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Thank God for Whitney Houston's drug-crazed secret gay life.
I have that issue of The National Enquirer propped up right next to the computer on which I'm doing my taxes.
Yes, I do my own taxes. Also my own accounting. A recent GAO investigation into the Big Box Tax Preparers (H. R. Block not mentioned by name!) determined that at least 25% of them made major errors. Generally these resulted in unwarranted refunds but occasionally they err in the direction of too much tax. Plus who wants to spend hours in an H.R. Block office anyway where the only reading material is three-year-old copies of Money magazine when you could be home reading about Whitney? It's not like Turbo Tax is rocket science.
Oh, Whitney! Ruining those silver pipes with crack-fueled orgies of such extreme decadence that the maidenly National Enquirer is forced to avert its eyes and use delicate euphemisms like "sex toys" and "intimate clinches with other women."
What the hell is a "clinch?" I'm wondering. A clinch is something you do standing up, right? How dirty can it be if you don't lay down to do it? The source for the story – who you gotta figure got something like a quarter of a million dollars since The Enquirer is splaying it across the front page of three separate issues – is Bobby Brown's sister Tina. Huh. I'm pretty sure Tina was one of the background minions on the Being Bobby Brown Christmas Special.
And now I'm starting to get reeeeeeeealy worried because Being Bobby Brown was absolutely one of my favorite TV shows last year and suppose all this fuss over Whitney's dildo collection makes upscale Bravo – raise your hand if you'd like to see James Lipton in a French maid outfit playing Erich von Stroheim to Whitney's Gloria Swanson – cancel Being Bobby Brown?
Back to the taxpayer's burden. In spring of last year, Intuit – whose point of sales system I inadvisedly purchased back in the days when I was a naive entrepreneurial wanna-be dreaming of the Big Buck$ that only hot sauce could provide me – came up with a very canny scheme to highjack all its point of sales customers so Intuit could use their cumulative transactions to launch a bank. Basically, they told me, they would no longer process credit card charges through any other bank but their own. And if I didn't like it – well. I could pony up the two grand for another point of sales system and don't let the door hit you on the way out.
I didn't have the two grand to spring on another point of sales system.
Now, I went with Intuit's point of sales initially because I use Quickbooks for accounting. And one of the things about Quickbooks is that you have to reconcile credit card deposits on a monthly basis in order to get your books to balance. But see, the Bank of Intuit appears to have no systematic approach to credit card deposits. (I suspect this is because they are using our credit card deposits for bigger and more grandiose empire building schemes.) Thus a $20.91 VISA charge that is made on Thursday may not be deposited until the following Tuesday. Only sometimes it's actually deposited that Friday. And other times it's mysteriously batched with six other charges, chosen randomly, for a grand total of $204.88 except that since we're looking at approximately 350 credit card charges over the course of a month, it's not immediately clear which seven of those add up to $204.88 and – well.
Thank God for Whitney, lying right there on the table next to the computer.
I have that issue of The National Enquirer propped up right next to the computer on which I'm doing my taxes.
Yes, I do my own taxes. Also my own accounting. A recent GAO investigation into the Big Box Tax Preparers (H. R. Block not mentioned by name!) determined that at least 25% of them made major errors. Generally these resulted in unwarranted refunds but occasionally they err in the direction of too much tax. Plus who wants to spend hours in an H.R. Block office anyway where the only reading material is three-year-old copies of Money magazine when you could be home reading about Whitney? It's not like Turbo Tax is rocket science.
Oh, Whitney! Ruining those silver pipes with crack-fueled orgies of such extreme decadence that the maidenly National Enquirer is forced to avert its eyes and use delicate euphemisms like "sex toys" and "intimate clinches with other women."
What the hell is a "clinch?" I'm wondering. A clinch is something you do standing up, right? How dirty can it be if you don't lay down to do it? The source for the story – who you gotta figure got something like a quarter of a million dollars since The Enquirer is splaying it across the front page of three separate issues – is Bobby Brown's sister Tina. Huh. I'm pretty sure Tina was one of the background minions on the Being Bobby Brown Christmas Special.
And now I'm starting to get reeeeeeeealy worried because Being Bobby Brown was absolutely one of my favorite TV shows last year and suppose all this fuss over Whitney's dildo collection makes upscale Bravo – raise your hand if you'd like to see James Lipton in a French maid outfit playing Erich von Stroheim to Whitney's Gloria Swanson – cancel Being Bobby Brown?
Back to the taxpayer's burden. In spring of last year, Intuit – whose point of sales system I inadvisedly purchased back in the days when I was a naive entrepreneurial wanna-be dreaming of the Big Buck$ that only hot sauce could provide me – came up with a very canny scheme to highjack all its point of sales customers so Intuit could use their cumulative transactions to launch a bank. Basically, they told me, they would no longer process credit card charges through any other bank but their own. And if I didn't like it – well. I could pony up the two grand for another point of sales system and don't let the door hit you on the way out.
I didn't have the two grand to spring on another point of sales system.
Now, I went with Intuit's point of sales initially because I use Quickbooks for accounting. And one of the things about Quickbooks is that you have to reconcile credit card deposits on a monthly basis in order to get your books to balance. But see, the Bank of Intuit appears to have no systematic approach to credit card deposits. (I suspect this is because they are using our credit card deposits for bigger and more grandiose empire building schemes.) Thus a $20.91 VISA charge that is made on Thursday may not be deposited until the following Tuesday. Only sometimes it's actually deposited that Friday. And other times it's mysteriously batched with six other charges, chosen randomly, for a grand total of $204.88 except that since we're looking at approximately 350 credit card charges over the course of a month, it's not immediately clear which seven of those add up to $204.88 and – well.
Thank God for Whitney, lying right there on the table next to the computer.
