Post-1040 Ponderings

Well, finally got done with that set of vile masochism known as Form 1040. And very glad of it.

Fortunately, I've found a good website, Free Tax USA, that allows it to be handled very much on the inexpensive side. As long as you made less than fifty thousand dollars last year, they'll process your federal return for free. In addition, select state returns are under ten bucks, and a professionally printed version of your forms comes in at $4.95. Not a bad deal, really. Especially seeing as how H&R Block's web-based service comes out to over $25 for the exact same results.

So with the brain-numbing suffering that comes hand-in-hand with filing one's taxes over with, now my brain has kicked into overdrive. Well, the high-quality caffeine I've been chugging down for the last 4 hours must also be taken into account, if only due to academic honesty and the severe bladder strain.

And so, while finishing off the second coffee pot of the night, I've done my usual blogrolling, and come up with a few serious gems for your perusal.

First comes Josh Marshall's admission of his age. Apparently he turned 37 yesterday. Which means he's about 23 years away from having his doctors recommend he take the test voted Most Obvious Set Of Judgement Calls Ever Created By Modern Medicine as found here. (Via Balloon Juice) And to think that people had to go to medical school to come up with such a concept as this...

To Josh, as the kool kids would say on their text messages, "GR4TZ 4 TEH B-D4Y!" Well, just typing that immediately makes me think of last Friday's edition of Exterminatus Now, graphically demonstrating the evil things that various folks around the English-speaking world do to senselessly massacre a helpless English language.

And then comes this gem picked up from Mr. Flannel Avenger. Apparently, folks that run the offshore gambling sites are a bit nervous about their profit margin now that Congress is getting serious about establishing legislation on internet-based gambling.It's about time they have to suffer from something, especially after clogging my various e-mailboxes with spam for the last umpteen years. (Good thing for me I never participate in those things. I'd hate to have yet another piece of paperwork to keep track of when it's time to file my taxes.)

Finally, Ezra pointed me towards yet another keyboard disaster. (Okay, he pointed every single one of his readers to this, but it's so much easier to think in the first-person at 4 in the morning.) Ended up laughing so hard at one point that I did a double spit-take/coffee-spill with a half-entendre (Difficulty rating of 3.7, according to the USOC.), thereby re-saturating the keyboard I got close to ruining a month ago.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go see a man about an emu.