Looky here!! A work-from-home-Friday video on Friday!!

I’ll warn you, it’s extra-super-long. That’s because after I talk about Halloween and politics, I added in the high-lights from a couple of previous Friday recordings that never got posted.

So, not extra-super-long, but extra-bonus-goodness! (See! It’s all about the spin!)

This isn’t a white board quip. It’s not a quip at all, actually, just a turn of phrase that cracked me up today. So I’m posting it under Conversation Enhancements.

…enough icing to make even the most die-hard sugar addict develop a facial tic.

From Cake Wrecks.

I’m getting dangerously close to burnout on the political news. I’m still passionate about it, but with nothing really new happening and both parties playing an awful lot of the same, old, tired, political games, it’s hard to stay interested. Thus, today’s quip is an old, tired, political one.

Anyone who is capable of being elected president should on no account be allowed to do the job.
– The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

If you don’t know what the chocolate drive is all about click here and here and here and here.

I just got word from my old buddy Adam. He’s now stationed in Illinois, but he put me in contact with Captain Scott Black in Iraq who will receive and distribute this year’s chocolate crop. So, once again, I’ll have a box out at my work and in “the Loft” (the youth room at Glenview Baptist Church).

If you can’t get to one of those places, then you are left to contribute money. You can use the link at the bottom of the sidebar to do that. Again, my company has graciously offered to pay for all the shipping. So, any donations will be used to purchase chocolate at the lowest prices I can find (including after-Halloween and after-Christmas sales).

Chocolate in any form will be gladly accepted, but the wounded warriors, understandably, prefer full sized candy bars over the small “snack” sizes.

I caught a very interesting bit of trivia on the radio this morning and I couldn’t wait to share it.

I knew that the word “silhouette” was French because it’s retardedly spelled (stupid French). But I didn’t know it’s origin was economic.

A silhouette is an image portrayed in shadow, a void that implies an object rather than the object itself being portrayed. In the late 18th century, if you couldn’t afford an expensive portrait, you could settle for a silhouette portrait in which your profile is traced from your shadow.

Here’s where it gets interesting. (I promise.) The word “silhouette” comes from Etienne de Silhouette who was the French finance minister the late 1750’s. Back then France was at war with England and they were running out of money. So Silhouette came up with an idea that sounded great on paper (or in speeches).

There were a few really rich people in France and a whole bunch of poor people. So, rather than try and tax a bunch of poor people, Silhouette decided to only tax the rich, and he taxed the snot out of them. He taxed them to the point that the wealth of the few was nearly spent. They were forced to melt down their golden trinkets and silverware in order to pay the taxes.

With much of the wealth spent, no one could afford painted portraits, so they resorted to cheap shadow paintings. It became a running joke that Silhouette had turned France’s wealth into a shadow of what it had been before. And the shadow paintings became known as silhouettes.

I wonder what item will be called an obama after he taxes the wealth of America into oblivion.

…

In case you were wondering (or even if you never have) I found a great resource to help you understand exactly how taxes are paid in the U.S.

The National Taxpayers Union breaks down the percentage of taxes paid by the taxpayer’s percentile of AGI. (That’s adjusted gross income, the number calculated by your 1040 tax form.)

In 2006, the top 1% of earners (that’s the 3 million richest people in the U.S., with an average income around $400,000) paid almost 40% of all the taxes that the government received, while the bottom 50% (150 million people with an average income less than $32,000) paid less than 3% of the tax receipts. And this is with all the Bush tax cuts in place! And Obama still wants to raise taxes on the rich. Apparently he thinks that they need to pay even more. 50%? 60%? Maybe he should do like Silhouette did and make the richest 1% pay all 100% of the taxes.

How exactly does he expect to make poor people richer by making rich people poorer? It didn’t work in France and it won’t work here either.

Last weekend we had a father-son camping trip for the middle school guys from my church. It was the first time I’ve slept in a tent in two years. We had a smaller than hoped for turn-out (11 all together), but we still had a great time.

I had hoped we could stay at Mineral Wells, but I underestimated the lead time on getting a reservation by about a month and they were booked solid. The helpful folks in Austin who take reservations by phone for all of the state parks in Texas helped me find Cedar Hill State Park. I’d been to Cedar Hill before to ride mountain bikes, but it never occurred to me to camp there.

I drove down a couple weeks ago to check out the camping. They have a rediculous number of sites there (more than four times the sites at Mineral Wells) but 90% of them are, shall we say, overly civilized. I’m talking 20 foot concrete slabs with water and electric hook-ups for your aluminum house on wheels. On my scouting trip I saw the flicker of TVs through the windows of many “fake-campers'” rigs.

Still, I was able to find a small pocket in one far corner of the park where the camp sites looked like camp sites: thick trees, shielded from the road, with just enough space to set up some tents around the fire ring. Plus these had access to a “beach” on Joe Pool Lake (and by “beach” I mean a flat, dirt area between the trees and the mud).

A quirk of the reservation system is that you can reserve a spot at a particular park for a particular date, but you can not reserve a particular spot. The actual camp site numbers are given out “first come, first serve” at the park on the day of the reservation.

I left the house at 5:30 AM to get to the gate by 6:30. I was first in line, but there was, in fact, a line by 7, when the office opened. Thus I was able to secure three of those coveted “more primitive” sites (#32, 42, and #43 if you’re interested).

When we pulled in that night, the place was absolutely packed. I couldn’t believe it. I was very lucky to get the sites I had picked out. There were kids riding bicycles on the park road all evening, the “clank” of horse shoes well into the night, and bright flood lights shining on noisy camp sites all around us. I felt very blessed to be sheltered from most of it by the trees around our sites. As stillness settled over the park that night, the only sound was the crickets, the wind in the trees, and the constant whirl of traffic on I-20 about a mile north of us.

Ah, well. It was still a great trip, even for a short, one-nighter. We all had a good time and stayed safe. Tent (on the ground), fire, hot dogs and smores… Yep. It was a camping trip alright!

No. I’m not sick or anything. I was just trying to imagine the following.

The quality of my life would be greatly reduced if I did not have nostrils.
– Weird Al Yankovic

I have some good footage from last week for “Work From Home Friday” that is still sitting in my camera. And this Friday I’m spending the whole day preparing for a youth camping trip. (Yes, I took a vacation day. I’m not that dishonest!)

I know that’s no comfort to your video hillarity jones, but I thought I’d let you know. Maybe, just maybe, if I can get the firewood loaded and the marshmallows bought in time, I can get last weeks video produced and posted. But I make no promises. The smores come first.

My wife, Tammy, works for a company that imports and wholesales clothing accessories (belts, purses, hats, etc.). Most of their customers are big-name stores, like Wal-Mart, Target, Kohl’s, etc. But once in a while Tammy handles an order from an unexpected customer.

Today, she processed an order from the mega-church in Houston pastored by the king of the “Prospertiy Gospel“, Joel Olsteen. What would such a church be ordering from a clothing accessory company, you ask.

Wallets.

Brilliant.

Today is my mom’s birthday! So everybody needs to go out and have some cake in her honor! Just tell your waiter, “It’s Trint’s mom’s birthday and I want cake!! Oh! And don’t forget the ice cream!” And if your spouse gives you “that look” because you’re supposed to be on a diet, tell them to get over it and just for that you’re going to eat piece too.

And it case you’re wondering, she’s turning 17 today.

Happy birthday, Mom!!