Rants January 25, 2009
+
1. My friend Sal is exactly like so many of my other friends: he can do things that I, and perhaps you, can’t do. He is a specialist in his field. Sal spends summers down the road a bit from me in Port Clyde, Maine and winters down the road a little bit from me on the Florida Keys. Oh, the one thing that you and Sal have in common is the stories you tell me, and this is one of them. Every January there is an antique car and tractor fair in Fort Meade, Florida. It is such a large fair that one rents a golf cart at the gate for $65 just to get around. One year Sal arrived at the fair too late to rent a golf cart. Alas! Every last one was gone. But when he walked onto the grounds he saw a small tractor for sale. Sal said, “I bought it for $400 and rode around on it all day.” I said, “But what did you do with it after the fair?” Sal said, “I sold it for $2600.”
+
2. It doesn’t take much to make me laugh --- even if I haven’t had a cup of coffee. This morning I laughed when I deleted some of the emails in my junk email box. One said, “Looking for a Fling?” What is a fling nowadays? If I had been pressed to define a fling, I would have said that a fling is running off to some near-by town for two or three days. But not until today did I ever wonder if yesterday’s fling is called a flang or a flung. I just Googled “Looking for a Fling” for a current definition. According to Google, the affliction known as “Lonely Wives Looking for a Fling” is now pandemic.
+
3. For years I’ve enjoyed collecting and sending along to you the silly things I encounter throughout the day. This one is an email from a Maine couple in which someone mentions that they’d like to hear from their Maine friends. It says, “I am forwarding this message from Ron and Lorina … as they wish to be remember to everyone. Joleen ----- Original Message ----- Subject: Hello Hope everyone made it back safe and sound. We were wondering how Marge is fairing? Please give her our address & email. Really would like to hear from our Maine friends. Simone & Ron …“ The wonderful thing about a letter like this is that it justifies the institution immortalized in Melville’s story about Bartleby --- the dead letter office.
+
4. For a year I have toyed with the idea of making a television program that consists of nothing except an old man who sits in a chair and simply talks while tossing a baseball from hand to hand. Until this morning, I wondered who would watch such a show. I wish I’d asked you, because that person lives with you so you knew a long time ago. For hour upon endless hour, that person sits like a rag doll and watches men run with a ball under their arms, or men hit a round thing with a stick. When they are lucky, they watch girls who hop on sand while pounding a ball over a net. Sometimes they watch cars going round and round an oval track and won’t even take a bathroom break for fear they’ll miss the pile up of the century. So --- we have determined that it is not what it is on the screen that builds a faithful television audience --- anything that provides an excuse to sit and drink whatever is in the glass or can is a show capable of climbing off the charts. So, when the day comes that they stumble upon this show, and they will, will you please do me a favor and, as you fill up the dish with heavily salted nuts, suggest that it might be time to order a catheter?
+5. It must be true because I not only heard it on TV, I also read it on the Internet. Drivers who use cell phones in their cars kill 2600 people and injure 330,000 every year --- just in the United States. Cell phones are now right up there with those beloved dogs and cats in a driver’s lap when it comes to causing automobile accidents. You can believe it, because half the people you pass on the turnpike have a cell phone plastered to an ear. Scientists tell us that 20-year-old drivers have the same reaction time as 70-year-old drivers who don’t even know how to use a cell phone. My first car was a 32 Ford coupe convertible with mechanical brakes and because I probably weighed around 100 pounds when I was 15, for all practical purposes I had no brakes. If you don’t know what mechanical brakes are, you should look it up. It took everything you had, and even big, rugged men had trouble stopping a car that had mechanical brakes. Eddie Tyler might tell you that in 1951 I passed him on the right hand side. I was coming up on him too fast down there between Harrington Cove and the Clark Island Road, there was a car coming the other way, and because I couldn’t stop I went out in the dirt and the grass and passed him on the right with dust and rocks all a flying. At the time I’d probably been driving a car for only a few days so it was a valuable lesson --- ever since then I’ve driven as if I have no brakes. I’ve taught driver education so I also have the annoying habit of hanging in there with the speed limit and stopping at stop signs, so my friends all hate to ride with me. When they do, they call me nasty names. And you probably know that in Europe they have Yield signs so I don’t have to stop there if nobody is coming. In America they have stop signs in many, many places that would be better served by a Yield sign. Anyway, can you tell me why the experts talk about reaction time when they should be talking about thinking time? If you don’t tailgate, you don’t need that famous reaction time they talk about where you have to jam on your brakes to keep from ramming that car ahead. And if a deer jumps out of the dark, you don’t need reaction time because they say you hear the bang and never see the deer anyway. When all is said and done, I’m glad I don’t have a cell phone. It’s bad enough to have to drive a car when you’re over 70. I’ve been hit in the rear end at least 6 times just because I stop at stop signs.
