Did you see that last night? A pill so you won’t steal. We laugh all the time saying there is a pill for everything and now it is only the beginning.

Now is the chance for all you entrepreneurs to make it big. Get creative and come up a new pill for whatever you think people need a new pill for. We all know how easy it is to convince people of just about anything so the market must be wide open.

Let’s see what we can come up with for a new pill. How about a new pill to slip in that some one person’s drink that always disagrees with you? Or maybe a pill for John Kerry so he can make up his mind once and for all. To go along with that we would have to have one to help Dubya stop falling over his words and be able to come up with something other than, “It’s hard. It’s really hard.”

My favorite pill would have to be one to Michael Moore that would make him shave, lose 300 lbs and stop whining. Now, if they can make a pill for this then they should be able to make multiple doses so we can get rid of all the reality TV shows that suck – that would be all of them. Instead we could have another 50 or 60 versions of CSI.

These pills could be more fun than having instant cloning pills. But don’t forget that for every pill created, we need an anti-pill. Think about it!

This was part of a joke I heard a long, long time ago and I will not entertain you with it now. I read just the other day of a company out in the Pacific Northwest that tested their employees to see if they smoked. If they did, they got fired. In mid-stream, the owner of the company said he was tired of paying high health insurance costs to people who abused their health.

It would seem to me that there is no need for this man to stop at smokers. Hell, we all abuse our health everyday simply by living. Let’s fire all the fat people and then move on to the ugly looking ones. After that we can target anyone with any kind of learning disorder. I’m sure testing could prove whether or not you ate that “Quarter Pounder” last night.

So tell me, where in this brief list did you get canned? Ain’t we a bizarre breed of cat? Americans are notorious for attacking problems from the wrong direction.

American Idol Rueben Studdard is fat. Let’s fire him from his job. Dean Martin was a smoker. He should have been fired. President Bush stumbles over his words. By doing so he is probably causing some kind of chemical reaction from the stress which in turn makes his health care cost rise. In the words of Donald Trump, “Your fired!”

The list can go on forever. John Kerry looks like Lurch and statistics show that people who look that way, have greater risk of being run over by speeding dump trucks – “Your Fired!” Anna Nicole Smith! We all know what happens when someone has big…..”She’s Fired!”

Jay Leno has a chin that protrudes beyond his wood shed. He must fear getting it clipped off while riding his Harley. Sorry, Jay, your a health risk -”Your Fired!”

If this idiot who owns this company would spend more effort to improve the working environment by giving his employees a chance to LAUGH, their health costs would drop drastically.

Yard sales can be pretty much put into four categories. There are those that want to sell everything they have that is totally useless and take the money and retire. Then, there’s the ones where they really don’t want to sell anything at all because things are priced higher than what you would have to pay new at Wal-Mart. The ones that I try to avoid like the plague are the “perpetual” yard sales – where they set up shop permanently. Those are the rip-offs. But the mother lode of all yard sales are the ones where they have one thing and one thing only on their mind – get rid of this junk.

Some go to yard sales looking for bargains – like collectors. Many go to hone their skills at “dickering”. Yard sale dickering is an art all unto itself and any educated idiot could write a book about the psychology of yard sale dickering.

In its simplest form, the owner of said junk knows how much he needs to get for a certain piece of invaluable trash – let’s say 50 cents. So he prices it at $2.00. Along comes the master of yard sale dickering and spies this worthless instrument and pretends he has no interest in it. That’s the first rule of dickering – don’t show interest. That means no drooling on the object and gasping for air also is a dead give away.

Eventually, the perspective owner of garbage, offers the “entrepreneur” $1.00 for the item at which time the owner, trying to act reluctant and that he is being taken advantage of, relinquishes his valuable to the sucker for twice what he wanted for it in the first place.

Where else on earth can two people have so much fun. Their real pleasure came in walking away feeling quite certain they had screwed the other person and for what?

I know I must have way too much time on my hands by I have to ask, why, oh why? There are many things that we all take for granted and/or never question but here are some to get you thinking.

Some things go together like beans and hot dogs, fish and water, bacon and eggs, etc. etc. Well, here’s another – a hot dog and a bun. When you buy hot dogs, they generally come in a package of 10. When you buy hot dog rolls, they come in packages of 8 or 12. Who was the brain surgeon who figured that one out?

Baloney and cheese sandwich. Baloney comes in packages of 8, 12 or 16. Cheese comes in packages of 16 or 24. Not so bad but more thought could go into that.

Peanut butter and jelly. Do those come in the same size containers? No and I hate using less jelly in my sandwich so I don’t run out of it before the peanut butter.

