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Where's November? November 29, 2004 That's the
question! Where did it go? Hunting season for the most part has come and
gone and all the whiners who never go outside and especially into the woods,
can now claim that they got THEIR woods back. Now they can sit on their fat
doughboys and watch another episode of "Wife Swapping" or "Jerry Springer"
(they come from the same mould) and feel good that they made a difference.
It's hibernation time
too! Depression sets in for many and about the only thing they see is the
bottom end of a bottle or the backsides of their eyelids. It seems the sun
sets around 2:30 in the afternoon and comes up again around 7 am. Nice! Real
nice!
I shouldn't bitch because there are a lot of people who
really like winters in Maine and the rest of them who say they do, are
friggin liars. I used to spend way too many days standing on the side of a
ski slope freezing my ever loving assets off, pretending I was enjoying
myself.
Mainard True
Listening to Joe Perham - November 26, 2004
I was working today getting some painting done around the house and decided
to put on a Joe Perham
CD. I knew it would make my work much more enjoyable. It doesn't much
matter how many times I listen to any of his stuff, I just laugh. One of the
biggest reasons I laugh I won't go into because I don't want to piss anyone
off - you figure it out.
You know Clyde is really a
smart man and Joe says the more he hears from him the more he believes that
what he says is true.
I got laughing out loud listening once again to stories
about the Penley Clothespin Mill in West Paris, Maine. When Albert Penley
was asked if he had any employees nearing retirement age he said he didn't know
of any that were going the other way. But the best one was when asked about
one employee who had quit his job at the mill and who was going to fill his
vacancy. Albert told him the man didn't leave no vacancy.
If you haven't been there yet, get on over to
Joe's site and look
around. He's got some audio clips you can hear too.
Mainard True
Getting this Blog working - November
26, 2004
I guess to make a blog a blog, it is supposed
to be dated and titled and easily accessible to readers. Don't get me wrong,
I own this site and I'll do it just as I damned please but I just wanted to
let you know what I was doing.
A Time for Thanks
This is the day we are to give thanks and so
I am giving thanks. I am thankful that Mainahs act the way they do and say
the things they say. It sets them apart from everybody else.
I am thankful for those who enjoy being
amused by Maine humor and can laugh at themselves. The rest of you just
ain't figured it out yet.
So on this day of thanksgiving, I want to
make sure to tell everyone not to go changing and be thankful you are a
Mainah!
Journal Becomes a Blog
You know, cyber space is an odd place to be
when you stop and think about it. Growing up through the late 50s, 60s and
70s, we learned, or at least were told, that computers were going to make us
all lazy and useless because they would be able to do everything for us. How
wrong they were. All that it has done is made us more angry and in a bigger
rush to get someplace.
For many, cyber space has become a place for
people to go anonymously and say things that we couldn't face to face. That
is both good and bad depending on whose shrink you are talking to that day.
Writers were always taught to keep a journal
and for anyone who ever has has learned what a valuable tool it really is.
Well, I never did keep one to speak of but as I aged, I discovered that I
did enjoy writing. This is one of the reasons I created Laugh Maine - other
than I find it is therapeutic and a true escape from many of the things in
real life I dislike (another book).
Although this website is just a newborn
infant in terms of the internet, I find I have to make changes to more
easily flow with rapidly changing world of the Web. Where I am writing now
was called the "Maine Journal" because I thought that was a cool name. It
let everyone know that it was about Maine and that it was a journal. I'm not
sure young people today actually know what a journal is but they certainly
can tell you what a blog is.
Blog is really short for Web Log but for
those of us who have spent enough time on the computer to realize all words
must be shortened. I think that one day while I was taking an afternoon nap,
Bill Gates and all the other computer nerds got together and in 1.9
nanoseconds made a law that said all terminology used on the Internet had to
be shortened and made into like a code.
Web Log became confused with another term
that was similar so they decided blog would work. I mean, "BLOG" what the
hell is blog. It sounds more like a hidden swamp monster movie - The Return
of the Blog Monster.
These days, blogs are the rage! They are used
in many ways. Some use them like a personal diary, while others create a
blog to use within a large corporation to communicate with each other. I'm
not even going to go there.
So I am changing with the times and I have
renamed my Maine Journal to the "Black Fly Blog". I though that named was
fitting as well - black flies being the unofficial state bird of Maine and
of course you now know what a blog is.
Nothing here is changing except the name and
the Black Fly Blog is where I will come when I feel the need to get
something off my chest and to share with you my profound and deep knowledge
of the Internet and specifically Laugh Maine.
