EZ Pay Taxes

 

Come on down folks. Time to pay your fair share to live in this country. It’s easy peasy. Two little math problems (ask your kids to help if necessary), sign your name, drop it in the postal blue box and you-are-done.

Don’t forget to put your credit card number or bank debit or some form of acceptable currency the government can use to buy bullets, pay manufactures for planes and warships, to feed the armies around the world and fix the bridges and stuff.

It cost some scratch to live in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Braves (but the indigenous people will have to change that). This is the Federal Government and they know how to spend money. They buy plots of land and call them states. They tout we are the greatest, most powerful and ‘wealthiest’ country on the planet, but we can’t seem to balance our budget without borrowing from some other countries bank.

So here is you chance to donate to all the neat stuff this government can spend money on. It only comes around once a year that the feds come a knocking with their palms out.

Just like tithing to your house of worship, you are giving your fair share so our elected officials will have the dough to makes laws, holidays, restrictions and regulations.

What about all the exceptions and exemptions and deductions and credits?

To simplify the tax system and get rid of all those other forms, this is the Federal Income Tax for dummies. No explaining to the IRS why your money should not be charged because you bought a home or paid sales tax or are down on your luck or want to charge off your hairdo as a business expense.

You got X amount of money. The Federal Government wants 15% of it to pay the bills. If you don’t like it, elect a different congress representative who can balance a budget.

Last year I suggested the government just sends a bill. They know how much money you have. They know how much tax you’ve paid. They know where you go to work, church, buy your gas and food, how many televisions you watch and how many offspring you’ve made (they are giving you a $12,550 deduction on every person in your household so keep at it). Your philanthropy is nice but not a deduction and churches are a business and should pay their fair share with no exemptions.

I’ve mailed my taxes in and will await the deposit or an audit letter. Next year I’ll probably try the online service, but when I can mail an envelope for 15¢ rather than give away my credit card number, the snail-mail is good enough for me. The refunds have always been like an unexpected bonus for vacation or special purchase.

Uncle Sam is waiting. The clock is ticking.

Dissection

 

Don’t remember if it was junior high or high school, but I imagine it was high school for us kids to handle sharp objects although we had shop class with power tools in junior high. It wasn’t elementary school with rounded point plastic scissors and white paste.

Anyway it was science class. I don’t think it was called chemistry but it did have the periodic table of chemical elements. It was a room with long flat tables (instead of desk) and beakers and vials of liquids that when mixed together became a magic show.

There were no goggles or special ventilation so the room smelled like a hospital. We didn’t have gloves but I think we borrowed aprons from the home economics class.

There was talk about plants and photosynthesis and pollination (no, there were no sex ed. classes). We just wanted to know how to make bombs or drink it and get drunk.

On this day we were about to learn about the internal anatomy…. Of a frog.

A living frog.

 The croaker hadn’t croaked yet so it was still hopping about trying to figure out why everything smelled funny. This is a guy who lives in a swamp but this school classroom was not a preferable place to be. If he/she had any idea of what was about to happen I don’t know. They would sit there in that froggy squat and bulging neck looking at you with those big eyes saying, “Knee Deep, Knee Deep”.  

Now there were books with layered graphics on plastics and gigantic charts with arrows and circles and descriptions of what was where, but our class assignment was to kill a frog.

Just to make the process more acceptable, we had to choose a partner for the assignation. Not being a team player and rarely chosen I hoped to bypass and just sit back and watch, but no, I had to participate. One of the girls who found the frogs icky were repulsed but were assigned to as partners in crime.

As I recall, we had to spread this reptile on a corkboard covered in wax paper and crucify it. When you lay a frog on it’s back they can face you. I don’t remember any blood as we spiked long pins into each limb to avoid escaping it limited time life on earth, thanks to some chemistry students.

Some of the class may have enjoyed what was coming next. Others were just following instructions from the teacher. Yet others were not looking forward to exterminating this amphibian but we had to pass the class to move onto graduation.

I think we used x-acto knives to start the incision because scalpels are really, really sharp and there would have been lawsuits.

We peeled back the stomach skin with tweezers but probably used our fingers too and we pinned back for what was about to come the disembowelment of this still breathing creature.

We were told to poke around at all the organs exposed to us to view the liquids pumping through this conscripted volunteer to inevitable execution.

Don’t remember the details of removal of the carcass but it was probably pulling out the pins and scraping the remains into the trashcan.

The object of the class was to teach anatomy but what a waste of a helpless frog to be plucked from home and executed for our pleasure.

