While I actually wanted to write about relationships between men and women, because it is just so much fun to do, (and the women make it so easy…I added that line to see if I can generate some hate mail, again, just for fun) but I felt it was my duty as a citizen of the United States and as a humor writer, this being tax week in the U.S., to take this opportunity to lampoon the IRS.
Ironically, the temperature where I live is supposed to be about ten degrees higher on April 15th than it has been and the next day it will go back to normal. I’m guessing that is Mother Nature’s way of letting us know that on April 15th we are getting very close to hell in this country.
It’s hard not to hate the IRS, although there is so much competition for that hatred amongst the other government organizations, also denoted with three letters like the FDA, TSA, CIA, FBI, NSA, etc, etc. Leave it to the government to make their name s too long to say so that they only use the acronym to describe them. Well, at least on April 15th each year we will reserve that hate for the IRS.
The government almost closed up this week because of a budget crisis, which leads me to wonder, if the government workers had not gone into work would they have stayed home and leaned on shovels?
That’s not really fair of me to ask that. Federal government employees don’t lean on shovels, that is reserved for city and county government workers. The federal government workers, especially from the IRS, collect the money from the citizens to buy shovels that costs thousands of dollars each so that they can then give to unemployed people so that they can dig a really deep whole for the whole country financially. At least that’s how it works metaphorically. In reality, the government wouldn’t give shovels to unemployed workers to do something, they’d rather just give them the money directly and have them go home and do nothing. And then point out how much they are trying to help them so that they vote for the idiots in Congress and the current President in the next election.
On second thought, this is almost as much fun as writing about relationships between men and women. But, honestly, I have to ask myself, does it count as humor if it is this close to the truth?
Recently I had to fill out a W-9 form for the IRS. It is a very simple half page, self explanatory form. Attached to it there were three and a half pages of instructions. I wanted to call the IRS and ask them why they needed all these instructions for a simple form. I chose not to because I was afraid I’d have to go through twelve menus to get to the person that MIGHT give me an answer but more than likely I’d get cut off anyway when I got there. So, instead I just imagined what the conversation would be like:
Me: I was wondering why there are so many instructions for this simple form?
IRS worker: I’m sorry that is confidential information.
Me: Why is it confidential? I’d like to know why my tax dollars are being wasted.
IRS worker: Sir, Your tax dollars are being wasted on calls like this.
Me: Does that mean you’re not going to give me an answer? Or does that mean you have no funny ending to this little skit I’m writing?
IRS worker: The answer is yes to both. Goodbye.
Yup, I was right, too close to the truth to count as humor.
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