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Peace is bad for Business.

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January 6, 2008 Rants

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1. My radio friend Chief Read sent me an article on the effects of binge drinking, probably because he knows that although I never drank I have the cognitive skills of a rat who participated in a binge drinking study. According to what I read, the more we have binged — and the younger we have started to binge — the more we experience significant, though often subtle, deleterious effects on the brain and cognition. It plain English, if you binged when you were a kid, you’re likely to do some inexplicably stupid things when you’re an adult. So --- here are some tips. Stop after one or two drinks. If you must binge, start at age 40, not at age 16. And, most important --- if you binged excessively when younger, please don’t get elected President.

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2. I got a hilarious email letter from Robert in Bath. I laughed and laughed and laughed at this letter because it was a brilliant on-the-money commentary on my last show. You know I really appreciate and admire your original material that you take the time to send me. I’d like to stress original. And I like to laugh. Here is a scrap of what Robert sent me: “Here is what Kenneth Roberts wrote in ARUNDEL about cleanliness; Page 23: I could not in all conscientiousness hold him up before my grandson as a model of the manly virtues, especially in the matter of bath-taking, at which he was more lax than most of our townsfolk, some of whom boasted there were parts of their bodies that water had never touched;. . .”

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3. You have heard me talk about the advantages of implementing the Kenyan training program for runners here in our schools. Once each child has had the Kenyan training program for runners, no child will be left behind and 10,000 runners will all cross the finish line claiming victory at the same time. This was brought to mind by an email I got that promised to put me at the top of Google searches. Suppose 10,000 people who own bed and breakfasts in Maine all respond to this advertisement. Doesn’t it make you wonder how all 10,000 bed and breakfasts can appear on the top line when Maine bed and breakfast is Googled?

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4. Marsha and I got into a big motor home with friends and went down to Key West for a few days. I like Key West. It is different. Don’t you think it is interesting that I also like Smogen and Monhegan? Key West and Smogen and Monhegan are all islands. Marsha packed food and clothes. I didn’t bother to pack much of anything which was a mistake because I forgot to bring a belt or suspenders. Most of my pants are so small that I can navigate without a belt, but the pants I took to Key West had about an inch of slack around the waist. Yes, I know. I could have corrected the problem with a piece of rope, but I didn’t think of it at the time. So I walked the streets of Key West for two days with both hands hanging onto my pants so they wouldn’t fall off. Anyone who saw me probably thought, “Look at that old fool trying to dress like a teen aged kid.”

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5. Secret to attracting beautiful women. That’s what the email said. That email was obviously directed at little boys because any mature man knows that there are few secrets in this life. And any mature man knows that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You have seen so called beauties in Miss America and other beauty contests that I wouldn’t be seen escorting through a back alley in Boston. In the experienced eyes of a homely old man who has been collecting social security for almost ten years, every one of them is a painted hussy. And going out with a woman who uses lipstick is a bother nowadays under our new government, because the police will stop her and pat her down and take away that tube of lipstick before they let her enter a plane or public building anyway. So these email ads are never written to appeal to mature men, because mature men are often married to beautiful women and wishing that they weren’t, or unmarried and happy to stay that way. And although young boys and old men alike are likely to gnash their teeth and make growling sounds when they see something exceptional, an old man knows that good looks --- when forced to stand alone --- can wear thin before the sun comes up the next day. Mature men know that there are personal attributes that far outshine physical beauty. Hoping that you are 19 or 20 years old and have never heard this story, I will tell you about a man who married a very homely woman who was a world famous opera singer. On the second day of their marriage, he looked at her and said, “For heaven’s sake, sing something.”

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6. Will you permit me to make a point here? According to the way I understand Euclid, a point takes up no space. We read that a line contains at least two points, neither of which exist. How would an engineer share a piece of cake with his little sister? He would cut it into two pieces, take the biggest piece for himself, and then, when sister went crying to mother, very correctly say that, measured from edge to edge, sister’s cake had exactly the same number of points in it as his did.

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7. I never heard of a man named Huckabee until he won the republican primary in Iowa. Because I wanted to read an unbiased report of this primary, I went to an on-line Canadian newspaper. According to two entire paragraphs in the article I read, Huckabee has no more grip on national and international affairs than that famous blonde beauty queen from Georgia. You can well believe that Huckabee’s staff leaked the word of his incompetence to the press. Can you think of a better way to insure that he will be our next president?

