Political Jokes I Wrote While Falling Asleep

This started as a series of non-partisan "yo mama" style burns, but I am rather obviously partisan and at some early point the disses became more an audition to be a Daily Show writer.


The Republican party's greased so many wheels, the EPA is considering Mitt Romney's hair as an alternate to foreign oils.

Last election a black man refused to disclose his birth certificate, this year a white man won't even show us his printouts from TurboTax. By 2016 we should expect a Tea Party candidate who won't divulge even his name and age, but he'll be very vocal about his stance on gun control.

Speaking of stances, the GOP's position for women and abortion is "first against the wall."



There was a whole long bit about Obama and "trap cards" and legislature being his "manna," but I clearly fell asleep writing it because I started mixing analogies and, worse, nerdy RPG references, and that just cannot be tolerated.

How I Know I'm A Failure | Taxes

Here's how I know I'm a failure:

I was working out my taxes, thinking if I didn't get much back I might take a second pass at them. Last year, I got a $14 refund. It was pretty sweet.

This year? Let's just say when I saw that little ticker calculate my TurboTax refund, I did a quadruple-check on their guarantee and it "submit" before my laptop and the laws of mathematics decided to glance back my way.

So to reiterate, here's how I know I'm a failure:

1. I'm not rich enough to only complain about how much I pay in taxes

2. I'm actually excited about getting anything back, because…

3. …I make so little any return is actually going to affect my life.

And while we're at it, let's include 4. I feel the need to complain about getting a tax refund and I think it's worthy of blogging about when I could feed a small tribal community for a year were I to convert my refund into the local currency and surreptitiously mail it to their community.

Then again, if I'm passive-aggressively flaunting my new found wealth and prosperity, I certainly must be a success after all. I patiently await my Illuminati induction invitation.

On Creative Accounting

I recently realized, since I am a professional writer, pretty much anything I purchase specifically to be blogged about here is a business expense. That's pretty sweet, say, any time I want to see a new movie and then come home and bitch about it here anyway. It just seemed like that would be something kind of hard to sneak past my accountant.

Oh wait, I use Turbo Tax.

And I do it myself. Because I don't earn enough to need an accountant. Honestly, I'm a pretty strict guy. I really stick it to myself and make sure I spent at least as long composing my responses to X-Mens and variously colored lanterns and elaborate foodstuffs as I did watching/reading/eating said "business expenses." I'm really kind of an asshole. I'm sure if I remembered what it was like to be my age, I'd let myself write off all kinds of drugs and hookers, and call them "writing aides" and "creative consultants."

But my accountant is a cranky old man who never likes to have any fun.

Sound A Doggy Makes at Big Apple Comic Con!

Today The Sound A Doggy Makes will be at Big Apple Comic Con's Spring show at Penn Plaza Pavilion in NYC!

This means that if you want to meet me and have fun, you probably should have bought a ticket a while ago and come down! (They're still available at the gate, no worries.) It also means I'm going to be triple-fisting it as my awesome self, a subtly ravenous fanboy, and as an assistant to a junior casting agent friend-type lady. (I will be acting as pack mule for all our stuff.)

This means that I will have an amazing time and write about the crazy crap I see and do.

And that means I can write off my business and train tickets as business expenses. Nice.

I totally interned at Toyfare, a sister publication to Wizard for like two weeks.
I was the fourth person fired in 5 days.
Two years later every magazine published by Wizard was killed
and they rebranded as a web site. Glad I didn't stick around.

Of Tax Season, Redux

So I got my taxes done yesterday. I don't make enough to really be worth taxing, it seems. In fact, the federal and state governments collectively feel bad about taxing me as much as they already have. They feel $23 bad, in fact. I'm actually kind of relieved I didn't qualify for some other benefits:

"Expenses for donating an organ for human transplant." As opposed to what? I know we put pig parts in people, but have we started putting people parts in pigs? Is this one of of those weird things the government has to throw into a document somewhere so it's not technically a secret that we're conducting crazy genetic tests somewhere? Have we actually captured Osama Bin Laden and transplanted his brain into, like, a parakeet or something?

Surprisingly, that's not the weirdest.

Really? Nazis? Are there really still cases being settled over Nazi cases? I mean I saw that Law & Order episode where a bank was convicted of taking money from Jews they knew were gonna die so they wouldn't have to pay death benefits, but I feel like this isn't necessarily common enough to pop up in Turbo Tax.

Hell, maybe Turbo Tax just really, really hates racists and wants to remind us. It's accounting software. I'm sure a Jew must have worked on it somewhere along the line.

Of Tax Season

My great-great-grandfather used to do this,
except he did it with the racing forms and a
radio in a secret room next to the only telephone
in the neighborhood.

I'm actually excited to do my taxes this year. Why? Because for the first time there isn't some ridiculously complex dealing in the past year which bumps me from one bracket to another despite my usually meager earnings. I've been out of school long enough. There's no tuition, no loans, no cashed-in bond of money market which paid for last semester's schooling. For once, my taxes are going to be "I earned [x]. I have [0] deductions. Business expenses totaled [$64]. I owe [something tiny]."

Hell, maybe I'll even get paid something. Like $5. How great would it be if the government had to pay some bean counter forty grand a year and a mail clerk eight bucks an hour to mail me my check for $5.50? It'd be great.

I am actually going to do my taxes myself this year, and it's going to be kind of fun.

Next year, however, I plan on being rich enough that I need to hire my own accountant, so I'm going to enjoy it while I can. I already started a tax shelter, donating $10 to the people trying to extend a moratorium on geo-fracking in the Catskills into a permanent ban. That's called a "charitable donation," kiddos.

On Health Care

I don't usually complain about insane bureaucracy and horrible paradoxes or catch-22's when it comes to government programs. Frankly, I expect as much. Oh sure, I'll still rage rage against the dying of the light when it comes to actually deciding how that insane bureaucracy is run, but for the most part I tend to simply try to avoid the federal government.

Example: I paid my taxes this year. All 93¢ I owed.

Yes, it might have been more fun to waste hundreds of dollars in man hours forcing the IRS to come audit me, then causally tossed a dollar at my poor auditor and told him to keep the change, but I did legitimately owe the government 93¢. Plus, it's just as funny and spiteful to make them go through the all the regular work for such a paltry sum while I kick back and do nothing. (I'm lazy. Sue me.)


But sadly, sometimes I experience the bureaucracy in a way where I can't win or spite anyone and that makes me sad. See, I'm trying to get myself some health insurance.

Since I'm a writer I am self-employed and thus do not get medical coverage through my employer.

As I've yet to complete or sell what I am currently writing, I am technically also unemployed, an interesting dichotomy.

Moreover, since I've been "unemployed" for more than a year now, I cease to qualify for cheap health care from the state.


Essentially I am too rich to be forced to work and too poor for good health care. Additionally I am too healthy for emergency care but too fragile for an immortality exemption.

I mean I could easily get a part-time job and re-qualify for the cheap state care, but I'd really much rather sleep past noon every day and just be a famous author. With immortality. And maybe a cool haircut.