Category Archives: Self-help

How To Be Funny

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Years ago, after a heartbreak (the first of many), I decided to stretch myself. I learned then that, of all things, fear can boost you out of the hole. Fear trumps all other emotions – logically I guess, as a survival mechanism. 

I had worked at and frequented comedy clubs for years, so I went that route of fear: performing (not, say, cliff diving.)  After said heartbreak, I took a comedy class (lame), attempted standup (terrifying; developed periscope-like tunnel vision of audience), and somehow got into an improv group (practice sessions riotous, even though I never got to “play,” as improvers call it, on show nights, my motorcycle constantly croaking in sketchy NYC neighborhoods after shows). 

Anyway, here goes: How To Be Funny

Hang Out with Funny People

Imagine if you ate breakfast every day with Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. That was Rob Reiner’s youth. No way he (the director of the fake “rockumentary” This Is Spinal Tap) was not going to grow up to be funny.

Callbacks

This is when you refer to something mentioned earlier in your “set” – or conversation – that made people laugh the first time. Everyone loves callbacks. They’re like, “Oh, I remember that funny thing; that was funny, even funnier now, HAW, how clever!” This is not your classic callback, but close enough, and funny as hell.

Footnotes and Parenthetical Insertions

Use for unexpected laffs. The weirder the better, I find.

Sarcasm

Growing up, our parents used sarcasm to great comedic effect, especially while driving. “Yo Einstein, find a parking spot already, it’s not that complicated.” “Hey Quicksilver, the pedal on the right is for the GAS.” I later learned that my favorite aged kid is eight, because they’ve learned sarcasm but still respect authority. This doesn’t last. Well, the sarcasm does.

And my personal favorite…

The Absurd

Example: Rodentologist and author of “Raising Hamsters Right” urges owners to guide their rodents with a firm hand from the get-go. “Establishing dominance is the name of the game. Letting your hamster think it’s in charge can have disastrous effects.” (Point being: Who can train a hamster?)

Be Like My Dad

He recently had a flu shot and his shoulder hurt. I said,”You should probably be drinking a lot of water.” His reply: “I’ll probably be drinking a lot of gin.”

See Live Comedy and Improvisational Comedy

Best viewed with a group, IMHO. Get a posse and go. GREAT standup show coming up at Randolph’s Chandler in October called the Ivy League of Comedy. Go! Saw them twice and they so rocked. Anyone who knows where to find good improv locally, I’m all ears. My contact info below. Nothing is funnier than improv. You’ll LERV it.

Create a Flash Mob

While working banquet at a stranger’s wedding? Bar mitzvah?

Or, If Unmotivated…

Watch flash mobs on YouTube. The bystanders’ reactions are priceless.

Tell Disgusting True Stories

Like how when I lived in a tiny walk-up in SoHo, New York, I subsisted on take-out pizza, sushi, and bagels. Never cooked. One day after 2 years I opened my oven and an absolute waterfall of cockroaches cascaded out. (They call that The Nest.) My neighbors thought I was being murdered, from the screaming. Imagine if you passed out, and they’d scrambled all over you? This story always gets a laugh and amusing faces of disgust. Note parenthetical insertion.

Tell Flagrant Lies to Amuse Self and Friends

At a boring party? Spice it up. Haul your friend over to someone you both don’t know. Ask the person what they do for a living (very American). Acknowledge their work. Then say, “Sheila here is a rodentologist studying the rat population of minor cities. She started out as a trapeze artist, didn’t you, Sheila? It will be Sheila’s job to keep a straight face and elaborate. (Note: This is a callback in two ways: the hamster reference, plus this game is straight out of improvisational comedy.)

Watch Funny Shows/Movies

I know a cosmic person who says his secret to inner peace is meditation and watching funny movies. With his mom.

I’ve been thinking, since recent flicks “Barbie” and “Theater Camp” had me howling, that what the world needs now (besides love*) is funny, yes, funny. Come on writers and directors, crank out those comedies — highbrow, lowbrow, we don’t care. Bring it awn. Go see comedies in the theater. The shared experience crushes home viewing.

Suggested Movies: A Short and Largely Obscure List of Comedic Brilliance

Not necessarily entirely comedies, but mega-comical moments:

Bridesmaids, Go (clever ensemble piece; the Amway scene!), Wonder Boys, Mother (Albert Brooks and Debbie Reynolds GEM), After Hours (Linda Fiorentino hottt!). Barbie is worth it for the dance numbers with Ryan Gosling, a former New Mickey Mouse Club alum who can DANCE.

