Cosmic Lemons, Lemonade Sea

"When life gives you lemons, rent a storefront in the trendy part of town and make artisanally squeezed lemonade at $14 a glass."     - Bike Snob NYC

                                                         

The Little Lemonade Stand of Life

Life is funny. It wasn't that long ago that I was complaining about having to pay my taxes. Complaining isn't exactly the right word here - let's just say that I was acknowledging my civic duty, but reflecting in a negative vein about what I'm getting in return, viz., the grudging ownership of a corrupt and bankrupt medieval principality somewhere near the Hindu Kush and the Karakoram Range that begins with 'A.'

On the other hand, I did record my elation at having applied for Medicare. This milestone is, like most milestones, a mixed blessing inasmuch as milestones generally mark the passage of one's days, and to qualify for this little prize you have to have reached a point at which, willy nilly, you begin to surrender certain of the powers and perquisites of being a large primate.

"Sure, I used to swing - both ways."

My point here is that sometimes, all you have to do is mention something that might use a little improvement, and the tables turn just the way you wanted them to. If I play my cards right I can break even - take back in medical payments what I pay out in taxes. That way, I'm not really leaving a balance on either side of the ledger, so I'm not contributing to the GDP. Which is just another way of saying that, provided I get sick enough, I will no longer officially exist. Or to put it another way, mereo, ergo sum. And that means I'll no longer have to do certain things, like comb my hair. . .

. . . or sit up straight

Not officially existing, in my lexicon of financial terms, need not mean the same as being entirely forgotten. So long as the Social Security Administration grants me a minimal existence by keeping me on its rolls as a beneficiary I'll be happy. So far, so good. Not everything is entirely rosy on that score however. They acknowledge my existence (much like that of a lesser god, a distant star or an awkward weather system . . . )

. . . but their letter apprising me of my new favored status ("Notice of Award") was sent from the department of Retirement, Survivors and Disability Insurance. That seemed to me a little bit of "giveth and taketh away" in the same breath. It is beneath mention that this is not a select group, nor do any of these designations include poor Miguel. I am neither retired nor disabled, and I like to think of myself in my cheerier moments as more than merely a survivor.

Survivor making artisanal knishes 

Let's be clear about this: being alive isn't necessarily the same thing as "being a survivor." It seems you would have to have survived something, like eating an artisanal knish, to qualify for the title.

"Knish, anybody?"

And then talk about making knishes out of lemons, this other thing happened as well, just like mentioning taxes and being immediately taken under the government's sheltering wing.  I had posted some time ago what was beginning to seem a premature announcement of my return to gainful employment somewhere in the Great American Desert - in Nevada, to be precise. But, like the pages of the calendar flipping across a movie screen . . . 

 

. . . the days passed, the phone was silent, the e-mail came and went with its empty promises of Viagra and ExtenZe offers. Forty days and forty nights I fasted in the desert; I complained, I raised my hand against the Cosmic Lemon, I cursed my humors and the fruit in my loins (lemons, assorted citrus). And the Cosmic Lemon heard my plaint and there issued forth lemonade in the desert.

There must be a moral here somewhere to help navigate this Sea of Lemonade we call life. In my case I'd say the moral is complaining will get you everything you want. It usually seems to work.

And All I Got Was This . . .

I went to see my tax man yesterday, that paragon of the green eyeshade.

"I'll do what I can, of course, but . . . ."

Today I wrote the check for my final payment to the relevant department of revenue and my indebtedness for last year's residency in the land of the free is gratefully and willingly liquidated. I am a citizen of the U.S. of A. without debt or blemish, although I still don't know who's been counting the keystrokes on my computer. Don't mistake my intent - this is not some jeremiad against the intrusive hairy arm of Big Government picking my pocket. 

"Well, we won't be needing this any longer, will we?"

Quite the contrary, in fact - I believe we should all pay up, in good cheer and with an unstinting openhandedness, for the privilege of living in a nation where the federal mileage rate is 51 cents per mile (not a bad bargain if you don't share my civic euphoria and decide to leave).

After all, a nation is among other things a commonwealth, which implies a mutual responsibility upon everyone in it to foster the well-being of everyone else. This is presumably why at least six states in the Union proclaim the month of April as Confederate History Month and encourage their citizens to dress up and run around in front of others of their fellows who may take a different view of such matters. (Diversity of background and belief is a watchword with me.)

"Rotchere's where they plugged Great-Grandaddy."

In any case, I take my responsibility for others seriously. So each spring, when I pay my taxes, I append a list of things I would like those funds to buy for the betterment of my fellow Americans. This year, knowing federal money might be in short supply with a national jobless rate of 8.9 percent, I kept my list pretty short. 

My priority of course is education - better schools and (just as important) school security are America's future:

"Gen'ly I won't fire if they look to be under twelve."

