I’m sure you had a point but I don’t think it’s in that post.
— MadMaxMercer via reddit
Category: Stuff
Your Tax Dollars At Work
A thought for anyone who asks “Can I stop paying taxes because of this thing I don’t like/can’t use?”
There are lots of things that you pay for but will not, choose not, or hope not to use. Your tax dollars go towards welfare, unemployment, drug treatment programs, prisons, nuclear bombs, and foreign countries. Do you expect to take advantage of any of those programs in the near future?
Taxes pay for things that benefit the public at large, but don’t necessarily benefit you. That’s a price we pay for civilization.
Je’accuse
It doesn’t get much funnier than an appalled 10-year-old accusing her parents of being in the shower together.
Best response ever
Us: We are going to the Bookstore! Do you guys want to come?
Children: NO! (They didn’t even look up from their computers.)
Us: If you’re sneaky, you may get to see your Christmas presents!
Beta: I don’t want to see them. If I do, they’ll turn into underwear!
Us:
Beta: I know that’s not true, but I don’t want to risk it.
Make Like A…
I’m gonna make like General MacArthur and be right back.
[Meghan looked at me when I said this, and quipped “So you’ll be back from the store 3 years later and after most of us are dead?”]
On Terrorism and Politics
Regardless of who sets the stage, it takes a conscious decision to play the part.
[After the latest round of terrorist bombings in Paris, people are alternately blaming Presidents Obama and Bush for setting the stage for the attacks. ISIL may have been created as a response to the invasion of Iraq, and ISIL declared their responsibility for the Paris bombings, but the core of every atrocity committed in the name of ISIL is an act perpetrated by a thinking individual that could choose a different path — but didn’t.]
I Am a Turd Burglar
I am my dog’s personal turd burglar.
Most nights I take Butter, the dog, for a walk around our neighborhood. It’s good for her and it’s good for me. As a responsible citizen I clean up after her. I wouldn’t want to step in another dog’s waste, after all, so I don’t inflict it on my neighbors. I wish everyone else were so considerate — most are, not all, but that’s a different topic.
Butter isn’t very regular. Some days she craps three or four times in the span of our walk (about 45 minutes to an hour), other days there’s not a single bowel movement. If I could choose which days would be more feculent I would pick garbage night so that I wouldn’t have to carry the bags very far, but I don’t get to choose so sometimes I wind up carrying around a lot of purloined stool.
She pees a lot too, but that seems to go alright because I don’t hassle her about where she makes water and I certainly don’t go back for it. But her manure is fair game for pilfering, and it’s mine, all mine.
I think Butter has a vague idea that we do our business in the bathroom instead of outside. I find the dichotomy interesting, actually: a dog’s bathroom is outside, in the open. If a person made them defecate and urinate inside their house, and other people found out, that person would be considered weird (and probably a bit filthy) and no one would want to go visiting at their home. The flip side of that coin is, if I am caught soiling the ground outside I could be arrested for disorderly conduct and possibly charged with other offences — even if I do it in the bushes and offer to scoop everything into this nice little baggy I brought with me.
When it comes time to make doody I imagine Butter’s internal monologue goes something like this:
“uhh… hold on… ohohohoh uungh… ahhhhhhhhhhhh
“oh I feel better, time to kick it away and clean up —
“why is he yelling at me to stop? Doesn’t he like clean —
“ugh no he’s fiddling with the rustling things again. He’s going to —
“oh gawd yeah he’s picking it up again. Why do you have to make it weird?
“dude.” Looks at me reproachfully. “If I drop a deuce in the house you yell at me. I do it out here and you insist on bringing it all the way home with us. What’s up with that?
…
“gawdammit everywhere I sniff it smells like my poop now. How can we search for everyone else’s scat if all I smell is my own?
“You’re a moron, did you know that mister?”
And so it goes. From her perspective I stalk her in order to plunder her excrement and keep it for myself. I think I confuse her a little, but not too much because she’s not that smart.
Humans, on the other hand, supposedly are smart. We recognize that dogs are a paradox.
She might be the smart one, though. After all, she gets free room and board, and a personal turd burglar.
Drywall is UP!
Our latest home-improvement project has reached a milestone: we have hung the ceiling in the dining room.
Meghan and I completed the ceiling in a one-day marathon of equipment procurement and hard work. We finished the wall section the next day after returning the rented panel-lift and truck.
Next up: “mudding” and removing the remaining sections of wall paper.
Power Tools
Home improvement can be a real pain in the ass. Buying new tools makes it fun again!
Today’s project involves removing baseboard trim that was installed before the hardwood floor. (who does that?!) It’s nearly impossible to remove, so we’re going to cut it out so it’s even with the floor instead, and install new trim the right way.
Welcome to New England
It snowed today.
Well, they were really flurries but still, it snowed today. I believe that this is the earliest snow I have ever seen in southern New England.
I have a hypothesis that the earlier the snow and cold come, the milder the winter will be. I’m hoping this rings true this year. I’m no fan of global warming, but I’m also not into paying huge heating bills either.