Marsha and humble September 30, 2007





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This is a rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for December 29, 2013

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Rants December 29, 2013

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1. Radio friend David in Washington, Maine sends me this apocryphal tale about my friend Winky who was standing in line at his bank when a masked robber came in, told everyone to lie face down on the floor, and then filled a bag with money. As the robber turned to leave, his mask fell from his face and the teller saw him. So the robber shot the teller. Then the robber said, “Did anyone else see my face?” Without opening his eyes or moving Winky said, “I think my wife got a good look at you.”

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2. A radio friend up in Palmyra says: "Every summer I grow 50 organic free-range broilers and three organic pastured pigs. I have no problem selling these rather spendy meats to people who do not want the contaminated commercial products. I try to keep the price as low as possible but organic grains are not cheap!" This is exciting. I'd like to have at least one pig and enough chickens to give us all the eggs we need. The last time I raised a pig, which was 35 years ago, I sold it at an auction I held on my front lawn. George the Barber bought it for around $100. Marsha and I could eat up the chickens in the fall or put some in the freezer. Is that the way to do it? Nobody can cook pork or chicken as good as my wife Marsha. I'm presently planning a visit to my friends nucleus of nirvana in May so I can see the operation for myself. I've been wanting a pig and chickens for years, but on the coast of Maine, summer is always over before it really starts. Do you raise a pig or chickens? How do you do it? I’m the humble farmer at g mail dot com.

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3. Did you see the news item about the man who got a telephone call from a robot? There is a sound track of their conversation on line that you might enjoy. The man says, “Are you a robot?” and the machine says, “I’m a real person.” The man says, “I believe that you are a real person, but just to please me will you please say, “No, I am not a robot.” And the robot says, “I’m a real person.” And the man says again, “I believe that you are a real person but will you please say, “No, I am not a robot.” And the thing replies, “I’m a real person.” And this is repeated on the tape over and over. It’s obvious that the telemarketers need to get a few bugs out of the system. This brings up another question: Have you ever wondered what happens when a live caller reaches a live person who sounds like a robot? Or when there is an impasse because a robot reaches a live person who talks like a robot? Because I can’t hear well, I always speak slowly when I answer the telephone or talk on the radio --- because I know how frustrating it is to speak with people who mumble or talk fast. So when I answer the telephone I say very slowly, "This is Robert Skoglund. How may I help you?" “Hi Mr. Skoglund, how are you doing today?” “This is Robert Skoglund. How may I help you?” “Hi Mr. Skoglund, how are you doing today?” “This is Robert Skoglund. How may I help you?” Fade out.

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4. Would you feel good if you had produced two 56-minute television programs in two days and had a good start on the third? I do. I like making television programs. I think my television programs are funny. But one morning as I sat at my computer in my jammies working on my TV program, clothes piled nearby, my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman stopped by. And her hand shot out and she seized my shirt that was on the pile, and said, "You can't wear that shirt two days. You're going to smell like an old man." I knew better than to say anything, but I ask you, what's the sense of being an old man if you cannot go out on the town with food on your tie and a shirt that smells like an old Maine man? Shouldn’t everyone who comes near know that you are an old Maine man who has paid his dues?

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5. Do you get emails from your friends at MoveOn asking you to sign this petition or that petition? You are assured that your signature will help keep a few greedy people from seizing even more of your tax dollars and sending your tax dollars off to the Cayman Islands. But then. After you have signed, another page pops up asking you to contribute $13 in seed money. Or 133 dollars in seed money. Or 1333 dollars in seed money. If you do not plant seeds you are not going to raise a crop. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself if the purpose of sending you that MoveOn petition was to get your signature? Or to get your seed money? Only cynical old men think about these things. Wait until your time comes.

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6. I would like to have the Outlook emailing program on my new 6-year-old computer. It would enable me to send out my Whine and Snivel newsletter without opening my old computer and shifting over material. While trying to discover if I could install Outlook on my computer myself, I found the following which shows the difference in thinking between old people and kids. It says: "Pros Efficient mail, calendar and task management Good search function Multi-account support Visually attractive Cons No really revolutionary improvements" To an old person, a young person’s Con is a Pro because if it is anything like the program I have in my old computer, I might be able to use the thing. If it has wonderful new revolutionary improvements, I’m stopped dead in my tracks.

