Rants for The humble Farmer radio program December 28, 2008
Rants December 28, 2008
1. My friend Winky was one of a dozen or so kids and they all lived in a tiny house. One day I asked him how they managed. Winky said, “It was easy, after we started to take in boarders.”
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2. When I’m on the road, I eat the one dollar chicken sandwich --- or whatever they call it --- at McDonald’s. I like McDonald’s because, coming from the working classes, on those once-a-year occasions when I might eat in a restaurant, realizing that serving people are tremendously underpaid, and realizing that most of the people who can afford to eat in restaurants got rich by being cheap, I sometimes leave a 50 percent tip. This is a lot when your meal might cost 10 or 12 dollars. And I don’t have to tip at McDonald’s. If I had to tip at McDonald’s I wouldn’t go there. Where else but McDonald’s can I get a sandwich that will sustain --- if not enhance life --- for a dollar? --- And without even sitting down being able to get the whole thing into me while I’m walking toward the door? When I’m on the road, it is sometimes necessary to do drugs which I ingest in the form of a senior coffee at McDonald’s. Senior coffee is cheaper than coffee coffee. But --- the other day when I paid for my dollar chicken sandwich and medicinal senior coffee, I reeled. The bill was over two dollars. So I asked the woman if it were a senior coffee. Please listen closely. She said, “You didn’t ask for a senior coffee.” Her words are true. I asked for a coffee but because I didn’t tell her I was a senior, I paid half a buck or so extra. I thought that one got a senior coffee because one looks like a senior. Not true. A senior coffee is something you have to ask for. So keep this in mind if you are 20 or 30 years old and looking to save on your next McDonald’s caffeine fix.
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3. If you own a newspaper or magazine, you are obligated to print the kind of stories that your readers want to see. Because --- if you don’t you are likely to get a letter that says: “You did so and so… cancel my subscription.” Here’s a typical example. According to what I read in my AARP magazine, 80 percent of 1300 people surveyed said that they believed in miracles. Forty one percent said that miracles happen every day, and 37 percent said they have actually seen a miracle. We are not told where AARP found the 1300 people they consulted for their report. Some, who were still alive after being treated by a dozen doctors, said that was miracle. But I’ll bet you could get an altogether different percentage should you poll university professors who teach physics. Even if my best friend were to win a lottery where the odds were 100 million to one, I would not believe in miracles. If I were to win a lottery where the odds were 100 million to one, I probably would, because I never bought a ticket.
+
5. When I married my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, she had a summer job as queen bee in a summer camp way out in the Maine woods. What I mean by queen bee is that she ran everything and thereby ensured the survival and profitability of the camp. When she quit to marry me, they had to hire five people to replace her. Any man who is married to a Type A woman knows very well what I am talking about. Because of the constraints placed upon Type A women by classical Newtonian mechanics, your Type A wife cannot possibly do things you have seen her do, such as simultaneously making the bed and washing the dishes, because it necessitates being in two places at the same time. The fact that you have seen her make the bed and wash the dishes at the same time was explained by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle which proved that Type A women are able to jump at random from one frenetic energy state to another. Because it is impossible to predict where a Type A woman might be scrubbing or cleaning at any given time, if you don’t want a rug with all its composite electrons to be suddenly yanked from beneath your feet, men married to these women have learned that it is best to simply retire to the workshop and stay out of the way.
+
6. She told me that her nephew was working in an office where they were giving out bailout money to the banks. And because he had gone to the University of Maine at Orono, the young nephew felt uncomfortable because everyone else in his office had fancy degrees from Harvard, and Princeton and Yale and Dartmouth. But one day he threw back his shoulders and said to himself, “I’m not going to be intimidated by all these people just because they went to all those wonderful schools. After all, I am the boss.
