Tax Day – 2017

🎶🎶Hello tax-day my old friend.
I have mailed my return into you again.
Because an audit softly creeping…
The sound of silence🎶🎶

It is income tax deadline day and time to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Once again, and for probably the rest of my life, I have had to pay someone to do my taxes. It is not because I lack the math skills or the initiative or the reason to do them. No, it is because they are so damn complicated. I tried to do it myself 3 years ago, just to see if my numbers were somewhat in line with our accountant’s… Nope, not even close. I would have underpaid a bit more the $3900.00… That would have been so bad for us!

I have resigned myself to hiring professionals to keep me from doing anything stupid and to pay the correct amount.  I gladly pay my taxes as I really like having navy ships, great roads, infrastructure, medical care, libraries, the FAA, etc…  These things cost money and it is a shared burden that I gladly buy into.

It does however chap me a little bit to pay a fair chunk of money every year and then confronted with government waste and pork-barrel politics. Over 5 BILLION in questionable funding in 2016, including:

  1. $300,000 to study boys and girls playing with Barbie dolls.
  2. $450,000 to research whether dinosaurs could sing.
  3. $460,000 to have computers binge watch the television show Desperate Housewives in an attempt to predict and understand human behavior.
  4. $12 million by the IRS on an unused email archiving service. It failed to install the activation software.

 

And then there is the 2016 Congressional Pork Report

Film Friday – Wooden Clogs?!?

I am not a big clog wearer… But I can appreciate the work that goes into crafting them. Althuough some of the work is done by machine, it is not like the shoes are being cut to the 1/1000th of an inch on a 21st Century HAAS CNC machine. The makers of this type of footwear are using old iron to rough the shoes out and then hand fitting and finishing them. These are built for wear and use and not for souvenirs to hang in an Amsterdam tourist shop. If you take a day trip out from Amsterdam/Rotterdam into the fields and villages, you will still see these on people’s feet. The same holds true with parts of Spain and France – especially with older rural residents.

Film Friday – MAD Lathe Skills!

Watching this video took away every excuse I have ever had on why my projects don’t tun our like I want them: “My Lathe is old,” “My Chisels aren’t right,” “I need a new jig,” I don’t have quality oak/maple/mahogany/black palm/koa to work with,” “The tool rest I use is crap”… Nope, I now know that every one of those phrases was complete and utter ego-protecting crap. Watch what this Moroccan craftsman does with a medieval bow lathe, a skew chisel, cast off wood, and his toes(!!). I am humbled.