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7. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, is so pleased with the present savings generated by our photo voltaic panels, that she says I can bite the financial bullet and put in 8 more PV panels as soon as it gets warm enough to work outside. She is convinced that the entire system should pay for itself in somebody's lifetime with the cost of power and oil going up so quickly. I figure with that kind of extra power provided by 8 more panels we'll be able to use electric heaters in the spring and fall and not have to buy oil to take off the chill. At present, the panels that we already have should enable us to pay just the minimum $9.41 for most every month in the year. With the panels we presently have we'll be saving about $800 a year in power bills alone. But being a greedy old Maine man, I want to save even more. We are also saving quite a bit in oil, how much I don't know, because we now heat our domestic water with electricity, most of which we generate ourselves. Of courses, that domestic hot water doesn’t go into the electric heater at ground temperature but is preheated with our solar water heaters which I built with my own two hands. As you know, I'm even heating the cellar office studio of Maine Private Radio with the same home-made water heating system. Because of our Bed and Breakfast we require as much power as a man with several children in diapers. And now we’re getting that power for free. I was already out of high school in 1954 when we were told that electricity generated by nuclear power plants was going to be too cheap to meter. Guess you know what happened to that. How times change. Who would have thought in 1954 that Maine people would be able to save money by setting up their very own little black panels?

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8. On Saturday I bought for a quarter a mint copy of Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality --- in paperback. I’ve just about finished it. Because I always read the last chapter in a book first to find out how it ends, I have the impression that in 2008 the learned author supports Einstein who disagreed with Bohr on whatever it was they were talking about. The nature of reality? It was beyond me so I don’t know. I think they agreed on the facts and figures but differed in their interpretation of the facts and figures. Don’t you think it is interesting to read about scientists? Einstein and Bohr were theoretical physicists which means that they could work out in their heads mathematical explanations to natural phenomena. But mathematicians or physicists with a different kind of mind had to come up with an experiment to test the validity of their hypotheses. The example of gravity bending light comes quickly to your mind. What do you do when you’ve read a book and there is no one nearby you can discuss it with? How many times will your spouse say “Yes dear” before you hear, “Enough of Schroeder and Max Planck already.”

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9. The bad news is that there are people in this world who remember things that you have done that you have forgotten. As long as you don’t see these people, you can walk about feeling good about yourself. And even when they do show up and start telling everyone in the crowd about this or that foolish thing you did back then, you can comfort yourself with the thought that they might be pathological liars. Or simply one of those who consider themselves to be “humorists with a considerable local reputation.” This was brought to mind when my cousin Truman, who is hard to beat when it comes to storytelling, came by and said, “Do you remember emceeing that show where a man and his wife and their baby were on stage with their instruments?” I had to admit that I could remember emceeing no such show. Truman said, “Well, you introduced them to the audience but they couldn’t seem to get started. And you said, ‘I wonder how they ever produced that baby.’”

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10. Did you attend the recent town meeting where much was said about taxes? One of the natives stood up and said, “If you people from away hadn’t moved up here and put all your kids in the schools, we wouldn’t have such wicked big taxes.” How do you calm down a Maine native who is so pumped and primed that blood runs out his ears? Well, one of the people from “away” stood up and said with that funny Boston accent, “If you greedy Maine people weren’t stupid enough to sell us your land, we’d still be in Massachusetts.”

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11. Here’s an email from radio friend Andy, who writes, “It just occurred to me that, if you were a terrorist who was stopped by an alert Homeland Security operative, you'd be the Fumbled Harmer.”

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Robert Karl Skoglund
785 River Road
St. George, ME 04860
(207) 226-7442
thehumblefarmer@gmail.com
www.TheHumbleFarmer.com

© 2013 Robert Karl Skoglund