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Rants February 3, 2008

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1. One morning I heard the people on the news talking about a football game that they called the super bowl that had been played the day before. I called my friend Julian and asked him if he watched it and he said he did. When I asked him what happened, I was not surprised to hear him say that he fell asleep. This is good. What else is television for?

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2. The other day a radio friend asked me in an email why I had something on my web page that would indicate to even a casual observer that I wasn’t very clever. Of course anyone who spent any time at all on my web pages would be likely to find more than one of these little items. Although I didn’t say that, I did write back that I’m not afraid to admit that there are many things I don’t know. For years on my radio show I have talked about all the incredibly stupid things I have done. Doing numb things makes one human, and although 49 percent of the people might not want a person who does stupid things to be the president of their country, they might enjoy reading about numb people in a Mark Twain or O. Henry story. And they might enjoy hearing this person tell stories about himself and his friends on the radio. Years ago my newspaper column was carried in over 50 newspapers in the US and Canada, and for years when I submitted my newspaper column it always had one misspelled word in it. It gave people a feeling of superiority to find that error in my writing. It made them feel good. I am in the business of helping people feel good about themselves. I often do it at the expense of doing or saying things that let them feel superior to me.

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3. The email I got said, “Our newest DVD: Girls Gone Wild, Wildest Bar in America is A coast to coast search for the craziest clubs loaded with the hottest girls.” Wouldn’t it be fun to travel Fort Myers looking for the Wildest Trailer Park South of Georgia? If our park didn’t win, we’d at least take honorable mention. I have seen 80-year-old women lie by the pool until their wrinkled skin was black and crusted. I have seen retired doctors and bankers, octogenarians all, sneak out an hour before sunrise to illegally water their parched lawns. I have seen a woman go back north in April with one aged husband, only to return in November with a different one --- who didn’t last out the season. I have seen with my own eyes, four people with a combined age of 368 playing bridge until 9:30 pm. I have seen seniors gone wild.

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4. It could happen to anyone, but it is more likely to happen to a rich kid. We hear from a reliable source that years ago a rich kid acquaintance of his was traveling through Africa with friends. When they came to a border, they were unable to leave because when they came into that country, nobody had stamped their passport. This left them in the position of Tom Hanks who was stuck in the airport in that movie that you remember seeing. How do you get out of Africa if you can’t prove by a stamp on your passport that you actually came in? The rich kid we are talking about and his friends went to a rural post office and asked the postmaster if he’d pose with them on the steps of the post office. When he came out to pose, a member of the party rushed into the post office and stamped all of the passports with the cancellation stamp. It said Zambia or Zimbabwe or whatever country it was on the post office cancellation stamp and they were then able to leave the country. This is such a ridiculous and improbable story that you know it must be true.

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5. The story about the rich kid who escaped from Africa reminds me of another story about a man who has been trapped at Charles de Gaulle Airport since 1988. His passport got messed up so he can’t enter France and yet he is unable to leave it. It was written up in the newspaper because the reporter thought it was such a strange and unusual thing. But if you think about it for a minute, and compare this unfortunate fellow to a man who doesn’t get along with his wife, yet has six kids so they can’t afford a divorce, we could probably find several hundred similar cases right here in Maine.

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6. Steve writes: “Recently I took the bus from Boston Logan to Portland. The bus costs $25. I had one twenty dollar bill, and one hundred dollar bill. The driver didn't have change for the hundred ($75 if my arithmetic is working). Instead, he took my driving license and instructed me to pay when we arrived in Portland, when I would receive my license back. He then proceeded further back in the bus, collecting $25 from at least ten more people. I estimate he then had about $250 in cash, plus my license, but it didn't occur to him to use that cash to make change for my hundred. He scooted back to the front, secure in having done his collections and drove (uneventfully, I am happy to say) to Portland. As you mention, you can't buy anything for twenty bucks and no one wants any bill any larger. Add to that the lack of two dollar bills (I once amassed and then spent about a dozen when living near Houlton, not realizing it was some promotion by a grocery store) and you end up with a very fat wallet.”

