Subject: What Profiteth a Man If He Loses His Ass?

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com>

Date: Thu, Apr 15, 2004 12:17 PM

TAX DAY. TURBO TAX. Etc. etc.

All done, all electronic, all zip zip zip.

The program called Turbo Tax walks you through your incredibly
complicated self-employed small business owner taxes very cheerfully,
presenting little movies now and then in which miniature people explain
things like depreciation for folks who can't read or who just like to
watch the tiny TurboTax movie people.

It also pauses for informative lessons in tax law. I have been doing my
own taxes forever, so after about 30 years of it, I actually understand
federal tax jargon and their unique brand of logic, as much as a layman
can be expected to "understand" it.

This program cheerfully explained the new tax laws to me and how they
affect me. Well, they don't affect me AT ALL, because I'm in the same
tax bracket as most people with ordinary shitty-paying jobs. We're
basically getting screwed at the same pace we were previously. Those
who make over $50 G a year, now, THEY really did get a break this year,
a large percentage drop in their tax rate. And the over-$100 g/year
folks, well, they're capped at 35%, down quite a bit from the 37.5% or
whatever that you'd have to pay if you were a billionairre last year.
And they are going MUCH easier on capital gains and inheritance and all
that. (That's Rich Guy tax stuff for you poebuckers out there.)

I'm not bitching that the rich guys got a break. Even the rich guys
have been getting ripped off BAD by the continent's largest organized
crime mob. It's just that... HOW COME I DON'T GET A BREAK TOO?!?

There's one tax bracket below mine, which I would be in if I weren't
surgically attached to the warm larger mouse, and I don't need to tell
you that they got the least break of all.

This is all dull common knowledge; it's just that I had to be FORCED at
what is ultimately GUNPOINT to get down and dirty and close to it for
the last two days. Wallowing in the muc,k as it were. The Emergentile
in me kinda DIGS it, perversely. Numbers do one's bidding, obeying
every order exactly as expected.

The SubGenius Corporate taxes for Texas were filed late, but only took
about 2 minutes to do. Texas is kindly to corporations. And for humans
or SubGeniuses, there's no state income tax! There are Teamsters,
though, so it's far from business heaven.

So... since I was in that logical mathful state of mind, and because
they're overdue, I was paying bills. ARISE sales have been wonderful so
I'm paying off credit cards.

I had to pay this one bill for $993.

It happened to be check # 999 that came up.

So I feel more like the money went to "Bob." (It actually DID,
indirectly, in that these debts are basically for past SubGenius
projects that we had to "float" until something paid off. SLOW AND
STEADY, that's the ticket. Also our only alternative, as it happens.
Thankfully that fits the preferred lifestyle anyway.)

Notice that during the week, with tax deadline day approaching, I
worked on Bucky's SubSITE revision FIRST... and THEN did the taxes.

I let "ART" come before "BIZ."

I was pondering the possible idiocy of that very thing this morning
when the subject header line jumped into my head. What profiteth it a
man if he loses his ass. CAN'T be the first time somebody's come up
with THAT one, though. Even if it's not especially original at least
it's better than NENSLO's joke about the homo amino acid. That was
REALLY REALLY BAD.

--
4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected (Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
P.O. Box 181417, Cleveland, OH 44118 (fax 216-320-9528)
A subsidiary of:
The SubGenius Foundation, Inc. / P.O. Box 204206, Austin, TX 78720-4206
Dobbs-Approved Authorized Commercial Outreach of The Church of the SubGenius
SubSITE: http://www.subgenius.com
For SubGenius Biz & Orders: call toll free to 1-888-669-2323
or email: jesus@subgenius.com
PRABOB

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Subject: Re: What Profiteth a Man If He Loses His Ass?
From: "nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

So, once again the question comes up:

"Are you glad the Church is 'for profit', or do
you wish you had gone the whole way, like all
the other money-grubbing shamen?"

--
"YOU BELONG TO US NOW!"
"GET DOWN WITH MY SICKNESS!!"

--Kino Beman, brand name

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: What Profiteth a Man If He Loses His Ass?
From: nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>

> I was pondering the possible idiocy of that very thing this morning
> when the subject header line jumped into my head. What profiteth it a
> man if he loses his ass. CAN'T be the first time somebody's come up
> with THAT one, though. Even if it's not especially original at least
> it's better than NENSLO's joke about the homo amino acid. That was
> REALLY REALLY BAD.
>

LIKE O PEEN.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: What Profiteth a Man If He Loses His Ass?
From: Cardinal Vertigo <jhobbs@myrealbox.com>

HOMO cystiene.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: What Profiteth a Man If He Loses His Ass?
From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com>

In article <407F8BFF.B47A3A90@yahoox.com>, nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>
wrote:

>
> LIKE O PEEN.

Yes I KNOW, Nenslo. I GOT it.

It IS funny, but for all-wrong reasons. As I'm sure you're pridefully
aware.

