Tuesday, March 25, 2014

The answer my friend ...



The boys check the electric meters for defects.
        "Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh," Warren screamed, falling over backwards off his chair, the just-opened mail fluttering slowly down over him.
      Marty, waking from his nap, wondered what the silly half-brother was on about this time. The income tax fiasco had been settled by H&R Brick, so what could have set him off this time.
     "This electric bill is obscene," Warren said as he gathered up all the papers off the floor. "Those dogs at Irrational Greed have gone too far this time. I can't believe they more than doubled the electric bill from last month."
     "You're crazy," Marty said. "That can't be true, let me see the bills." Warren handed over the new bills and Marty grabbed a calculator and began adding up the long numbers on the right side of the decimal point to figure out the electric rate.
     "OK, to start there's 'Electricity Supply' at 0.0802, plus 'Merchant Function' at 0.002904 and 'ESRM' at 0.066069, hit equals and the total is 0.1492009 per kilowatt hour," Marty said. "What's ESRM? Ergregious Sinful Ripoff Metric?" (Actually ESRM is defined by the utility as Electricity Supply Reconciliation Mechanism - to reconcile electricity supply revenues for the month with the market cost of electricity - The Copy Desk).
     "Fourteen cents a kilowatt hour, there's got to be a mistake somewhere," Marty said. The boys decided to check the electric meter outside, but aside from hurting Marty's tail as Warren held it to keep Marty from falling, nothing was accomplished.
     "Last month's electric rate was just 0.0718846 and back in September we paid even less, 0.0692497," Marty said after burrowing down into the paid bills folder. Then Marty remembered that last year he switched the summer burrow over to another electricity supplier and took the all-windpower option. It was more expensive, but the summer burrow doesn't use much power and it wouldn't really cost that much more.
     "Hey, the price of windpower, one of those overpriced, Al Gore endorsed, government imposed renewable power supplies, is cheaper," Marty said. "The rate is 0.13375 and it hasn't changed since we switched over. (If the boys got all their power from the wind last month they would have saved about 13 clods on the power bill. But market forces only rarely push power rates above the fixed price of windpower, still it's interested that sometimes, wind is competitive - The Copy Desk)
     "We can pay the bill this month, but we'll have to cut back if we're going to be able to buy pants at some point," Marty said.

     (So to pay the Irrational Greed bill and continue saving up to buy pants, the boys did the only thing they could think of . . . . - The Copy Desk)



Warren and Marty freezing in the dark.

    

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Render unto Caesar .... a salad, it's easier



Warren works on his taxes.
     "Why do I have to pay taxes if all year I just worked underground," Warren said, to nobody in particular. Marty, sleeping nearby, didn't wake despite Warrens constant shouting at his computer and throwing pencils around the room.
     "Now it wants to know if on any third day of any month last year if I was under age 5.5, if so, enter 0.75 on line 24 and multiply line 23 by line 24 and enter that on line 27 ..... unless you're a marsupial, in which case you enter the number on line 16 of form 8899 and do the worksheet on the back to determine if you've earned too many clods this year to qualify for the burrow enhancement credit (see form 23554.996)," Warren muttered. "This is absurd, did Kafka write this stuff. If there was some Raid around I'd kill myself right now," he shouted.
     This, finally, woke Marty. 'I'll go to the store if you need some," the helpful half-brother said.
     "Listen to this next bit, it gets worse," Warren screamed, now barely able to retain consciousness from hyperventilating. Marty, thinking fast, covered Warren's head with a paper bag and rubbed his elbows (It's a marmot thing, you wouldn't understand - The Copy Desk). Warren slowly calmed down and agreed to take a nap (They almost always agree to naps - TCD).
     "It says this is form 1040 EZ," Marty said. "I bet I can do it." Marty gathered all Warren's paperwork, adjusted the computer screen (Warren always tilts it too far back) and set about doing the taxes. Methodically he began working his way through the forms, the worksheets and the tax tables. "Now it says to take the product of line 16 times line 15 and enter that number on the worksheet for form 8900," Marty said. "I think I'm almost done."
     From The Copy Desk: What happened next is unclear. Warren awoke from his nap and found the following scene.




Marty succumbs to the rigors of tax preparation.
                                                                                    




Sunday, March 2, 2014

Drone Alone

     From The Copy Desk: Mourning has broken, the boys are back and ready to resume their lives in a post-Harold Ramis world.


     Marty and Warren were discussing their favorite animals, dolphins, pheasants and elephants.  They agreed that dolphins are cool because they're smart, like to play, polite (Thanks for all the fish) and they live in the ocean - where they pose no risk to marmots. Pheasants have their uses, like bursting up out the grass and scaring the pants off anyone crossing the meadow, and in addition there is the preferred 'ph' spelling of their name.
     Now as for elephants, Marty said, "I think they're just about the greatest animals, after marmots, on the planet." Warren for once agreed with Marty's opinion, citing his research on Marmopedia, "It says they live in family groups led by their matriarch, so they always listen to their mother or grandmother."
     "But the elephant in the room is under attack," Marty said. He is, in fact, just a little confused. The elephants on the savannah are under attack . . . By greed and poverty. Greed is fueling a holocaust of elephants as gangs of impoverished humans are gunning down elephants at a record rate,  using axes to chop off tusks of dying animals and shipping the ivory to Asia so China and Philippines can get rich selling carved trinkets.
     "Somebody should do something," Warren said. Marty thought for a moment and then said, "It's simple. I know how to stop the elephant slaughter." Warren gave Marty his trademark 'do tell' look and waited.
     "Drones, alone, can save the herds," Marty said. "Work with the national governments in Africa and put armed Predator drones overhead to hunt the poachers. A few cases of Hellfire missiles raining down on poachers from unseen drones, both day and night, will crush the poaching business, don't you think?"
     "Like an elephant stepping on a grape," Warren said.