+
6. I am thinking about having my credit card paid by big brother. I pay off the balance every month but think my payment arrived one day late because of a holiday and my negligence. There is, I think, a $30 or so fee for this. You might have many of your monthly payments automatically deducted from your checking account so this can’t happen. I haven’t done it yet, because I don’t like the idea of someone being able to dip in there and take what they want. You might have seen some months, when there might not have been anything in there to take, when you had to very judiciously juggle things around. Businessmen would not have that problem. They haven’t seen a bill in years because their office staff takes care of things like that. I think they ran electricity down our road around 1923 and I’m old enough to remember hearing that my neighbor Alex went into a rage when CMP sent him a bill. He said that he’d always paid cash for everything, no one had ever sent him a bill in his entire life and he’d have the power shut off if he were going to get bills. You might be old enough to understand that most any change is upsetting.
+
7. You will recall I mentioned a while back about seeing a program that promised to tell me how to tell a real Rolex watch from a counterfeit Rolex watch. I was so busy taking notes, so I could tell you about it, that I didn’t see how the program ended. Radio friend Bill Miller sends this: “Dear Humble, Once, while working for U -Haul a few years back, I stumbled upon a Rolex laying in the under-seat portion of a truck. No one claimed it, and I had, a Rolex Presidential watch. This watch had diamonds on the quarter hour and a gold bezel...Im not sure what that would get me in life but wow...I had a Rolex. For years I wore that watch very proudly as a status symbol..showing I was a winner in life..a ROLEX. Some years later I was working as a paramedic on the beach in florida and had to extricate a young man who had imprudently dove into the water wearing speedos ,showing off to women who wanted gucci flannel pajamas, and had broken his neck. As I reached below the backboard in 4 feet of water I felt that watch unclip and fall off my wrist...gone...forever. That was a life lesson I couldnt have paid enough for. I wear a Timex now. Bill” My question to you is the obvious one: Why would anyone wear a watch that came with a cheap strap?
+
8. What you can learn when you listen to the radio. Of course it has to be a certain kind of radio and I’ve been getting my radio off a place called PRX on the Internet. This week I learned that Hawaii has about the highest electric bills of any state. Right up there with New York, Vermont and Maine. But on this radio program I heard that the University of Hawaii is going broke trying to run their air conditioners. How about that? Haven’t you always heard that the temperature in Hawaii is perfect? Never hot, never cold. And now we hear they can’t afford to run their air conditioners. I guess this punches a hole in that bit of folklore. Another bit of folklore, which approaches an outright lie, is calling Florida the Sunshine State. And if you have never heard of Ibsen or his play called “An Enemy of the People” I suggest you Google “An Enemy of the People” right now and become familiar with it. --- Because there are days when they shut down highways in Florida, The Sunshine State, because you can’t see the road through the smoke from wildfires. Even worse are the controlled fires caused by burning the cane fields and the burning forests that are being swept away by endless housing developments. On an average day, you might not see that smoke or even be aware of it, but the soot builds up on your car and in your lungs. Some days the air is so bad in parts of The Sunshine State that you can’t get enough air in your lungs to ride a bicycle. You find that your lungs make a little whistling sound when you breathe. People who live in many parts of Florida take this constant smoke and burning eyes for granted and should you mention smoke, they’ll give you a funny look and say, “What smoke?” Don’t expect to see anything about Florida’s rotten air quality on television or in the newspapers. It would be bad for the tourist business. Yes, and please do look up Ibsen’s play, An Enemy of the People.