Political Blues
You know I think it is just about time to rid us poor
folks of this election coming up on November 2nd. I don't know about you but
I've had enough. I read one place that just the Presidential candidates will
spend over 700 million dollars on their campaigns. Geez!
Well, how much is 700 million dollars anyways? You know I
ain't got the foggiest idea in the world. I guess it's a lot. If I spell it
all out it looks something like this: $700,000,000.00 and that's a lot of
zeros. Now zeros I can relate to.
What tickles me about elections is the things said. What
is said don't mean anything only to those who want to believe what they are
hearing. It's like being in a house full of liars. One of them lies and the
other one swears to it.
One of the candidates was asked if he knew the stuff he
was saying wasn't true. He said he knew that but he couldn't just sit by and
let the other guy "one-up" him.
John Kerry says he is a Red Sox fan and he is amazed at
that Manny Ortez feller. Some fan or does he stumble over his words too?
Why is it we feel this need to "know" someone famous? I
guess we think that by telling someone that we know an important person that
makes us important then too.
Enough rambling for tonight. I hope I wake up in the
morning and this will all be history - the kind we soon forget!
Oh, I forgot why I came here to write. I wrote a song a
while back entitled "Political Blues" and it is a blues number. The words go
like this:
Have you heard that the left side is
fighting to win
Everything the right side says is a sin
I got the political blues Yeah those
political blues
Never saying what they mean
Never meaning what they say
Somewhere in the middle they could go
either way
It depends on the polls when they come out
today
I got a case of the blues Yeah
a bad case of the blues
Just to look at them numbers gives me
a case of the blues
First they move to the left, then they move
to the right
Watching them in action is really quite a
fright
I got the political blues Yeah
political blues
Never making up their minds gives me
political blues
Well, a budget got submitted by a numbers
crunching dork
It would have been fine but what about the
pork
Oh yeah I got political blues
Yeah a bad case of the blues
How to pay off those contributors Gives me
a case of the blues
"We want to drill for oil. How can that
be?"
The Senator yells from his big SUV
Oh man political blues a bad case of
the blues
Never saying what they mean Never
meaning what they say
Our President went to college and he did
learn
But not as much as from one certain intern
Oh I got those political blues,
Yeah I got political blues
Not knowing what "is" is gives me a bad
case of the blues
Maine Huntin' Season
As we near that time of year when Mainers head for the
woods in search of that big buck, I am reminded of many very stupid and also
hilarious events that occur as well. We have all heard the stories of the
ignorant out-of-staters that mistake a cow or a horse for a deer. I think
there has also been an occasional "jackass" brought down by mistake as well.
One of the funniest stories that I have heard relating to Maine hunting
season was told to me by Joe Perham.
It seems there were these two fellas and they were going
hunting. They hopped into Bill's pick-up truck and headed down the road. You
see Bill wanted to hunt out back of old farmer Chet Harrington's farm so he
thought he better stop and see old Chet and get his permission, you see.
Well, Chet he ain't real talkative and some folks are a bit intimidated by
him because he is a big man.
Bill went knocking on Chet's door early one Saturday and
went on in and talked with him for a while. Bill asked him about what he
came there for and Chet, he thought for a minute and then told Bill he
guessed it would be alright if he hunted down back of the barn but there was
one little catch. Chet had an old mule that needed to be put down and he
couldn't bring himself to do it. You know, they'd gotten close over the
years, so he told Bill that if he took care of that mule he could go hunting
down back. Bill agreed.
You know Bill has a good sense of humor and when he got
out to the truck he pretended to be mad at old Chet. They started drivin
down the road when all of a sudden Bill stopped the truck got out and shot
that damned ole mule. Old Tom sitting on the other side of the pick-up truck
was dumb founded. "What in the hell did ya do that for, Billy?" he yelled.
"Well," Billy says, "That son-of-a-bitch said we couldn't hunt on his land.
So I showed him."
Billy got back in the truck laughing inside knowing he got
Tom real good but before he could head down the road ole Tom he jumped out
of the truck, threw a round in his gun, took aim and shot Chet's horse.
"What in the hell did you do that for, Tom?" cried Bill. "Well," said Tom,
"I thought I'd show him a thing or two myself!"
Maine, the Way Life Should Be?
Day after day, time and again, I am witness to
extraordinary displays of ignorance and I guess I'm so damned ignorant
myself I can't figure it out. Maybe someone who reads this can help me out
here.
