Chicken Soup for the Tax Preparer

The good news is that it’s just about six weeks before another tax season comes to an end.

The bad news is that it’s still six weeks (and weekends) away.

So the last thing you probably want to be reading while gasping for air amidst a landfill of 1040s is some serious missive from yours truly about succession planning and why you should begin thinking about it sooner rather than later. That would probably be met with a string of four letter words in reply and understandably so.

So how about some comedy at the expense of others?

Much like a steaming bowl of chicken soup when you’re under the weather, it couldn’t hurt. 

Herewith are two of my favorites.

In the category of “thank God they don’t give certification tests to politicians,” here’s a gem that’s been making the rounds from California Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters on the current sequester who warned that “sequestration would kill 170 million jobs.”

Interesting since the Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs the number people who work at about 135 million.

She later backpedaled faster than a veterinarian treating Stephen King’s feared canine Cujo saying she actually meant 750,000 jobs. Thank goodness or else unemployment would be much worse than we originally feared. And this is from someone who one day could conceivably – contingent on who controls the Congress - become the chair of the House Financial Services Committee. That would be akin to someone taking a three-hour online tax prep course and asked to prepare the returns for GE.

The second one is pretty far removed from the political or financial arena, but head-shaking and funny nonetheless, especially for those of you who are sports fans.

A female soccer player attempted to try out for an NFL team over the weekend by entering a regional scouting combine in New Jersey. Lauren Silberman, who had never made a competitive kick in a football game, paid the required $275 entry fee and was matched against 36 other hopefuls. Prior to suiting up, she said her intention was to attempt a 60-yard field goal – which is three shy of the current NFL record for those keeping score at home.

Wait. Didn’t we see this movie before, perhaps a Disney film?

In any event, Ms. Silberman attempted two kickoffs – two booming boots, the first of which traveled 19 yards and the second, six yards shorter. That’s an aggregate distance shorter than my property line. Since the average kickoff distance in the NFL is between 60 and 65 yards, I doubt failing to reach even one-third of that distance would exactly spark a signing frenzy. A kicker who does her best impression of my golf drive is not destined to be enshrined in Canton, Ohio.

But incredibly, she was not fazed by the reality of the situation and instead told reporters, “Hopefully the scouts will notice my technique. It's not always length.''

Now you could have a double entendre field day with a quote like that. But for now, we’ll just leave it alone and chalk it up to campy tax season humor.

There’s never enough of that to go around.