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Peace is bad for Business.

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This is a rough draft of the Rants for the November 11, 2008 humble Farmer radio show.

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1. If you will Google the Funeral Directors Association of Kentucky you will see three links on their home page. One of them says, “Choose a destination.” By the time you need a funeral director, isn’t it a little late for that?

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2. Rare nude photos of Kate Moss. That’s what an email in my deleted items box said. It made me laugh. --- Because I thought about it. --- Perhaps there is no such person as Kate Moss. And when you click on it, you get a real estate ad. And even if Kate Moss does indeed exist, why would anyone want to look at rare nude photos of her? Don’t I have better things to do than look at rare nude photos of Kate Moss? Or anybody else? I’ve seen my share of naked people over the past 71 years and I can’t think of one of them who didn’t look better with clothes on. My friend Steve Lindsay is a great sculptor who can and has turned knotty wood into magnificent larger-than-life statues of nude women. So you could understand why Steve might want to look at rare nude photos of Kate Moss. If even one of them inspired him to take mallet and chisel in hand, he could sell the product for thousands of dollars. Oh --- the thing that made me laugh when I saw “Rare nude photos of Kate Moss” was the thought of a web page named: “Rare nude photos of The humble Farmer.” If you were to post the two links on a web page side by side, I wonder which one would get the most hits?

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Steve Lindsay’s web site. http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9fdc/sculpt.html

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3. Do you like the automated voices that now talk to you when you call someplace to get information? I do. If you were to think about it, nowadays when you do get a live person on the other end to help you, even Henry Higgins wouldn’t be able to understand their dialect. But the machine speaks the kind of English that even a deaf old Maine man can understand. And after you have contracted your business, you can hang up on the machine without having to listen to a sales pitch or excessive apologies without being abrupt or feeling impolite. I recently changed the pin number on my credit card so I could remember the number. The voice says, “Hello there, I can help you with that. Please enter the old pin number. Ok, I got that. And now enter the new pin number. Please enter that again so I can verify it. Ok, I got that. You’re all set, now you can [click].

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4. You will remember that a week or so ago I said something about ignorant people being able to do a certain thing because they didn’t know that the experts all agreed that it couldn’t be done. Someone, I’m sorry I didn’t keep track of who it was, wrote, “I agree 100%. I heard a story years ago, and I don't know if it's true, but apparently the engineers at GE used to "haze" newcomers by giving them an assignment they knew was impossible. They told one guy to develop a method of frosting lightbulbs on the inside. Ho ho! The sucker went for it.” Marvin Pipkin not only found a way to frost bulbs on the inside but developed an etching acid that gave minutely rounded pits instead of sharp depressions. This materially strengthened each bulb. Fortunately, no one had told him it couldn’t be done, so he did it. Well. Of course nowadays I Google things like this and I found it under the topic: “Impossible.”

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5. Interestingly enough, on the same page as the impossible frosted lightbulb I also found this article on the Four-Minute Mile. It says: Do you remember the four-minute mile? They’d been trying to do it since the days of the ancient Greeks. Someone found the old records of how the Greeks tried to accomplish this. They had wild animals chase the runners, hoping that would make them run faster. They tried tiger’s milk: not the stuff you get down at the supermarket, I’m talking about the real thing. Nothing worked, so they decided it was physically impossible for a human being to run a mile in four minutes. Our bone structure was all wrong, the wind resistance was too great, our lung power was inadequate. There were a million reasons. Then one day one human being proved that the doctors, the trainers, and the athletes themselves were all wrong. And, miracle of miracles, the year after Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile. And the year after that three hundred runners broke the four-minute mile! Harvey Mackay, U.S. Entrepreneur and author in Speechwriter’s Newsletter, quoted in Bits & Pieces, July 20, 1995, pp. 20-22.

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6. I mention this article about breaking the four minute mile because the author, Harvey Mackay, wrote several books. One of them was Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive. Harvey Mackay is not only a very successful businessman, he has also written best selling books on how to succeed in business. And I mention this because Harvey Mackay wrote a newspaper column about me. Yes. He wrote about The humble Farmer’s Annual Free Lobster Picnic. Harvey Mackay praised my creative marketing genius and said words to the effect that The humble Farmer’s free lobster picnic was the greatest marketing tool possessed by any professional speaker in the United States. You will remember that my wife Marsha ragged and nagged away at me day and night for three years until she finally made me shut it down.

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7. Were you listening closely when I read Harvey Mackay’s article on breaking the four minute mile? If you were you might have expected another ending. I think I did. Listen while I read part of it again. I’ll put the ending I expected to hear on it. “Do you remember the four-minute mile? They’d been trying to do it since the days of the ancient Greeks. Someone found the old records of how the Greeks tried to accomplish this. They had wild animals chase the runners, hoping that would make them run faster. Nothing worked, so they decided it was physically impossible for a human being to run a mile in four minutes. Our bone structure was all wrong, the wind resistance was too great, our lung power was inadequate. There were a million reasons. Then one day the doctors, the trainers, and the athletes themselves were all proven wrong, because a fellow showed up from Kenya.

