The Annual Most Worthless News Item Day
If there's a handful of days you can count on local television newscasts to milk for a pointless, lame story every year, you'd have: Groundhog Day, the day the polar bear at the zoo gets a new ball to play with, and April 15th. If there's anything more worthless to cover for news, and lots of times the ever-coveted live shot, it's a TV news reporter interviewing late tax filers at the post office.
Douchy Reporter: "Hi, Sir, what's your name?"
Citizen: "Uh, I'm Mike."
Douchy Reporter: "And Mike, why are you filing your taxes so late?"
Citizen: "Uh, because I can."
Douchy Reporter: "Oookay, thank you. Well, John and Sue, as you can see, it's a hostile, stand-offish crowd here, very tense as last-minute tax filers manually place their envelopes, one by one....Bob, can you get a shot of that......right....yeah, right there......as they place their envelopes in this blue rectangular steel container right over there.
What will happen next is at Midnight, a postal worker, presumably a middle-aged female of large build, will gather these envelopes, and place them into a receptacle of some sort, we're not entirely sure what that receptacle will look like at this time. It then gets wheeled into this large stone structure you see here with a pronounced chimney on top of it.....Bob I don't know if you could get a shot of that....yeah.... we can only assume that there's some sort of furnace or incineration device in there.
Then, small pixies, perhaps up to 40 or 50 we've been told, will then take these envelopes and place small codes and bars on them, apparently encryptions that only the IRS can decipher. This is done with a dusting of glitter of some sort. Amazing stuff, apparently. They then will be transported instantaneously via a portal device, to the IRS, is what I'm being told. The entire process, once the envelopes are inside, John and Sue, it all takes roughly 7 seconds. Fascinating story unfolding here, as it does every year, John and Sue. Back to you."
Here's one example from yesterday. They opted not to to the live shot (presumably to keep the news crew out of harm's way), but you can cleary see the pandemonium that was unfolding at this particular Sioux Falls, SD post office. Oh, the humanity....
Douchy Reporter: "Hi, Sir, what's your name?"
Citizen: "Uh, I'm Mike."
Douchy Reporter: "And Mike, why are you filing your taxes so late?"
Citizen: "Uh, because I can."
Douchy Reporter: "Oookay, thank you. Well, John and Sue, as you can see, it's a hostile, stand-offish crowd here, very tense as last-minute tax filers manually place their envelopes, one by one....Bob, can you get a shot of that......right....yeah, right there......as they place their envelopes in this blue rectangular steel container right over there.
What will happen next is at Midnight, a postal worker, presumably a middle-aged female of large build, will gather these envelopes, and place them into a receptacle of some sort, we're not entirely sure what that receptacle will look like at this time. It then gets wheeled into this large stone structure you see here with a pronounced chimney on top of it.....Bob I don't know if you could get a shot of that....yeah.... we can only assume that there's some sort of furnace or incineration device in there.
Then, small pixies, perhaps up to 40 or 50 we've been told, will then take these envelopes and place small codes and bars on them, apparently encryptions that only the IRS can decipher. This is done with a dusting of glitter of some sort. Amazing stuff, apparently. They then will be transported instantaneously via a portal device, to the IRS, is what I'm being told. The entire process, once the envelopes are inside, John and Sue, it all takes roughly 7 seconds. Fascinating story unfolding here, as it does every year, John and Sue. Back to you."
Here's one example from yesterday. They opted not to to the live shot (presumably to keep the news crew out of harm's way), but you can cleary see the pandemonium that was unfolding at this particular Sioux Falls, SD post office. Oh, the humanity....
Comments
I like how many "news" programs have tax advice stories on Tax Day...gee don't you think that advice might have been helpful to people earlier than the very last minute?