+
9. When I called my wicked step mother she said that one of our neighbors had fallen on the floor and perished. She stayed right there and languished because they didn’t find her for a day or so. She had one of those magic buttons to wear around her neck, I think they call them Lifelines, but she didn’t bother to put hers on that day. So when she dropped, she was helpless. You know, there are days when you can go out in the woods and scramble to the top of a 60 foot spruce tree and I remember those days well. But I told the wicked one that I knew I was at the age where it would be foolish to go out in the woods unless I told someone where I was going. She said that she was at the age where it would be foolish to go out in the woods.
+
10. Here’s another junk email that got my attention. If you are a social commentator, you should be grateful for junk email because you will never run out of topics. This one says: “Your wife need your attention? Solve all your problems with IT.” I don’t know why they need to advertise. You and I have friends who no sooner left for work, when IT came in the back door.
+
11. (prx 090120) On the morning of the presidential inauguration I looked at the television and saw three million people jostling each other, elbow to elbow in that space between the Washington Monument and the Capitol Steps. I couldn’t help but think what a great day it was in Washington for pickpockets.
+
12. Have you ever seen the Eifel Tower in Paris? Have you ever seen The Brandenburg Gate in Germany? This is redundant. Where else would you find the Eifel Tower or The Brandenburg Gate? I was going to say that for over 30 years, I have boasted and bragged that I have never talked down to you. I was going to say that when I mentioned An Enemy of the People or Bartleby, I took it for granted that you were familiar with the works of Ibsen or Melville, so I would never day, “Ibsen’s, An Enemy of the People.” I was going to say that President Obama was talking down to you by pointing out to you and me in his inaugural address that his words, “the time has come to set aside childish things,” came from the scripture. But, much to my surprise, in looking over my notes, I see that I have recently been as guilty as the President of the United States. Is there not a lesson to be learned here? You hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye.” That’s Scripture, Matthew 7, 3.
+
You are invited to stop by for supper anytime.
Robert Karl Skoglund
260 Hamlin Drive
Fort Myers, FL 33905
207-226-7442
humble@humblefarmer.com
Hear humble's radio show on his web page
http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/ThisWeek.html
See and hear humble tell stories on his web page:
http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/
Hear dozens of humble's rants and even his radio show on PRX:
http://www.prx.org/Enjoy humble's music/humor program on Maine cable television stations:http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/TvTowns.html
Did you know that Robert Skoglund, The humble Farmer, stands on stages and tells funny stories?Ask humble to entertain you and your friends with dry stories like these:http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/PortlandA.html
You can visit humble and Marsha at their Bed & Breakfast on the coast of Maine.
http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/BaB.html
Showing posts with label wdna the humble farmer humorous social commentary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wdna the humble farmer humorous social commentary. Show all posts
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Rants for The humble Farmer radio program, January 11, 2009
humorous social commentary for the January 11, 2009 The humble Farmer radio program
Broadcast on the Internet on humble's web page, on the web page of Village Soup, and on WDNA in Miami.
+
1. (090111) Imagine how startled you’d be if you just learned that Johnny Cash did not do time in Folsom Prison. Did the fact that I’m probably not the only person who was misled help Johnny Cash sell 90 million records? On the same page on the Internet I also learned that Merle Haggard wrote Okie from Muscogee as a satire. Everybody knows that song, Okie from Muscogee, and it is only now that I realize why I have heard of Merle Haggard. I don’t see how you could not have heard Okie From Muscogee because it was on top of the popularity charts fairly recently --- 1970 or so. I’ll bet you didn’t know that Okie from Muscogee was a satire, either. Listening to songs by Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash, is there really any way to tell?
+
2. It finally happened. This morning my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, looked at me and said, “Take those filthy pants off right this minute and throw them in the wash.” I had to laugh. I said, “I just put them on fresh two minutes ago right out of the bureau drawer.” You know, I’m not able to do it very often, but this morning I stopped her right dead in her tracks.
+
3. (prx 090108) We hear that the economy is in bad shape. And although I don’t have any answers, I might have the same questions as you do. You might remember that Mr. Nixon did better in the polls than Santa Claus when he opened the doors to China and by so doing put us where we are today.
Which is broke.