I was reading a Clark Ashton Smith story in one of those old sf mags
you sent me or maybe that Geo gave me -- a story about a poebucker who
hears tell of a lost African plateau inhabited by normal sized black
men but GIANT WHITE WOMEN... white women 8 feet tall! (Come to think of
it, the back cover illustration of the man standing before the giant
hot-looking queen of the Giant White Women was so striking that I
scanned it and it's one of the pictures buried within that shiny round
thing I mailed you.) Anyway, I had always heard good things about Clark
Ashton Smith, like he was a psuedo-Lovecraft and thus BadGreat, but
this particular story from the 1940s sucked worse than your joke.

I am still trying to struggle through "Stranger in a Strange Land," by
interspering it with bearable reading, but the dialog, especially the
"manly freethinker" banter of this Jubal Harshaw character, is REALLY
making it difficult. Phrases like "arrested development," "nerd" and
"wish fulfillment" keep popping up in my mind right in the middle of
the weightiest scenes. Like when the third Matrix movie is trying its
hardest, but you just bust out laughing. It takes one to know one, and
I know this one piece of "classic sci fi" REALLY SUCKS so far.

Last year however, some book collector friends of mine turned me on to
a... uh... a fantasy novel called "Perdido Street Station" by an
English lad named China Meiville, which renewed my faith in the future
of insane fantasy novels. A wonderfully styled exploration of a QUITE
fucked-up, completely invented universe in which forbidden science and
magic twist together in the coolest way. I heard it described as
"steampunk" or "cybersteam" or "punksteam" or some such. I call it fine
Advertent Bulldada.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: What Profiteth a Man If He Loses His Ass?
From: KRONOS <null@void.com>

John Sladek (greatly underappreciated) did a really funny parody of
Heinlein's style in a story called "Engineer of the Gods" -I think
that's the title.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>

>
> It IS funny, but for all-wrong reasons. As I'm sure you're pridefully
> aware.

Mrs. Nenslo said it was the worst joke ever made.

LYCOPENE.
>
> I was reading a Clark Ashton Smith story in one of those old sf mags
> you sent me or maybe that Geo gave me -- a story about a poebucker who
> hears tell of a lost African plateau inhabited by normal sized black
> men but GIANT WHITE WOMEN... white women 8 feet tall! (Come to think of
> it, the back cover illustration of the man standing before the giant
> hot-looking queen of the Giant White Women was so striking that I
> scanned it and it's one of the pictures buried within that shiny round
> thing I mailed you.) Anyway, I had always heard good things about Clark
> Ashton Smith, like he was a psuedo-Lovecraft and thus BadGreat, but
> this particular story from the 1940s sucked worse than your joke.

At this stage in my life I find Lovecraft unreadable, although at age
sixteen it was THE MOST WONDeRFUL HORRIBLE STUFF IN THE WORLD, but have
ALWAYS found C A Smith unreadable, like the early work of one of HPL's
self-appointed heirs, Basil Copper - mere Lovecraft pastiche. Copper
improved after a while, when he started writing less like HPL. One
not-so-SF writer I enjoy is Jeff Long, who writes climbing novels. Sort
of. Since that's what he did for years, climb rocks and mountains, he
started out writing Angels Of Light, about a band of climbers, rock
bums, who find a plane full of drugs crashed in a frozen mountaintop
lake. His second novel, The Ascent, is about a climb of the north face
of whatchamacallit, tallest mountain in the world but makes it not so
much glorious as dreadful and agonizing and dirty and wretched - his
personal experience coming through. Then he wrote The Descent, the
first thing I read by him, which is a kickass scary horrible
subterranean SF novel - seems there's always been an incredibly deep and
vast tunnel system circling the globe which has just now been accessed,
and partially colonized in a primitive dirty and brutal way, by surface
people, and some folks undertake to cross under the Pacific ocean in
these tunnels despite the fact that they are still somewhat inhabited by
the race which preceded humanity on earth - whom we know as DEMONS, and
whose culture and artforms center around HORRIBLE TORTURE AND
MUTILATIONOF THEIR VICTIMS FOR YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS and if they
survive they get to join the tribe. His most recent, I forget the name,
had way too many things in it at once although an ancient disease does
exterminate 90% of humanity which is always good.

>
> Last year however, some book collector friends of mine turned me on to
> a... uh... a fantasy novel called "Perdido Street Station" by an
> English lad named China Meiville, which renewed my faith in the future
> of insane fantasy novels. A wonderfully styled exploration of a QUITE
> fucked-up, completely invented universe in which forbidden science and
> magic twist together in the coolest way. I heard it described as
> "steampunk" or "cybersteam" or "punksteam" or some such. I call it fine
> Advertent Bulldada.

They now have massive omnibi of the complete short stories of many of
the old timers like Fred Brown, William Tenn, and seven volumes of Ted
Sturgeon, but however great those stories are one at a time, too much of
that "tone" just grates after number twenty. I'm poking along through
Mockymen by Ian Watson, whose The Embedding I liked quite a bit - one of
the better Neanderthal Clone novels (with brain-eating!). And I have
Jack Williamson's Terraforming Earth waiting. Also found a funny little
thing called The Dechronization of Sam Magruder, which claims to be an
indiscretion of a Harvard paleontologist named George Gaylord Simpson,
manuscript found ten years after his death, about a guy who slips
himself through time back to the age of the dinosaurs.

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Original file name: What Profiteth a Man If #1AD937 - converted on Saturday, 25 September 2004, 02:05