Tuning Up For Death... Or Something As Sure As...

Doing taxes is a little like tuning a guitar. You pull everything up so that it's more or less in tune, stretch a little bit, bring it all up again. Pick a string. Tweak at it until it's there, stretch it again, bring it back up. Use that string to reference the next one and repeat the steps you followed for the first one, then go back and re-tune the first as it will need more tweaking due to the tweaking and stretching on your second. You then repeat this for the following strings, going back and tweaking the previous until everything is no longer stretchy and is right on the money. Then you have to put the thing on your knee and wallop it a whole bunch of times, shake it, rock it, sing loudly to it and do one more final tuning and then sit back and admire your job. Although, sometimes all that infernal tweaking leads to eternal tweaking and you can never get the damn thing to work... sometimes after this you have no choice but to forget the tweaking and just start paying... Ooops, I mean playing - Slip of the tongue!

Rare Ornithology Opportunity

There was a rare and unusual sighting of the great, ostrich-like bird Rocketus Soulum Choirus up around the Dubliner area at University and Vandalia in Saint Paul this past Friday. It seems that its migratory patterns should guarantee regular sightings for the next two Wednesdays. Due to its nocturn habits the best time to catch a glimse of it will be between 9:30pm and 1:30am.
The Rocketus' song is quite unique, being somewhere between country and rock usually with a lo-fi, bedroom, acoustic, singer/songwriter quality, but recently it's had attributes of a slacker, Irish pub song nature. Normally quite pleasing to the ear, this new sound has an added attraction that needs to be heard for a better understanding. The Dubliner's less than city-priced beverages have also been known to add an extra quality.
Rocketus is not a shy bird, so no visitor limit has been placed on the local ornithologist community. A great opportunity to see this rare and glorious creature.