Three generations ago, the dollar bill you gave to the milkman would pass from hand to hand five or six times before it ever left your village. And then it would circulate a while longer in your county and then move elsewhere in your state. Spend that dollar nowadays in a big box store and within a week it is in China by way of Arkansas. Not one of your neighbors gets to see it.
Thirty five years ago nobody thought to ask what would happen if you and all your neighbors bought everything you could from China at low, low Wal*Mart prices: toys, wood, clothes, dishes, instruments, and now even food.
Yes. If everything we buy in every store in America is made in China does it take an economic genius to figure out what is going to happen to the companies in the USA that made the things we used to buy from them?
Right. They go out of business. And when they go out of business, American workers lose their jobs. Of course, this is no concern of mine or yours because American workers losing their jobs is an abstraction --- we don’t know who these people are, and their wages were probably too high, anyway. But being able to buy things made in China at low, low prices is, for you and me, a concrete and necessary reality.
So China is now the proverbial Company Store. For all practical purposes, China owns most of The United States. And because every day that goes by they get almost every cent that we spend, day by day they own more and more of the United States. To survive, very soon almost every rural family will have to do what their ancestors and put up preserves from a big garden. They will keep a cow, chickens and a few pigs.
How do we avoid this huge, sucking economic black hole? By buying only those products made in the USA so Americans can go back to work? Probably not, because we look for those low, low prices offered only by the Chinese. And there is a good chance that there are no longer on our shelves any products made in the US of A.
So, now we are told that the US economy is in bad shape. The past administration whipped up an unnecessary war that has cost you a trillion or so. And while the war commanded your attention, every business was deregulated or privatized so billions more could be funneled down that rat hole.
But a brighter day is coming, because is not Mr. Obama going to jumpstart a ruined economy with a trillion or so dollars? You’d better hope he gives it all to the bankers, because if you and I get our hands on it, within a week every penny of it will be in China.
+
4. (prx 090110) Where do you get your information? Newspapers? Television? Because I can’t afford to buy a newspaper, and because one must carefully consider the source when getting news from television, I just realized that I am turning more and more to the Internet. You know that I already have solar hot water heaters attached to my house and that I am presently building panels that will generate electricity from sunlight. All my bustle and scurry has nothing to do with a burning desire to save the planet. Putting in solar collectors will save me money. So I’m also on a tear to get rid of all the energy hogging appliances in our home. Did you know that the older models of refrigerators gobble electricity and that many of the new ones will pay for themselves in just a couple of years just by being more energy efficient? Of course, you know, too, that over the past 30 years, whenever I’ve learned something interesting, I’ve quickly passed it along to you --- for whatever it’s worth. So, if you are standing, please sit down in the nearest chair and hang on with both hands because I was staggered by what I just read today. While looking on line for an energy efficient refrigerator, I learned, that many of the newer refrigerators will run on next to no electricity at all --- if you never open their doors.
+
5. If you are like me, you constantly update your web pages. You put up things that are new and you take down things that no longer have meaning. When this wonderful letter came in from a radio friend in Miami, I put in on my Facebook, my blog and my web page at once. Please listen carefully to this: Dear Mr. Skoglund, As a Native American, or whatever you want to call us, from my earliest remembrances of growing up in the home of my beloved maternal grandparents, I learned to love and respect my elders. As I grew older I came to the realization that offering to our elders respect and gratitude was small compensation for the wisdom they imparted to us younger people. For this reason I rise early every Sunday morning to listen to your show, more for the wisdom you impart than for the good music you play. As a Native American, I, too, have often wondered why people think they need to have more than one pair of shoes. Thank you for imparting your wisdom each Sunday morning. Have a happy, healthy, and enjoyable New Year.” This letter is signed by a Mr. Myers who has appended on the bottom of his letter:
Treat the earth well,
It was not given to you by your parents;
It was loaned to you by your children.
Isn’t that wonderful. The earth was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. My sentiments exactly. Oh, and while I was on my web page I then removed this other item which doesn’t apply anymore, now that we have a new press secretary in the White House. It said: "You might have seen that best-selling author who made the evening news because he had lied to the American people on national television. --- This was news because he was an author."