Mel Brooks: Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, and High Anxiety.

Forget Paris: the pigeon scene with Debra Winger

Stuber: So, so good. You won’t regret. Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista!

The Spy Who Dumped Me: the chase scene alone…Milla Kunis and Kate McKinnon

Three Woody Allen movies you may not have seen that kill: Small Time Crooks (Tracy Ullman), Hollywood Ending (absurd plot, luminescent Tea Leoni), Manhattan Murder Mystery (Diane Keaton)

Cricket On The Hearth: old-school animated Christmas movie my nieces love.

Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion (when they ask for a Business Woman’s lunch)

Pink Panther flicks (“It’s not my phaone.”)

Bill Murray: Scrooged and Caddyshack

Groundhog Day: romantic to boot!

The Royal Tenenbaums

Overboard: I’ve seen it 10 times and I do not re-watch movies.

Anchorman (I’ve never seen)

Christopher Guest: Best in Show

Napoleon Dynamite: The dance sequence, you’ll be afire

Alan Arkin (total god): Glen Gary Glenross, Little Miss Sunshine, The Russians Are Coming The Russians are Coming

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: another old nugget

Meet the Fockers (I’ll tell you a funny story if you ask at contact info below)

Shows: Maybe another column, with Dear Reader’s input? Your call. Good day.

*Nod to Burt Bacharach

Ann Aikens has released a darkly comical yet uplifting book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, available on Amazon and local Vermont shops. She has written her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. Information at annaikens.com.

Cutie pie Ginger! At top is Marshmallow; RIP our classic darling. You brought only joy.

Know Anyone in Tunbridge Likes to Laff? This Friday!

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Come and go as you please from 6-7:30 for reading, signing, plus pizza & childcare thanks to goddess librarian, Mariah. Bring your book or get one there for cash or check!

THANK YOU for Getting My Book these Aws Stats!

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Thanks so much for participating in or forwarding my free eBook “sale”!

By doing so, you kicked me up to the top of 3 categories, so when people searched that category over the 4th, my book showed up as at left. And many “strangers” are now reading it.

I beat out some heavy hitters, THX!

FREE eBOOKS & RAFFLE thru THURSDAY!

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Download a free eBook of A Young Woman’s Guide to Life. On Amazon, click BUY NOW and the price will show up as $0.00 at Checkout. Forward this if you wish!

If you SUBSCRIBE at www.annaikens.com or Forward this, LMK and I’ll do another COOL LIGHTER giveaway. (See it at SURPRISES on above website).
I may do a free hardcover raffle as well? Why not!

The New Year: Just Grab That Ball and Keep Running

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New Year’s Resolutions have a bad rep, perhaps deservedly so. That said, I made some and have been sticking to them. More or less. Has Dear Reader made any? Are you complying?

I read odd ones that people had submitted to the New York Times. One person vowed to stop using the words “very” and “really” so much (seems innocent… I mean if that’s all you have to change about yourself, you’re doing really very well). So I guess we can resolve to do (or stop doing) whatever the heck we want! I’ll come up with something embarrassing for you by the end of this piece.

Important: If you had a resolution but dropped the ball, no need to chuck it into the stands and limp off to the locker room in disgrace. Just pick up that blasted ball and keep on going. There’s no ref, baby. No rules. It’s all you. I paraphrase the Alec Baldwin character in “Glengarry Glen Ross”: Always Be Resolving. 

For now, I’ve resolved to: join a gym (or something); make more time for spirituality (of a cosmic stripe); learn a bunch of tech (e.g., how to operate 10 things on my phone that I don’t even know exist). Maybe how to insert a Box and Whisker into a Word document (what?).  Hell, I might need that. To learn the lingo of the young people, such as “quiet quitting” and “flava,” along with “le dollar bean” so I know what the heck people are talking about. 

Timing is everything. Who wants to jump out of bed on a winter’s morn? Perfect time to read. The local paper (ahem) or an actual book. Not screens. It feels a luxurious indulgence in the morning, not like a checklist item, and deliciously old school. When stuck somewhere traveling, delete photos, video, apps, and emails that eat up phone space. I deleted ALL on my junk email account with one motion… freeing! Timing.