+
7. My brother says that one day while far from home in the state of Maine, he found himself in a town where lived an old family friend. And because he thought it would be nice to drop in and catch up on the news he drove to the house and knocked on the door. A shy boy with a lot of feet and arms answered the knock and upon saying that he had come to visit, my brother was invited in. They chatted of this and that until my brother asked where Diane was off to that afternoon. And the boy said, “Who?” “Your mother, Diane.” “Diane isn’t my mother. That family moved away. They haven’t lived in this house since last year.”
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8. There exists in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a company called Public Radio Exchange. The cognoscenti refer to it as PRX. PRX can best be described as an electronic warehouse where wanna be radio producers and used to be radio producers can display samples of their work. Radio program managers can dig through the assorted electrons and buy whatever suits their taste and fancy. For almost a year I’ve been sending them the rants that you’ve been hearing for over 30 years on my radio show, and the same day it was posted, a station in Connecticut paid forty cents for my story about the boy with the degree from the University of Maine who was the boss. Because I’d heard the story the day before from a good friend, my immediate reaction was to share the residuals with her. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Every time I hear the word “residuals” I think of the tobacco juice that used to run down either side of Daddy Joe’s mouth.
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9. If you are good at what you do, you probably do it for the enjoyment you get from doing it. If you are lucky, you also get paid for doing what you like to do. But in the final analysis, if you didn’t require an income, you would continue working because you think it is fun. Today we are talking about a Realtor who thinks that matching people to pieces of property is fun. He said that a local couple approached him because they were looking for something really special. They knew exactly what they wanted and had no difficulty describing it on paper. My friend, who knew everything worth knowing about every piece of property for miles around, read their list very carefully. Then he thought about it for a little while and asked them if they were sure that they had described in detail the property they were looking for. And they said, “Yes, yes.” It was exactly what they wanted. Did he know of such a place? And he said, “Yes, it’s where you live.”
+
10. Just about every Saturday in the winter I go lawn-sale-ing. Although I’m very much like you in that I already have much more than I need in wives and worldly possesions, the possibility of finding a Craftsman chop saw for five dollars is a powerful motivator. People are willing to sell good things for pennies on the dollar because they are like everyone else: they have more than they need and only by practically giving away what they already have, can they make room for more. And, yes, by the way, I did find an antiquated Craftsman chop saw for five dollars, but it lacked the little left hand thread 8 millimeter bolt that holds on the saw blade. Did you know that unless you go on line and order one from Sears for over 11 dollars, you can’t buy this bolt? I spent days and over a tank of gas looking because it stood to reason that somewhere I could buy that bolt for 98 cents. Even the unleashed power of the Internet availed me not. Please notice that I didn’t say I couldn’t find one. I said that I couldn’t buy one. After days of searching, I stood before a nice young man with a warehouse full of goodies behind his counter, who told me that he couldn’t sell me a bolt to hold on a saw blade because of liability. Yes. We have come to the point in this country where a grown man who has been stone cold sober for over 70 years cannot buy a bolt for his saw because the man who has storage bins filled with these bolts is afraid of a lawsuit. We live in surreal jungle of our own making. Does not a situation like this transcend commentary?
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11. Would you like to know how you can get along good with your neighbors and co-workers, even though you might be distressed or even outraged by some things you see every day. Smile, close your eyes, and whisper to yourself, "Give me strength to last only two more years and 3 months when I'm out of here with my pension." Suppose you've just come out of a PTA meeting at one in the morning and you see your next door neighbor's kid letting the air out of the tires on the superintendent's car. Would you tell anyone what you saw? Would you complain? Would you be a squealer? Keep it to yourself if you ever want your neighbor --- or the superintendent --- to speak to you again. Because there's nothing on this green earth that people hate more than a squealer --- someone who rocks the boat --- a whistle blower. Did you see the policeman who ratted on his buddies? They called it breaking the blue wall of silence, or something like that. He blabbed around that some of his policeman friends were stealing drugs and then selling them back to the drug dealers. His boss wasn't too happy about what he'd done. There's even talk about putting that one honest cop who squealed in jail. And then we saw two teachers who were attacked and pounded by violent students. The administration begged the teachers to forget about it, but they wouldn't. They were sick and tired of it. One of the kids is still in jail. You can understand why the boss doesn't like whistle blowers. As long as no one complains, John Q. Public thinks that the boss is doing a good job. Suppose you were a teacher who was thinking about writing a letter to the newspaper saying that for three years many kids in your class had headaches and coughed all the time. Doctors thought it could be caused by mold in the carpets. The carpets should be taken out. Don't do it. The superintendent would probably go through the roof. What you are really saying is that he doesn't have a good grip on what's going on in the school. You see, if he can keep the public from knowing about it, the condition doesn't exist.
