bursting some brain cells by thinking too hard

    Yo.
     The 'siblingage' post is taking forever to write. I started it, it ended up being waaay too long, I edited, it didn't make sense, so I'm working it. Anyway, it'll show up eventually.
     For now, I just wanted to say that I'm still alive (barely--I've had a migraine off and on since Saturday) and if I could, I would go across the hall (I'm home since Wednesday is my late day at work) and kill my neighbors. For some unknown reason, my previously very-quiet across-the-hall neighbors have started wearing shoes at all times. Including the toddler. And if you haven't noticed, they call them "toddlers" for a reason: they are always moving. It's like living in a tap dance studio. I don't need to be at work until 10:30, but I'm actually thinking of going in early because the noise is really making me out-of-control angry, taking what would have just been a really terrible headache and turning it into a reasonable excuse for triple homicide.
     Well [she says, brightening artificially], how are you all doing today?
     I was reading my Kiplinger's Personal Finance (June, 2006) the other day. I suppose I should explain why I get the magazine in the first place, but...suffice it to say it involves my dad and his notions of my financial situation. I read this letter to the editor and knew that I had to share it with y'all.

ALL IN THE FAMILY
Your article on who qualifies as a child made my day ("A Loophole is Born," March). I amended the returns for clients whose incomes exceed $345,000, taking away their dependent exemptions (the clients weren't getting them anyway) and dividing them among their children. For example, with the child tax loophole, a doctor's 18-year-old son who earned $13,500 in 2005 can claim his younger sister as a dependent, saving the family about $3,000 (including the earned-income credit plus a percentage of the child tax credit).
--F. H., Little Rock, Ark.

    That makes me want to (a) vomit, (b) scream, and (c) find out what fucking moron is in charge of writing the tax laws that allow a DEPENDENT CHILD to claim another DEPENDENT CHILD as their own DEPENDENT CHILD in order to save their parent[s], who already make more than a third of a million dollars a year, $3000 (no, not "$3,000", but $3000) in taxes, and beat them bloody. Oh, yeah, and make sure that anyone who has the opportunity to do it will go to Little Rock and practice civil disobedience against Mr. H., for saving the BIG guys their much-needed money.
     Ugh. It's this sort of shit that makes me truly disgusted to be forced to call myself an American, or a lawyer. To have anything to do with a system that allows something this pathetic is revolting to me.
    The Cat recently posted, on her memes blog, the results of a 'political profile' quiz. I often take the quizzes that she posts, though I don't post them with the same regularity. (Popeye complains and Trixie makes fun.) I booted up that quiz and answered the first two or three questions before abandoning it; I knew what my results would be, and the questions themselves were annoying to me. My politics isn't something that can be characterized in an "either/or" fashion. At heart I am clearly liberal, but my education and experience have led me to believe strongly in personal responsibility, too--the "hand up, not hand-out" idea, and so forth. So those multiple choice questions were insufficient to encompass my philosophy and the results would likely have left me unsatisfied.
     But that letter to Kiplinger's? That...that makes me want to blow shit up, you know? It makes me want to do completely illogical things like go to marches and carry banners and demonstrate on the steps of federal buildings. I don't think that people who make $345,000 should have the option of sheltering $3000 under their 18-year-old kids. I think they should fucking suck it up and pay the taxes that they owe, instead of pretending that they cannot afford to pay that $3000. Instead of pretending that the $3000 is not a legally owed tax on the excessive amount of money that they earned--excessive in terms of the difference between what they earned and what the average person, or even the average reasonably well-off, middle-class person, in this country, earned. And I don't think that people who "save" $3000 for wealthy people should be lauded and encouraged to find other loopholes. I think they should be

Nevermind. My head hurts, I'm going to go sit quietly on my bed and try to think about the land where kitties and puppies swing dance in the moonlight and kiss on the lips, and try to forget I ever thought about any of this. Plegh. There was a reason this blog wasn't political in the first place.