+
6. Long time radio friend Harris Contos sent me the following news item: “VASSALBORO, Maine --Vassalboro's planning board has approved an application for a coffee shop with topless waitresses despite opposition of most residents who showed up. More than 50 residents showed up for Tuesday night's meeting and most of them voiced disapproval of the idea. Ellsworth businessman Donald Crabtree plans to open the topless cafe within 30 days at the site of the former Grand View Motel on busy Route 3. Planners said the central Maine town has no ordinance to regulate businesses' uniforms -- or lack of them. They say the proposal met the town's 10 performance standards, which are mostly related to safety, parking, traffic and signs.” Of course I immediately replied to this news item from Harris. My obvious question to him was the same question that is in your mind right now. Would their health insurance would pay for any colds caught during working hours? Harris believes that any waitress submitting such a claim would get a form letter back from the company, pointing out that they weren’t covered.
+
7. A news item about topless waitresses in a Vassalboro coffee shop, sent to us by long time radio friend Harris Contos, raises several issues. Would an unemployed waiter be likely to picket coffee shops where your steaming hot coffee is served by topless waitresses? As a person who believes that men and women should receive equal pay for the same work, I am somewhat alarmed that any woman would choose to uncover anything perceived as an advantage. And what culture from ages past has so impressed its values upon us that a topless waitress should be viewed worthy of space in a newspaper --- or of a place in a coffee shop? How much would a topless coffee shop have to undercut the competition before you would be seen going in there? And what do you say to the waitress when she smiles coyly and asks, “Cream and sugar?”
+
8. Whatever is America’s greatest satirist, Alan Able, doing nowadays? If you can find out, please tell me because I’d like to know. I see that a movie of his life is available and I have snuck it into Marsha’s queued requests on Netflix. The name of it is Abel Raises Cain, and I am told by Netflix there will be a long wait. Thirty or more years ago Alan Able impressed me with his satirical antics and I became a fan. We exchanged stuffed envelopes through the mail, this was long before email, and one day, which must have been around 25 years ago, I found a note from Alan Able on my back door. I missed his visit. The same week I chanced upon a girl from the Pinies in New Jersey, who was wandering about my farm taking pictures of the huge woodpile, the sheep and the piles of junk. Do remember that this was before my wife Marsha moved in and restored order. Anyway, knowing that Alan Able was capable of most anything, I viewed the New Jersey girl with great suspicion for several days, thinking that she might have been set upon me by Alan Able. I suggest that you Google Alan Able, because reading about his capers is a refreshing, enjoyable adventure in itself. Take for example, his Omar’s School for Beggars, a fictional school for professional panhandlers. Or read about the actor he hired to pose as Deep Throat after Nixon’s Watergate scandal. That conference drew 150 reporters. Read about the 7 actors he hired to fall asleep in the studio while Donahue was interviewing gay senior citizens. Or the time he ran for Congress on a platform that included selling ambassadorships to the highest bidder. At the 2000 Republican National Convention, Able campaigned to ban all breastfeeding, saying that it manifests an oral addiction leading youngsters to smoke, drink and even become gay. My favorite was his Society for Indecency to Naked Animals. Their goal was to clothe naked animals all over the world and their slogan was “A nude horse is a rude horse.” It began as a satire on media censorship. Thanks to the satire of Alan Able, there is no censorship of the media in America today.
+
9. (PRX 090112) You might have seen those silly little articles in magazines about dogs and their owners. The premise is that people buy pets that not only reflect their personalities but their physical features. We have also heard that people who live together for 20, 40 or 60 years also tend to resemble each other. I don’t know if this is true, because, wouldn’t you agree that an evaluation of the data would be subjective --- as long as we are talking about outward appearance? But could we not prove that, after a few years of marriage, man and wife do seem to approximate each other in their observable habits? I invite you to participate in the following experiment. To confine the experiment within the parameters of solid science, you will be asked to keep a written record of your bathroom habits for a month. I’m humble at humblefarmer dot com and if you are truly in love and 100 percent compatible I would be surprised if your results differ from mine. Every time over the past 18 years that I have moved toward the bathroom, day or night, for any reason, I have had to stand by the door and wait --- because my wife had the same intentions two seconds before.
