Nilknarf Journal

14 March 1997

06:02 Another nine hours of sleep, and I'm feeling great! I think that I'm caught up now, finally. I spent some time looking at the comet again (Hale-Bopp) and it appears to be separating from the sun, meaning that it's on its' way out of the solar system now. Although I could be wrong about that. It also appears to be crooked, the head is no longer symmetrical.

The threatened snow/rain did not occur, and now the skies are crisp and clear. It is again cold, probably 25 degrees F. It is supposed to stay cold 'til Monday, then get beautiful again.

I anticipate a busy weekend... I put some ads in the paper for the house and computer and my band saw. I'm hoping to get enough money for my trip to Texas, otherwise it'll go on the Visa, and I really don't want to do that.

I've just got some little details left to do on the rental house, then I'm done with it, once the carpet gets installed. I'm going over today and work and clean the carpets that we're going to reuse, and clean up all of the tools, etc. that are still there. I also need to do some more outside work, but that may wait 'til Monday when the weather isn't quite so cold.

Our Kansas legislators believe that they deserve a 92% raise. There are plenty of people who will argue with them about that. They have made Kansas the laughingstock of the nation with the highest personal property taxes in the nation on automobiles; so they whine when they are in the bottom 30% of the national pay scale for legislators. The huge raise is "to bring them in line with the national average". Most Kansans would believe that this would be OK if they could get us back down to the National Average in taxation. Otherwise, they are, as usual, being greedier than the national average. Which is also already pretty greedy.

How many more people can our nation support that are non-productive? Of course, my idea of productive is rather skewed; it does not include anything that lawyers, legislators or governmental regulators commonly do. It does include producing goods or services that may improve the public well-being, like fast food or wheat or corn or computers.

At some point in life we're supposed to outgrow blind idealism. I have yet to get there.

Incidentally, I have noted that the number of hits that this page gets is inversely proportional to the average national weather; this means that my readers are generally intelligent and well-rounded people and that they are capable of taking breaks from the web when they want to! Congratulations!