Went to get the taxes done today. How shall I put this- remember what happened to Marsellus in Pulp Fiction with Zed and Maynard? Well, I'm Marsellus and Zed and Maynard are the IRS. Looks like I'm making a significant contribution to the war effort whether I wanted to or not.

Here's the thing. Way back when, when I was unemployed, I was running out of money. Being unemployed for long periods of time while also being kicked out of a nice rent-controlled apartment at the same time will do that to a person. So, almost a year ago, I cashed out my 401K. The whole enchilada.

As we all know, the 401K is money that you set aside out of your paycheck that goes into some kind of retirement account set up by you. It's basically my money because I put it aside (yeah, yeah I know there's matching funds and stock market involvement, but for the most part it's my money). For whatever reason, the wise-heads in congress- the same one's who gave us deregulation and Freedom Fries- decided that for everyone's best interest, we'll penalize people for cashing out too early. A pretty steep penalty I might add. The idea being to encourage people to hold onto it until they retire and not take it out for doing something, like, oh buying yet another winter home in Aspen or trying to be able to afford to live because you've been fucking laid-off and there's a recession going on. I took it out early and so I got penalized. For whatever reason, instead of doing it all in one fell swoop, I decided to hold off on some of the penalty then so I'd just pay for it come tax time. I'm smart like that sometimes.

And today, I got hit with the penalty. A big, huge whopping penalty. The kind of penalty one just doesn't right a check for immediately to pay off. Why? Because I have none of the money left due to the fact I WAS FUCKING LAID-OFF AND UNEMPLOYED. Well, that and blew a lot of it on baseball tickets and booze, but that's another story.

So, because I was unemployed I had no money left, which made me take my money out. And because I was unemployed I had to blow all the money I took out, not to mention all of my savings. And now I have to write a huge whopping check to the government because I took my money out to get by. Oh, and my job doesn't pay nearly as much to cover it all because it was the only job I could get and it doesn't pay as much as I want but am stuck with it because THERE'S A FUCKING RECESSION GOING ON. Does any of this seem fair to anyone? It was my money after all. And it was the only thing I could do other than move home because it's not like the government was doing anything to fix the economy or give unemployed people enough money to get by.

Yeah, I know it's partially my fault. I did blow what money I had left and I haven't really been very thrifty lately. And maybe I should have done what my mother said I should do and become a lawyer or an accountant or a middle manager at Global Widget Inc. so I wouldn't constantly be hard-pressed for cash. And it's totally my fault for not being born into an already wealthy family or didn't set up an off-shore account in the Bahamas or buy off enough politicians to rescind the 401K policy. Silly me thinking that congress would have my back in something like this, considering that nobody in congress has ever faced lay-offs, unemployment, or job searching. Hell, sometimes they're daddy makes them Governor and then President if they fuck up so much.

And I know too that as a Democrat, I shouldn't bitch about paying taxes. After all California is laying off teachers left and right and the Federal Deficit is climbing and W. got us into a war which we have to entirely pay for ourselves because he pissed off all of our allies. But then, on the other hand, I didn't vote for him, I didn't buy inflated dot.com stock, didn't jack-up energy prices, or work in an income bracket that the Republican party feels the need to give tax relief too.

So in other words, I'm just plain screwed right now. And all because I got laid-off.

At least I just downloaded the new Radiohead CD a couple of months before it's out (way spacey and tripped out mellow). This day hasn't turned out all bad.