Maybe A Flat Tax Ain't Such a Bad Idea After All

Brian and Kirsten (April 2011): Dear IRS, we owe you $176. Please find enclosed check for same. Love, us.

IRS (May 2011): Dear Brian and Kirsten, you owe us $1097. Please enclose check for same. All the best, IRS.

Brian and Kirsten (May 2011): Dear IRS, We believe your math is off. Enclosed is proof. Please review. Thank you, us.

IRS (May 2011): We have graciously granted you a three-month reprieve. We will not contact you during this period. We will not provide you with more information if you contact us. We are benevolence personified. Yours, IRS.

IRS (August 2011): Dear Brian and Kirsten, you owe us $1097 plus $4 interest on unpaid bills. You must enclose check for same. IRS.

Brian and Kirsten (August 2011): Have you reviewed our previous return for errors which we believe you have made? Love, us.

IRS (August 2011): No.

Brian and Kirsten (August 2011): We would much appreciate a completion of this review, if you would kindly do so. Love, us.

IRS (August 2011): Hey, deadbeats: Due to the overwhelming glory contained within our soul, which if viewed with the naked eye would melt your retinas and cause your heart to swell with pride and burst, we have consented to a three-month extension to pay your unpaid bill.

Brian and Kirsten (August 2011): Thank....you?

IRS (November 2011): Listen up, you ungrateful fuckwits. You now owe us about $1105, which we can withhold from your paycheck,or which we can squeeze from your lifeless corpses in blood. Either way is fine.

Brian and Kirsten (November 2011): ....

IRS (November 2011): We have completed our review of your tax return for the previous year and have adjusted it. We have found errors which we have corrected, and which result in you having a remaining tax bill of $0. We are grateful to have served you. Love, IRS

So, Apparently it's NaBloPoMo

Or "National Blog Posting Month," for those of us who can't construct words from abbreviations.

Apparently I've been supposed to have been posting on my weblog every day.

Really? People do this? I mean, people with jobs? Like, the full-time kind? I can barely find the energy to post once a month anymore, let alone daily. Good for those who can, I suppose, but that's not me. I find that all I ever want to do when I finally DO get home from work (and that's been really late the last two weeks) is watch TV, veg out, and sleep.

One of the great things about the Internet is that it allows people to actually publish their thoughts, feelings, bad beatnik poetry, and such on whatever time frame they want. It also allows some of them to start thinking about being journalists, or at least journalist-y. I'm taking a class at WU on the evolution of social media, and one the requirements is a paper - I'm writing mine on the specific protections given to bloggers who claim to be journalists by shield laws. It's an interesting topic, and I might think about maybe intending to publish my paper when I'm done writing it. But it does come back to my real problem with NaBloPoMo, and that is that people who are paid to blog, or paid to report (and are therefore reporters and covered by shield laws regardless of how they publish) can make NaBloPoMo a thing without having to be put out. The rest of us (Chris Hill, I'm looking at you) may not post for decades at a time.

Maybe we should have a NaBloPoCen?