This Weekend, We're All Patriots....

Yesterday would have normally been the near-universally detested "Tax Day" here in the Land of Unlimited Opportunities Where Seldom Is Heard a Discouraging Word and the Skies Are Not Cloudy All Day. Exactly how all of that gets reduced to "USA" always amazes me but I chalk it up to a triumph of marketing and branding, and a contempt for phonics bordering on malice.

Instead of enjoying the Spring-Weather-Has-Finally-Arrived, some of us are slaving over our taxes when in previous years, the deed would have already been done and our fate sealed. 

My brother, Adam, explained, clearly and cogently (he argues for a living) exactly why you procrastinators have more time this year. Here's a second helping for you. And don't tell me you thought he was writing about Abe Vigoda. I was born at night, but not last night. Enjoy your extension, Alexander Graham Bell.

I like what I do for a living (those for whom I work, maybe not so much) but how'd you like to tell folks you work for the Internal Revenue Service? Don't be like that! Somebody has to. Point in fact, tens of thousands of people do and despite our muttered imprecations and seriously intended aspersions cast without the benefit of a net, they do what they are charged to do and what Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr. succinctly summed up, though probably pre-audit.  

We pay taxes every day. And every year we file a return to see if we are to get back some of our own money. I remember my wife filing her taxes in Germany when we lived there and her tax rate was staggering but despite the ransoms paid in withholding she rarely saw any money returned to her when she filed. 

I just assumed because her husband was universally regarded as such a sonderangebot, her government saw no reason to bless her twice. Strange how I never got around to mentioning that theory to her when we lived in her country.

Like you, in all probability, I filed my taxes already. Did I grumble? Of course, I did and anyone who tells you s/he didn't is a liar. And speaking of grumbling, I can only assume Jarod Kintz doesn't know my dulcet-toned friend from Palestine, Texas, David "Lips" Malone when he offers with some acerbity "Taxes and Texas, they have the same letters but only one can go to Hell."
-bill kenny