Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

Fucking Tax Time

I should warn you ... it's April 15th. Those who have been reading this blog for a rather brief period of time have not experienced what I call my "blue" period, as in "cuss a blue streak." This post contains a little some a lot of a shitload of profanity, a sort of return-to-my-roots kind of post -- to clear the sinuses, so to speak. It's April 15th. So, you have been warned.

Driving to the Lakewood post office, which is open after hours on April 15th, has been a once-a-year celebration of American tradition -- I finished my Form 4868 much earlier than last year, at 11 a.m., and those who know me probably think I'm lying. I decided to wait until 7:30-ish to make the trip just for the experience of it, you know, renew acquaintances with old friends that I see once a year.

Form 4868 -- Automatic Extension -- I don't know why it took me so long to take advantage of this quarter page form invented by some maniacal genius at the IRS. Instead of agonizing and waiting until the 23rd hour on one day a year, now I can do it on two days a year, April 15 and October 15, which just happens to be my birthday. If I had only known this long ago, before the turn of the century, I could have ruined many more birthday celebrations.

So, my darling wife and I were driving to the Lakewood post office tonight. Some people just don't know the rules. "Newbie," Stacey said. The guy obviously didn't know where the hell he was going. Warren Road is two lanes in each direction -- well, those of us who know the road understand that it is wide enough for two lanes and drive accordingly and those who don't know the road can see that there are cars in two distinct lanes of travel -- and this dumbass is driving in the middle of the fucking northbound lane, obviously out of his element. This is not the day to be driving like Aunt Clara, looking at the green-haired chick holding hands with the black dude with the white fucking mohawk. This is Lakewood, man.

I had no idea that there were people out on April 15th who didn't know the rules for last-minute tax deadline filing.

If you're going to be participating in this annual rite of Spring, you have to know where you're going -- you need to be prepared. You need to know the location of the post office and cannot wait until you're on your way to look for the goddamn address or you risk being a victim of road rage.

If the idiot read the fucking newspaper, he'd know that scientific studies have shown that fully one-half of the last-minute filers have all the symptoms of being temporarily legally insane. Getting in their way could result in serious injury or death. The other half ... well, they're just plain every-day crazy, and the closer it gets to the midnight filing deadline, the crazier they become.

It gets very, very ugly at about 11:40 p.m. I've been in the lobby of the post office, a grown man with a comb-over groping for IRS forms, crawling on hands and knees on the form-littered floor, yelling, "Form SE, Form SE, where the fuck are you?" Just two years ago, a well-dressed woman, dark wool skirt, frosted silvery hair, white silk blouse, torn at the left-shoulder seam, and this, mind you, at just 9:25 in the evening, was in the classic stages of early panic, mascara running down her face crying, racing from car to car in the parking lot, clawing at windows rolling up as she whimpered, "Tax tables, I need tax tables ... someone, please, please, twenty dollars for your tax tables."

This leads to the next rule of thumb. Do not try to turn right into the post office parking lot from the left hand lane of Warren Road when a white VW Beetle with a black "The Who" sticker on the rear bumper has moved into the right hand lane. The mother-fucker thought that putting his fucking turn signal on gave him special papal dispensation to turn into the parking lot. "Fucking Newbie," I muttered. No way in hell that was going to happen. And my fellow asshole behind me, smile on his face, didn't let the mother-fucker in, either.

And don't ever bring a child with you to the post office after 5 o'clock. This fucking clown actually thought that two whining, snot-nosed brats would garner him some sympathy -- what the fuck was this guy thinking, subjecting these innocents to the sheer lunacy of last-minute tax filers. Those poor children, at a later hour, could have been kidnapped and ransomed for a Schedule C, at a minimum. Fucking Newbie.

And here's the thing about this dipshit with the two snivelling kids that he yanked out of the back seat of his car. He was driving a 2005 BMW, one of those BMW 835 i-j-k-l models -- the mother-fucker can afford to drive a fucking BMW -- obviously an east-side son-of-a-bitch, a displaced east-sider at that -- he can afford to buy a goddamned BMW when the exchange rate has just gone down the tubes with this numbskull in the White House and drive it when gas is a buck ninety five a gallon and the fucking asshole can't afford to go to an accountant?

If you drive a BMW, you go to an accountant. Dumbass -- and he wanted me to hold the fucking door for him while he carried his brat daughter out. God, give me strength.

Posted by Bill at April 15, 2004 11:57 PM