Suppose the second hand cigarette smoke in your workplace makes you sick. Your co workers tell you that you're crazy because no one is allowed to smoke in the building. And then one day the smoke is so strong that you walk around this huge building to find out where it is coming from. And way over in a secluded corner you find a room where people smoke. And the ventilation fans circulate it throughout the entire building. For years you've asked the boss to take care of this. Is it now time to write a letter to the newspaper? Not if you want to keep your job. Because here in the land of the free and the brave, pointing out substandard or illegal conditions is saying that the boss doesn't have his hands on the wheel. Oh, he can't fire you for that. But you'd have to be pretty simple not to know that within a year or two he's going to find an excuse to put you out on the street. You might be aware of similar situations every day where you or your friends work. But you want to keep your job. So when you see your neighbor's kid letting the air out of somebody's tires, you might want to remember that ancient statue of the three monkeys. You didn't see it, you haven't heard a thing, and you're not going to say a word. I'm Robert Skoglund, and you didn’t hear me say it.
+
12. My friend Winky used to play golf but gave up because he would hit the ball off into the woods and never be able to find it. Now he goes bowling, and because the balls are much bigger he has only lost two.
1. My friend Winky was one of a dozen or so kids and they all lived in a tiny house. One day I asked him how they managed. Winky said, “It was easy, after we started to take in boarders.”
+
2. When I’m on the road, I eat the one dollar chicken sandwich --- or whatever they call it --- at McDonald’s. I like McDonald’s because, coming from the working classes, on those once-a-year occasions when I might eat in a restaurant, realizing that serving people are tremendously underpaid, and realizing that most of the people who can afford to eat in restaurants got rich by being cheap, I sometimes leave a 50 percent tip. This is a lot when your meal might cost 10 or 12 dollars. And I don’t have to tip at McDonald’s. If I had to tip at McDonald’s I wouldn’t go there. Where else but McDonald’s can I get a sandwich that will sustain --- if not enhance life --- for a dollar? --- And without even sitting down being able to get the whole thing into me while I’m walking toward the door? When I’m on the road, it is sometimes necessary to do drugs which I ingest in the form of a senior coffee at McDonald’s. Senior coffee is cheaper than coffee coffee. But --- the other day when I paid for my dollar chicken sandwich and medicinal senior coffee, I reeled. The bill was over two dollars. So I asked the woman if it were a senior coffee. Please listen closely. She said, “You didn’t ask for a senior coffee.” Her words are true. I asked for a coffee but because I didn’t tell her I was a senior, I paid half a buck or so extra. I thought that one got a senior coffee because one looks like a senior. Not true. A senior coffee is something you have to ask for. So keep this in mind if you are 20 or 30 years old and looking to save on your next McDonald’s caffeine fix.
