and then, all of a sudden, something that has puzzled you for years suddenly makes sense? I just read in the Maine Organic Farmer newspaper that it is illegal to place manure on fields between December 1 and March 15 of the following year. Doesn’t this pretty well explain why, when you drive past Steve Dennison’s farm around Christmas time, his cows are always wearing such a pained expression?

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3. “The most dangerous places in the world.” That’s what the headline said. Where do you think those dangerous places are? Could one of them be on a Maine snowmobile during spring thaw? We have read that the players in a basketball team sustained more injuries in recent games than they did when the team’s bus crashed. And --- would you like to live with a professional athlete? After years of pigging out on muscle building drugs or having their heads pounded, because of brain damage athletes are known shoot their families and sometimes themselves. Dangerous places all, but, as Rambo said, “I’ve seen worse.” Where are the most dangerous places in the world? I don’t really know. But I do know that when any meal is being prepared in our home, you do not want to be in my wife’s kitchen.

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4. I have discovered the Jack Benny show on the Israel channel around noontime. You might remember all of the jokes about Don Wilson being fat. That was one of their staples: Dennis Day was not clever, Jack Benny was stingy, Phil Harris was drunk, Don Wilson was fat. But the programs were made 50 or so years ago. Anyone who looks at Don Wilson today would say that he was pretty slim and fit.

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5. The headline said: "Driver, coach among injured after UMaine women’s basketball team’s bus crashes" And then there was something about "Ashleigh Roberts, who has recently returned to action following a concussion, forward Corinne Wellington, who is out for the season with an injury," A bus crash is just like another day on most any playing field. Ask yourself this. What would happen if anyone were forced to engage in an activity that resulted in bruises and cracked bones? Wouldn’t you bet that someone would be either in jail or up before the World Court?

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6. You might have heard that the new 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. If you don't have an E-ZPass you are probably confined to a wheel chair on Beals. 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 expected toll-takers to make correct change for someone going through the booth at 40 miles an hour.

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7. 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?

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8. I just heard about a thing on television called an android tablet. I perked right up when I heard it, thinking one or two android tablets a day might be good for arthritis or my androids. But later in the day the android tablet turned up again when I was Googling something so I looked for a definition of android tablet. You might be happy to learn that an android tablet is no more than a tablet computer that runs the Android operating system and that some have a case that resembled the iPad. I’m not going to Google iPad to see what that is because I will probably only learn that it is a poor boy’s version of an android tablet.

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9. A small newspaper way off in a forgotten corner of Maine, reported earlier this week that although an elderly man died and was buried only a mile from his home, his faithful dog Shep did not lie down on the grave and slowly expire there near his master. This dog didn’t seem to know anything about what is expected of even a half-way decent Maine hound. A good neighbor didn’t have to drag this dog off and tie it up to keep it from returning to the gravesite. This dog didn’t lie out there in the snow and rain day and night, refusing to eat or to be comforted. This mindless animal didn’t wear a deep path in the dirt, walking endlessly around the headstone, growling and snarling at anyone who came near. “As a matter of fact, Old Sam’s death didn’t seem to bother the dog one way or another,” said the reporter who covered this unique story. “There was a fellow in the crowd there at graveside who must have slopped some bacon grease on his pants while frying up breakfast, and when the thing broke up Shep hung right in there beside him and jumped in the car when the door opened.” You might be interested to hear that in a sidebar someone mentioned that Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum was hoping to stuff the dog and give him a good spot next to the skull of the Piltdown Man. Although my friend Winky was familiar with the mandatory behavior of bereaving dogs, he wasn’t surprised to hear that the faithless Shep wasted no time in locating a new source of food and worldly comforts. Winky’s been married five times.

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10. You have heard me say over and over again that I would never knowingly say anything on the air that would offend someone or cause trouble. But there are exceptions and right now you are going to hear one. One day I went to see my doctor. And my doctor had his assistants check me here and his assistants poked me there. He himself even poked me. And all of the data was compiled and sorted on computers and when it was printed out the doctor read it and saw that it was good. And then --- the doctor said, “Mr. Skoglund. The only thing I am going to prescribe for you is four glasses of water and a half hour of exercise every single day.” My friend. Do you realize that if I were to say that doctor’s name on the air --- if I were to reveal his identity --- within a month a coalition of pharmaceutical associations would probably have him stripped of his credentials for malpractice?

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11. There was an article in the newspaper about the age limit being lowered on Mormons who were going on missions. A lot of people wrote in that they wouldn’t let a Mormon in the house. You know that my hobby is studying languages and that I’ve always envied anyone who could live in another country for a year and learn another language. So what do you suppose I’d say if, given a choice, I could have my nephew in South America learning Spanish for two years or carrying a weapon in Afghanistan? I’m sorry if this makes me a disagreeable person but I always welcome Moonies or Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses. When my friends are seated comfortably I give them a lecture on the blessings of solar radiant heat in my cellar floor. I point out the pipes and let them feel the heat in the floor. I talk about saving money. Even a kid can build solar water heaters. Get the glass for free on the dump. Why aren't more Maine people told about how much money they can save by building their own solar water heaters? You don't have to be rich to do it. I get right wound up because I’m quite religious about saving money with solar energy. Some friends get up and leave before I even get to the great part about pouring the cement on top of the pex pipe. I used to think leaving while I was begging them to stay wasn't a nice thing to do until I realized they were probably rushing home to build their own solar collectors. When I mentioned this to one of my radio friends in Palmyra who will soon be 80 years old, she said that Mormons were very intelligent and that she could talk with them, but when she saw Jehovah's Witnesses coming she always met them at the door in the nude. I told her I was glad she had found a use for them.

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