July 19, 2017 – Our RV Adventures

Daily Archives: July 19, 2017

July 19, 2017 Uncategorized

Impregnated By Kermit the Frog . . .

Jan and I headed down to the nearby 14 screen movie complex to finally see Wonder Woman. We normally like to wait for the crowd to thin out on big movies like this. And it certainly worked today, since there was less than a dozen people in the theater, including us.

Jan and I both REALLY enjoyed the movie, one of the best we’ve seen recently. I was especially happy to that they stuck very closely to the original comic book storyline EXCEPT for the fact that they moved the time period from WWII to WWI, or The War To End All Wars, as they referred to it at that time.

Gal Gadot was perfect for the part, and the

One unusual fact that has come to light since the movie came out is that Gadot was pregnant during the filming, while she was doing all the action scenes. But even stranger is the fact that they called her back this past November to redo some scenes . . . action scenes. At this point she was five months pregnant with a definite baby bump.

The solution to that was CGI (Computer Generated Graphics). They cut the abdomen out of her leather costume (which wouldn’t fit at that time anyway) and then covered her bump with a green piece of cloth. Then in post-production they took away her bump with computer graphics. Neat!

Gadot said later that in close-ups, she looked like Wonder Woman, but in the long shots she looked like she had been impregnated by Kermit the Frog.

Well Recommended.

Afterwards it was up to Willis to have dinner at Whataburger. YUM!

And now for Unintended Consequences Pt. II.

The city of Seattle, WA seems to be doubling down in the unintended consequences game.

In 2014 Seattle raised their minimum wage, already at $9.47 an hour, to $11, and then on to $13 in 2016, heading to $15 next year. So was the result of this that everyone made more money and lived happily ever after?

Not quite.

Restaurants have been closing at an increasingly faster pace since the minimum wage hikes, and the increase ramps up with the wage increase.

A recent University of Washington study shows that workers at the lower end of the wage increases, the ones going from $9.47 to $11 to $13 to $15, are now making an average of $125 LESS per month than before the increases.

And city tax revenues are down due to all the businesses closing.

Probably not what they had in mind.

Next up, in January 2016 Seattle instituted a $25 tax on gun purchases and a 5 cent a round tax on most ammo. They said the $500,000 the tax would raise would be used to study gun violence. So what happened?

Well, after a number of lawsuits to force the city to release the data, they finally admitted that the tax collected was less than $200,000. And insiders say it was really just a little over $100,000. But that’s $100,000 extra, right?

Well, yes and no.

Many (most) gun dealers moved out of the city, and the one remaining large gun dealer said he’s overall sales are down 20% and gun sales down over 60%. He’s laid off employees and is in financial trouble.

But the big kicker is that while he sent them a little over $15,000 from the new tax, he didn’t send them the usual $150,000+ in sales tax revenue and employee taxes that he normally does.

No, due to reduced overall sales, he only sent the city a little over $70,000. And now they’re losing that, because as the last dedicated gun store in Seattle, he’s leaving town too.

Don’t you just hate when that happens.

Well, maybe things got better in the city’s gun violence problem with a $100,000 of studying? Nope, not even close.

“Per the Seattle Police Department, when comparing the first five months of 2017 and the five months prior to the bill taking effect, shots fired are up 13 percent, people injured in shootings are up 37 percent, and gun related deaths have doubled.”

Ouch!