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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
* Scheduled to coincide with the first full day of Spring Training, please see Bugs & Cranks for the latest on the Atlanta squad:
Anatomy of a Brave: A head-to-toe look at the Braves’ chances for success in the new season.
And now, back to your regularly-scheduled content. Cheers.
Tomorrow, my wife and I are having our taxes done. By a ‘professional’. Because having your taxes done by a ‘hobbyist’ is a damned fool idea. This isn’t like rock tumbling or stamp collecting or open-heart surgery — something could actually go wrong. That’s why we’re involving a pro.
It feels a little strange to be thinking of taxes so early. When we’ve handled our taxes ourselves, we’ve never started working on them in the middle of February. Or late February. Or March, or typically until April 14th at nine in the evening when my wife looks over and asks, ‘Hey… what day is this?‘
“This isn’t like rock tumbling or stamp collecting or open-heart surgery — something could actually go wrong.”
Thus begins a three-hour tour of our financial records, pay stubs, credit card receipts, and various bits of paper with cryptic things like ‘J14Q9B – $700’ written on them.
(What could it mean? Is it a savings account number? A winning lottery ticket code? The license plate of a car we smooshed, and the cost of the repairs? It’s a mystery.)
We keep all of these records in the same standard, secure place everyone keeps them — in a shoebox in the far corner of our least favorite room. The box collects dust for three hundred and sixty-four days a year, until our mad dash with the calculator to make the numbers on the bits of paper add up. Or to look reasonable. Or at the very least, to not suggest that we owe back taxes equal to the gross national product of Venezuela.
It’s all different this year. Our mad dash — ‘Oh shit, honey, the appointment’s in the morning!‘ — happened tonight, almost two full months before taxes are due. And now we’ll have an experienced set of eyeballs poring over our shoebox filing system. He likely won’t know what the bits of paper mean, either — but at least we’ll have an expert opinion about whether they’re likely to cause the feds to come storming after us. If that’s the case, maybe we’ll move to Venezuela. I hear extradition from South America is a real bitch.
So, we’re taking the shoebox to the tax man. By the end of the session, we’ll owe whatever small fortune the IRS wants… and another little ransom for having the tax return prepared. I’m pretty sure we have to bring our own envelopes. And stamp licking is an extra fee, apparently.
But at least if we get audited, maybe we can send the tax man to Venezuela. I hope he needs a tan.
Permalink | 2 CommentsLadies, gents, and lovers of all ages —
“You won’t find baby talk or fancy chocolates, but you might just learn something.”
Today’s very special (and fully grant-funded) look at romance from a rigorous and impartial perspective is being brought to you by The Science Creative Quarterly, which has been gracious enough to publish my piece:
You won’t find baby talk or fancy chocolates, but you might just learn something. So put on those lab coats and have a look. And while you’re there, take a stroll through the SCQ‘s impressive archives. I think you’ll find the hypothesis ‘Their site is great!’ to be accurate to several decimal places. Happy Valentine’s Day!
Permalink | 2 Comments* For the baseball fans, two new Braves posts at Bugs & Cranks:
Do It for ‘Druw — A lighthearted look at how the Braves can keep Andruw Jones. (Hint: It involves bobbleheads.)
Talking Points — Is Oscar Villarreal’s new contract a model for future deals? Or just an excuse to daydream until spring training starts?
For you non-baseball buffs, today’s regular content begins… now.
You can tell it’s been a long year for the meteorologists. Boston has so far — knock on a toboggan — escaped the snowy ravages of winter this time around. Sure, other areas have been hit hard — Colorado over the holidays, upstate New York over the past week — but Boston has remained unscathed by the white stuff. The worst news the weather people around here have delivered regarded a cold spell with near-zero wind chills. Not sub-zero, mind you. Just near-zero.
And it’s absolutely killing them.
“If you listened to them, you’d think a Category 6 beast was on the way, with wind tunnel force and an eighty percent chance of locusts and brimstone.
You can see it in their eyes during the weather reports. This is Boston. It’s supposed to snow in Boston. An army of skiers and schoolchildren and ice sculpture specialists are watching them, noses pressed to their televisions, praying to hear that there’s a winter Nor’easter coming to dump three feet of snow in our laps.
But it hasn’t. Snowy precipitation has been both conspicuous and persistent in its absence. If not for the cold streak, you could say it’s downright temperate around here.