Bacon and Eggs. One pound of bacon, on average, has 18 slices. A dozen eggs has – no, not a trick question – 12 eggs. Two eggs, over easy with bacon means two eggs and 3 pieces of bacon. You see there are always eggs left over.

Horse and carriage. Why doesn’t the horse push the carriage? That way you don’t have to ride around with a horses ass stuck in your face all the time.

Mainers have a unique way of looking at things – we all know that. Sometimes the methods to their madness leaves even the most astute scratching their logically pure minds.

It seems that John went out to his outhouse one morning for his early morning pilgrimage. In case you from away wasn’t aware of it, Mainers still use the outdoor privy more than you might realize. When he sat down, a quarter fell out of his pants pocket and landed in the pile of organic materials piled quite high.

Not knowing what to do, he yelled loud to his wife and said, “Martha, bring me a ten dollar bill!” Martha appeared shortly carrying a twenty dollar bill – that was all she had – and asked John what the problem was. He told her what had happened and puzzled she asked, “What do you need ten dollars for?” Quickly he retorted, “You don’t think I’d crawl down in there for just a quarter do you?”

I was thinking the other day about days gone by – you know what many of us refer to as “the good ole days” or “them trying times”. When we reminisce in a way to not think about the hard times we call them “good ole days” and the rest of the times it is called “them trying times”.

One of the things that made it “them trying times” was having large families – this of course was necessary because many hands were needed to tend the farm. It wasn’t unlikely to see 6, 8 and even 10 kids running around.

Joe Perham tells the story of his family of thirteen kids going to the Fryeburg Fair and his father wanted to take his family in to see the prize bull. This bull was a huge animal and was worth a lot of money for breeding purposes.

Joe’s father saw that it cost ten cents apiece to get in to see the bull and he couldn’t afford that, so he went up to the man selling tickets and said to him, “Sir, I have 13 kids here that would really like to get in there and see that prize bull but I can’t afford ten cents each for all these kids. Could you possibly give me some kind of discount because I got so many kids?” “Well,” the man said. “Mister, you wait right here. I’m going to bring the bull to see you!”

Once again a man so brilliant as myself has to question man’s intelligence. If one is constantly questioning most everything around them that the majority of people consider to be normal and acceptable, does that make them abnormal and not acceptable? I wonder. If someone is most often working to change the things around them to more closely resemble the unacceptable lifestyle they a running away from, does that make them contrary? I wonder.

I am a contradictor by nature and am constantly questioning many things. I would presume it to be “normal” to contradict other people and some of the bizarre and not so bizarre things they do but to contradict yourself is insane behavior – isn’t it?

I’m not talking about changing your mind or “flip-flopping” as we all so recently became nearly uncontrollably ill every time we heard the expression. We all do and should change our minds about things as new information becomes available to us to instrument such changes. Life would be a bitch if we didn’t change our mind about something.

But to institute change or at the least strive very hard to make change toward something we know is wrong or that we have before tried to avoid, is insane behavior.

What am I getting at? Well, if you have read much of what I write, you would know that many times I “get at” nothing. But this time it is different. I am going to do something I rarely do – insult someone from Massachusetts!

People are fleeing Taxachusettes by the SUV load and buying up land in Maine faster than the two land surveyors can get the lots plotted. If you’re from Maine, that was a joke – two surveyors. Get it? What baffles me is their logic and reasoning for wanting to get out of the “city”. It’s the rat race, the smell, pollution, ill-mannered people, rules, regulations, restrictions, taxes, fast-paced lifestyle and I could go on. They tell us they just can’t take it any more. And so they pack up and move to Maine.

Once they arrive, they go to work to make their new home as much like the one they just left. Once moved in, they go to work to make sure that their new neighbors hate them immediately. They are rude, uncaring, noisy, they question the property boundries, insult Mainers in general, complain that not enough is being done in these tiny little communities so they work to increase the tax base, yada, yada, yada.

Oh, man! That’s insane!

We have all heard the joke about why there are more women in this world than men, right? – because the male sperm won’t stop to ask directions. If you live in Maine, it is quite understandable why anyone wouldn’t stop to ask directions.

To Mainers, THE world is very small – it is basically what is around them. They know where the store is and where to get gas and where Fred’s Body Shop out on the back side of the river can be found. They drive by these places everyday and Mainers assume that the rest of the world (see above description) should know where they are located too – as important as these places are to everyday life. So, asking directions to get somewhere by people from away brings mixed results at best.

First off, the Mainer feels immediately put out for two major reasons. One, the asker of directions is so damned stupid they don’t know where Fred’s Body Shop is and that angers the Mainer to no end and two, the asker has put the Mainer in a position where they now have to speak – beyond the traditional nod or vocalized “Ayuh”. That’s why you get the answers you do when you ask a simple question like, “Can I get to Sunday River Ski Resort this way?” In case you have never asked, the answer is “Ayuh!” – no more no less.