+
10. Last week I caught a rat in a mouse trap. Something ate a hole in an orange that was on the floor by the door and I thought I’d catch whatever it was in a mouse trap. I didn’t think whatever it was could be more than two inches long. But the next night, around 6 o’clock right after supper, I was surprised to see a huge rat, upside down with the trap on top of him, with his nose caught in that mouse trap, right there in the entry way that you might as well call the kitchen floor. How a rat got into the house I have no idea, unless it hopped in when someone left a door open. --- What do you do when you see a live rat with his nose caught in a mousetrap? If you scoop up the whole business, the rat might escape and you’d sleep that night with a rat either running across the bed covers or trying to yank them onto the floor. Being a television person, I quickly set up my video camera and took pictures of the rat while I was trying to figure out what to do. You can well believe that when I posted the film of the entire operation on Blip, which some people call the thinking woman’s YouTube, I heard at once from some animal rights people. Well, now, a week or so later, I’m still hearing about this live rat in a mousetrap and more than one person has called my attention to the havahart trap web page. I commend this havahart web page to your attention the next time there are unwanted rats in your kitchen. All it says is, “Rat Traps. Remove unwanted rats the most humane way!” So --- here you are with the unwanted rat in the little humane havahart cage without a word of advice as to what is expected of you next. Presumably you will not kill the rat, because if that were an option, you might as well have set a snap trap, eliminated an interminable unnecessary wait on death row, and had the unpleasant business over with at once. So --- there should now be no question in your mind as to what you must do when you have taken a rat prisoner. Visit one of your animal rights friends as quickly as possible and let the rat out in their kitchen.
Broadcast on the Internet on humble's web page, on the web page of Village Soup, and on WDNA in Miami.
+
1. (090111) Imagine how startled you’d be if you just learned that Johnny Cash did not do time in Folsom Prison. Did the fact that I’m probably not the only person who was misled help Johnny Cash sell 90 million records? On the same page on the Internet I also learned that Merle Haggard wrote Okie from Muscogee as a satire. Everybody knows that song, Okie from Muscogee, and it is only now that I realize why I have heard of Merle Haggard. I don’t see how you could not have heard Okie From Muscogee because it was on top of the popularity charts fairly recently --- 1970 or so. I’ll bet you didn’t know that Okie from Muscogee was a satire, either. Listening to songs by Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash, is there really any way to tell?
+
2. It finally happened. This morning my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, looked at me and said, “Take those filthy pants off right this minute and throw them in the wash.” I had to laugh. I said, “I just put them on fresh two minutes ago right out of the bureau drawer.” You know, I’m not able to do it very often, but this morning I stopped her right dead in her tracks.
+
3. (prx 090108) We hear that the economy is in bad shape. And although I don’t have any answers, I might have the same questions as you do. You might remember that Mr. Nixon did better in the polls than Santa Claus when he opened the doors to China and by so doing put us where we are today.
Which is broke.
Three generations ago, the dollar bill you gave to the milkman would pass from hand to hand five or six times before it ever left your village. And then it would circulate a while longer in your county and then move elsewhere in your state. Spend that dollar nowadays in a big box store and within a week it is in China by way of Arkansas. Not one of your neighbors gets to see it.
Thirty five years ago nobody thought to ask what would happen if you and all your neighbors bought everything you could from China at low, low Wal*Mart prices: toys, wood, clothes, dishes, instruments, and now even food.
Yes. If everything we buy in every store in America is made in China does it take an economic genius to figure out what is going to happen to the companies in the USA that made the things we used to buy from them?
Right. They go out of business. And when they go out of business, American workers lose their jobs. Of course, this is no concern of mine or yours because American workers losing their jobs is an abstraction --- we don’t know who these people are, and their wages were probably too high, anyway. But being able to buy things made in China at low, low prices is, for you and me, a concrete and necessary reality.
So China is now the proverbial Company Store. For all practical purposes, China owns most of The United States. And because every day that goes by they get almost every cent that we spend, day by day they own more and more of the United States. To survive, very soon almost every rural family will have to do what their ancestors and put up preserves from a big garden. They will keep a cow, chickens and a few pigs.
How do we avoid this huge, sucking economic black hole? By buying only those products made in the USA so Americans can go back to work? Probably not, because we look for those low, low prices offered only by the Chinese. And there is a good chance that there are no longer on our shelves any products made in the US of A.
