I’m rich. Didja know? Wildly, fabulously wealthy. Dripping in cash even. I own more homes than Mitt Romney and John McCain combined. And I will soon install a car elevator in each and every one of them.
Being so rich, I try to avoid taxes. Usually, I just make my team of accountants/tax avoiders do them and sign the form on the dotted line. Then I wash my hands thoroughly. Really, though, I don’t even like to think about taxes.
You see, I believe in the Leona Helmsley rule:
“Only the little people pay taxes“
With all that money, couldn't she afford a bag to put over her head? (Google image)
So I must say I was ticked off when the White House came up with this Widget that lets people know whether I might be paying a lower percentage of my income in taxes than they are. And just how many of my NASCAR-team-owner-buddies are too. [I was even more annoyed when, despite my best efforts and all the technological assistance I was willing to pay for, I could not embed it on my blog.]
But I learned something from this Widget, nevertheless. I learned that I am still paying a higher percentage of my money in taxes than other, lesser mortals.
You see, with an Easter Basket, you’ve got a running shot at picking what you like. And I think that life is just like that. You get good candies and bad, and sometimes even a toy or two — that special something. Of course, there are always candies you hate – circus peanuts, for example have no place in an Easter Basket.
But here in the DC area, well, things are different. Here, Easter Baskets are controlled by the government. And you can tell because Easter Baskets are brimming with that well-known symbol of the U.S. Constitution, the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Here is a sample of an Easter Basket in the DC area:
A Typical DC-Area Easter Basket
Yup, this is the DC area. So all you get is Reese’s. Why? Civics. Let me take you back to 7th Grade Civics (Thanks Mrs. Ganley!)
A Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup represents the three branches of the government established under Articles I, II and III of the Constitution: The Legislative, The Executive and The Judicial branches. And they are all here, in DC. And they all stick in your craw. Peanut butter tends to do that.
Article I sets up the Legislative Branch (that’s why they think they’re special – it’s like being the eldest child). The Lege is the thick, sticky peanut butter middle of the Reese’s Cup. These days it is so dense, especially since the Republicans took the House, that nothing can penetrate it. It can be broken, it can be consumed (usually by itself) and it can be cut, but only with a very sharp a knife or bad press. It moves more slowly than molasses, and sticks to the roof of your mouth.
Article II gave us the Executive Branch: That’s the chocolaty outsides of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Unlike the insides of the Cup, the outside changes, sometimes due to political pressure, also known as heat. It melts. It freezes. It peels off. It tries to mix with the Peanut Butter insides, but the Peanut Butter part of the Cup resists; it says “No, I will not mix with you. My components must stay true to our peanut buttery-ness. No chocolate can be inside.”
Lastly, Article III spawned the Judiciary Branch. This Branch is represented by the paper outsides of the Reese’s Cup. So naturally, it is the Supreme Court that really holds the chocolate and peanut butter together. In order to get to the chocolaty/peanut buttery goodness, the Judiciary Branch must be strip searched; whether it has done anything wrong or not. Even the Justices need to live under the draconian legal precedents they spew.
From here Life gets a little bit confusing. The Vice President is well, Vice President. He is considered part of the chocolaty outsides of the Reese’s Cup. BUT, the Vice President is ALSO President of the Senate — he is just like Certs: two mints in one in our Easter Basket!
Yup that means that the VP is the tie-breaker in the Senate, which is why there is never a 50-50 stalemate. So Vice President Biden is not Certs. He is, in fact, the human equivalent of Reese’s Pieces.
Our Vice President -- Out of the Box
Now there are other parts of the Easter Basket that really represents life in this country. The grass, the jelly beans, the chocolate eggs. The real, hard-boiled, colored eggs.
And there are of course, Peeps. They are always underrepresented in Easter Baskets. That is because so few of them vote.
Bet these Peeps vote in November
Because it’s time to organize.
Power to the Peeps!
But when the take-over happens, just make sure it’s not these peeps:
No Fashion Sense
Or these:
Tea Party -- Spelling Things Out for the US
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On this historic day, otherwise known as Wednesday, 19 of your favorite humor bloggers are staging a WordPress coup. We have banded together to address the important topic:
Better Living Through Reese’s Peanut Butter Cupss
Yes, you read that right. Your eyes are fine. Well, they may not be fine – I really don’t know. But it does say “19 of your favorite humor bloggers” (or who SHOULD be your favorite bloggers). We are all presenting the same topic, each from his or her particularly unique perspective.
Why this topic? Why now?
Why not?
Click on the Reese’s Pieces links to gobble up the entire, yummy bag of 19 posts.
I have a house full of folks, meals to cook, wine to drink and stories to be told. So I’m neglecting my blog. Yup, me.
So here is my very favorite post, from Long, Long Ago, when I was a baby blogger, in case you desperately need to get a life! need to hear my voice.
Happy Easter! Happy Spring!
Downsizing
My husband John and I had an appointment to look at smaller houses with a realtor. We were going to go this afternoon, but after going to the grocery store early this morning, I cancelled.
“Why did you do that?” asked John, puzzled. John wants to get rid of the big house. He wants to get rid of the big mortgage.
“Sorry,” I told my husband. “I can’t downsize.”
“Why not?” he asked again.
“Toilet paper.”
“Huh?”