Secondly, the Mainer just don’t like you. You are different and one reason is you ask stupid questions. Others are, you drive too fast, never use directional signals and ignore “one way” signs. But the biggest reason they don’t like you is because you think THEY are stupid. You think Mainers are lousy at giving directions, talk funny, move too slow and drive old rusted out cars – so what’s my point?

I don’t know. Do I have to have one? I’ll sum it up this way for lack of a better story to tell. I went to a meeting at a local Maine town one evening. It was a meeting to discuss whether or not the local town should limit the number of signs around the town. Being that 100% of the people in attendance knew pretty much where everything was located that they would ever have reason to visit, it was unanimous that all signs should be taken down.

Someone brought up the point – and I wouldn’t say it was me – that what if someone from out of town came to visit. How would they find their way around? I used an example of being able to find the local ski resort which can’t be seen from any direction entering town or even from any vantage point within the state of Maine unless you drive by the main entrance first. As is the case with many things in Maine, it is located in the middle of nowhere facing nothing.

The response given to the inquiry was, “How can anybody not find a mountain?”

I rest my case – as weak as it is.

That’s a common question asked by millions of people everyday – isn’t it? I thought of some “what’s up with that” questions just last night.

Here’s one. Mainers seldom if ever mow their lawns in the summer – even when they have riding lawnmowers. And if they do mow the lawn they never finish the job by doing the trimming and weed whacking – What’s up with that?

These same people though, during the winter time, have a plow on their truck and they’ll plow their driveway, front lawn, back lawn, the acre and a half out back of the house and all the way over to the neighbors totaling about 6 1/2 acres – What’s up with that?

Mainers don’t paint their houses. As a matter of fact they don’t even put siding on them. Used to be black tar paper. Now it’s Tyvec house wrap – What’s up with that?

Mainers don’t wash their cars either. We wonder why they rust out so quickly. That’s easy to see. The corrosives never get taken off – What’s up with that?

Mainers love Wal-Mart. They’ll drive 50 miles to save 10 cents on oil for their snowmobile – What’s up with that?

Mainers believe that a measure of success comes from mere possessing numbers. An example is the number of sheds they have. Instead of fixing one or two of the 13 they already have, they’ll build another – and it might not even be on their land – What’s up with that?

Mainers love “Mix and Match”. Yeah! Ever notice when driving around, you go by someone’s trailer and they’re building on an addition. The first thing they do is build a “roof over”. For those of you who don’t know, a “roof over” is a structure built strong enough to drive fully loaded pulp trucks over and it goes over your entire trailer. Now, don’t that look good – by the way, it never gets painted or completely finished. Then it’s time to build a garage to put the snowmobiles in – cars and trucks can stay outside. The garage has a “Dutch Gambrel” roof line put on it, which is different from the bridge pitch built over the trailer and the garage is never sided.

Soon they discover the garage isn’t big enough so they add a bay to one side of it and it has a shed roof over it – are you getting the picture here?

If so, What’s up with that?

You got any “What’s up with that?” stories? Send them to me.

I moved some of the older blogs into the archives today. If you want to continue reading some, the titles and links are a bit further down the page on the right but that ain’t why I’m here – to tell you that.

Help me out, if you will! I have a question to ask. Are Mainers smart or dumb? I’m puzzled! You see, I think it might be a bit of a “Catch-22″ if you know what that means – probably if you do you don’t know either whether Mainers are smart or dumb.

Mainers comes across as being very “littral” (literal). But do they come across that way because they are smart and are out-thinking the other guy or is he that way just because he’s dumber than a pole axe?

Let me give you some examples of what I’m talking about. Have you ever been asked a question like this before? “Have you ever owned a trailer with one of them big “cut-out” butterflies stuck on the side of it BEFORE?” Before what? “Have you ever shot a deeya out the winder of ya truck, BEFORE?” Again I ask, “Before what?”

Or how about this one? Mainah sitting on his piazza when a flatlander stops in front of him and asks the Mainah, “How far does this road go?” and of course the question to ask is, “I didn’t know it could GO anywhere?”

You see what I’m talking about? Why do Mainers do that? I thought I had it figured out once because “I got it!” You know, I got the joke – if it was one and so I thought I must be smart. But after I thought about it a while I realized that “getting it” was really kinda dumb and that maybe being dumb is getting it or worse yet, perhaps it never was intended to be a joke because the person disclosing must have been quite dumb or smarter than me.

So I need help. Are Mainers smarter or dumber than the average flatlander?

I ain’t too wealthy and probably never will be. Most of my cars have always been second hand and tinkered up some just to keep them running.