+
3. If you own a newspaper or magazine, you are obligated to print the kind of stories that your readers want to see. Because --- if you don’t you are likely to get a letter that says: “You did so and so… cancel my subscription.” Here’s a typical example. According to what I read in my AARP magazine, 80 percent of 1300 people surveyed said that they believed in miracles. Forty one percent said that miracles happen every day, and 37 percent said they have actually seen a miracle. We are not told where AARP found the 1300 people they consulted for their report. Some, who were still alive after being treated by a dozen doctors, said that was miracle. But I’ll bet you could get an altogether different percentage should you poll university professors who teach physics. Even if my best friend were to win a lottery where the odds were 100 million to one, I would not believe in miracles. If I were to win a lottery where the odds were 100 million to one, I probably would, because I never bought a ticket.
+
5. When I married my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, she had a summer job as queen bee in a summer camp way out in the Maine woods. What I mean by queen bee is that she ran everything and thereby ensured the survival and profitability of the camp. When she quit to marry me, they had to hire five people to replace her. Any man who is married to a Type A woman knows very well what I am talking about. Because of the constraints placed upon Type A women by classical Newtonian mechanics, your Type A wife cannot possibly do things you have seen her do, such as simultaneously making the bed and washing the dishes, because it necessitates being in two places at the same time. The fact that you have seen her make the bed and wash the dishes at the same time was explained by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle which proved that Type A women are able to jump at random from one frenetic energy state to another. Because it is impossible to predict where a Type A woman might be scrubbing or cleaning at any given time, if you don’t want a rug with all its composite electrons to be suddenly yanked from beneath your feet, men married to these women have learned that it is best to simply retire to the workshop and stay out of the way.
+
6. She told me that her nephew was working in an office where they were giving out bailout money to the banks. And because he had gone to the University of Maine at Orono, the young nephew felt uncomfortable because everyone else in his office had fancy degrees from Harvard, and Princeton and Yale and Dartmouth. But one day he threw back his shoulders and said to himself, “I’m not going to be intimidated by all these people just because they went to all those wonderful schools. After all, I am the boss.
+
7. My brother says that one day while far from home in the state of Maine, he found himself in a town where lived an old family friend. And because he thought it would be nice to drop in and catch up on the news he drove to the house and knocked on the door. A shy boy with a lot of feet and arms answered the knock and upon saying that he had come to visit, my brother was invited in. They chatted of this and that until my brother asked where Diane was off to that afternoon. And the boy said, “Who?” “Your mother, Diane.” “Diane isn’t my mother. That family moved away. They haven’t lived in this house since last year.”
+
8. There exists in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a company called Public Radio Exchange. The cognoscenti refer to it as PRX. PRX can best be described as an electronic warehouse where wanna be radio producers and used to be radio producers can display samples of their work. Radio program managers can dig through the assorted electrons and buy whatever suits their taste and fancy. For almost a year I’ve been sending them the rants that you’ve been hearing for over 30 years on my radio show, and the same day it was posted, a station in Connecticut paid forty cents for my story about the boy with the degree from the University of Maine who was the boss. Because I’d heard the story the day before from a good friend, my immediate reaction was to share the residuals with her. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Every time I hear the word “residuals” I think of the tobacco juice that used to run down either side of Daddy Joe’s mouth.
+
9. If you are good at what you do, you probably do it for the enjoyment you get from doing it. If you are lucky, you also get paid for doing what you like to do. But in the final analysis, if you didn’t require an income, you would continue working because you think it is fun. Today we are talking about a Realtor who thinks that matching people to pieces of property is fun. He said that a local couple approached him because they were looking for something really special. They knew exactly what they wanted and had no difficulty describing it on paper. My friend, who knew everything worth knowing about every piece of property for miles around, read their list very carefully. Then he thought about it for a little while and asked them if they were sure that they had described in detail the property they were looking for. And they said, “Yes, yes.” It was exactly what they wanted. Did he know of such a place? And he said, “Yes, it’s where you live.”