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7. Years ago an airplane was getting ready to leave the airforce base up at Limestone, Maine, and my friend Winky was waiting for the truck to arrive to pump out the aircraft's sewage holding tank. The captain of the airplane was in a hurry, but the truck was late in arriving, and there was so much snow and ice around it took a long time for Winky to hook up the hose to pump out the tank. When the captain of the plane said that he was going to see that that Winky was punished for being so slow, Winky said, "Sir, I have no stripes, it is 20 below zero, I am stationed in Limestone, Maine and I am pumping sewage out of an airplane. What could you do to punish me?"

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8. Because I have many friends and many guests from all over who are kind enough to visit our B&B and farm, I constantly hear strange and mysterious things. Of course, being the most uncompromising gossip in Maine, I can’t wait to pass these items along to you. Richard said that after entering a Parisian restaurant he noticed that there was a dog seated on the lap of the person at the next table and that the person and the dog were both happily munching away – probably on a plate of escargo or pom fritts. Being a very uptight and narrow minded person, Richard asked to be moved to another table. Which was not really any better because from his new seat he could see that the cook had a dog in the kitchen helping him prepare food. It has been years since I last idly roamed the streets of Paris and when I was there I never went into a restaurant, but I’d like to hear what you have to say about dogs and Paris. Hearing this story reminded Victoria, who was at the other end of our table, that the last time she was in Paris she heard a sucking, slurping sound. It was a man in a white uniform who was driving some kind of mobile vacuum cleaner. He was sucking up all the hunder poop, I think that’s a French idiom, this man was vacuuming all the hunder poop off the sidewalks. You know about these things. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com Please, tell me what it is that lends Paris its charm --- and would you want it tracked into your home. 050805

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9. Someone in California sent me an audio tape touting the benefits of algae, which I listened to on my way to the dump. You eat this algae and drink 15 glasses of water every day and, according to the testimonials, you lose weight and you feel good. I probably would have tried it if they had stopped there, but then they said you’d have the same amount of pep and energy as you had when you were 20. And that killed it for me right there because I couldn’t get out of my own tracks then either. I’ve heard that a friend of mine is on one of these algae and water diets and that he has lost 30 pounds. You can see how that could happen. No matter what you eat, if you put it down on top of 15 glasses of water every day, you’re going to lose weight. [book]

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10. A Houlton woman was driving through Canadian customs with 9 screaming kids when the official asked her if she had any drugs or alcohol. She said, “If I had I would have used it by now.” [book]

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11. Hard to believe, but from what we read in the papers there are still some people who are such good drivers that they don’t wear their seat belts. Some of us can’t understand why they don’t have seatbelts for children who ride on school busses. Or on Amtrak. Kids have to wear them in your car. Why not in school busses? Of course there will be mandatory seatbelts on school busses someday. But the legislature has to wait until a bus gets creamed by a big truck. We don’t put our storm windows on until the pipes in the bathroom freeze. We don’t clean the house until company’s coming. If it wasn’t for some kind of crisis, nothing would ever get done. On the other hand, from an economic standpoint, it might be well if nobody wore a seat belt. It could keep an awful lot of people from ever drawing social security. [book]

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12. Do mothers think differently than they did 2,000 years ago? Listen to what I have to say, and then you tell me. Can you hear an Italian mother, living when Nero was Emperor, saying, “My 20 year old son recently broke his tibia when the Roman soldiers threw him to the lions. What can we do to shorten the recuperation time so they can throw him to the lions again?” What do you think of a mother who would say something like that? Compare it with this quote I recently copied from a newspaper: “My 20-year-old son recently broke his tibia playing football. What can we do to expedite his return to play?” [book]

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Here’s a web page a friend in Holland sent me. It is a bumper sticker that says, “Be nice to America or we’ll bring democracy to your country.”

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Over the past six years most of the world has learned to hate us. The rest are laughing at us.

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http://ongein.nl/ongein/item.aspx?id=7211

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