Feelin’ Funny: Mordechai Schmutter

Inflation is so bad these days it’s not even funny.  It’s so bad that I’m putting aside my humor column this week to discuss it, but not in a way that is actually informative enough that you can’t read this on Shabbos.

I always thought it was a great idea for me to work in my house.  The commute is pretty pleasant, and I’m in a central location – in the living room right at the bottom of the stairs – so that I don’t miss any of the goings on of life, and that way I can write about them.  The problem is that when these things do happen, I can’t actually get any work done.  Especially since a lot of these things happen right on top of me.  Because I’m in a central location in the house.

It’s time once again for our annual tax-tips column.  Our column has been rated the top tax-tips column in the United States for people who don’t know anything about taxes BY people who don’t know anything about taxes.  The goal of our column isn’t even to teach you anything.  For the most part, it’s barely even tax-related, other than mentioning the word “taxes” or “IRS” once or twice, for tax purposes.

Everyone loves Purim, but no one loves cleaning up from Purim.  Yet the night after Purim, you have to sort through what you got for mishloach manos and figure out what to do with it.  It’s like putting away groceries, if you bought minute amounts of hundreds of different foods – mostly unhealthy – and put no thought into grouping like things together in the same shopping bag.  (“Why did we buy unwrapped jelly beans?”  “Why is every can of soda in a different bag?”  “Is this for Shabbos, or…?”  “Why did we buy this thing if we don’t even know what it is?”) 

I turned 40. 

This is not something I set out to do.  No one asked me.  It kind of just happened.  In fact, a bunch of things kind of just happen to you when you get to 40.

Of all the units we use to measure things, time has always been the most fluid.