IRS notice,
There are arrears reckoned on your account over a period of 2010-2011 year.
You will find all calculations according to your financial debt, enclosed.
Sincerely,
IRS.
&&&&
Attached to this phishing e-mail, which was addresses to a number of e-mail addresses, was a zip folder. I would not recommend opening it. My reckon is that if I opened the attachment, a virus would put my computer in arrears.
The blathering idiot was sitting at the kitchen table doing his taxes, when in a fit of confusion and boredom at the inane complexity of a form, he fell asleep.
When he woke up, he was in heaven. He knew this was the case because the disciple Matthew greeted him. The blathering idiot sat up and looked around. Heaven was not like anything he imaged. The primary thing that struck him about it was how rundown it appeared. The pearly gates looked rusty and slightly out of plumb. They didn’t close tightly. Some things that looked like trash tumbled from heavenly prominence to heavenly prominence, making slight rustling sounds like empty plastic shopping bags. Even the angels’ wings looked sooty and their gowns looked frayed and not quite as dazzling as whitest of whites sound be. One angel was even wearing a frayed t-shirt that read “Angels are people too.” Infrastructure neglect was everywhere.
Matthew had a sad and besmirched look on his face. “We cannot get God to pay attention to heaven. He says he is constantly fighting an endless war with Satan, and sending hurricanes to New Orleans and earthquakes to Haiti and such to punish people for their wicked ways, even if they are already long dead. He says he has no time to keep up heaven. But we have a plan and it involves you.”
The blathering idiot listened to the plan. He wasn’t sure if it would work, but if the blathering idiot succeeded, he could stay in heaven if he wanted.
“And if I don’t succeed?” the blathering idiot asked.
Matthew, the former tax collector, frowned, and then slowly shook his head.
The blathering idiot practiced over and over what he was going to say, and when he was ready, Matthew and some angels, including the one with the t-shirt, dressed him in the most scary costume they could think of, and then they sent him to see God.
"Well, Almighty, our records still show you owe back taxes for several million years."
Shortly after that, or so it felt like, the blathering idiot woke up, an IRS form stuck to the side of his face.
Once he removed it, he glanced around. The world looked like he was back exactly where he had always been, back where he was before his trip to heaven. The blathering idiot didn’t know if that was good or bad, if that meant he had succeeded or not. He once again read over the form that had been stuck to his cheek, and he continued to wonder.
The Tea Party folk won’t wake up to the real issue. The don’t want to, and there are political elements, mostly tied to the Republican Party, but not exclusively, that don’t want the people, Tea Party or otherwise, to look behind the curtain, because these wizards (of Wall Street) won’t take you home; but they’ll take your home, and your car, and your bank account, and your credit rating. Nope, we’re definitely not in Kansas anymore. Unfortunately, the people of Kansas — and elsewhere — don’t seem to care. This curtain is not of cloth nor iron, but gold, and the shininess of greed is too hard to breach.
Post Script:
http://baselinescenario.com/2010/04/17/pecora-moment/
Further information as to who caused the problem.
It is a pity to live under a tax system where you must be smarter to figure out what you owe in taxes than the brain power it took to earn the money to begin with. I have a Master’s degree in English and have written for two small daily newspapers, two small national magazines, and have worked with scientists and engineers on technical documents and consumer documents, and the tax code is the worst cluster fubar of the English language that I have ever seen. It reads like it went through a meat grinder of politicians, lawyers (I know, any more using politician and lawyer in the same sentence is redundant), lobbyists (ubiquitous as cockroaches and also often lawyers) and bureaucrats, and what came out the other end would be suitable for use as secret code in any war. Nobody could decipher it. Not even us.
On top of that, you can get advise from an IRS representative, but it’s not legally binding.
I’m not a TEA party activist, but doing your taxes should not be an industry all to itself with preparers acting like the oracles at Delphi, or a chore, if done by yourself, relegated to the level of near madness.
Filed under Random Access Thoughts, taxes, words, writing
Booker's Blog 