Half of your EVERY income tax dollar gets spent on death and destruction!
Maybe as a semi-wrathful frog I should start by flailing a 2 by 4? Would a grabber like “Half your EVERY Dollar!” be better than the eyelid-closing title of my previous post, which everyone should read and think about, “Military-Industrial Complex”?
In any case, I must do a better job with Categories so it’s easier to find posts. Inciting y’all to read the posts in the first place is not the same as helping you find potentially interesting ones from the past. Already, I’m having trouble finding posts about specific topics from the fairly recent past. I’ve forgotten what content went with some titles.
What the title of this post tries to suggest is first, especially when I’m in semi-wrathful frog mode, I always try to write something more worth reading than “ribbit”. There’s so much non-fact-based, not-thought-through ribbiting around. I try hard not to add more. The third part of the title, “2 by 4”, I already explained. “Scuse me” refers to the culture in which I was raised where 2 by 4s were frowned upon. If you had something worth saying, the expectation was that in most circumstances you would have the grace to keep it to yourself. If it really had to be said, you should do so with minimal fuss. So, as an example, here’s a true story from a Brit friend.
Early one morning when my friend was playing in a nearby gravel pit, he found a metal canister. It looked quite old. What could it be? He broke off some of the corrosion with a rock and exposed a plate with strange writing. Maybe his dad would know what it was? He took it home. “I don’t know,” said his dad. “I have to go to work in a minute but give it here, I’ll take it in the shed and buff it up a bit.” Dad went out and had a go with his grindstone. After he got home from work that afternoon and had his tea, he put the canister in a cardboard box, strapped it on the back of his bicycle and peddled off then waited patiently in line with the box under his arm until it was his turn. When it was, he said: “Erm… ‘Scuse me…” to the policeman on the other side of the counter, “My boy found this. Looks like German writing. Thought it might be an old bomb, like. Thought I’d best bring it here.”