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Rants January 23, 2011

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1. You might have heard that a new indoor ice rink just opened in Ellsworth, Maine. We are 100 percent in favor of these indoor ice rinks. Because the water is only ¾ of an inch deep it is much easier to retrieve the snowmobiles.

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2. You might have read about that fire chief who recently grabbed newspaper headlines by marrying a widow after saving her home. At the time you probably wondered why such a common, everyday thing should warrant space in a newspaper. The chief was certainly not the first man to find himself married after putting out a fire.

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3. You might remember hearing me mention my 790 page college textbook called Energy for Sustainability. I’ve just finished Chapter 12 on Large-Scale Renewables and although I don’t understand the complicated math and charts and graphs, anyone who reads what scientists have discovered can see that in the not too distant future, the wind is going to be generating much of the world’s electricity. As you have already seen, many powerful and influential people are already speaking out against wind power, because to get control of the wind there will be no need to start another very profitable war.

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4. There’s been a lot of interesting things in the newspaper this week. Here’s what the newest member of a Maine school board in Maine told the newspaper reporter about the schoolboard boss who visited her in her home: “She told me in no uncertain terms that I should never voice opposition publicly, and when I asked whether she expected unanimity in every vote, she responded ‘Yes,’” This parallels a scene out of the Godfather. You remember it. The don and Sonny are in a meeting with a guy who wants legal protection for his drug selling operation. The don is against the drug trade, but Sonny evinces interest. After the meeting Sonny is chewed out by the don, his father, for not keeping his mouth shut and thereby giving the impression of family solidarity. Never let anyone outside of the family know what you are thinking. No one is surprised to hear that school board members are visited in their homes and told how they should vote by older and wiser members. Meetings take much less time if issues are clearly ironed out ahead of time and the only remaining function of the meeting is a formalized rubber stamp. And why should there be differences of opinion when it comes to the manner in which money is spent to educate children, anyway? Don’t you agree that many televised smiling faces around a table make the person running the meeting look good? Whenever possible the outcome of any meeting is always determined days ahead of time and one wonders why anything as mundane as telling a school board member how she must vote warrants space in a newspaper.

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5. A friend who thought he was being naughty sent me a Youtube clip of a hairy hominoid riding along on the hood of a safari vehicle. You might have seen the clip I’m talking about. The gibbon, or whatever the animal is, is sleeping peacefully on the hood of the vehicle that is bouncing through the savanna when, hey ho, here comes, running at full speed, her mate who jumps first on the vehicle and then on her. Whiz, bam, and he passes out beside her, right there on the hood with the car still bouncing along and the camera still running. Because it reminded me that as an old old man I can no longer do many of the things I once took for granted, I was extremely distressed by much of the distasteful action in this video. Put yourself in my place and think about it. How long do you suppose it’s been since I’ve been able to jump up on the hood of a moving car?

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6. I don’t remember who sent me this email, but if it was you this is what you said, “I was just viewing your website, I got a laugh about your sketch about ugly politicians, there is this guy, Gerald Celente, he is a trend forcaster who predicts the economic future and has been correct many times, I remember him saying that "politics is show business for ugly people". Politics is show business for ugly people? Well, I don’t know about that. Doesn’t our own Governor Lepage prove that there could be exceptions?

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7. 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 passed away many years ago.

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8. Everyone knows that young folks do not share the same experiences and expectations of mature adults. When polled, young people were still eagerly looking forward to some nebulous form of improvement in all aspects of their lives. But when older people were surveyed, they tended to be more satisfied with their health, finances, work, and relationships than young people. In other words, older people threw in the towel years ago and realized long ago that this is as good as it gets.

