Below is a rough draft of humble's rants for your Maine Private Radio show for December 6, 2015.

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Can you guess what the greatest thing is about making this radio/TV program? Unless I become schizophrenic there will never be any infighting among the cast. I do not have to constantly come up with new and interesting things to consider on this show, because on this show you will hear No Things Considered. I do not lay awake nights thinking up ways to increase my ratings. This show is free from backstage stress, and you can think of many other reasons that make this show unique. But have you ever stopped to realize why you always hear me say that I’m making this program just for you? You are the only person who is listening.

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2. What are people really telling you when they say that they don’t watch television or have no computer? If you were to chat with a stranger you happened to meet on the street and that person told you they had no computer and no TV, you would know absolutely nothing about them except that they are in a socio-economic class that does not require these things. If you give this some serious thought, will you not come to the conclusion that there are only two socio-economic classes of people who do not watch television or need computers? They are either street people who live out of dumpsters --- or they are rich intellectuals.

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3. Do you remember Go dog, go? Have you ever read Go Dog Go? I had already served in the military, flunked out of music school and was living in Europe when Go Dog Go was written. But I heard about Go Dog Go because my wife Marsha used to teach little kids how to read. So when someone in our home is doing something the others appreciate, we cry: "Go dog go." And now that I think of it, I’ve heard teen age boys call each other “dog” in those movies where they steal cars in front of a hidden camera. Do you suppose they got that from reading Go Dog Go? What do you know about Go Dog Go? Has it contributed to urban crime in America?

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4. Someone told me that a police patrol car parked outside a local neighborhood pub round about midnight. The officer in the car noticed a man who staggered when leaving the bar and could barely walk. The man stumbled around the car park for a few minutes and, after trying his keys on five vehicles, managed to find his car and fell into it. It took him a few minutes to get it started as a number of other patrons left the bar and drove off. Finally he switched the wipers on and off, flicked the indicators on and off, blew the horn and turned on the lights. He went ahead a bit, then backed up and sat there for a few more minutes as some more vehicles left. At last he pulled out of the parking lot and drove slowly down the road. The Police officer who watched him followed him, turned on the flashing lights and the man pulled over. When he gave the man a breathalyser test he was surprised that the man tested sober, so he told him that the breathalyser machine was broken. The man said, “It’s probably OK. Tonight I'm the designated decoy.”

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5. Long time radio friend Harris down in Massachusetts – years ago Harris studied to be a dentist at Tufts --- Harris writes to say, “Got a new car, had the BMW for 20 years, it wasn't going to see its 21st . Got a Ford Focus, really nice car, lotsa high-tech features, including voice command. Got into an argument with the latter, however, we're not speaking to each other now.”

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6. You’ve heard me say this before, but it is so true that you’re going to hear me say it again. They do not make things like they used to. Nothing seems to last anymore. No matter what you buy, it seems that before you get it out of the wrapping paper it becomes obsolete or wears out or breaks down or runs down so you have to buy another one. If there is an item that is an exception to this rule, it is my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, who seems to grow tougher and more dependable with each passing year. But the purpose of my present commentary is not, as you probably thought, to boast and brag about my wife, but to rant and rave about things that do wear out before they should. Case in point. The 6 volt battery in my Model T. You know the car I’m talking about. It’s a good dependable car and you’d have to admit that it’s given me good value when you consider that I paid $10 for it in 1951. Anyway, I recently bought a brand new battery from my friend Steve Corson in Rockland, but last summer I couldn’t get it to hold a charge. I had to crank the engine to get it going, so this week I took the used battery back and got the regular junk value for it when I traded it in on a new one. I was careful with that battery so there is no reason it should not hold a charge. You know, in winters I took it out of the car and left it on a board in my friend’s heated garage. I’ve been good to that battery but it didn’t seem to make any difference. But --- the one I just bought is guaranteed to last 30 months so you better believe I’m going to hang onto that warranty paper this time. The young man in the store carried the new battery out to my car for me and when he picked up the one I was trading in, he looked at the numbers on it and said, “Wow. Most batteries won’t last over 4 years but you bought this one here in 1999.”

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7. While looking through Dateline’s webpage, this is what I read. I quote without permission: “The earliest known ancestors of modern humans might have reproduced with early chimpanzees to create a hybrid species, a new genetic analysis suggests. …Scientists can't say how long the hybridization carried on, but the final speciation occurred around 5.3 million years ago, possibly because the two species' genetic codes were too different to mix, or because the animals were simply physically unappealing to each other.” Wow. Would this not also indicate that back then they didn’t drink alcohol?

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8. Did you know that Santa Claus is richer than Daddy Warbucks? I’d really never given it any thought until I Googled Daddy Warbucks, Asp, Punjab, just to see what they’d been up to lately and learned on the forbes.com website that Daddy Warbucks is worth 27.3 billion. I was also surprised to see that this once aged icon is now only 52 and young enough to be my son. Would you be surprised to hear that Lex Luthor is only worth 10.1 billion although he went to MIT? Daddy Warbucks has a BS from S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook, so you might want to keep that in mind should you ever be pressed to help one of yours with an educational decision. You don’t even know who Charles Montgomery Burns is so I’ll tell you. He owns the nuclear power plant where Bart Stimson or is it Simpson works. He went to Yale, according to this web site I found, he is worth 8.4 billion and he bought the Frank Gehny-designed Springfield Concert Hall from the city and turned it into a prison. Oh, Santa Claus is the world’s richest fictional person and if you want to consult my source to get the website so you can read more you can ask to get my weekly newsletter, The Whine & Snivel, and read about it there, or you can Google Daddy Warbucks Punjab Asp. You might be interested to know that Santa Claus is richer than Daddy Warbucks because being immortal, the elf employees don’t require health insurance.

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9. My brother in law is from Jonesport. And if you say to anyone living on the Maine coast that so and so is from Jonesport or Matinicus, you don’t need to say any more. You’ve told the complete story. They know more than they want to know right there. But because Jonesport doesn’t mean anything to people from away, I’m going to tell you that my brother in law has been known to spend winters in a very nice park in Zepherhills, Florida. And when I visited him there he said that it was very difficult to buy a place in there because nothing went on the market until someone died. I asked him if prospective buyers went around feeling people’s pulse. And he said, “It wouldn’t help. We have people walking around in here who have no pulse.”

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10. People see what they want to see. People hear what they want to hear. A child might make a complete fool of himself in a children’s pageant on stage but his mother and his friends could watch the show and honestly think that he did a wonderful job. This came to mind one evening while I was watching the news. If you saw the program you know who I’m talking about, don’t you. Yes. It was that woman who opened a bag of potatoes and got on TV because she said she found a potato shaped like a heart. Somebody is always finding a potato that is shaped like something. She showed the potato on TV and when she held the potato up, it was --- shaped like a heart. And when I looked at that potato shaped like a heart I realized that she could probably have even got on TV if she had held that potato upside down and said it looked like something else.

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