Yesterday was another one of those "Here's your

sign" days.

I am weeding the hill in the front yard and a walker-bystopped and asked me what I was doing.

Now, I am weeding the hillside, sitting on my ass with a weeding tool that actually looks sort of like a bayonet or some kind of fighting knife. It's a good tool, made in Scandanavia and perfect for weeding, especially for dandilions and tap rooted weeds.

It is obvious that I am weeding. I am sitting on my ass, weeding tool in hand, cart full of pulled-up weeds parked next to me.

"I am practicing my lane mine detection skills," I reply. "I do not have a mine detector handy and this is too close to the house for me to blow them in place. Too bad. If this was the back yard, I'd just run a row of Bangalore torpedos the length of the yardand crank them off and look for sympathy explosions, but I can't here or I will damage the house."

The idiot looked aghast. "There are land mines in your yard?"

"I do not know. That's whay I am looking for them. Just making sure my yard is safe."

He looked shaky and walked off.

Five minutes later the police arrived.

He pulled up.

"What is going on here," the cop asked.

"OK, I was here weeding this hill, right Pretty obvious?" I answered.

"I see that," said the cop.

"So some jerk asked me what I was doing and I told him I was looking for land mines. Some time ago I decided that God put stupid people here for my personal entertainment. Before that stupidity angered me. Now it amuses me."

"Land mines, huh?" the cop asked, rhetorically.

"Yeah," I answered. "As a perrson who makes his career dealing with stiupid people, you should know where I am coming from."

The cop laughed. "Oh, I do. By the way, if you do find any land mines, let me know. I'll have EOD remove them."

"Roger that," I answered, and the cop drove off.

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ANother double post.

I mentioned to someone that I am hiring an Amish roofing crew and he got mildly upset and went off on how the Amish pay no taxes, which is a out and out lie.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY escapes taxes.

While it is true the Amish do not pay into Social Security, it should be clear that they do not draw from it at all. They take care of each other.

It is also true that they, for the most part, pay no property taxes because they do not individually own their property. The church owns it, and therefore it is tax exempt. It should also be noted that schools are paid for by property taxes and the Amish have their own school system, so that's pretty much a wash there.

The church ownership tax break is someting available to all of us. To take advantage of it, all one has to do is turn the ownership of their property to their church with the agreement that they can live there for the rest of their lives. a small handful of non Amish people have done that over the years, but most of us opt not to do that, choosing to pay property taxes instead. Our choice.

Now, I'll give this guy credit in that he looked at me and went straight to the computer and looked up what I said.

He educated himself and returned to me.

"What you said is pretty much true," he said. "Nobody escapes death and taxes."

"It's not taxes that the Amish skip out on," I deadpanned. "It's death."

"Death?" he asked, looking perplexed.

"Yup. Death. They escape death."

"How do you figure that?" Ne asked. Now he looked really confused.

"Have you ever been to an Amish funeral?" I asked.

"No," he replied. "Can't say I have."

"Ever seen an Amish funeral?" I asked.

"No. I haven't seen one."

"Well, there you go," I replied, and walked off.








my other blog is:http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/