The pen is back ...

I celebrated the completion of a huge work project -- the labors of nearly a month -- by eating lunch out. Chez Taco Bell.

Sometimes when I pull up to the drive-thru of such a place, I think of a column I once read by some delightful old curmudgeon. Never, says the man, does he ever go through the drive through. He stops his car, he goes inside, he talks to people, not a speaker-box and he eats his meal around other people, not in his car.

So today, I did likewise.

My order was about $6. Just for kicks, I calculated the percentage that I paid in taxes. Nearly ten percent. That would be, in Biblical reckoning, a tithing. Tithing belongs to God, not the guv'mint. The implications were disturbing.

How many times a day do we calmly hand over nickels and dimes, nickels and dimes, more nickels and more dimes, to the government,without any thought at all?

"I'm sorry, my son picked up your order by accident," said a Woman approaching the table where I was waiting for my food. "He just put napkins on the tray, he didn't unwrap anything."

I assured Her that I wasn't the least bit bothered. Then I pondered for a while on the society in which I live, where every stranger has now become a disgusting bag of germs in our eyes, where they actually wrap plastic forks in a coating of plastic in a restaurant such as I was in, lest the filthy fingers of strangers brush across them or their breath blow out a blast of baleful bacteria.

It wasn't so long ago that people ate out of communal bowls, shared the same Communion cup at church, even slept double in beds with strangers at roadside inns. Then again, people died young back then.

It is Schumann's 200th birthday today. Great composer. I listened to the melody of his composition for string orchestra and wondered about the precise moment when it entered his head. Was he munching schnitzel in some inn, on a rainy, cold night? Walking the street in spring? Or just sitting quietly in his study contemplating life?

Taco Bell is not celebrating Schumann's birthday. Their PA system is playing Stereo Mc's "Connected."

"If you make sure you're connected
The writing's on the wall
But if your mind's neglected, stumble you might fall
Stumble you might fall, stumble you might fall."

Perhaps Stereo Mc will be remembered in 200 years. Perhaps not.

Imagine

"Imagine there's no taxes,
It's easy if you try ..."
-- with apologies to the late John Lennon

I stood in the Wendy's line at lunch, lusting over a luscious salad. I had eight quarters and three one dollar bills in my hand. Should be more than enough to cover the cost of an item whose listed price tag is $4.79, right?

Wrongo, bucko.

Not in 2009, not in this city, not in this swiftly-sinking-to-h$ll country of ours.

With tax, it came to $5.25. That's .46 tax, or eight percent!

I didn't have the invisible two extra quarters the city/state/feds demanded so I had to use the credit card or get something cheaper or just starve. Sweetie will not be happy -- She doesn't like to use the card except for emergencies.

Unless you are a math genius with a tax table in your pocket, you can't hope to use a store price tag these days to determine how much you will pay for your merchandise.

Tax anger created this country. Tax anger just may be what drives out the current crop of slime that has oozed into all its positions of leadership.

We need taxes for public education, we are told. Well, public education in this country stinks. It's not the fault of the majority of teachers, highly over-worked and underpaid, but rather of badly-raised children, moronic parents and stupid administrative ideas such as recess elimination. So let's figure out a better way and maybe pay for it more intelligently.

We need taxes for roads, we are told. What, those same roads that our current taxes can't keep fixed? Why not sell stretches of freeway to big corporations and let them rename it, for example, Ronald McDonald Expressway and paint the happy clown's face on the pavement and pay a fat fee for the privilege of millions of drivers getting the craving for a Big Mac as they speed down the road?

We need taxes to pay the salaries of senators and such, we are told. I really, really hope that you don't believe that. Why not have communities pick local good guys and gals and compel them, George Washington-style, to temporarily serve their country as leaders, and pay them a living wage like honest folk make and no more? I'm sick up to my ears of all the arrogant political dirtbags who salivate over public office like a junkie craving his crack-pipe. Let 'em work off some of their bloated belly fat laying asphalt on our new, tax-free roads or dodging IEDs in Iraq.