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

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Rants April 30, 2017

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1. I read a web page entitled, “How to Make Your Home Unattractive to Thieves.” Well, that’s an easy one. How to make your home unattractive to thieves. Be poor.

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2. From time to time you see on your ballot the question --- should marijuana be legalized in Maine. You know that a lot of money will always be out there to push for No on the marijuana issue because if marijuana is legalized it will just about empty out our jails and state prison. Put a lot of law enforcement people out of work. The police would have nothing left to do except track down murderers and thieves. Imagine how many TV shows would be out of business if you couldn't see men in combat/riot gear breaking down the door of some kid trying to pay his way through college or take care of his little sister’s hospital bills by selling pot. Those break down the door of the pot dealer movies will someday be classics, like old Buster Keaton films where he was on a railroad track or hanging from a clock.

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3. Paint and putty don’t last like they used to. One day I took a window out of my barn. I had just reset the glass and painted it, but the paint was already peeling and the putty was falling out. And then I looked at the date I'd written on it when I last painted it and it was 1978. When time seems to have lost its meaning, you know you're growing old.

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4. Dial this number. 1-800-682-9701 It is the number I got from QTC Medical Services, Inc. in Philadelphia. It came in an overenight Fex X express package and is the number I'm supposed to call if I can't make my hearing appointment in Topsham on April 28. I can make the appointment, but they have my name Skogland instead of Skoglund. Some person who could better serve humanity by doing something other than typing names on documents threw me a curve. It is my understanding that the VA is kind of particular about names and numbers. And I don't want to mess with this for three months and then discover that the wrong name was on the paper. But back to that number. Call it and you get nothing but commercials. I think I got seven different offers to go on cruises and get credit cards. Push pound if you're not interested. At last the thing ran out of steam, told me that the new number was 1-800-712-6600 and told me to hang up. Then it repeated the hang up order in Spanish. Then it hung up. Have you ever been told by an agent of the VA to call an 800 number and heard nothing but commercials? I thought I was on hold. The name of the company is QTC Medical Services, Inc. in Philadelphia. By going to the QTC home page, I got a number and finally reached (I was 32nd in line) a girl in San Antone who corrected the spelling in my name. But try that number. Have you ever heard anything like it? Please tell me where and how did you ever get a number that put you on hold and gave you commercials for 7 different products?

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5. You probably saw the recent headline: Stroke and dementia risk linked to artificial sweeteners, study suggests. Drinking a can of diet soft drink a day associated with almost three times higher risk, say researchers – but critics, who own the artificial sweetener and soft drink companies, warn against causal connection. There is not much difference between coal and cola companies. No matter how you spell it, they each spend a lot of money trying to convince people that scientists don't know what they are talking about. And their money is well spent because when honest hard-working blue-collar people stop believing their lies, these folks will be out of business. It wasn't all that many years ago that one of our friends was right into a can of Coke every day but repeated warnings by a knowledgeable friend, for which we are grateful, augmented by common sense, got her to give it up. And that's all I've got to say about that.

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6. I learn so much about people just by reading my Facebook page. I have women friends who struggle to believe that my wife, Marsha Skoglund, loves to paint windows and polish brass and clean floors. She also loves to cook and wash the dishes and pans afterwards. I am shoved out of the way when I try to elbow my way in to the sink to help. What is so unusual about a woman who loves to cook and scrub and clean? Why should my wife be deprived of life's little pleasures? She says it's easier than teaching, which she did for 25 or more years. I was mean to her for 9 years when I wouldn't eat her cookies, rhubarb pies or little cakes. Of course it enabled me to drop 35 pounds. And I'm thinking about depriving my wife of the pleasure of making goodies for me again. My pants are too tight, and a summer without her sweet goodies should trim me down. I am allowed to do the wash now and also help make beds because she can't lift the mattress corners or walk downstairs to the washing machine. We made two double beds upstairs today. I helped. She's getting the house back in order. As long as she is able to work she is happy. And when my wife is happy, everyone in this house is happy.

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7. 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 productive feeling of well being. One 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 criminally insane men like Dr. No and Goldfinger could find seemingly expendable cadres of people to aid them in their bloody pursuits of world domination and personal economic gain. I hope you won’t think about this, because if you do, you will realize, as I did, that there are millions of people out there who eagerly vote for them in every election.

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8. Speaking of elections, I just watched Moose and Squirrel on YouTube. Moose and Squirrel were popular long after I was in the service and probably while I was either living in Sweden or going to school, so I never got to watch Moose and Squirrel when it was popular so I didn’t know anything about it. In the episode I saw, the bad glorious leader had his henchman spray everybody in the world, especially scientists, with stupid gas. The only one not affected was Moose, who was already there. Can you imagine a cartoon from the 1960s where the glorious leader wanted all the scientists to be stupid? Do you have to ask yourself if anything has changed in 57 years?

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9. Why do you enjoy being around certain people? Is it because you admire them and would like to be like them? Is it some gift they have that you wish you had? Is it that you can experience that gift just by being associated with them? On the other hand, why is it that you don’t even like to think about some people because they look so dopey and are always doing stupid things? --- I guess I’ll quit right there before you accuse me of talking politics.

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10. It is not uncommon to go out in the woods here in the town of St. George, Maine and see a little wooden platform twenty feet up in a tree. I think they call this a tree stand. My friends who are hunters climb up the tree and sit or stand on this tiny wooden platform, sometimes for hours, until a little furry animal comes close and then they shoot it. By this time, the hunter is so stiff from just sitting quietly that he can barely climb down the tree. This is why there is hardly a hunter alive who has used one of these tree stands who has not fallen off the thing and dropped kerplunk on the ground. Perhaps you have chanced upon those wipeout television programs where people crash snowmobiles and skateboards and water skis. So, if you have ever seen a hunter fall out of a tree stand you realize that a popular Maine sport has been denied valuable promotional coverage. Are not producers of Wipeout shows remiss in not adding footage of falling Maine hunters to prime time television?

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11. 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 years ago 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.

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