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Rants March 16, 2008

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1. One day I cut down a couple of huge cherry trees that had died on the stump and I used my chainsaw to peel off all the soft rotted wood on the outside. And I got to thinking that you could compare me with a half rotted cherry tree. Once you get it cleaned up it will get you through a cold night. 051007

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2. What is this “watch tv from around the world on your computer”? You might have seen it in your junk email. I would imagine that watching tv on your computer can be done. We have all watched scraps of programs on our computers. But who profits if we are watching commercial free Dutch or Swedish television on our computers? I don’t know, which is why I wonder why anyone would bother to tell us about it. Very few of us send out email out of the goodness of our hearts: most of us only send out an email when we want something. I have never bothered to click on the free laptop junk mails because I wouldn’t take a laptop computer if someone gave it to me. Have you ever tried to do 90 words a minute on a laptop? And I have never clicked on the two free tickets from Southwest Airlines because I am happy where I am. And although I have never clicked on the watch tv from around the world on your computer, I suspect that I’m not the only one who would like to know what it is all about. If it works --- if it is free, please tell me so I can pass ne good news along as a public service. I’m humble at humblefarmer.com.

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3. Can you get used to typing 2008 on your letters? Whatever happened to the 1990s? I can remember reading a book called 1984 years and years before 1984. It is one of those hit-the-nail-on-the-head books that anyone who even pretends to be educated should read every 5 years or so. If you read 1984 way back in the 50s or 60s you might have also wondered if in 1984 we really were going to be living in a society where continual war was the norm and only the name of your current enemy changed on a regular basis. But 1984 came and went and in 1984 the state wasn’t spying on me. And then there was Y2K. For years it was understood that computers were going become inoperative at the stroke of midnight that ushered in the year 2000. It was feared that banks and railroads and electric plants were going to shut down. But countries that spent next to nothing preparing for Y2K fared just as well as those that got carried away. And then, long before my time, there were the thousands who eagerly awaited that October day in 1844 that started and ended just like any other. At present I’m looking forward to May 11, 2011, because on that day the house I live in will be 200 years old. Because Hezikiah Prince made a note of it in his diary, it is the oldest house in the town of St. George that we know the actual day that it was framed up. But, superstition, fluff and celebration aside, is there a dark, impending day out there on every calendar that is determined to crush us? --- a day that really is a threat to our mental health and happiness? Yes. It is our 40th birthday.

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4. Have you given up trying to read the advice computer gurus post on line? I made my television program with my computer. When I finished I told my computer to save the one hour program. It takes two hours for my computer to save a one hour program. I went out and visited my neighbor Bill Legg while my computer was working. When I came home, my computer screen was black. All I have to do is touch a key or wiggle the mouse and the screen lights up. I touched the space bar on my keyboard. The screen lit up --- but --- this action also stopped my computer from saving the television program which was only an hour and 45 minutes into the two hour project. Well, I can fix that by changing my screen so that it doesn’t go black, and then I can start out from scratch. But I couldn’t figure out how to change the screen saver. So I typed my problem into Google and sure enough, here was the answer from a guru. The guru said, “It's probably obvious to you already, but I'll say it anyway, it could just be a screen saver. If you wiggle the mouse or hit a key on the keyboard and your screen comes back, that's it. You can adjust the screen saver behavior in the Display portion of Control Panel.” I eagerly went to the display portion of Control Panel and guess what. It brings up the same properties box that you bring up when you click on your desktop screen. I already had spent a long time in that very same box but couldn’t find anything that looked like it would control the time that the screen stayed on without turning black. What that guru did was tantamount to putting a cave man into a stick shift car and saying, “You can figure it out.”

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5. The Common Ground Fair is just about my favorite event in Maine. Last year I spoke with not dozens but hundreds of radio friends. My most unforgettable moment? I was talking with 6 or 8 friends when another couple showed up. Nice looking young girl around 25 – 30 and her friend. She looked at me and said, “Hot.” And of course being deaf I leaned toward her and said, “What.” And she said, “Hot. You are hot. I have listened to that sexy voice for years but I had no idea that you were such a…” and she licked her lips and kind of moaned and squirmed with her entire body. And I said, “What do you do?” And the fellow with her said, “She doesn’t have a job yet. They just let her out yesterday.” 050930

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6. Ever hear just a snatch of a conversation and wonder what they were talking about? Early one morning I was standing outside the gate at the Common Ground Fair with two vendor passes in my hand. And while I was standing there a young couple walked by and the young guy was talking. And if you were the girl who was walking along with him, please send me a note so we’ll all know what he was talking about. All I heard was, “… and then a little bit of drool fell out of her mouth onto my forehead…” CD 2005 #2

