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

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Rants May 7, 2017

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1. 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.

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2. Facebook is a sickness. I think I've already knocked out the outline for a column here this morning, and that's my excuse for hanging out on Facebook for so long. I write my rants and my newspaper columns on Facebook. They start out as stream of consciousness things which is the easiest way to write. Facebook is also such a great place to sit back and observe human nature. Like Miss Marple who saw so much living as she did living in a village, one sees so much just reading facebook. All the different shades of humanity are revealed here in just a line or two. One of my favorite character types is the one that prowls around until something is found that can be construed as an error. What do you call the kind of people who delight in pointing out flaws in anything they see? We all enjoy seeing flaws in others because it gives us a feeling of superiority. For years, back before computers, I used to try to have at least one misspelled word in each column to give many of my readers a feeling of superiority. Reading whatever I wrote made them feel good about themselves because they could always find something wrong with it. Sometimes I didn't even have to try to have a misspelled word in my column so making people feel good was the easiest thing I did all day.

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3. We read that Stephen Hawking says that humans only have 100 years to find a new planet. "For years, he has warned that threats including climate change, destruction from nuclear war and genetically engineered viruses put humankind in grave danger. He thinks the human species will have to populate a new planet within 100 years if it is to survive," the BBC said in a statement posted online. "With climate change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics and population growth, our own planet is increasingly precarious." This reminds me of the story about Farmer Grigg's Bogart. You can move out of your house but trouble follows you. People go on vacations to get away, but you’ll notice that they take their cell phones with them. People shout, “I’ve got to get away.” How do you get away from yourself?

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4. If you had an ad on the list of Craig to sell a bicycle, if I wanted that bicycle I would not call you and say, "Hello?" I would say, "This is Robert Skoglund calling about the bicycle you have for sale." Period. Get that out of the way and get on with the business of the day. You can't believe the run around I just had with a man who called about the 3 wheel bike I have listed on the list of Craig. I thought he was a machine, because even after I identified myself as Robert Skoglund, he kept saying, "Hello?" Thank goodness he finally said that he was calling about the bike so I finally knew it was a real person. When I was in the 7th grade Mr. Bragdon taught us how to answer a telephone. I don't even know if we had a telephone when I was in the 7th grade, because I can remember the first telephone call I ever made and I can remember what I said and it was after I was in the 6th grade. So I knew how to use a telephone before I even had one. I wish more people had learned how to talk on a telephone when they were in the seventh grade. Life would be much simpler for all of us. By the way, to date I have sold two of the items I've put out on the list of Craig. A bike and a 49 Chevrolet to go. Perhaps today only the car to go. It is a wicked powerful tool. I'd put more things on there and sell things that I don't need, but I can't think of anything I have that I don't need.

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5. 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 and I hobbled around in a cast for a month.

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6. In a discussion of the best countries to visit if you want to be kidnapped, Facebook friend Daniel said, “I ain't goin none o' them places. Couldn't stand the rejection” Anyone who has ever been rejected when visiting a foreign country didn't bring enough money.

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7. Speaking of the law of inverted averages, have you noticed that every day there seems to be more and more famous people that nobody has ever heard of? Today it was Samantha Bee. How can they already be famous when I’ve never heard of them? You can’t turn on your TV but what they are interviewing some famous baseball player or movie star or singer that seems to have materialized already famous like Venus on the half shell. Thousands of people show up to see these famous unknown people perform outside in blizzards or in theaters that collapse or in other venues where people carry guns to protect themselves and end up shooting two or three of their neighbors who throw popcorn or make too much noise texting. Many of us older folks now live in an unfamiliar world where going to bed when the sun goes down looks more and more attractive..

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8. When I first did the math to put a shower stall in our upstairs bathroom, I saw that a custom built shower was feasible. It would fit nicely in the allotted space. We’re talking about what used to be a tiny closet in a 1811 house. Also the roof slopes down. No dormer. Not much space here. But then I realized that once you got into this tiny shower stall it would be like being enclosed in a metal culvert: it would be so small that once in it, your arms would be pinned to your sides and you wouldn't be able to wash your body.

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9. One of my friends was wondering if he should start taking $1500 from his Social Security when he is 62 or $2000 a month from his social security when he is 66.2. He has two choices. Which one would you take? It all depends. And, if you think about it, the choice would be a simple one in some cases. If you smoke, it would probably be wise to take your social security as soon as possible.

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10. On page 550 of a psychology book one sees the question: “When is Middle Age?” Reading down, we learn that there is no consensus on when middle age begins and ends. But --- people with low socio-economic status tend to report earlier beginnings of middle age and old age. I was more than somewhat distressed to learn this. If income can determine one’s position on this road of life I died of old age back around 1978.

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