I'm 6'2", my wife's 4'9" (hey, she didn't even notice I'm bald for the first two years) but we're the same height lying down.

She really married me to reach things down from shelves and dust up high.

Seriously, 5'6" ain't short, I've known men shorter than that and some taller than me - but they're all human.

But I have more than 100 tools. How would I make things instead of buying them - how would I repair things instead of replacing them, how would I show the kids these skills unless I had my tools.
Today I've used...

Pickaxe, shovel, spade, trowel, big spirit level, small spirit level, bolster, pointed cold-chisel, lump hammer, block plane, tenon saw, long straight-edge, mixing bucket, watering can, hacksaw, socket-set, small screwdriver, wire cutters, broom; and probably a dozen more that are so commonplace that I don't recall using them. And this isn't for work, this is at home. (I'm a kept-man - I send the wife out to work while I look after the kids!)

We used to have a lot of trouble in Hounslow, West London with the dibbles pavement parking outside their station. I worked next door and got so fed up with it I had a word with one of the senior cops who promised he'd peer out of the window from time to time and shout at whoever did it.

Worked, too!

Freeman:"I mean really, who are you going to rob: the guy with the .45 on his waist or the guy that doesn’t?"

Let's think this through then.

Someone goes out intending to rob someone.
He sees you with a gun on your hip.
He chooses to rob someone else.

The upshot is that /someone/ has been robbed. What you've done by carrying an visible weapon is pushed the problem onto someone else who doesn't carry a gun. You may think that's OK - you're probably thinking that /everyone/ should carry a gun so there'll be no robbery.
EVERYONE.

What about children?
What about weird people with voices in their heads?

By your standards they would presumably deserve the perceived protection that a weapon offers and you'd be happy for them to carry a gun - indeed, you'd expect them to carry a gun.
Now that /is/ weird!

Me - I'd rather not.

There's a chip shop near my brother called Chip and Fin.

I can't quite understand what it is they're trying to prove.

If they want my respect, earning it by behaving in a sociable manner might be more appropriate than making me pretend to respect them out of fear of what might happen if I don't.

I can't quite understand what it is they're trying to prove.

If they want my respect, earning it by behaving in a sociable manner might be more sociable than making me pretend to respect them out of fear of what might happen if I don't.

Groucho Marx!

(I would never look like a Rorschach Test that would look like me)

Wow! I've got a Blackjack Avion! It's not finished and technically it belong to an ex boss, but since I've been paying for the garaging for the last seven years and haven't seen him for nearly all of that I might dig it out and finish it. There's few bits we didn't buy, but I can either make them or see whether Richard Oakley's still got any.

That's not a xylophone - they have wooden bars. That's a glockenspiel.

Daft cat, though. We don't get as much fun from ours - she was twenty last month and spends most of her day sitting quietly on the warmest lap she can find, leaving the house only under hydraulic pressure.

The bloke deserves a medal for parting rich fools from so much money in one go. As for the specious justifications - they're just part of the show.

I also wonder to whom in Britain he's been speaking. I don't feel threatened walking around towns here, nor does my 4'9" wife!

It's not as if this is anything new. Anyone remember Sherlock Holmes "The Man with the Twisted Lip"?

Anyway, lots of people lie to you for money - politicians, advertisers and so on - she's just another one.

Diesel is already near enough $10/gallon in the UK. Then again, that's for one of our proper man-sized UK gallons, not these skimpy "gallon-lite" things you Americans have!

"[piracy] costs the U.S. record industry at least $3.7 billion annually in sales. "The magnitude of this [theft] is incalculable," says Richard L. Gabriel, lead national counsel for the RIAA"

So - if he can't calculate it, did he just pluck the $3.7 billion out of thin air?