Perhaps the object of the class was to teach young white kids they can kill another creature without remorse for science.

I’m not a doctor (and I don’t play one on TV) but I can fact check what a medical professional diagnosis to see if the colon is connect to the thigh bone or not.

I am a body donor. After I stop breathing (hopefully not during the above dissection) take whatever parts and pieces you want. I don’t need them anymore. If you can slice and dice my remains to forward medical knowledge I’m all for it. I donated my wife. There are no ashes or graves with headstones only family members will know until they forget.  

 

We ❤ Violence

 

We love violence. We must. Check out our history, entertainment, politics and even domestic relationships.

We have a fascination with violence.

If there is a scuffle we gather round to watch with our phone cameras then we rush to our regular social media sites to see other angles of the same incident. Oh what fun is that?

The news feeds us body counts everyday and we gather round to sob and light candles around the chalk lines.

Let’s get real. What we call sports is nothing more than violence. People pounding it out in the squared circle or autos speeding in a circle but what we are hopping for is a gigantic crash to be replayed on the evening news. Football is nothing more than gigantic men pushing and shoving each other on a pitch while basketball sweeps the glossy floor in offensive and defensive maneuvers the pride of any general. The nightly news is filled with the body count from the night before and with good luck you get a body cam video of the occurrence that can be slowed down and repeated for your enjoyment. Go to the big screen and watch our heroes save us by arriving in their ballet tights and pummeling the bad guys. To reinforce the notion that might makes right, there are repetitive of war documentaries and police chases and even competition shows that raise the anticipation until one wins by defeating the other.

Today the carnage is on the other side of the globe and we can’t look away. The difference is these bodies don’t get up for the next scene.

I personally try to avoid violence. I know it is all around me. I do watch the news and the news is now violent entertainment and the weather. When I hear voices rise, I go in the other direction. Does that make me a ‘chicken’?

I know I have the same hormones as everyone else. I feel sorrow of the lost of control of humanity and yet, I know the limit I can tolerate.

I also know the conclusion of violence.

After we wipe off this planet of our own species and our neighbors, what would we do if we met another? 

Congestion

 

Remember the beginning of the pandemic?

Everything stopped.

The kids didn’t go to school.

The office was closed.

Mandate to stay inside.

Wear a mask outside but only for exercise or fundamental necessities provided by essential workers.

Park your car.

Only wear leisurewear.

Get to binge on movies and get to know your family.

No vacations. No travel. Stay at home.

The reason I brought this up was the pandemic didn’t have much affect on my daily life. I am already a stay-at-home guy. I do go out once a day for a bicycle ride and pick up some libations or whatever looks tasty at the Tummy Temple.

The difference was the roads were empty.

This was heaven for a two-wheeler who survives by avoiding metal mobile machines.

After two years, the roadways are getting back to ‘normal’. Congestion distracted driving, no signals and loud noises. I won’t comment on the pollution.

While the pandemic waits for the next surge, the mask are coming off, large groups are forming as if everything is not the way it was.

I’ll still ride the side streets to avoid the traffic and travel at off hours to avoid the rush and enjoy the quiet without the congestion and stress and road rage and drive by shootings (so far).

Of course, at a certain age, congestion can take an internal turn.

Sorry boys and girls, but as we grow older our internal tubes and valves don’t work as well as they used to. That double cheese pizza you ate last night might need a little help to get through the pipes. There is more time spent on the porcelain throne to avoid the congestion.

ZOO

 

A zoo is a place where animals live in captivity and are put on display for people to view. The word “zoo” is short for “zoological park.”

Think about that for a minute.

Where animals live in captivity?

Put on display for people to view?

Some creature on this planet is taken away from their home and shipped to another land and put in a cage for people to look at.

Justification of scientific study or saving vulnerable animals from extinction makes the excuses for such action acceptable. Not all will be able to view the planet’s neighbor in their natural habitat so the zoo is the next best thing?

There are many confinements. There are jails and prisons to keep bad people behind bars and away from the rest of society. Are these zoos without tourist tickets? Work places are zoos. You are expected to be behind bars at a certain time and cannot leave before the bell rings or you get fired. Relationships are zoos. Even though no one knows what goes on behind the doors in the bedroom, your interaction with your friends and neighbors will be observed and analyzed. Schools are zoos where you perform for the audience of the parents and rewarded by the teacher.

The problem of being in a zoo is you can’t get out. You are at the welfare of someone else.

This is our zoo. There is nowhere out. There is nowhere we can escape to. Are we being observed…?