It's the flu

You know, the flu? You get a shot in October so you won't come down with it and they warn you about egg allergies and some geezer always croaks from the serum , you know, the flu?

Plenty of rest, plenty of fluids, lay in bed, watch a lot of TV, go back to work after 3, 4 days. Yeah, the flu.

Settle down, people.

Tea Party, Washington DC, Apr 15 2009

Took my lunch hour and rode over to Lafayette Park to see what was what. Pouring down rain, but, still, quite a crowd:

These guys made my day:

Tax day

Schlub makes a pretty good living. Schlub arrived at this happy point through years of taking crappy to less crappy to quasi-crappy to not-so-crappy to fairly decent jobs. Every one of those crap-to-decent jobs developed Schlub's skill set, as did his schooling, acquired through a combination of the VA (paid for by doing very crappy things for the military at slave wages) and personal funds while working the crappy to less crappy jobs. Seven years to get a bachelor's, all told, taking a class here and there, and then a Masters three years later, while working the quasi-crappy to not-so-crappy jobs, ending up with a fairly decent job. Schlub is, after so much time and effort, a highly educated, rather competent person.

All this makes Schlub rather proud of his current situation. I own things, a house, car, clothes. I eat well. I vacation. I have this general smugness of the self-made. I inherited nothing, was not supported by rich parents or grants or legacies or giveaways. And it all came rather hard, to tell you the truth. But it did come. And I am smug.

So, imagine, then, the consternation when my accountant, Ming the Merciless, announced I had to pay 1/3 more in taxes than I had already paid. What? Why? I thought I was getting a refund, what with mortgage interest, my deductions, that stuff. Nope, said Ming, you made just a little too much for most of those deductions to apply.

Well, ain't that something?

So Schlub had to empty his business account by half of everything he had earned last year. Well, that's only right. Taxes are the price of living in a prosperous country. Except Schlub's very hard-earned money did not go to those things of defense and transportation that a prosperous country provides. Oh no. It went to AIG executives who became AIG executives after they got into Harvard on a legacy scholarship from their private school, then spent requisite time in various high profile company positions until Dads' retirements got them the mantles their birth and position guaranteed. Then they spent the next ten years applying those interesting new theories of Laffer curve and Keynesian spending they had discussed in their Masters seminars and oh, well, who knew that wouldn't work? Tut, just call Barney and Nancy and Harry on the Hill and have them ram through this rescue plan, will you? We'll call it TARP or something and will get the peasants like Schlub to bail us out. Pass the brie, Muffy.

Yep. Makes me feel real good about tax day. In fact, I celebrated.

I went out and bought more ammunition.