Yes, timing. Who wants to drink booze in January after all that bloaty holiday merrymaking? Meditate, not medicate! It’s more calming, more slimming, and way less wear on your organs. Meditation and rest make your organs happy.

Further: I resolve to drink as much hot cocoa as want and cry as much as I please. Who cares? There is much to be sad about. Let it rip. Cocoa beats scotch, which is pricey, makes you loopy, and glosses over your sorrows. Why not experience your sorrows and wail away for a bit? Then you’re able to move onto Mood B, which just may involve Hope.

True Goal: Rather than focus on the problems I can’t solve, I aim to focus on those that I can, like helping with literacy (okay, “such as” helping with literacy). Give someone else hope. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the despair.

Mainly in 2023, I aim to laugh and make others laugh more because I’ve noticed that, for sure, people used to laugh a LOT more. Life has gotten harder which means we have to laugh harder. When you’re laughing, you can feel hope. Have I dropped this ball yet? Yes! But I can pick it right back up or pass it to the experts.

There are plenty of hilarious books. Countless funny movies and shows, e.g., Avenue 5, Silicon Valley, the John Mulaney standup shows (try New in Town and The Comeback Kid), and apparently mind-blowing Rothaniel comedy special by Jerrod Carmichael, or that clean old movie gem, Mother, with Albert Brooks. I allow myself two TV shows per week. My TV is mostly cheery background noise. Including football where grown men slam into each other for big paychecks. I can’t watch, but I can listen to the fans. It’s like an expensive radio.

Ah, radio! Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me at 11 am on Vermont Public Radio on Saturdays (or podcast) has you hooting no matter what mood you’re in. Get in a car or go to vermontpublic.org and play it there as you putter about if you own no radio. Who does?

Word to unload in 2023: this “huddle” word used in business, for “small group meeting.” It comes from sports, but it sounds way too much like “cuddle.” Cuddling with coworkers…the visual…snort. 

In closing, I acknowledge that Dear Reader is tired. We all are. Sleep more while the nights are still long. Sleep well. Dream of dropped balls retrieved with ease, and laughter, and problems solved, and hope. Good rest, good year, and good day.

Your Water Break at the Halfway Mark

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I’m not going to candycoat it. We’ve had it with this virus. It’s maddening, with no end in sight — a marathon with an invisible finish line. If you randomly approached strangers and asked, “What are you talking about?”, 85% of the time they’d reply, “COVID.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m a planner. These days we can’t plan a thing more than two weeks out…never know what’s around the corner! Reports come in, rules change, doors open and close. I’m kicking myself for not taking a river cruise, going to Scotland, Nova Scotia or Scandinavia, or trying Cuba before it was shut off (again) or surf camp, tennis camp, renting a lake house with friends. Yeah, it’s hard to schedule trips with people, everyone’s so busy, but I could have gone alone! It’s fun to travel alone. All that observing.

When will church start? The Olympics! Choir? Chorus? Contradancing? Canoodling? When will live concerts and sports and Broadway return? Hotels, movie theaters and the next Westworld? Will I lose my job? Will I get a job? Will I get a job requiring hazmat gear or cooties-soaked mass transit? It’s just painful.

On one hand the virus is not a face-melting pox…but then we’d know who has it, which is the problem. To bright-side it isn’t impossible, but it’s a stretch. “At least…” we’re not in a nuclear war; it’s not the Holocaust; it’s not 9/11; it’s not a global Katrina. Yet any way you slice it, COVID-19 sucks. Because we can control little beyond following protocols around masks, distancing, OCD-caliber handwashing, and donating money or time, we just have to suck it up.

We’re increasingly vigilant towards our mental well-being. Resilient human nature has us generally bouncing back, but striving to be upbeat is now more of a repeating calendar task (“no end date”). We have to work at it. A New Hampshire friend quit watching the news. Unapologetic, she says, “I find that going inside is the answer.” Meditating, sending love, enjoying your sheets, picturing a freer future, and resting—knowing that there are many people worldwide without such luxuries. I’ve never slept so much in my life. Dreams are like a free vacation. Occasionally a peculiar or disturbing dream, true, but well it didn’t actually happen, now did it? Didn’t cost a dime or expose you to microvarmints.