We all know that Maine is a unique place - well, at least
those of us who were born here. The rest just say it but they don't know
what it means. Now Maine ain't for everybody, thank God. It takes a certain
kind of a person to endure the winters in Maine and if you oversleep you
stand a good chance of missing out on summer.
No one will argue about its' beauty - the rugged
coastline, majestic mountains, abundant lakes and rivers and the vast
expanse of junk yards from one end of the state to the other.
I met a family one time from California. They came to
Maine to go fly-fishing and after they had spent several days driving down
roads they had found in their new Maine Atlas and Gazetteer looking for
likely places to fish, I caught up with the mom and asked her what she
thought of Maine. Her response was a gem. "It is really a beautiful state
but it seems that nearly every home we go by has several old school buses
and a junk yard to go with them."
Now that I have established the fact that Maine is
beautiful, I'll get on with my story(s). People flock
to Maine for several reasons but the one common denominator seems to be this
profound statement: "I came to Maine to get away from the crap I was living
in!" Being a country boy and all, I had to look for more details as to what
"crap" meant. I learned that it meant congestion, too many rules and
ordinances, noise, unfriendly neighbors - I think you get the picture.
Being a Mainer and all, I understood immediately that I
wouldn't like living that way but I just can't figure it out. Why is it that
as soon as them folks land here because they said they really loved Maine
and had to get away from that other "crap", do they want to turn Maine into
what they just left behind? I don't understand. I'm too dumb I guess.
I heard one old-timer tell me that Maine used to be part
of Taxachusettes (my intentional misspelling in case you were wondering) and
now they are buying it back one house lot at a time. And one of the first
things they do when the buy one of them house lots is to run over to their
new neighbors and accuse them of encroaching on their property line and
threaten to sue them.
No matter how hard I try, I'll never understand it. Maine
is slowly disappearing - perhaps one house lot at a time and the slogan of
"Maine the way life should be" will soon become "Maine, what happened?"
Skiers
I was just the other day reading some of David Jenson's
ramblings at his Maine Cottage
Garden web site. He has a section in there about Maine and some wicked
good humorous stuff. I was reading through his story called
"The White
Knuckle Express" and I had everything I could muster to keep from
laughing. Anyways, you know it brought back some memories and he's got a
pretty darned good description of what really takes place during the hours
of 4 and 10 p.m. on Fridays and Sundays during the ski season. Joe Perham
has a story he tells about a BMW and a porcupine in describing some of them
drivers. I won't go into details but if you ain't figured it out yet it's
got to do with comparing pricks! I only said that because I know any red
blooded Mainer would a got it but I'm not sure about the guy driving the
BMW.
All this brings me to a story! My wife and I
used to own a bed and breakfast right near one of them "premier ski resorts"
in Maine (and it wasn't The Loaf). The first year we opened and the first
onslaught of guest we had came from street level in Beantown. One executive
was driving a BMW and I discovered the darned car could talk. Oh, ayuh!
Darndest thing I ever heard. I was out shoveling some snow - that's what you
do in Maine in the winter when you got all the firewood in - and this guy
drives up and gets out of his car, leaves it running and goes inside to
check to make sure he's in the right place. Now us Mainers might be a lot of
things to a lot of people but one thing most of us know is where in the heck
we are. Well, hell, all he had to do was take a second or two and read the
friggin sign hanging out front.
When he got out of the car, it began talking. I had to
look around because the voice I was hearing was one you really only hear on
television or something. It took me by surprise I want to tell ya! It was a
deep, soft, sexy woman's voice that kept repeating over and over, "You're
door is open. Please close your door." "Your door is........" Blah Blah
Blah! Now, again, I hate awful to pick on these types of people but do you
really need some recorded sexy, sultry voice telling you that you left your
door open, you idiot?
The next morning it was wicked cold. I don't mean cold. It
was WICKED cold. I was about to head off to work so I went outside and
started my old Jeep Wagoneer that was about 30 years old. It cranked a bit
slow but it took off and purred like a kitten. I decided to check with the
guests to see if they wanted to get their cars going before I left in case I
could offer some assistance and I want to tell you they took one look at my
car and then one look at me and the laughs filled the dining room. The guy
with the robot girlfriend in his BMW began to have some second thoughts and
he went out to start his car and you know what? The damned thing wouldn't
start and he wasn't very happy about it either. I know because I overheard
him talking back to his talking car and it wasn't very pleasant what he was
saying.
I couldn't leave it at that. I had to say something! "Ayuh,
whether you pay $3,000.00 or $30,000.00 dollars, if they don't start ain't
none of 'em worth a piece of crud (well, not quite but close enough)!"
Tom Remington 2004 |