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8. My distant cousin John works all over the world. He writes well about interesting things and he should compile his letters into a book about his experiences. John writes from Dubai that because of the censorship there Michele Malkin’s blog is not available. I Googled Michele Malkin to find out who she is and now, although I’ll forget her name before I go to bed tonight, I have read a few things about Michele Malkin. How do you feel about censorship? I don’t think censorship is a good thing. Please --- let us hear our leaders talk on television and please --- let us read what their supporters write about them in newspapers. If they’re all crazy, you and I want to know about it.

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9. Next week Marsha and I plan to visit Steve and Rachael. Steve writes, Do you have a cell phone so that we can give you directions? Do you like Lasagna? As you know, I have to comment on these questions. First, can you imagine having friends who live so far out in the jungle that Google won’t recognize their address and print off a map for you? And I’m talking about a big map that you can consult as you approach in your swaying howdah. I have to admit that we are not in the socio economic class of people who have cell phones. I have seen many people whip out cell phones here in my house and outside, and it is my understanding that cell phones do not work in our area, anyway. Lasagna? Unless someone invites me over for beans and hotdogs or lobsters --- unless I know what I’m getting for supper, I’m going to eat before I go over to a friend’s house for supper. This is part of what I emailed back to Steve. I like guests and this is why. I said, “Don’t worry about me. I don’t eat anything. Don’t be like Marsha and worry about guests. When you start to be concerned about the comfort of your guests, you start to dislike guests. I like guests because here, as far as I’m concerned, they’re on their own.

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10. From time to time we talk about curious inexplicable things we have seen on TV. I was just watching Columbus discovering the New World which brought this to mind. Was it in a Clint Eastwood film or was it the Count of Monte Cristo or was it in both films that we saw a man on horseback riding through a field in which there is a road consisting of two wheel tracks? Of course, the people making the movie were too young to realize that when a horse pulls a wagon, there, between the two wheel tracks, is the third track which was made by the horse. When I was a kid there were several dirt roads that had the three tracks made by a horse and wagon, and I remember well what they looked like. And then, today, while watching Columbus, we saw him landing on a beach in the new world as he said, “I claim this land for Spain.” The scribe standing beside him was recording his words, scribbling frantically with a quill pen. But nowhere did you see a bottle of ink.

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11. Over the past year most Maine people have seen enough courtroom scenes on TV to earn them a law degree. One of the things we have learned is that an accused person gets judged by a jury of his peers. That means people who look and think just like you do. It’s a good system, because you’re more likely to get off. It makes you wonder how a young man with green hair and a ring in his nose can get a fair trial around here. You can’t find a jury in Rockland that isn’t made up of retired Maine State Prison guards. [recycled]

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12.. Speaking of courtroom scenes, when you’re being considered for jury duty, you’re asked if you have any opinions on the matter at hand. If you say, “Yes,” the law says they can’t use you. They only want people who have no opinions --- no preconceived notions. What kind of person can have lived 30 or 60 years without having any opinions? And how do you select a jury from the few who claim to have none? If a nice looking young man is accused, do you want nice looking young women on the jury? Would unattractive women automatically dislike him, knowing that he would never give them a second glance on the street? Would plain looking young men be jealous? Would sweet old grandmothers want to cover him with a protective wing? If you are a man who has been selected for jury duty here on the coast of Maine, here’s one bit of advice if you really want to fit in. The only two men in the courtroom wearing a tie will be the accused and his attorney. [recycled]

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13. My friend Jerry writes: Dear humble, I had an educational experience last night. I was watching TV and sipping my traditional nightcap Scotch. It was from a very expensive bottle that I save for special occasions. The occasion this time was that I had run out of cheap Scotch. Anyway, I was paying attention to the TV and in taking a sip something brushed my upper lip and when I pulled the glass away and looked at it I noticed a waterlogged housefly clinging to the rim of the glass. Apparently it had fallen into the glass and I had nearly swilled it down the hatch! It forced me to consider, for a moment, whether or not I was a serious drinker of good Scotch. I knew the average person would be so disgusted they would dump the remaining Scotch but I decided the stuff was strong enough - and expensive enough - that I would flick the fly to the floor and finish the glass. I patted myself on the back with the thought that I was a true connoisseur of fine Scotch. When I told a friend about it today he stated that a true lover of fine Scotch would have first wrung out the fly....

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14. If you sit around in a courtroom long enough, you will learn that the fines for shoplifting, theft, assault on an officer and similar crimes are $100 or so. But fines for not having your insurance papers in your truck or for forgetting to register it are $200 or $300. Judging from the proportion of the fines, crimes against people are not considered serious as crimes against the bureaucracy. [recycled]

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