Everyone I know talks “downsizing.” Our friends are mostly middle-aged like us. We all bought 4 bedroom 2-1/2 bath colonials back when our kids were small – we thought it was a legal requirement that came with the birth certificates. Now the kids are off at college, or off working, or just off. Occasionally friends decide to downsize because they are not yet empty nesters and are trying to push their overgrown open-mouthed offspring/bloodsuckers out of the nest.
As I said I had just come home from the grocery store. With 36 rolls of toilet paper. Double sized rolls. That means I had actually just come home with 72 rolls. For two adults and one dog.
What made me do it? We really only need a fraction of that. Why not get a six-pack? And then a six-pack of toilet paper?
Earlier, I stood in the aisle at my local Safeway and considered my options. Hmmmm. I thought. This HUGE package costs $15.00. The size I really need costs $9.00. But the 36-which-equals-72 roll package was only 6 bucks more. I had no choice; I bought the big package. It was cheaper — unless you totaled up today’s groceries. And then it wasn’t cheaper at all. But into the cart it went.
I continued on down the aisle. Damn, I thought. I need paper towels too. Sixteen rolls? Why not?
Go through any grocery store. You can buy small, but it’s gonna cost you. You can buy a six-pack of soda for $4.99. Better still, you can buy a twelve-pack of soda for $6 or two twelve-packs for $12 and get three twelve-packs FREE! What a deal. You save $18 just by spending $6 more than you were going to spend in the first place! I must buy them.Just because I stopped drinking soda in 1996 doesn’t mean I should pass up this deal.
Twenty-four 12 oz. bottles of pure spring water? Sure. I only have six left from the two dozen I bought in 2007.
These promos work on me every time.
The price of wine also goes down as the quantity goes up. I can buy one bottle of my favorite Pinot Grigio for $9.00 or I can buy two for $7.50 each. If I want to buy even more, I can buy six or more bottles for $6.00 each, get totally sloshed and not really care what I’m spending. There’s some logic there.
It even happened in the produce section. I wanted one small container of blueberries and one of strawberries. Instead I took home two hefty containers of each.
“Are you going on a ‘berries only’ diet?” asked John as he helped me unload the groceries when I got home.
“No,” I responded. “It was ‘buy one, get one free.’ I couldn’t let them go to waste, could I?”
“Well at least not until the extras have been in our fridge for a few weeks,” John muttered.
So you see, I can’t downsize. I cannot get a smaller house. I can’t even get a smaller car. How would I get my groceries home?
I think I’m going to call the realtor back. We need a bigger house.
Even before computers I found a lot to laugh at. But since computers? I’ve found that it’s hard to not laugh at whatever happens to appear in front of my eyes, magically, through the tubes that are the internets.
Just now, while sitting alone here at my kitchen table, sipping a cuppa, I laughed loudly enough to wake up Cooper, who is stone deaf. Yup, it was that funny.
What was it? What could it be? What could make me stop writing what I was writing to share a laugh?
Well, I really don’t know how it happened. Or I don’t know how I got to the starting gate. You see, I was Googling pictures for a post when I suddenly found myself at Moondustwriter’s Blog. I had never seen it before; it’s a photography blog, and the picture on this particular post was a beautiful shot of a rocky beach in the moonlight. It looks like Maine to me, and I love Maine. The accompanying poem was beautiful too. But not being a poetry lover, I was quickly distracted by what I saw on the sidebar:
Can you see it there on the bottom right? I write like Mark Twain. Pretty cool, don’t cha think? Of course, I wanted to know who I write like. So I clicked on the link.
Wait, wait, come back! Don’t you want to know what happened next? Don’t you want to know who it is I write like? Or like whom I write?
Well, I looked at my list of favorite blog pieces, and chose what I thought was my best: Both Sides Now, my story about how all my family members die on holidays. And I learned :
Wow!
Cool. I like Kurt Vonnegut, but I never considered myself in his league, or even remotely like him. But I’m guessing the dark humor is Vonnegut-esque. Interesting.
But, I wondered, are all my posts so dark? I didn’t think so, so I plugged in another piece: Downsizing, a story of how hard it is to resist stuff.
And lo and behold, I write like Chuck Palahniuk, who I’d never heard of. I immediately went to Amazon.com and ordered all of his books though. That is, of course, what I want anyone who hasn’t heard of me to do when they find that they write like me. Here’s a sample:
Look, it's even got my face on the cover!
Again, I wasn’t sure that either of these two posts really reflected just who I am. I mean, my blog is a mish-mash of stuff. So I tried it again. And again. And again.
I entered my About page: David Foster Wallace (damn, more books to buy).
I entered Take Me Back, about how Sarah Palin thinks that President Obama wants to go back to pre-Civil War days: H. P. Lovecraft
I entered Color My World, my recent piece about Redbud trees: Margaret Atwood. Hey, I’ve read HER!
Lastly, I entered Great Balls of Fire, my piece about my neighbor Beau who built Tara Oaks, and who, I’m sure will soon host Civil War reenactments on his meadow: this time I was Margaret Mitchell.
Apparently I am either wildly talented or have a multiple personality disorder.
Really. I tried to resist posting this clip. I tried hard.
I wrestled with my sense of “oh I can’t subject my international readers to this” and my sense of humor. My tendency to show serious things in a funny way. My senses of humor won. My fundamental need to post about hypocrisy won. Because this is as close to the truth as I have seen in a long time.
FiftyFourandAHalf 