So, now we are told that the US economy is in bad shape. The past administration whipped up an unnecessary war that has cost you a trillion or so. And while the war commanded your attention, every business was deregulated or privatized so billions more could be funneled down that rat hole.
But a brighter day is coming, because is not Mr. Obama going to jumpstart a ruined economy with a trillion or so dollars? You’d better hope he gives it all to the bankers, because if you and I get our hands on it, within a week every penny of it will be in China.
+
4. (prx 090110) Where do you get your information? Newspapers? Television? Because I can’t afford to buy a newspaper, and because one must carefully consider the source when getting news from television, I just realized that I am turning more and more to the Internet. You know that I already have solar hot water heaters attached to my house and that I am presently building panels that will generate electricity from sunlight. All my bustle and scurry has nothing to do with a burning desire to save the planet. Putting in solar collectors will save me money. So I’m also on a tear to get rid of all the energy hogging appliances in our home. Did you know that the older models of refrigerators gobble electricity and that many of the new ones will pay for themselves in just a couple of years just by being more energy efficient? Of course, you know, too, that over the past 30 years, whenever I’ve learned something interesting, I’ve quickly passed it along to you --- for whatever it’s worth. So, if you are standing, please sit down in the nearest chair and hang on with both hands because I was staggered by what I just read today. While looking on line for an energy efficient refrigerator, I learned, that many of the newer refrigerators will run on next to no electricity at all --- if you never open their doors.
+
5. If you are like me, you constantly update your web pages. You put up things that are new and you take down things that no longer have meaning. When this wonderful letter came in from a radio friend in Miami, I put in on my Facebook, my blog and my web page at once. Please listen carefully to this: Dear Mr. Skoglund, As a Native American, or whatever you want to call us, from my earliest remembrances of growing up in the home of my beloved maternal grandparents, I learned to love and respect my elders. As I grew older I came to the realization that offering to our elders respect and gratitude was small compensation for the wisdom they imparted to us younger people. For this reason I rise early every Sunday morning to listen to your show, more for the wisdom you impart than for the good music you play. As a Native American, I, too, have often wondered why people think they need to have more than one pair of shoes. Thank you for imparting your wisdom each Sunday morning. Have a happy, healthy, and enjoyable New Year.” This letter is signed by a Mr. Myers who has appended on the bottom of his letter:
Treat the earth well,
It was not given to you by your parents;
It was loaned to you by your children.
Isn’t that wonderful. The earth was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. My sentiments exactly. Oh, and while I was on my web page I then removed this other item which doesn’t apply anymore, now that we have a new press secretary in the White House. It said: "You might have seen that best-selling author who made the evening news because he had lied to the American people on national television. --- This was news because he was an author."
+
6. Long time radio friend Harris Contos sent me the following news item: “VASSALBORO, Maine --Vassalboro's planning board has approved an application for a coffee shop with topless waitresses despite opposition of most residents who showed up. More than 50 residents showed up for Tuesday night's meeting and most of them voiced disapproval of the idea. Ellsworth businessman Donald Crabtree plans to open the topless cafe within 30 days at the site of the former Grand View Motel on busy Route 3. Planners said the central Maine town has no ordinance to regulate businesses' uniforms -- or lack of them. They say the proposal met the town's 10 performance standards, which are mostly related to safety, parking, traffic and signs.” Of course I immediately replied to this news item from Harris. My obvious question to him was the same question that is in your mind right now. Would their health insurance would pay for any colds caught during working hours? Harris believes that any waitress submitting such a claim would get a form letter back from the company, pointing out that they weren’t covered.
+
7. A news item about topless waitresses in a Vassalboro coffee shop, sent to us by long time radio friend Harris Contos, raises several issues. Would an unemployed waiter be likely to picket coffee shops where your steaming hot coffee is served by topless waitresses? As a person who believes that men and women should receive equal pay for the same work, I am somewhat alarmed that any woman would choose to uncover anything perceived as an advantage. And what culture from ages past has so impressed its values upon us that a topless waitress should be viewed worthy of space in a newspaper --- or of a place in a coffee shop? How much would a topless coffee shop have to undercut the competition before you would be seen going in there? And what do you say to the waitress when she smiles coyly and asks, “Cream and sugar?”