For meditation, I highly recommend the (free!) Insight Timer app. Thousands of guided meditations. Choose a topic, or just nature sounds/music and set the timer with various gongs and bells. Great good fun. It displays how many people are currently meditating; numbers have gone way up. Some gems are Canadian Jennifer Piercy (try Yoga Nidra for Sleep), or the young Jonny John Liu, whose name enchants and whose accent lulls in Self-Transformation Through Self-Acceptance. Just download Insight Timer and click on the Search magnifier at bottom. Off you go! I fall asleep before they’re over. Shh.

When spiraling downwards, I try self-talk, summoning pleasant thoughts. Like: this mess involves the entire planet. So the top medical smarties worldwide are working on solutions ‘round the clock. Vaccines! Treatments! Virus-killing UVC light-spraying robots on subways! Maybe this horror will end sooner than we think. Just maybe we are in fact, as one scientific predictor put it, halfway there. Envision what you’ll do when it’s over!

To make handwashing less of a bore: the virus’s fatty membrane holding it together is destroyed by soap. You’re not just rinsing virus down the drain; it literally falls apart. Don’t fret, I missed one! Just lather up, remember your nails and rings. You’re making it impossible for it to replicate. For the (required!) 20 seconds, you know to sing Happy Birthday twice. I sing it
to different people, dead or alive, real or fictional, as I launder my paws. To amuse self. Mental well-being.

I feel your pain, Dear Reader. Keep steady on your mount on this long and crazy journey. If you fall off, just get back on your pony and keep slashing through. I’ll water you both when you pass my station, so you can keep going. The way you act and process thoughts will determine our collective outcome. Think of solutions and wish hard. I miss you. Good day.

 

 

Frozen

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As a generally can-do person, it rather stuns me when I freeze up, motionless. One example: years ago, I was house-sitting in L.A., where friends had relocated. Before they left, the wife said, “Use the car in the parking garage, my grandmother in New York gave it to us—it’s really big!”

I froze up. There was no way I could drive on freeways in some giant jalopy, a lone Beverly Hillbilly. I couldn’t even picture piloting the ship (a 1984 Chevrolet Caprice Classic) out of the building’s garage, heaving its enormous steering wheel. I explained this to a carless comedian friend from New York, then living in Santa Monica, whom I badly wanted to visit. But: I couldn’t drive the boat. I walked 4.8 miles to Santa Monica.

Another: I was living in a scary part of Chicago, losing it after 9/11 and taking psychology classes (of all things). One day I just couldn’t get into the subway to go home. I crouched into a ball in an alley, phoning a friend to talk me onto the subway (“Lift right knee…”). Prior, I had considered anxiety disorders total hooey. Yet there I was: frozen solid.

Back to L.A. When there was a 6.7 earthquake there, my friend quickly ran for their dog and earthquake kit. His wife, frozen, put on lipstick. How we react to panic is largely animal. It’s what happens a bit after the initial shock, perhaps, that makes us human.

When the potential enormity of COVID-19 first became apparent, all I could do was cook. Others did similar or hid under blankets, fretting and texting. A sage in Bethel noted that when we’re in Survival Mode, our love center shuts down. How terrible. Hence one guy stealing milk out of a woman’s shopping cart at Market Basket.

We’re now over the initial shock. We’ve gotten used to circumstances changing weekly or daily, sometimes hourly. It is time to exit Survival Mode, calm down, unfreeze, and somehow trust that we will transcend this—economically, psychologically, and physically. For some, calming comes from YouTubed church meetings or pagan Zooms. Friends and I hold Facebook Messenger “Wait Watchers” meetings wherein we share perspectives and tips that keep us sane during this crazy-making wait. Mostly we laugh and cuss and that is the real draw. If you’re lapsing into frozen, reach out for help or, possibly, to help. Either works.

 

I saw high school girls in a parking lot, each seated solo in the way back of an SUV with the hatchback open, each facing the middle (like a flower). They played music and laughed, socially distant. Next a group of women on lawn chairs around a fire pit. They drank and laughed, socially distant. I do “live FaceTiming,” wherein I visit people and we talk to each other thru a closed window or glass door, on our phones. It doesn’t all have to be virtual, right?

Despite the horrors, which are legion, benefits exist. People are slowing down. Reprioritizing. Paying attention. Walking. Feeling. Calling elders. Cleaning closets. Napping. There can be no mass shootings (no masses), minimal war (sick, unwilling, or napping soldiers), little pollution. The planet is healing. Some speculate that the virus was sent by Mother Nature. “I see, you’re gonna keep trashing my forests, creatures, and waters? Ho-ho, take that!” Who knows…the planet is a living thing. Maybe it went into Survival Mode.

