Here's another proposed Constitutional Amendment to help cut down on the bidding of tax rates. Everyone pays the same tax rates.

No governmental unit shall permit a tax abatement or relief to any entity in an attempt to entice such entity to move to the region servicing the tax. That is, no state, county or city may reduce or eliminate taxes to any entity (corporate or personal) as an inducement to cause that entity to create a business, relocate an existing business, not leave, or expand a currently existing business. All entities that exist under the auspices of the taxing authority shall pay the same taxing rate as all other entities.

Proposed Constitutional Amendment for candidates

Any elected office-holder, when announcing candidacy for some other office, shall immediately relinquish their current office.

Since it is clear that the office holder is no longer interested in holding the current office, and that constituency served by that office will no longer have full representation and services while the office-holder pursues another office, the office-holder shall be removed from office.

The office-holder will be replaced by whatever means is appropriate to the office, similar to the situation where the holder resigns or dies in office.

Dinner at Seahorse Grill in Dearborn

TheWife[tm] and I decided to go out to dinner this evening. Some of the people I work with have been lunching at The Seahorse Grill in Dearborn, and they seemed to like it. We opened the front door to leave and found that it had been snowing for several minutes, and sticking! The first real snow of the season. We finally got to the place, ordered (fried catfish -- not as good as the catfish houses in central Arkansas, but good) and sat down. The next table had a little girl, probably about 2 years old, that was very fidgety. The father saw me watching, amused, and asked me if I wanted the child. I politely declined, pointing out that I'd been there, done that, didn't need to do it again. The parents were tiring of chasing her all over the restaurant and trying to get her to sit, when something amazing happened. The manager of the restaurant brought teddy bear to amuse the teddy bear. Once she got calmed down, the manager then brought over a small bowl of banana pudding. The little girl was calm and quiet the rest of the meal.

I like 'nana pudding, so I was tempted to start acting out and getting fidgety.

Anyway, The Seahorse Grill in Dearborn. Recommended.

Some celeb is pregnant

I see that several people have posted commentary about another celebrity is pregnant.

Yawn.

Is this the new "I have a new [movie|album|whatever] that will flop" promotion machine tool?

We live on a short block across the street from an elementary school. Being in close proximity to the school, one might think that we would get a lot of kids begging for candy. But, between the short block (surrounded by long city blocks) and the kids natural fear of the school, we really don't get that many beggars. So, we end up with a lot of excess candy. Living here for several years, one might think that we would learn.

We had 24 kids of various ages begging for candy. One of the kids was dressed in a 20's-style zoot suit, complete with a snazzy tie and fedora. He was walking home, passing by our house, and I invited him to come back for more. So, I guess we had 25 kids.

Some kids were walking by on a side street, ignoring our street, until The Wife[tm] yelled to them to come get our candy. While they were on our street, they visited 3 or 4 other homes before resuming their side street route.

A new spider head

After racquetball last night, I cut up another pumpkin for the spider head, and mounted it on the body. Here's what the finished product looks like:

The spotting on the top of the spider is the blood of its most recent victim. Curious that the blood tastes like Louisiana Hot Sauce. Hopefully that'll keep the squirrels away at least for a day or so.

Happy Halloween!

Free pumpkin for squirrels

Last year, I made one of these pumpkin spiders that I found on MAKE magazine's website. It went over pretty well -- people thought it was cute, it was easy to build, etc.

This year, I took the PVC pieces and painted them: black for the elbows and florescent green for the legs. The florescent green really stands out, but it doesn't cover very well. So, it's been out in the yard for a week or so, with just the body in place. I didn't want to put the head on, as the pumpkin would just rot. Today, I took a smaller pumpkin, cut out some eyes and a small hole for an electrical wire, for use as the head. I took a Christmas light C7 string of bulbs, removed all the bulbs except for a purple and a green bulb at the end, and ran them into the head, and finally took some long screws and screwed the two pumpkins together. Since it wasn't possible to see it during the day, I was looking forward to seeing it at night.

Only problem is that shortly after putting the head on, the neighborhood squirrels said "Hey, free pumpkin!", and ate about half of the head. And, chewed the light string wire in two, as well. Since the lights weren't on, they didn't get electrocuted.

Sigh...

Ok, the next available time to fix up a new head is Tuesday. Hopefully, the squirrels will have had their fill. Pictures when I get it finished.