+
8. Whatever is America’s greatest satirist, Alan Able, doing nowadays? If you can find out, please tell me because I’d like to know. I see that a movie of his life is available and I have snuck it into Marsha’s queued requests on Netflix. The name of it is Abel Raises Cain, and I am told by Netflix there will be a long wait. Thirty or more years ago Alan Able impressed me with his satirical antics and I became a fan. We exchanged stuffed envelopes through the mail, this was long before email, and one day, which must have been around 25 years ago, I found a note from Alan Able on my back door. I missed his visit. The same week I chanced upon a girl from the Pinies in New Jersey, who was wandering about my farm taking pictures of the huge woodpile, the sheep and the piles of junk. Do remember that this was before my wife Marsha moved in and restored order. Anyway, knowing that Alan Able was capable of most anything, I viewed the New Jersey girl with great suspicion for several days, thinking that she might have been set upon me by Alan Able. I suggest that you Google Alan Able, because reading about his capers is a refreshing, enjoyable adventure in itself. Take for example, his Omar’s School for Beggars, a fictional school for professional panhandlers. Or read about the actor he hired to pose as Deep Throat after Nixon’s Watergate scandal. That conference drew 150 reporters. Read about the 7 actors he hired to fall asleep in the studio while Donahue was interviewing gay senior citizens. Or the time he ran for Congress on a platform that included selling ambassadorships to the highest bidder. At the 2000 Republican National Convention, Able campaigned to ban all breastfeeding, saying that it manifests an oral addiction leading youngsters to smoke, drink and even become gay. My favorite was his Society for Indecency to Naked Animals. Their goal was to clothe naked animals all over the world and their slogan was “A nude horse is a rude horse.” It began as a satire on media censorship. Thanks to the satire of Alan Able, there is no censorship of the media in America today.
+
9. (PRX 090112) You might have seen those silly little articles in magazines about dogs and their owners. The premise is that people buy pets that not only reflect their personalities but their physical features. We have also heard that people who live together for 20, 40 or 60 years also tend to resemble each other. I don’t know if this is true, because, wouldn’t you agree that an evaluation of the data would be subjective --- as long as we are talking about outward appearance? But could we not prove that, after a few years of marriage, man and wife do seem to approximate each other in their observable habits? I invite you to participate in the following experiment. To confine the experiment within the parameters of solid science, you will be asked to keep a written record of your bathroom habits for a month. I’m humble at humblefarmer dot com and if you are truly in love and 100 percent compatible I would be surprised if your results differ from mine. Every time over the past 18 years that I have moved toward the bathroom, day or night, for any reason, I have had to stand by the door and wait --- because my wife had the same intentions two seconds before.
+
10. Last week I caught a rat in a mouse trap. Something ate a hole in an orange that was on the floor by the door and I thought I’d catch whatever it was in a mouse trap. I didn’t think whatever it was could be more than two inches long. But the next night, around 6 o’clock right after supper, I was surprised to see a huge rat, upside down with the trap on top of him, with his nose caught in that mouse trap, right there in the entry way that you might as well call the kitchen floor. How a rat got into the house I have no idea, unless it hopped in when someone left a door open. --- What do you do when you see a live rat with his nose caught in a mousetrap? If you scoop up the whole business, the rat might escape and you’d sleep that night with a rat either running across the bed covers or trying to yank them onto the floor. Being a television person, I quickly set up my video camera and took pictures of the rat while I was trying to figure out what to do. You can well believe that when I posted the film of the entire operation on Blip, which some people call the thinking woman’s YouTube, I heard at once from some animal rights people. Well, now, a week or so later, I’m still hearing about this live rat in a mousetrap and more than one person has called my attention to the havahart trap web page. I commend this havahart web page to your attention the next time there are unwanted rats in your kitchen. All it says is, “Rat Traps. Remove unwanted rats the most humane way!” So --- here you are with the unwanted rat in the little humane havahart cage without a word of advice as to what is expected of you next. Presumably you will not kill the rat, because if that were an option, you might as well have set a snap trap, eliminated an interminable unnecessary wait on death row, and had the unpleasant business over with at once. So --- there should now be no question in your mind as to what you must do when you have taken a rat prisoner. Visit one of your animal rights friends as quickly as possible and let the rat out in their kitchen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
