Epilogus (e-pi-lo’-gus): Providing an inference of what is likely to follow.
I’ll tell you where we’re headed here. No, I better not. It is too frightening to imagine! It makes Freddy Kruger look like a angel floating over a field of blooming wildflowers waving in a gentle summer breeze. He would be wearing a freshly laundered striped polo shirt. He would be singing the theme song from “Brady Buch” in a beautiful soft tenor voice, clutching a bouquet in his stainless steel knife-blade fingers, with tears of joy streaming from his sensitive deep blue eyes.
This is what we might call contrast—the Freddie portrait is the exact opposite of where we’re headed. Where’s that? We’re headed to a face-to-face tax audit with the IRS at the regional office in Buffalo, NY. I’ve never been through one before, but I’ve heard it is like having hemorrhoids in your mouth, or combing your hair with barbed wire; or being doused in motor oil, wrapped newspaper and set on fire with a stick match.
I had to rent a Ryder truck for all my tax records, and as I was driving to Buffalo, I started having second thoughts about some of the deductions I had taken. For example, I wrote off sleeping every night as an education expense. I’ve always learned a lot from my dreams. I figured my sleep was worth $200.00 per hour, given what being awake is worth. In my business it would be $2,000 per hour. I sell ginseng supplements and and bidets on the internet. I travel to China every couple of weeks to check the facilities and engender goodwill toward my suppliers. It is a shame that my travel receipts were flushed down the toilet by my maid, and I have been unable to recall how I got to China, or where my passport is. Most of the paper in my truck is blank. I was warehousing it in California and the print was washed away by the rain. I generously pay my Secretary $14,000.00 per week. Every week she insists on giving me back $13,000.00 so I won’t fire her for “not playing along with the scam.” I don’t know what she’s talking about—she’s just a wonderful, generous employee. Then, there’s the pooping. I poop once a day, during business hours. I figure the time I spend on the toilet costs me $200.00 per day. That comes right off my profits, and deserves to be written off as a business expense.
There’s more, but suffice to say I’m looking at a fine, seizure of assets, and prison time—ONLY if I can’t make my case, and, let’s face it, I can’t. I feel Ike driving this truck into Lake Erie and renting a boat to Canada. I could fly to Cuba an reincarnate my business in Havana. To hell with the IRS. I have an escape and evasion plan!
Postscript: This man had a plan, but it didn’t work. He drove off a cliff into Lake Erie. The Ryder truck sank to the bottom before the man could unbuckle his seat belt. He drowned and left his wife and 6 children to fend for themselves.
The Lesson: don’t drive a Ryder truck off a cliff. Don’t cheat the IRS.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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