All straightened out...

Let me tell you how it will be
There's one for you, nineteen for me

Most folks settle up with Uncle Sugar on April 15 every year. A fair percentage, though, take advantage of Form 4868 (Application for Automatic Extension of Time to File U.S. Individual Income Tax Return), which must be filed by April 15 and extends the deadline for filing to August 15. Form 4868 does not take you off the hook for paying any income tax you may owe; the IRS expects you to enclose payment for expected taxes owed along with the 4868. But you get four additional months - with no questions asked - to organize your receipts, get your ducks in a row, and get right with the gummint.

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat.
If you get too cold, I'll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.

Come August 15, if you still need time, you can file Form 2688 (Application for Additional Extension of Time To File U.S. Individual Income Tax Return) that, when filed by August 15, gives you until October 15 to get your stuff together, move off the dime, and file your tax return. Unlike Form 4868, the rules for Form 2688 require you to explain why you need an extension, and your explanation must be adequate, according to the rules.

Don't ask me what I want it for
If you don't want to pay some more

This year, the drop-dead date for filing - if you've gotten your Form 2688 approved - is October 16. Tomorrow.

How do I know this?

Haha. ... Heh-heh. ... Hooo! ... Hahaha ... Oohhhhh! ... Heh-heh-heh-heh ... HAHAHAHAHA!!! ... HOO-HOO-HA-HEY! ... HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! ... YAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!

(Need a hint?)

Cheers...

Strange, but nice...

Another poem I remember from an old Jean Shepherd show. I happened to record that broadcast, and so was able to listen to his recitation several times, but it wasn't until I happened to find it in an anthology published in 1918 (and read at Notre Dame soon after that, if the inside cover is any indication) that I found out who wrote it. Enjoy.

EVOLUTION
      - Langdon Smith

When you were a Tadpole and I was a Fish
In the Paleozoic time,
And side by side on the ebbing tide
We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal flip
Through the depths of the Cambrian fen --
My heart was rife with the joy of life
For I loved you even then.

Mindless we lived, mindless we loved,
And mindless at last we died;
And deep in the rift of a Caradoc drift
We slumbered side by side.
The world turned on in the lathe of time,
The hot lands heaved amain,
Till we caught our breath from the womb of death
And crept into life again.

We were Amphibians, scaled and tailed,
And drab as a dead man's hand;
We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees
Or trailed through the mud and sand.
Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet,
Writing a language dumb,
With never a spark in the empty dark
To hint at a life to come.

And happy we loved, happy we lived,
And happy we died once more.
Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold
Of a Neocomian shore.
The eons came and the eons fled
And the sleep that wrapped us fast
Was riven away in a newer day
And the night of death was past.

Then light and swift through the jungle trees
We swung in our airy flights,
Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms
In the hush of the moonless nights.
And, oh, what beautiful years were these
When our hearts clung each to each;
When life was filled and our senses thrilled
In the first faint dawn of speech!

Thus life by life and love by love
We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death
We followed the chain of change.
Till there came a time in the law of life
When over the nursing sod
The shadows broke and the soul awoke
In a strange, dim dream of God.

I was thewed like an Aurochs bull
And tusked like the great Cave-Bear,
And you, my sweet, from head to feet
Were gowned in your glorious hair.
Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,
When the night fell o'er the plain,
And the moon hung red o'er the river bed,
We mumbled the bones of the slain.

I flaked a flint to a cutting edge
And shaped it with brutish craft;
I broke a shank from the woodland dank
And fitted it, head and haft;
Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn
Where the mammoth came to drink --
Through the brawn and bone I drove the stone,
And slew him upon the brink.

Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,
Loud answered our kith and kin;
From west to east to the crimson feast
The clan came trooping in.
O'er joint and gristle and padded bone
We fought and clawed and tore,
And cheek by jowl, with many a growl
We talked the marvel o'er.

I carved that fight on a reindeer bone
With rude and hairy hand;
I pictured his fall on the cavern wall
That men might understand.
For we lived by blood and the right of might,
Ere human laws were drawn,
And the age of sin did not begin
Till our brutal tush were gone.

And that was a million years ago,
In a time that no man knows;
Yet here to-night in the mellow light
We sit at Delmonico's.
Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,
Your hair is as dark as jet,
Your years are few, your life is new,
Your soul untried, and yet --

Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay,
And the scarp of the Purbeck flags;
We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones
And deep in the Coralline crags.
Our love is old, our lives are old,
And death shall come amain.
Should it come to-day, what man may say
We shall not live again?

God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds
And furnished them wings to fly;
He sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn,
And I know that it shall not die,
Though cities have sprung above the graves
Where the crook-bone man made war
And the ox-wain creaks o'er the burdened caves
Where the mummied mammoths are.

Then as we linger at luncheon here
O'er many a dainty dish,
Let us drink anew to the time when you
Were a Tadpole and I was a Fish.

Cheers...

You've been using your PalmPilot too much when...

...you start tapping the stylus on the screen of your monitor.

...you press your monitor's power button for a couple of seconds to turn on the backlight.

...you press the brightness and contract controls on your monitor to switch applications.

...you think of HotSync-ing your computer instead of your Palm device.

...your handwritten notes are written using Graffiti strokes.

Cheers...