In a banner year for snow, too. That has to make things worse. I can just picture our local weather wonks sitting in a bar somewhere commiserating, when some yahoo meteorologist from Denver or Buffalo texts them with:
‘U GOT NO SN00!!! LOLZ!!!’
That’s like a knuckle right up the ‘El Nino‘, that is.
So it’s no surprise that the network climate crews are all over the snow expected later this week. They finally have something to report, and they’re hyping the hell out of this storm. Or hyping hail into it. If you listened to them, you’d think a Category 6 beast was on the way, with wind tunnel force and an eighty percent chance of locusts and brimstone. Stock up on fresh water! Board up your windows! Stash the old people in the basement — the Big One‘s a-comin’!
Meanwhile, this is what the local weather report actually says:
Tonight: Mostly clear. Low 14F.
Tomorrow: Mostly sunny; snow after midnight.
Wednesday: Snow turning to rain in the afternoon.
Thursday: Maybe snow. Maybe not. A little windy.
Friday: Partly cloudy. High of 25F. What is this, June?
In total, Metro Boston is looking at something in the range of three-to-six inches of snow. Three-to-six inches would be big news in, say, Tampa. Or Tempe. Or Tuscaloosa.
In Boston, six inches of snow is what you leave on the sidewalks when you get tired of shoveling. Or when the snowblower conks out. Or when you have your first yardwork-induced coronary. In any event, it’s nothing. A pittance. Mere flurries.
At least it lets the meteorologists feel useful for a few days again. They can get the kids’ hopes up about a snow day, and tell viewers to ‘hit the slopes’ with a clear conscience. Maybe they’ll even call their meteorologist mates in other cities to gloat:
Remote Meteorologist: Hello?
Boston Weather Hound: Yo Scott, it’s Joe. In Boston. You know how you said we got no snow?
Remote Meteorologist: Yeah.
Boston Weather Hound: Well, suck it! Big blizzard on the way. Booyah!
Remote Meteorologist: A ‘blizzard’? I don’t remember seeing-
Boston Weather Hound: You heard me. Snow all up in our bidness now.
Remote Meteorologist: Look, there’s nothing on national radar about a ‘blizzard’. How much are you getting?
Boston Weather Hound: Uh… three to six inches?
Remote Meteorologist: Pffft. Weatherman, please. Six inches is nothing. Our producer’s snorted lines of coke taller than six inches.
Boston Weather Hound: But the wind-
Remote Meteorologist: I mean, six inches? Six? We get six inches of snow in August around here.
Boston Weather Hound: I’m just saying-
Remote Meteorologist: Dude, I’ve seen a kid eat two ice cream bars and shit six inches of snow. You suck. Just admit it.
Boston Weather Hound: I hate you. You know that, right?
Remote Meteorologist: Yeah, I know. Ah well, guess I’ll go cry… in my enormous eight-foot snowbanks! Ha ha! You got no snow!
Hopefully, it won’t come to that. Meteorologists can be so cruel.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind if snow just passed us by this year. I don’t ski, and I’m all grown up now — even if we do get enough snow to get out of work, I have to spend my whole off day shoveling the steps. I’d almost rather be stuck in a midmorning staff meeting.
(Almost. But not quite. Those things are like watching milk spoil. And slightly more distasteful.)
At any rate, it seems we’ll survive this weeks’ ‘blizzard’. And I’m sure we’ll hear every imaginable climatological detail before and after, from cold front mechanics to the quantum physics of isobar migration. All the while knowing it’s for a snowfall they might normally call a ‘dusting’. It almost makes you feel sorry for the meteorologists.
Like I said — almost. Just wait until next year. I bet they give us two feet of snow a week and sleet on Sundays. It just goes to show — you can’t keep a winter weather wag down for long.
Permalink | 2 CommentsIf there’s one thing I’ve realized in the three-and-a-half years I’ve been hammering away on this site, it’s that I really enjoy writing. There are days when the ideas come slowly, or when it’s hard to find the time, but if I don’t write for more than a day or two, I start to miss it. I guess you could say that writing is my one true love.
Well, that’s not entirely accurate, of course. My wife is my ‘one true love’. Without her, there’d be no web site. Or writing. Or laughs. I’d be an illiterate destitute wretch, spending the rest of my miserable existence penniless and friendless, weeping for all I’d lost.
