[Taxacom] Happy Thanksgiving?

[Kenneth Kinman]

Joel,   
     I guess this is all off topic, but I'll bite since things are
pretty slow at present.  Can a hotel actually prevent you from leaving
the country because you can't pay your bill?  Especially from the United
Kingdom (one of our strongest allies)?              
     In any case, it just goes to show you that unnecessary (especially
long-distance) travel is to be increasingly avoided.  Staying closer to
home saves inconvenience, money, time, pollution, or even being groped
by TSA at the airport, not to mention all of the other ways air travel
(in particular) now provides inconvenience and aggravation with little
comfort and greater cost.  Coin-operated bathrooms on airplanes are
perhaps the next step.  Being mugged is an additional concern depending
on where one is going (although Wales is presumably less probletmatic
with respect to mugging or terrorism than in many other places).  
        And how much excess radiation does one get flying into the
stratosphere in transoceanic  flights?  Certainly more than the body
scans that some people ignorantly avoid and prefer getting TSA-groped or
even having urine bags punctured.  People are so pennywise and pound
foolish when it comes to radiation and a lot of other things.          
      Even more importantly, why do we continue to have back-to-back
major holidays during the worse possible time of the year weatherwise
(or should I say that we are weatherdumb, and dumb in many other ways)?
Millions will go through the same travel hysteria next month when
another wave of travelling gets all the new headlines, because of
weather or TSA groping or whatever.  Just pray that it doesn't end up
with a terrorist attack that slips through the cracks because TSA is
distracted by idiotic screening of children and their great
grandmothers.    
       In any case, Jesus was most likely born around April, so
celebrating Christmas in December is probably kind of inappropriate and
stupid in the first place (and perhaps more likely based on a pagan
holiday).  Christmas in April, and perhaps Thanksgiving in October would
make a lot more sense and avoid a lot of weather-related deaths,
injuries, and the spread of winter-related diseases.  Which is truly
more important, intelligent planning or blind tradition?  And as long as
the merchants get all their money-grubbing holidays in there somewhere,
why should they gripe about when they occur?   
       But what would be even more helpful would be less long-distance
travel in the first place, especially overseas.  Most "tourism" is a
slothful and polluting waste of energy and resources by people who have
too much time on their hands and not enough sense to spend their time
and resources closer to home.  If we want to get serious about global
warming, species extinction, and spreading diseases, cutting a lot of
stupid mobility for the sake of tourism would be a major place to start.
A lot of  tourism just caters to the slothful doing far too many
slothful things. And even for those who are not slothful, whose needs a
cruise ship that becomes  disease-ridden or losing power when you could
get good food and entertainment closer to home. The grass is not always
greener elsewhere although the commercials may try to get you to think
otherwise.       
         ---------Thankful I am at home,
                                   Ken              

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Joel Hallan wrote:
    I'm writing this with tears in my eyes,my family and I came down
here to Wales,United Kingdom for a short vacation unfortunately we were
mugged at the park of the hotel where we stayed,all cash,credit card and
cell were stolen off us but luckily for us we still have our passports
with us. 
We've been to the embassy and the Police here but they're not helping
issues at all and our flight leaves in less than few hours from now but
we're having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager
won't let us leave until we settle the bills,i'm freaked out at the
moment. 
Joel 
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family