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Someone you can call to do your taxes who’s not me

Down on the left of my computer desk top is a copy of my W-2 form from my part-time job. For various reasons, this past tax year didn’t see a lot of income from my other job as a freelancer. That needs to change. That is another story. I will use a computer application I have used for the past four years to file. It’s pretty simple. I am all for simple.

I could rant here about the need for simplifying the tax code. It needs simplifying. Or I could rail on how the top 1 percent need to pay more taxes. A New York Times interactive feature the other day showed what percentage in which I happen to reside. I am in the bottom 30 percent.

All I know is the quicker I get my return done, the quicker my fate will be revealed. Will I pay or will I be refunded? Probably I will receive a small refund. To some fat cats, that means I am one of those who doesn’t pay taxes so I should just shut up. The hell you say.

Well, I just know I will file pretty soon. It won’t be a big deal. If it is, don’t call me to do your taxes ’cause you’d just end up playing tennis in one of those places where the Feds keep you for 20 months or so while you work on your backhand. But here is a good person to call for those complicated returns, Jake Barnett. He’s the 13-year-old math prodigy featured Sunday on “60 Minutes.”

Jake’s is an amazing story, first brought to light in this article by the Indianapolis Star’s Dan McFeely. The child faced a rocky road because of autism. It wasn’t long before he was taking college classes and will graduate in a couple of years. If he doesn’t end up doing something which wins a Nobel Prize or two, he can at least earn a great living preparing taxes. Hey Jake’s parents: I doubt he needs any motivation, but if he does …

 

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Captain Francesco Schettino may go down, though not with his ship

The cruise ship Costa Concordia looks like a beached monster whale as it remains capsized after running aground with more than 4,000 passengers on an island off Italy’s Tuscan coast. Eleven are dead and almost two dozen passengers and crew are missing. Among the missing are two American passengers.

An amazing recording is being played on CNN — a transcript of which is here — as this is written of a supposed ship-to-shore radio transmission between the Italian Coastal Guards and Capt. Francesco Schettino, the ship’s skipper. In the recording, the port authority angrily inquires about the conditions on board the ship, not knowing until this conversation that Schettino had abandoned ship with passengers and crew remaining on board. It didn’t help to get to the truth that the captain first lied about having left the 952-foot, 17-deck cruise ship.

First Schettino said he abandoned the ship because it was “keeling.” The captain told the Coastal Guard that he was on a boat coordinating the efforts to evacuate the vessel.

Port authority: “What? You’ve abandoned the ship?”

Schettino: “No. What abandon? I’m here.”

M/S Costa Concordia. Cezary p photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

You’re either on board or your not.

Italian Coastal Guard Capt. Gregorio De Falco ordered Schettino back on the ship several times in the conversation, adding very bluntly:

 “Look Schettino, you might have been saved from the sea, but I will make sure you go through a very rough time…I will make sure you go through a lot of trouble. Get on board, damn it.”

Schettino never returned on board and is under house arrest, facing the possibility of multiple manslaughter and other charges.

Early reports accuse the captain of navigating too near the rocky coast before beaching the ship.

 “While this is a terribly sad time for everyone involved, we want to recognize the tremendous efforts of Concordia’s crew, who along with the Italian Coast Guard and authorities, helped to evacuate more than 4,000 passengers and crew members from the ship in very difficult conditions,” Micky Arison, Carnival CEO said in a press release.

One supposes Arison means he was singling out the acts of those Concordia crew members who were not the captain.

The shipwreck has touched off a lot of talk concerning the safety of these maritime behemoths. Previously, most of the safety efforts were aimed at sanitation and prevention of disease. Crime on board these ships also has been a hot topic. A database of Centers of Disease Control ship inspections for sanitation can be found on this link. Also, here is a database of crimes on board cruise ships reported to the FBI between 2007-2008 which were compiled by the Sun-Sentinel newspaper in South Florida.

 

 

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Note to self: Self …

I spent an hour and a half writing something only to delete it near the end. It wasn’t a controversial piece. It was not slanderous or libelous or otherwise defaming. It was actually sort of funny. Therein lies the problem. It was “sort of” funny. Not funny, certainly not hilarious. Just not funny. My post was in the tall tale tradition of great writers such as Mark Twain, though certainly not as folksy and, of course, not anywhere in the same league.

This exercise in futility makes me ask: Did I just waste an hour? No. How can I answer otherwise? I relived a pleasant memory and made myself chuckle a few times. But I didn’t want what I had written out there forever. That is not to say that my body of work does not contain certain instances of crap. It does. Perhaps, what I do here online is an exercise but not futile after all. I create. I write. I amuse, myself. Maybe what I wrote will be a basis for some fresh material for a book. The idea is coming together. Now, if only I can center my thoughts.

Hmmm? Oh, I’m sorry. I was just thinking out loud.

 

 

 

 

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Let us now all say “Ahhhhh” for the weekend

It’s a long weekend coming and I’m ready as can be. Two NFL divisional games tomorrow, two Sunday including the Texans-Ravens. My second-fave team, the Saints play San Fran tomorrow. I saw an episode last night of Anthony Bourdain’s “The Layover” in which he was featuring San Francisco dining and bars. One bar lady said the two things tourists should not call San Francisco are “San Fran” and “Frisco.” Well, Frisco this. Sorry, my Bay Area friends, just jivin.’

One activity I will not partake of very much during the weekend is computer use. That’s because my work computer is about to drive me totally insane. If you knew the circumstances you would understand. I don’t mean to be cryptic. I will say this: “Dial up.” Slow as a snail’s butt in a molasses spill. I continue to be told relief will be coming soon in the form of a Blackberry. Somehow, I am not comforted.

Well, it’s time to read a few blogs and head on into the weekend. Listening to sports talk radio this week, it seemed as if the “spundits”, my name for sports pundits, can’t agree how badly Baltimore will beat Houston. That doesn’t bother me. I don’t expect the Texans to win but there is always — in the cliché-ridden world of sport — the chance that comes with “any given Sunday.” So we shall see, bees knees.

I say again: Go Texans!

 

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¿Cómo se dice: The fun is just beginning?

It’s the attack of the attack ads as Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich et. al. bring their merry little traveling road show to South Carolina. Want some grits? What’s a grit?

Gingrich has sounded downright Bolshevik in his broadsides against Romney and the latter’s role with Bain Capital. This comes, of course, after Gingrich complained of being “Romney-boated” and vowing not to campaign negatively.

The fun is just beginning though. You know more and more attack ads will come. Hell, the primary season has just started! Negative campaigning is as American as Apple pie, especially with Republicans. The historically, sleazy 1894 campaign between Republican James Blaine and Democrat Grover Cleveland is perhaps the best example of nasty politics with a near-modern media flair. Ah, history. You can’t live with it. You can’t beat it with a shovel.

One can only hope for a little moderation in the nastiness when, most likely Willard Mitt Romney, squares off with Barack Hussein (what an unfortunate name for the time, but he got elected didn’t he?) Obama. If it is Romney who is nominated, why he seems like a pretty genteel fellow and Obama is normally Mr. Cool. Unfortunately, there are no gloves to come off from all the PACs and other groups that can fill the campaign coffers as high as an elephant’s eye thanks to the dunderheaded Supremes who signed off onCitizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

¡Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos!

Photo: U.S. Air Force

¡Ataque los anuncios de televisión, no! ¡Perros de ataque, sí! No. ¡Ataque los anuncios de televisión, si! ¡Perros de ataque, sí!

Ed. Some weird stuff going on with the finished product. Nevertheless, Spanish translation from Span¡shD!ct.