True laws are real(1)

In my town, you commit a criminal act by pitching a tent in your back yard and letting your  grandkids or friends' kids sleep overnight in it. The stated reason is to prevent thugs like me from "operating a resort without a license."

(The lads and their pup tent remain welcome; in the immortal pre-pardon words of Richard M.Nixon, "There's been a lot of good writing done in prison.)

Rendering unto Caesar

Off to town for a visit to our new Tax Majal, sometimes known as the county court house. The occasion is an approaching  deadline for forking over a four-figure sum for the privilege of continuing to live on my modest little spread.  I could pay on line, but I prefer to walk up to the  counter and write the check. It gives me a chance to glare at one or two of the Regulators, and that seems to do something for my glands.  You just know that some of these hacks wish for a law requiring us to tug our  forelocks as we submit to the  extortion.

The property tax bite this year is up 13 per cent, and that's under local governments  whose commissars are something like 80 per cent Republican.

Speaking of self-sufficiency

Could we? General Fertig's people did in the Mindanao jungle.

...curtain rods were cut into pieces and shaped to provide ammunition for .30 caliber rifles, steel was shaved from automobile springs and curled to make recoiling springs for rifles ...

Speaking of survival

Did you ever wonder why Bear Grylls never seems to slip a Bic lighter into his cargo pants  before he jumps out of the airplane?

No Boy Scouts in Britain when he was wee?