(That’s what she tells me, anyway. She’s a great girl!)
So, my wife and writing are my two true loves.
And Guinness. (Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!)
Let’s be honest, now. An expertly poured Guinness in a proper imperial pint glass is a thing of beauty. Especially if the bartender draws a little shamrock on top with the tap stream.
(Yes, I know it’s just a novelty for the tourists. I don’t care. You show me a shamrock drawn on a crappy Bud Light draft, and I’ll stop thinking it’s cool. Nyah.)
“Thirty percent less boob jokes. Ninety percent more ‘wood’ and ‘getting to third base’ jokes.”
There’s more to Guinness than visual appeal. There’s the taste, of course. An acquired taste, to be sure — like caviar or pate or mustard gas. But there’s so much more — the heritage, the trivia (it’s nitrogenated, you know), the excuse to talk in a really bad Irish accent. A good Guinness isn’t just a beer; it’s an experience.
And that’s why my wife, writing, and Guinness are my three true loves.
And then there’s baseball.
I don’t talk about it too often here, but I’ve been a baseball fan for as long as I can remember. Other sports are great, but baseball is special. The hundred-plus years of history, the legend of the greats from today and yesterday, and the umpteen-hundred kinds of statistics measuring performance in everything from ‘runners left on base with less than two outs after the sixth inning’ to ‘tobacco wads spat per at bat’.
(For the record, Lenny Dykstra holds the career mark in the modern era. Sadly, wad-related statistics have only been tracked since the late ’70s.)
So why have I provided this guided tour through my most precious and cherished entities? To announce that I’ve been given the rare opportunity to combine two of the things that I love the most.
(No, it’s not dipping my wife in a bathtub full of Guinness. I thought of that, but she wouldn’t go for it. She says the bubbles tickle her nose.)
I’m happy and proud to announce that I’ve recently signed on as a regular contributor to a new baseball-related web site, Bugs & Cranks. The B&C mission is to ‘cover the good, the bad, and the ridiculous’ happening in the major leagues, and offer ‘humorous and insightful’ commentary on all things baseball. Each writer covers primarily one team; I’m assigned to the Atlanta Braves, and I’m looking forward to a season full of stats and yuks. And Bobby Cox blowing a gasket sometime in May if the team’s not playing well.
So what does this mean for you, the devoted reader — or casual reader, or occasional lurker, or Google searcher looking for ‘Latvian hooker llama porn’?
Well, if you’re a baseball fan, then you’ve just found a new site in Bugs & Cranks (permalink to your right atop the sidebar) that will entertain, enlighten, and inform you on a daily basis, no matter your favorite MLB team. The writing staff being assembled there is top-notch, including published authors, freelance humorists, and accomplished writers (like Dan Tobin of Surgical Strikes fame, featured on this site’s blogroll for many moons now).
You’ve also got the means for us to have an extra conversation or three a week. My writing over there will be much the same as it is here, with three slight differences:
When I post a new entry at B&C, I’ll let you know in the next post here with a quick link. It might look something like this:
Bugs & Cranks: Braves’ New World
That’ll be your cue to check out the story, or to click the main link and see what’s new and gnarly around the rest of the league.
(Go ahead, try it now. The links are real, and it’s never too early to get into game shape.)
But what if, horror of horrors, you’re not a baseball fan?
Well, then you get nothing, I guess. You’re one of those leering Latvian llama lechers, aren’t you? Sicko.
At any rate, nothing much around here will change. I’ll still be slinging the same nonsense on this site several days a week, and occasionally managing to get a piece published elsewhere.
(Speaking of which, keep an eye out on Wednesday. The Valentine’s Day post for this year has been accepted on another site. Very exciting.
For me. For other people, maybe not so much.)
So that’s it for now. I hope you’ll come visit us at Bugs & Cranks for baseball fun, and stop by here again for semi-daily shenanigans.
(Or Dial ‘M’ for Moron for shenanigans from the archives, lovingly dusted off and reprinted for your nostalgic enjoyment.)
Personally, I’m just squealingly happy to combine two loves into one, and spend some time waxing poetic about the national pastime. And as long as I have beer in the fridge, I can drink Guinness while I write and combine three loves at once. Oh, mama. That’s as good as it could possibly get.
Just, you know, don’t tell my wife I said that. I’m not ready for ‘penniless and friendless’ just yet.
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