To the land where the Bong tree grows!

As a stereotypical member of my generation, I waited to do my taxes until last night. BIG MISTAKE. For the first time ever, I owe money and I'm not terribly happy about it. In fact, I have composed a short bit of doggerel to express how I feel.

We have until the deadline pushed,
The boxes on the form to fill.
When through the papers I have rushed,
Then forced to swallow a bitter pill.

Why did we have to pay so much geld?
Is it to support a lazy neighbor?
More money than all the year I've held
Worth so much of my labor.

The worthless government, I sniffed, quite cross.
Unnecessary! Run by fools!
Paying for pork, and crap, and dross.
I'm sure we don't need more schools.

A political change in my brain, I knew it!
To a demagogue I'd swear fealty.
The key proposal then, I intuit-
Is getting rid of the marriage penalty!

(Bows) Ok, ok. It's bad, but writing it made me feel better. My position on poetry is that it doesn't mean anything unless it has some form, so if I ever write any it will either rhyme or be set in a rigid arbitrary format. Isn't that the point? No surprise, then, that among my favorites are Ogden Nash and Edward Lear. Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat is a great poem that I'll always remember because my mom bribed me and Kevin several dollars if we could memorize it when we were very young. We both did and then spent our money on fireworks. I got the bonus fiver for memorizing the Gettysburg Address. Ahhh, childhood.

Ten years ago

Continuing the high school nostalgia kick I started yesterday, I thought I'd point out that REM's Out of Time is now ten years old. That album is one of five or six that will always mean "High School" to me; it's a real work of art and definitely the high point of REM's career. Everything they've done from there has been slowly but steadily downhill.

Around that same time, I got this black hat with a hammer 'n' sickle on it at a Dallas art museum. I loved that hat, and was really sorry when I lost it in college. The circumstances: I was out at the coast as one of the famous fall Oregon windstorms blew in. It was so windy that it was literally difficult to stand up. Anyhoo, the hat was picked up and within seconds was most likely miles away. It was a tragic loss, but not as bad as what someone else with us lost that night. (Let's just say it was a fungible good.) I could get a hat pretty close to it at this site that sells ex-Soviet memorabilia. I want one of those flasks. (Found via Boing Boing)

Finally, a gratuitous LAPI, unashamedly stolen from Al: A woman who prefers quickies. Wow! It even mentions the Boris Becker incident that I blogged earlier.