So: what do you want to do with your time? When this thing is over, and it will be over, it’s entirely possible we’ll lament, “Where’d all my free time go, man?” Choose wisely.  Share laffs. Help. Learn something new. Meditate. Stretch, lit. and fig. Send pleasant thots. Panic not.

Report in as able. Good luck to you and yours, Dear Reader, and good day.

I’d rather take a Test than celebrate Valentine’s Day

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On the eve of everyone’s favorite manufactured holiday, here’s a test for you on absentmindedness from a book on habits. It’s called, cheerily, the Cognitive Failures Questionaire. It may depress you more than Valentine’s Day—or not. Or maybe you entirely forgot it’s Valentine’s Day because you’re absentminded.

Take the test and find out just how bad off you are. Fun!

 

Good Riddance 2019, Hello 2020

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My mommy’s holiday necklace.

Dear Reader may need an uplift this time of year, even if it’s dark humor. Let’s dig in.

In 2019, a friend’s limb was amputated. Others had other terrible things happen. Stars from all walks of life departed this Earth, including my mommy. This, as you know, is life. We slash through the bad and relish the good as able. Maybe your 2019 was dire, or your holidays horrible. An ER doctor told me, “The holidays bring out the best in some people, but in many they bring out the worst inner toddler.”

I offer from that pantheon of useful knowledge, the women’s magazine, this: rather than making New Year’s resolutions, why not list the good things that happened to – or because of – you in 2019? My own list includes a holiday party I threw last minute that was a riot, and the community chorus I joined that proved a rollercoaster of faltering and delight, one of the best experiences of my adult life.

Or try these: Maria Shriver envisions a garbage can she dumps crap in to leave behind. White Plains, NY wrote: I read my entire 2019 calendar, marveling at all I overcame. Brooklyn said, “One way I motivate myself, which probably exhibits a considerable pathology, is to imagine a medieval courtroom where seated around a table are people from my past who have either thwarted, opposed, or ridiculed me. They watch a closed-circuit TV feed of me as my willpower fails. I hit snooze, drink that next beer, whatever. They laugh at how I’m a failure. That gets me going at what I should be doing.”

If you dig resolutions, how about music? My minister advised, “Music will get you through the hard times.” Take uke or voice lessons. Join a choral group – you learn while the tenors and basses cause mischief. Get a pet so you have a cutie to come home to. Or read Eckhardt Tolle’s A New Earth, a slog in the beginning but with a pay-off that’ll blow your mind. I requested deep Resolution thots from the nutters I call friends. The printable responses follow.

From CT: Quit buying losing lottery tickets and buy an actual winner. Shelburne, VT: 2019 was awful…I’m planning on less grief and more joy. South Korea: Just living one day at a time. Spain: I have never ruminated over these things, nor do I give a toss about where I’ve been or where I’m going; whatever I’m doing in the moment is pretty much exactly what I want to be doing. The Bahamas: Prepare for transformation – think dragonflies and caterpillars!  And oddly, from three kind Americans: I’d like to be kinder; more patient; give people a chance.

Boston: Break the mold and try new things. Scarsdale: 2020 is the year of the woman! Burlington: I don’t do NYs resolutions because if something is worth changing, it’s worth changing pronto. North Reading: Declutter! Several women: (1) intermittent fasting; (2) looking forward to the current admin being defeated by the female vote. Fairfield: I hope that people feel they’re good enough…that improvements don’t come from comparing yourself to others or their expectations of you, but rather just…to be. NYC: No NYC resolution would be complete without “weight loss.”

Randolph: Release the old, prepare for the new – a new world is anchoring. This past year the illusions of the ego started dying and consciousness awakened. Let’s envision a new earth collectively and personally; what do we really want to experience in this lifetime? Also Randolph: Speak your truth. Maine: After the worst year of my personal life coinciding with the current state of politics and [skullduggery] among people, I find myself often in a dark and angry place; I resolve to focus on mental and physical recovery, resisting the temptation to become a total recluse in a cave.

Now for the cheery ones. Boca Raton: Year moved like lightning, enjoy the moments! Winooski: Support young people to be engaged and stay positive! Williston: 2020 will be a year of promise and prosperity; I will dedicate time to my passions and incorporate them into my profession. Denver: Speak up, ask for what you want, and accept what comes from that.