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8. Tom in Dallas says, “The volume differential between your rants and the musical interludes is getting extreme. That is, I need to crank the volume up to hear the music, but at that level, your voice is BOOMING, so I end up changing the volume 20-30 times an hour in order to enjoy your show. Has anyone else mentioned this to you, or is it (gasp) just me (something that seems increasingly to be true as I get older)?” In response to this much appreciated commentary, Mike says, “Dear humble, I opened your show for Dec. 30 in an audio editing program called Audacity so I could see a graphic representation of the audio levels. Sure enough, your speech is of good level, while the music is a good deal lower - perhaps 6 to 10 dB down.” John says: Hi humble, Dr. Tom is correct. The spoken portions of your program are much louder than the musical portions. At times it sounds as if the spoken portions are peaking the meters (I can hear a bit of distortion even on my computer speakers. So. Thank you for telling me about this. I’ll leave the voice where it is, and try to crank the music up a bit louder.

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9. Then, in response to my question about balancing my voice and my music, this came from another John, who says just the opposite: “I find that I have to turn up your voice segments, they seem to low compared to the music segments. I tend to listen on my little notebook computer or on the tiny "speaker" in my cell phone, so not the best sound reproduction equipment on this end. I was just reading about the difference between "volume" and "loudness," and how many of the big audio producers are now increasing "loudness" to capture listeners' attention, but increased loudness also reduces the variation and contrast in the audio content, making it less interesting. As you always ask the telling question: could it be that the difference between your voice and music segments is their "loudness" and not their "volume?" I think "loudness" is like your story of hollering at the wife when the phone is for her. Yelling has more "loudness", but is less discernible than clapping three times, though both may have the same "volume." I dare not suggest how you might apply this audio technology to your problem, after all, I'm only a carpenter.” And then John appended this interesting article from Rolling Stone magazine called The death of high fidelity. I will append the web site in my Whine and Snivel newsletter which you may have for the asking by writing to humble@humblefarmer.com I still don’t understand the difference between loudness and volume, but I will defend your right to explain it to me. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity

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10. May I call to your attention a website that contains an article by Tom Lehrer’s last student?

http://www.buckswoodside.com/stories/tomlehrer.shtml

Here's a verse from Tom Lehrer’s "Send The Marines": which was written 50 or so years ago.

For might makes right,
And till they've seen the light,
They've got to be protected,
All their rights respected,
Till somebody we like can be elected.

Tom Lehrer transcends commentary.

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11. I never did finish telling you about our trip to Key West with the Booger Boy in his 45 foot bus. I don’t usually brag, but because you know me you can probably already guess that when I go on a trip I throw caution to the wind. I don’t care how much I spend. When we left home I told Marsha that I had $57 and I didn’t care how I spent it. I told her I was intending to buy her a Key West t shirt. She said she already had two Key West T shirts so I knew I wasn’t going to get any help from her. But here’s what I did with my money. On the edge of the dock at Mallory Square there works a man in a tall hat. He has a dog that jumps and bites a dollar bill out of someone’s mouth. When I was there two years ago I asked him what Noodleman was doing and he said that Noodleman was in Thailand doing things best known to himself. After the dog show I put $5 in the collection bucket. Entertainers are notoriously underpaid and they appreciate anything. Then, I heard a flugelhorn player who was so good that at the end of his solo I hopped up on the bandstand and told him that he was too good to be playing in Key West. I put $5 in his cup. Then there was an acrobat who jumps through a hoop and lands on his feet. By this time the excitement of the Key West ambiance had somewhat worn off so I only gave him a dollar. I also put a dollar into the box with the girl inside where the fire-eating man poked metal rods down through the box. I bought three post cards for 90 cents plus tax and a hotdog for $2.75 plus tax. And that’s what I spent during the three days we were down on the keys. You’re right, I could have spent more than $16, but I got lucky because --- when we stopped at station so the Booger Boy could put 346.8 gallons of fuel in the bus, he refused the $2 I handed him in gas money.

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12. Coming off the Florida Keys in the camper, we had a 40-50 mile an hour wind rattling the awnings on our port side and the Boy said, “Look, no fishermen on the bridges today. And he was right. That wind and 55 degree temperatures had driven all the fishermen inside. But when it’s warm and sunny you’ll see hundreds of snow birds standing on Florida bridges with a fishpole in their hands. This reminded me of a story I wrote 25 or so years ago. A condensed version of it would sound something like this: When I went next door and walked into Gramp Wiley’s trailer I shook the ice off my coat and hat and said, “Get your coat Gramp. Jamie Wyeth wants us to come down for supper. It will be a quiet time. Nobody there but Martha Stewart, Jennifer Lopez, Tom Brokaw, Larry King, Al Roker, and Dolly Parton. Gramp Wiley looked out the window at the driving, freezing rain bending the trees and said, “A man would have to be crazy to go out on a night like this. No, I’m staying right here.” Just then the phone rang. Gramp Wiley picked it up, listened for a few seconds and hollered, “Get my boots and so wester. Tom says the smelts are striking down at Harrington Cove and the boys are pulling them in two and three at a time.”

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