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9. Have you seen any of the movies called Turner Classics? I can get the Turner Classics which run without commercials on channel 74. There is even a Turner Classics website that tells you which old movies are going to run for the entire month. When I’m alone in the house and am eating my second breakfast or dinner I sometimes turn on Turner Classics. I do not suggest that you turn on Turner Classics while you’re eating because --- well, could you turn off one of the Pink Panther movies and go back to work? The other night I caught Peter Sellers while eating my nighttime bowl of cereal and sat there and laughed until I cried. It was slapstick which is --- and should be very corny. When you see those things called Funniest Home Videos and people accidentally fall into a swimming pool, it is not funny. It doesn’t look funny. Even though there is canned laughter behind it, seeing someone accidentally mangle one or both of their appendages on the crossbar of a bicycle doesn’t make you laugh. --- But when Peter Sellers falls into a swimming pool or gets his hand caught in a spinning globe --- even though he’s doing it on purpose for the film --- it is funny. He is smooth. He is slick. It takes a real artist to do these things so they don’t look contrived. The other night I saw some actress I’d never heard of before named Elke Sommer accidentally rip the sleeve off Peter Seller’s jacket and it was hilarious. It looked very natural and it fit right in because of the way things were going in the movie. I am very impressed with Elke Sommer because I looked her up and read that she moved to different countries just to educate herself and at last count could speak 7 languages. You’ve heard me say that’s what I’d do if I could. And while we’re talking here about movies my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, said she’d never heard of Peter Lorrie. My wife who is addicted to movies has never heard of Peter Lorrie. Peter Lorrie was bad. Peter Lorrie was bad --- he was actually the baddest man to ever show up on a movie screen, and he didn’t need to splatter blood and guts or roll over flaming cars to command your attention. Peter Lorrie never hurried. He never worried. He never got excited. He never even raised a sweat. But no one ever was or ever will be so bad as Peter Lorrie. Whenever you turn on Turner Classics and see Peter Lorrie, you say to yourself, “My my, no good is going to come of this.” Have you ever seen Peter Sellers or Peter Lorrie?

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10. I just heard James McIntosh say on his “Nonsense At Work” program that diversity is hard to come by because management tends to hire in its own image. As true as that might be elsewhere, do you think it could happen here? When some folks asked me to produce a program for public radio in 1978, seems as there were at least 5 guys up there in the Orono studio that weren't married. There was also a woman in there who raised sheep. One by one the gay guys and the sheep woman were weeded out because they didn't fit in, which might be construed by some as to mean that they didn’t belong to the political party that voted like management did, and even getting married didn't keep my head off the block. You can see that each and every one of us would be an embarrassment to any business entrusted with serving the public. A year or so ago an excuse was found to bounce the last surviving hippie, he is finally gone, and now our local public radio broadcasts are evaluated by a staff that is completely trustworthy, homogeneous and pure. Each word is carefully weighed for its impact on funding long before it is delivered. If an overeducated liberal is yet to be found in some dusty back office, perhaps he knows enough to paste a “Support Our Troops” sticker on his car and evince other manifestations of belonging to mainstream America. So, how would you play it? Ask yourself this question: If you were running a public radio station that counted more and more on corporate funding and less and less on listener support would you want a bunch of hippies, gays and women libbers out there in the front trenches working for you? Who is this Amy Goodman?

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11. Here’s some listener response to my comment about Winky who sells necklaces he makes out of moose droppings: David writes: A friend in New Hampshire packages goat droppings dusted with lime in little ziplock bags, with a folded paper label on top, pierced to hang on a dowel display of his fashioning. It looks like a candy display. They are sold as African Violet Food for potted plants, and sell briskly at a florist shop that sells some potted plants. He does NOT list the contents- this is not required by law. Apparently the pellets look like machine-made articles to the customers. (Directions: Poke a hole in the soil with your finger, two inches from the stem of the plant. Push one fertilizer pellet into the hole. Close the hole. Water. Repeat weekly.) The professionally printed labels and bags cost him around 11 cents each. There are around 50 pellets per bag. The florist pays him $1.11 for the bags, and sells them for $1.99. He sells more than one hundred of them each month in the winter- just in the one location... must have repeat customers. The display is next to the grow-lights. This pays for goat food and firewood. It has made me wonder; are his friends buying these out of charity? But this is a small New England town, so that is unlikely. A Yankee will only go so far with charity. What’s the half life of goat droppings?

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12 Do you believe in conspiracies? You can easily convince youngsters that they have enemies who are scheming to take over the world. Old people don’t believe in conspiracies. You and I’ve been around long enough to know that greedy people don’t need to get together to figure out how to rob the rest of us.

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13. When I heard that someone had organized a manhunt, I was terribly upset because manhunt is a sexist term. Because women have proven that they are just as capable as men when it comes to robbing banks don’t you think it is well past time to retire this offensive word?

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