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7. I was telling my friend Dan about the Common Ground Fair which is held every September in Unity, Maine. For three days there is more IQ on those few acres of ground than you’ll find on any comparable space this side of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Everyone enjoys watching the little dogs that herd the sheep. Dan said, “Ugh. Don’t ever get a border collie.” He said that he was once with a bunch of dog walkers out in the woods and without noticing what had happened the border collies had herded all their owners together. They were all so close they were touching --- shoulder to shoulder and chest to chest. I hope you lonely young people in big cities are listening. 050902

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8. All I know about this is what I heard, and it seems as someone got blind drunk and then staggered off, bare butt naked, and tried to start a fire on the floor of a nearby woodshed. Upon hearing this I quickly whipped out the little notebook you’ve seen me carry on my right pant leg. I wrote down the following salient points. Please listen closely. The property owner heard the commotion outside and dialed 911. By this time, the drunk’s friends had found him and put out the fire. Meanwhile the drunk had run off into the woods, still bare butt naked. Later, a fireman reported seeing him out on the main road so the property owner once again called 911, this time to alert the sheriff. And what do you think the dispatcher said when she was told that a naked man was staggering down the road? “Can you give me a description?” 050902

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9. You might remember that I like baked beans and spaghetti and could happily live on baked beans and spaghetti until the day I die. Please hear this letter from Brent: Dear humble, I do find you unusually paradoxical since your erudition, intelligence and academic history come across loud and clear on your show. You have a voracious passion and understanding of the social and cultural happenings around you, which are most often associated with sophistication and depth of knowledge/wisdom.....Whereas your culinary interests seem very basic and working class, that harken to your youth, years of bachelorhood, addiction to your desk top, poverty, an artist caught up in the thrall of his muses??? --- Thank you Brent. My discriminating taste when it comes to meals also applies to women, and is not regretted when I look around and see friends who were obviously hooked by their first entre. 051118

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10. Who hasn’t heard of Oil of Olay? There is no question in my mind, that if a woman uses Oil of Olay between the ages of 30 and 50, at the age of 50 she will have the same complexion she had at 30 --- as long as she doesn’t smoke and has never exposed her skin to the sun. I present to you this evidence that women who use Oil of Olay do so with the understanding that it is not a panacea and that eventually more drastic steps will be necessary. Please listen closely. A woman who was in a remarkable state of preservation recently sat at our breakfast table. One wondered why this woman was traveling with a man old enough to be her father, until it was revealed, with fanfare, that she was 55 years old. I was not surprised that anyone 55 could look so much younger, and to prove my point I brought up the web page that contains pictures of my Radio Friends and showed her a picture that was taken of me when I was 55. I looked like a little kid. I told her that she would soon discover, as I did, that there comes a day when crow’s feet do come home to roost. I told her that I didn’t know exactly when it happened, but on one quiet, unannounced day within the past 15 years I suddenly looked my age. And that woman smiled at me and said, “Well, that’s why they made paper bags.” 051111

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11. You have heard me say that I could never afford to have children and at 70 had to learn about grandchildren, starting from scratch. Without even an hour of grampy experience to fall back on, Marsha placed one of her grandchildren under my care for an hour. I was scared. The child Avalane cannot talk. What could I do if she wanted something and how would I know what she wanted. But you can well believe that I learned something from this unique experience. The child went into my library and peeled the dust jackets off some Art In America books and ate them. I couldn’t believe it. The child ate paper. How, I wondered, could any child cultivate a taste for paper? But then --- I remembered that earlier in the day I’d seen her parents feed her an avocado. 050819

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12. It can be statistically proven that people come in three sizes: large, average and small. Because most of the women used in television commercials are no more than skin stretched on very small bones, the American woman has been conditioned to place herself in the large category. You can’t look at a television commercial without realizing that someone is trying to make women dissatisfied with the way they look, smell or feel. This is why even the most sensible woman might be tempted to lose weight --- to diet. Have you ever lived with a person who eats nothing but salad? After a week you beg them to wolf brownies or at least put enough chocolate sauce on their lettuce to make them sociable. A St. George man told me that his wife dieted faithfully for three weeks without losing a pound. She got so cranky that he started avoiding her --- he even fell asleep drinking his nightly hot chocolate in front of the TV and stayed on the couch all night. And night after night, his wife lost weight. It was two or three weeks before a doctor figured out why. The television ads for weight loss had made his wife so sensitive to calories that she’d been gaining half a pound every night just by smelling the hot chocolate on his breath. 050826

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13. Someone stood up at our last Grange meeting and said that eggs are now laser-etched with an expiration date and a code. This code which is printed on the eggshell traces the egg back to the Maine farm where it was packaged The process could even be refined to the point where you could tell which hen at the farm laid the egg. This quantum leap forward in recording the origin of a hen’s egg is truly encouraging in a state where many good people still don’t know who their own father is. CD 2005 #2

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14. A fellow I met when I was in New Jersey said that he and some friends went to Maine looking for cheap lobster. He said they ended up in Nova Scotia.

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