Secondly, I stipulated that a percentage of my taxes go to a sane energy policy, which means offshore drilling like you've never seen:

"Oil Painting" (by J.M.W. Turner)

Every time this topic is brought to the table, the sentimentalists are promptly in arms and papering the streets with photographs of poor pathetic pelicans. But a few pelicans measured against our nation's security? It simply doesn't compute. Sure, the little beggars drenched in crude oil are photogenic and unfailingly appealing to the weepy-eyed sentimental, but I've eaten smoked oysters that looked worse than this:

"Gw-aarkk!"

We really have to stand together on this one - our existence as a species, Homo americanus, is being threatened by our dependence on foreign sources of oil.

 Homos americani

I stipulated that a certain percentage should go to our national highway infrastructure. In years past, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) has supplied vats of house paint to neutralize nightime visibility, and turned the job of highway striping over to unemployed painters of the early Impressionist period:

Interstate highway in Colorado (after tax-funded upgrades)

Of course I would have wished to bespeak a small portion for the public health, but not even our federal government can bear costs like that:

"Sooo, you'll be requiring some insooorance, ehhhh?"

I've never had any acknowledgement from the IRS of my request for appropriate disbursements of my tax monies - nothing, that is, until I paid last year's taxes, when I received a nice postcard from the agency showing me what I had bought:

I paid my taxes, and all I got was this Tomahawk missile. Fortunately, it missed.

Things To Do Today: Start My Own Country

Leonard Caslin, a.k.a. Prince Leonard I of Hutt, is a man for all seasons. Hutt, or more properly Hutt River, is a micronation on the Australian subcontinent (Australia is the Texas of the South Pacific). The Prince of this patch of western Australia is the unsung hero, the lodestar of the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, the superannuated, the ignored, the sidelined and the just plain pissed off of the globe. He is a model of adaptation, of self-invention, of landing squarely on one's feet, of one who can make lemonade from lemons (now there's a trick).

Forty years ago, Leonard Caslin farmed an anonymous 18,500-acre patch of wheat in western Australia. Angered by a government-imposed quota on his chosen commodity, Leonard seceded from the body politic and inaugurated his own 18,500-acre principality, dubbed himself as aforementioned, and proceeded to starve the larger beast by withholding taxes. Leonard was, in a word, the self-appointed Howard ("Mad As Hell") Beale of the subcontinent. 

His primary interest does not seem to have been the wider spread of democracy so much as the institution of a limited anarchy such as that of Great Britain. Nonetheless, and being far enough away from the center of Australian civilization that no one cared enough or could get there soon enough to stop the proceedings,  the great experiment in nation-building took - Leonard displays in the royal compound a laminated and framed letter from the Australian tax authorities stating that he has “been deemed to be a non-resident of Australia for income-tax purposes.” (The Australian authorities, being the very devils of irony, clearly intended to compliment Leonard by deeming him to be a "non-resident of Australia.") Further, the news account remarks, Hutt River, "tapping into Australia’s convict history and an enduring popular disdain for central authority, also inspired a proliferation of new micronations across the country."  The engine of history, as Marx noted, is economics.

Hutt River is now a going concern, although not officially recognized as a separate nation by the Australian (or any other) government. But it attracts young backpackers, mostly Germans, by the thousands each year, who walk up the gravel road into the Huttian capital where they are issued official tourist visas and have their passports stamped by none other than the Prince. The capital, like London, Washington or Rome, boasts its own national sculpture in public spaces, not exactly Lord Nelson in Trafalgar Square, but at least you can tell who it is.

 

  "Done 'im meself. I'm saving up for a plinth."

Once you are a prince, of course, there's no retirement in sight. Always something to do. Perhaps the most inspiring aspect of such secession from the main body is its self-sufficiency and complete autonomy. Hutt River has about 20 residents, a commonwealth of about the size that allows the local potentate plenty of leisure for civic projects (see photo) or just to be alone with his hopes and dreams.

Naturally it might occur to anyone possessed of sufficient leisure to take a page from the Book of Prince Leonard,

cast off from the safe haven, strike out on one's own, and occupy one's allotted time with self-determination and autonomous government. My own rationale for secession is two-fold: I could balance my national budget and keep anyone I wished out of my yard. Balancing the budget, a dicey matter even in the best of times, would be easy in my country since I have no plans to return to school myself and can mandate the teaching of creationism as a way to prepare my nation's students for careers in the 21st century (no education line item); need no roads or highways, seaports, airports, transmission grid, etc. in my yard (no infrastructure); can rely, as Canada does, on the extravagant military expenditures of the United States for my own national security (no defense budget); already know a naturopath who works cheap (affordable quality healthcare for everyone in my country). 

I could, in short, replicate Texas in my yard and tap into my own convict history.