+
10. Just about every Saturday in the winter I go lawn-sale-ing. Although I’m very much like you in that I already have much more than I need in wives and worldly possesions, the possibility of finding a Craftsman chop saw for five dollars is a powerful motivator. People are willing to sell good things for pennies on the dollar because they are like everyone else: they have more than they need and only by practically giving away what they already have, can they make room for more. And, yes, by the way, I did find an antiquated Craftsman chop saw for five dollars, but it lacked the little left hand thread 8 millimeter bolt that holds on the saw blade. Did you know that unless you go on line and order one from Sears for over 11 dollars, you can’t buy this bolt? I spent days and over a tank of gas looking because it stood to reason that somewhere I could buy that bolt for 98 cents. Even the unleashed power of the Internet availed me not. Please notice that I didn’t say I couldn’t find one. I said that I couldn’t buy one. After days of searching, I stood before a nice young man with a warehouse full of goodies behind his counter, who told me that he couldn’t sell me a bolt to hold on a saw blade because of liability. Yes. We have come to the point in this country where a grown man who has been stone cold sober for over 70 years cannot buy a bolt for his saw because the man who has storage bins filled with these bolts is afraid of a lawsuit. We live in surreal jungle of our own making. Does not a situation like this transcend commentary?
+
11. Would you like to know how you can get along good with your neighbors and co-workers, even though you might be distressed or even outraged by some things you see every day. Smile, close your eyes, and whisper to yourself, "Give me strength to last only two more years and 3 months when I'm out of here with my pension." Suppose you've just come out of a PTA meeting at one in the morning and you see your next door neighbor's kid letting the air out of the tires on the superintendent's car. Would you tell anyone what you saw? Would you complain? Would you be a squealer? Keep it to yourself if you ever want your neighbor --- or the superintendent --- to speak to you again. Because there's nothing on this green earth that people hate more than a squealer --- someone who rocks the boat --- a whistle blower. Did you see the policeman who ratted on his buddies? They called it breaking the blue wall of silence, or something like that. He blabbed around that some of his policeman friends were stealing drugs and then selling them back to the drug dealers. His boss wasn't too happy about what he'd done. There's even talk about putting that one honest cop who squealed in jail. And then we saw two teachers who were attacked and pounded by violent students. The administration begged the teachers to forget about it, but they wouldn't. They were sick and tired of it. One of the kids is still in jail. You can understand why the boss doesn't like whistle blowers. As long as no one complains, John Q. Public thinks that the boss is doing a good job. Suppose you were a teacher who was thinking about writing a letter to the newspaper saying that for three years many kids in your class had headaches and coughed all the time. Doctors thought it could be caused by mold in the carpets. The carpets should be taken out. Don't do it. The superintendent would probably go through the roof. What you are really saying is that he doesn't have a good grip on what's going on in the school. You see, if he can keep the public from knowing about it, the condition doesn't exist.
Suppose the second hand cigarette smoke in your workplace makes you sick. Your co workers tell you that you're crazy because no one is allowed to smoke in the building. And then one day the smoke is so strong that you walk around this huge building to find out where it is coming from. And way over in a secluded corner you find a room where people smoke. And the ventilation fans circulate it throughout the entire building. For years you've asked the boss to take care of this. Is it now time to write a letter to the newspaper? Not if you want to keep your job. Because here in the land of the free and the brave, pointing out substandard or illegal conditions is saying that the boss doesn't have his hands on the wheel. Oh, he can't fire you for that. But you'd have to be pretty simple not to know that within a year or two he's going to find an excuse to put you out on the street. You might be aware of similar situations every day where you or your friends work. But you want to keep your job. So when you see your neighbor's kid letting the air out of somebody's tires, you might want to remember that ancient statue of the three monkeys. You didn't see it, you haven't heard a thing, and you're not going to say a word. I'm Robert Skoglund, and you didn’t hear me say it.
+
12. My friend Winky used to play golf but gave up because he would hit the ball off into the woods and never be able to find it. Now he goes bowling, and because the balls are much bigger he has only lost two.
Labels: humor, Maine, The humble Farmer
posted by The humble Farmer at 4:59 PM
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