I end with these. Cancun: The only resolution I ever make is to try and get by with more. Colchester: I plan on openly laughing at people more this upcoming year. That’s still legal I think.

The good news is humans do feel hopeful about 2020. May Dear Reader’s new year bring happy changes, loving vibes, and that elusive minx: luck.  Good day, and good year.

Procrastination’s Destination

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easter tableDear Reader, I‘ve done it again. It’s gorgeous outside and everyone is strolling or gardening and I’m inside. Doing my taxes. At the last minute.

Generally, it seems, humans love to get away with something. Like when my mommy would say I could have “a couple” cookies and I’d take three. A friend still has a stapler from our first job together 30 years ago, technically white collar crime; I’m pretty sure her family would have given her a stapler had she asked. Tax advisors to corporate giants find secret, magical tax loopholes, and their clients are rolling themselves in wallpaper paste and 100-dollar bills, having gleefully denied Uncle Sam his due.

My current scam is the Substitute Task System. Say, I’m supposed to write my column. I don’t feel like it, so I scrub the tub. It’s productive but it feels like I’m getting away with something. Later, when I am to vacuum, I’ll sort a drawer. Write birthday cards? Clean the dashboard with a toothpick. All less of a yawner because they’re not the thing I’m supposed to be doing. Then, when I’m supposed to do my taxes, I’ll write my column. You get the picture. By not doing what I’m supposed to be doing, even if I’m doing something measurably less pleasant, I think I’m getting away with something. Delicious.

Back to taxes. Why do I put this off? Because every year I can’t find some document, or I think the accountant is going to ask me for a document I don’t have and I’ll never get through to the people that can get me the document, lost in an endless loop of recorded phone options (“Press 9 to hear these options again”) as the grains of sand cascade hopelessly through the hourglass’s waist.

Or: kindly people at the library, paid by God, are helping me at no cost in a super lean year. They examine my documents and murmur softly, “Uh oh. She has to file a 27-K19…” because of some 75-cent “dividend” I got in a way I don’t understand. They can’t find the 27-K19 form and the good citizens on line behind me begin melting as their kids circle the library in a frenzy. A hole starts opening in the floor and through the smoke I can see the gates of Hell and I’m going down. I am a bad person. I’m unprepared. I never got rid of the thing producing a 75-cent dividend requiring a 27-K19. I’m inconveniencing the hard-working Americans on line behind me. Run.

Weirdly, I’m not by nature a procrastinator. I dislike putting things off. I could never understand college friends concocting cockamamie excuses to get an extension on a paper – why prolong the agony? An inveterate list-maker, little gives me more satisfaction than (a) lining tasks up and (b) knocking them down. Saturday morning is my favorite. A whole DAY to check items off the list. Brilliant!

TurboTaxBut filing taxes is simply, for many, an odyssey fraught with peril. One wrong move and it’s Hefty Fine City plus Audited For Life. I’ve done my taxes last-minute in all ways: on paper with an instruction booklet, via affordable accountant, via pricey accountant avec late filing fee (his idea), via kindly people paid by God to help those in a super lean year, by phone (before Al Gore invented the Internet), and with TurboTax (after Al Gore invented the Internet). My suggestion: TurboTax. Start it, ignore it for a few days, and they’ll halve the price to lure you back. Score.

That lucky reward aside, procrastination is ultimately unsatisfying because you’re not getting away with something. In the end, it has to get done. All the sweating and hair pulling and the crying and the bloodletting wreak yet again their senseless damage when you could easily have dealt with things earlier during a blizzard instead, and gone frolicking outdoors with everyone else on a gorgeous Palm Sunday.

StyxCould it, Dear Reader, have been gorgeous that earlier weekend, and a snowstorm this? No, it could not. Mother Nature collaborates with God at tax time to punish human laggards for dillydallying. Hades is the only stop on this terrible annual journey across the River Styx aboard the S.S. Procrastination. It’s not a local, it’s an express. The doors will not open until the last stop and you cannot get off and you know exactly where you’re headed and it’s nobody’s fault but your own that you got on board. Good day.

HOT TIP FROM A LOCAL:  A tax-prep service apparently accessible to 70% of Americans, but only 2% use it because no one knows about it: irs.gov/freefile.