  Comedy
This week: The Dimes of March Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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My favorite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.
-Steve Jobs
The lack of money is the root of all evil.
-Mark Twain
Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.
-Warren Buffett |
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Money
The tax filing deadline, here in the US, is a bit over a month away now. It may seem early to some of you for me to be bitching about taxes, but chances are, your tax return involves stapling a W-2 to a 1040 and maybe, if you have a house, filling out a Schedule A (and if you don't have the slightest idea what I'm talking about, consider yourself lucky).
You can probably do that on April 15th and be safe. But oh, no, I can't let my life be that simple. For various reasons involving a failed marriage, failing business, dead relatives, extreme laziness, and a capuchin monkey, I have to fill out pretty much every one of the IRS's convoluted, self-contradictory, and predatory forms.
Well, not "I," actually. I pay someone to do that for me. But I still have to start getting everything together starting about the previous June in order to even think about making the mid-April deadline.
Point is, taxes suck. But hey, income tax is only paid if - and this may come as a shock - someone has income. So I have the perfect solution: No income! No income, no taxes, right? I'm sure there's a flaw in that plan somewhere, but right now I just don't see it.
Americans - and probably citizens of other countries, too, but really, I'm only passingly familiar with Canada, England and Belize - seem to have a dysfunctional relationship with money. Economically, we recognize basically three levels of wealth: poor, middle class, and rich. These are defined as follows:
Poor - Anyone who makes less money than me.
Middle class - Anyone who makes approximately the same amount of money as me.
Rich - Anyone who makes more money than me.
Rarely, in the public discourse about money, do people make a distinction between making money and having money. Reporters treat it like the same thing, talking about "a tax on the ultra-rich" or some such, but when you dig deeper, you're not taxing the "rich," you're taxing people with high income.
And despite my above definition, those are not necessarily the same.
I know a guy who makes - well, I don't know exactly what he makes, but by my definition, he's rich. He works for a prominent business with international clients, goes on casual business trips to places like Dubai and Hong Kong, and is high in the company's hierarchy. If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say he grosses, before taxes, maybe half a million a year - less than investment bankers, but more than most of the rest of us drones.
And after paying on his student loans, mortgage, car payments, kids' educations, nanny for the special-needs kid, groceries, rental house on the beach, and so on, he and his wife can barely make ends meet. Oh, sure, they have the option of doing things like dumping the rental house or switching the kids to public school, options the rest of us slubs don't have, to cut back expenses, but the point is they don't.
Meanwhile, I have another friend who pulls in about $50k a year as a desk jockey in a cubicle - higher than the average, yes, but not by much - but he lives frugally and saves a bunch of that every year.
By society's definition, friend A is rich and friend B appears, outwardly, to be poor. But in 20 years, friend B is going to be the one who's able to retire comfortably. So who's really rich, here?
And does it matter? The measure of a person is not in his wallet - oh, who am I kidding; yes, it is. I've been saying for years, now, that online dating sites should have the following two rules:
1) All (straight) women must post a recent, non-photoshopped picture;
2) All (straight) men must post a recent, non-photoshopped bank statement.
Doing that would avoid a whole lot of false starts.
Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yeah. Money. No one likes to actually talk about what they make, because they invite either envy or pity. The poor can comfort themselves with the whole "money can't buy happiness" schtick (news flash: it can, it does (after all, beer costs money, and beer makes me happy), and poverty sure as hell doesn't promote happiness), but they know that the better-off are looking down their noses at them. The middle class may be large and comfortable, but the poor and the rich alike enjoy lobbing pot-shots at their perceived conformity and complacency. And, of course, everyone hates the rich, especially other rich people. There are whole protests about that sort of thing. But most of us would like to be rich, even if it means getting yelled at by hippies for harshing their buzz.
So I'm going to suck it up, pay my accountant, pay my taxes, and not worry about where I fall on the rich/poor spectrum. As long as I have beer, little else matters. |
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Last month, in "Comedy Newsletter (February 8, 2012)" , I kvetched about February in general.
Mummsy  : Never tell a strawberry blonde not to rust. *sigh*
Sorry, I forgot to send a pony with your booze. In other (hopefully welcome) news . . . there are no Hello Kitty stickers either.
By the time I finished it, I was having a philosophical conversation with Hello Kitty and three My Little Ponies, so thanks a lot.
Kalany  : Just wondering... For a "comedy" Newsletter, where in lies the comedy? I finished reading this and instead of feeling happy, lighthearted and joyful, I feel extremely depressed. I was unaware that comedy was to make you feel depressed...
Wow, tough audience... I'm reminded of a "joke" that Alan Moore recounted in the Watchmen graphic novel, that goes something like this (I'm paraphrasing because I don't feel like digging out my copy, and it's not in the movie): Man goes to see doctor, tells him life is a black vortex of sorrow and he doesn't know how he can go on. Doctor says that the great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight, and he should go see him to lift his spirits. Guy breaks out in tears. "But, Doctor," he says, "I am Pagliacci."
Hope this newsletter makes up for my lapse. If not, well, I only do about 1/4 of the Comedy newsletters 
troy ulysses davis : Enjoyed your newsletter.
Thanks!
LJPC - the tortoise : Robert - Hysterical NL, as always. I especially liked the bitter-old-man-yelling-at-the-kids part. I'm not sure it happened as instantaneously to me as to you, but every year, the sound of neighborhood kids shrieking and yelling annoys me a little more. By the time I hit 70, the little buggers will really have to worry about being caught and throttled -- if only I can still move when I'm that age. Maybe that's how God protects kids: by the time you can't take them anymore, you're too blasted old to do anything about it. Great NL!
~ Laura
Your'e too kind.
Sara♥Jean  : Despite your hatred of your own birthday (which passed just a few days ago), I am glad you were born, Robert.  At this point, there are 9 days left in February. Darned leap year! A little over a week.
You'll make it!
And, in fact, now that it is March, I can confirm that I did, indeed, make it. I should clarify, however, that I never regret having been born; I simply don't like being reminded of how long ago it was.
glo-stick: February is sometimes the most boring month of the year. However, Valentine's Day is good for one thing - a great excuse to pig out on chocolate! Yay! :)
Many people are convinced that the end of the world, or at least the collapse of civilization as we know it, is nigh. There are many signs that point to such an occurrence: Justin Bieber, this year's Oscars, Rush Limbaugh issuing an apology, and the existence of Twilight, to name but a few; but we've endured things almost as bad in the past and survived. Anyway, point is, some folks who worry about the end of the world are hoarding gold for trading and ammo for protection. I think they've got the wrong idea; gold won't be worth the paper it's printed on, and guns have a tendency to jam. I think if you're worried about the end of the word, hoard what I call the 3 C's: coffee, cigarettes and chocolate. Those will have real trading value, worth much more than their weight in gold. I mean, here in America, we can still mine gold, but smokes are land- and process-intensive; and coffee and chocolate don't grow here at all...
And that's it for me for March! See you next month, when Spring will be in full Swing, and taxes will actually be due. Until then,
LAUGH ON!!! |
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Comedy: March 07, 2012 Issue [#4914]
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