Head Scratchers

I see things all the time that make me wonder how they came to be. What was the twist of circumstances that created a certain sign, a certain situation? Sometimes it comes clear later what was going on. Occasionally I actually talk to someone who has knowledge of the situation and can explain it. A vast majority of the time I am left scratching my head and wondering about stuff for days. Following are three.

On a sign next to the entrance of a small cemetery off of Malloy Bridge Road in Ferris, Texas claiming "Free Dirt" and a telephone number. Okay, are the two connected? Is the free dirt coming from the cemetery? or did someone just feel like this was the ideal place to put the sign? Are families of the recently deceased really the target market for this product? "Slow down the hearse! I need to get the number for free dirt!" Wait, shouldn't the free dirt from the grave belonging to the family? or is it another revenue stream that the cemetery thought up? My guess is that you don't get a lot of repeat business in the cemetery business, so you have to maximize the sale per lot. Still scratching my head on this one.

In the paper this morning there was an article that 47% of the households in the US do not pay federal taxes. Apparently, if you make $50K or less and have a household of 4 members, then the credits and the tax breaks actually make money or the credits keep you from paying. We just passed "tax freedom day" a couple of days ago (the day where the taxes are covered for the year under the income you have generated, April 1) That means that the heavy lifting is being done by 53% of the rest of the citizens. How can this be? People making under that amount are smarter than I was when my income was at that level, I've always paid. Now that I think about it, this is actually better than how most churches run where 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. Is it possible that the government has a better system than the church? Scary thought.

Finally, I read in the paper where the chairman of Augusta National skewered Tiger Woods about all the damage he had done to golf and the world in general by his escapades. It seems a little late in the game to be jumping on that bandwagon, but Augusta folks do things their way. Okay, we all make mistakes, but as I have said before, Tiger messed up because there is no one he admires more than himself. There is one way to get his attention. If the board for the Masters came up with a moral clause in their tourney, then applied it all the golfers, you would end up with a band of monks playing at the Masters. They will sell their firstborn to play in that tourney. "Tiger, if you mess up again, no more Masters." You would then have stories of Tiger shoving women in front of the bus to get away from them. It is a puzzlement to me that no one has thought to put this in the by-laws of the events.

Godspeed out there to the rest of the bewildered.
Don