One day I met a talking car. It was in the winter – cold as hell outside. It had snowed the night before and we all know how friggin cold it can get after a snow in Maine. If you don’t and you live in Maine, it’s time to get out from around the kitchen stove and get outside. That way you’ll appreciate that nice warm wood fire. Note: In summers Mainers ask, “Hot Nuff Faw Ya?” In winter they ask, “Cold Nuff Faw Ya?” Ayuh!

I was in my yard shoveling some of that “partly cloudy” Joe Cupo said we were going to get, when into the driveway came this BMW. I know it was a BMW because it said so right on the front of the car.

This man got out of his car and left it running and went inside. As he walked away, I could hear someone talking. I got a little closer to hear what it was. They might a been talking to me you know. Then I heard, “Your door is open. Your door is open.” It was a woman’s voice too, so the first thing I done was check to make sure my fly was zipped up and it was so I turned around to look and I already knew the door to my barn was open because I came out that way.

I couldn’t imagine, so I got a bit closer and you know what? There wasn’t anyone in the car – at least that I could see and it bothered me some.

Well before I could get a good grasp on what was going on, that man came back and drove away and I never did figure it out.

Some days later, I run into Joe Perham and I was telling him about it and you know what he said to me? He asked me if I knew the difference between a porcupine and a BMW full of skiers headed for Sugarloaf. I said no and he said, “With the BMW, the pricks on the inside.”

I understood that alright and rightly agreed with him but I never did figure out who was doing the talking.

Marriage can be great for some people and absolute misery for others. Often we rush into marriage without taking the time to consider all the ramifications of our decision but mostly we are just too young to know the difference.

Being young and stupid is probably good in that if we were any smarter marriage would be a thing of the past. These days it seems that few people stick to their commitment and work hard to make it last. It is rare to find couples that have been married for long periods of time – for those of you who may not know, a long period of time is longer than 6 months.

I went to a 50 year wedding anniversary of a couple I had known for a few years. The bride was a cantankerous sort with a “whiskey drinkers” voice. Organizers of the party thought it would be a great idea to have the couple say a few words and maybe share some thoughts or advice with those of us in attendance.

They prodded the woman finally onto the back deck of the house and in her deepest “whiskey” voice she said, “I don’t know what all the damned fuss is about! The only reason we are still together is because we couldn’t agree on when to split up!”

This also reminds me of a fella who lived over in Eastbrook, Maine and he never married until he was 70 years old. At the wedding reception, the crowd of friends and family gathered in the newlyweds one bedroom trailer, wanted to know why he had waited so long to marry. His response was quick and full of thought. “Well,” he said. “When you find the right woman, it’s worth waiting this long for her. If you don’t find the right woman, at my age, I won’t have to live with her long.”

And finally, there was a man from Caratunk that never went anywhere without his woman. Everyone in Caratunk agreed that his woman had the face that could stop time or was that a train it would stop? Either way she was not a pleasant woman to lay eyes on, if you know what I mean.

Finally one day, Fred down at the store asked the fella why he never went anywhere without his woman. He said, “I’d rather take her with me than kiss her goodbye!”

Mainard True

Marriage can be great for some people and absolute misery for others. Often we rush into marriage without taking the time to consider all the ramifications of our decision but mostly we are just too young to know the difference.

Being young and stupid is probably good in that if we were any smarter marriage would be a thing of the past. These days it seems that few people stick to their commitment and work hard to make it last. It is rare to find couples that have been married for long periods of time – for those of you who may not know, a long period of time is longer than 6 months.

I went to a 50 year wedding anniversary of a couple I had known for a few years. The bride was a cantankerous sort with a “whiskey drinkers” voice. Organizers of the party thought it would be a great idea to have the couple say a few words and maybe share some thoughts or advice with those of us in attendance.

They prodded the woman finally onto the back deck of the house and in her deepest “whiskey” voice she said, “I don’t know what all the damned fuss is about! The only reason we are still together is because we couldn’t agree on when to split up!”

This also reminds me of a fella who lived over in Eastbrook, Maine and he never married until he was 70 years old. At the wedding reception, the crowd of friends and family gathered in the newlyweds one bedroom trailer, wanted to know why he had waited so long to marry. His response was quick and full of thought. “Well,” he said. “When you find the right woman, it’s worth waiting this long for her. If you don’t find the right woman, at my age, I won’t have to live with her long.”

And finally, there was a man from Caratunk that never went anywhere without his woman. Everyone in Caratunk agreed that his woman had the face that could stop time or was that a train it would stop? Either way she was not a pleasant woman to lay eyes on, if you know what I mean.

Finally one day, Fred down at the store asked the fella why he never went anywhere without his woman. He said, “I’d rather take her with me than kiss her goodbye!”