Due You Feel Like We Due?
Saturday 28 February 2015
H+R Block is back on the airwaves with their “Get Your Billions Back America” ad campaign. If you’re lucky enough to not know what I’m talking about, let me fill you in: a stereotypically looking ((I’ll let you decide what that looks like– hint: it rhymes with cold and bite)) accountant claims that H+R Block will maximize your tax refund (assuming you file with them). At best, this is disingenuous. At worst, it’s anti-American.
Why?
Like it or not Republicans, but American is basically a big union. And taxes are the equivalent of union dues. By not paying your fair share of taxes, you’re shirking your union responsibility.
What pays for roads and bridges that we drive on? Taxes. What pays for the wires delivering electricity to our houses? Taxes. What pays to ensure that the food, water and drugs we ingest into our bodies aren’t toxic? Taxes. Get my drift?
Here’s another way to look at it. H+R Block bragging that it can get you the biggest tax refund is like not tipping at a restaurant and only paying the bill. Technically that’s legal, but doing so totally screws over the waiter. Those not paying their fair share are screwing over us, the majority who do pay our fair share.
That’s why the sentiment this H+R Block ad campaign perpetuates is so worrisome: paying the absolute, “yeah-technically-that’s-legal-but-you’re-being-a-dick-about-it,” bare minimum in taxes fosters an undemocratic, “somebody-else-will-take-care-of-it-so-why-should-I-give-a-crap” mentality.
I don’t want America to get its billions back, because America will just blow it on saltines and DVDs. ((and not even bluray DVDs because America is like “The picture quality looks fine to me.”))
Just When I Thought It Couldn’t Get Any Worse
Wednesday 25 February 2015
First there was the “too many people have said ‘I don’t know you’ and now you can’t connect with them unless you provide their date of birth or mother’s maiden name” LinkedIn fiasco and now this:
Turns out, “commercial” (aka “bitch”) LinkedIn users have a finite number of searches they can perform every month.
Really?
That’s the entire point, the raison d’être, the singular function of LinkedIn: searching for people and companies. And now LinkedIn’s saying that I can only do that x number of times?
In addition to generating revenue via advertising, LinkedIn’s already selling my data to god-knows how many other companies. And, not unlike the deal we have with the pigeons, I thought that was the deal we have with the Internet: I have a free account with some service and in exchange, the service runs ads and gets to know every single thing there is to know about me.
LinkedIn is reneging on this deal. Not to mention the fact that LinkedIn doesn’t stop mining your data after you cough up for a “Premium” account.
Imagine if Google only allowed you to send 25 emails a month, else you pay for a “Google Pro” account: the Internet would collectively shit an adorably kitten-shaped brick.
I’d prefer not to even be on the site, but begging looking for work demands that I use it to reach out to recruiters and the like.
My disdain, scorn and contempt for you, LinkedIn, continues to burn with the fire of a thousand supernovae.
Since When Is Wasting Paper In Vogue?
Monday 23 February 2015
After canceling my New Yorker subscription, (Condé Nast: it’s me, not you. Honest.) I’ve found myself on the receiving end of Vogue magazine every month. I don’t know how it happened, but I’m sure as hell not paying for them. This month’s issue proved resoundingly ludicrous: it’s over 600 pages long and the table of contents is on, wait for it, page 92!
The good news is that now I have enough cologne samples to last through 2018.
A 14-Letter-Word For Bernice Gordon
Tuesday 3 February 2015
This past Friday, the Times published a wonderfully creative obituary for one Bernice Gordon, a 101-year-old cruciverbalist.
Quite a remarkable woman, considering:
[i]n the 1960s, she caused a small sensation by introducing the rebus puzzle. Such a puzzle might require solvers to replace the sequence “a-n-d” with an ampersand, for instance, as in SC&INAVIA and CARMENMIR&A. One ampers&-laden puzzle by Mrs. Gordon, published in The New York Times in 1965, split the crossword community in ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ (Clemens cognomen), leaving some readers spellbound and others scandalized.
To those not versed in crossword puzzles, that’s quite an accomplishment. Almost akin to being the computer hardware engineer who says “Hey, why don’t we put two buttons on the mouse?”
Sadly, Mrs. Gordon’s passing has made the puzzling world a little less cryptic.