Well, not really. But I do have the unfortunate luck of having been born on a day that isn’t traditionally Tax Day, but turns into Tax Day when April 15th falls on a Saturday. It probably gave my parents no end to delight about me being their second “favorite little dependent.” Luckily, I took care of my taxes months ago. But should I have even bothered with taxes? We seem to forget to ask the basic questions. Usually things start out as an assumption and, with time and repetition, become “Truth.” If you tell yourself something long enough, over and over again it will become your individual Truth. Even if it started out as a lie. This is the case with taxes.

Now I’m not going to go into a long diatribe about how the Sixteenth Amendment wasn’t properly ratified, whether it grants the power to tax individual incomes, or about the shady banking interests who set up our tax system. These things and more are covered succintly and entertainingly by this summer’s feel-good movie event America: From Freedom to Fascism (as originally mentioned on April 4th in my post, Screwing Up The MATRIX). No, I will choose to go into a different long diatribe.

The way I look at it is simple — THE GOVERNMENT DIDN’T BUST ITS HUMP AT MY JOB, SO IT’S NOT THE GOVERNMENT’S DAMN MONEY! That’s a pretty straight-forward belief. Unfortunately, it hasn’t caused the IRS to suddenly and magically cease existing. At least, not yet. When asked if the government deserves a part of the spoils for a typical working stiff’s Monday pay, many people will chuckle, gently say “No,” and wonder why this heretic is questioning the laws of nature, or at least the laws of the good ol’ US of A. But think about it — after a couple days off relaxing, isn’t it a struggle to give it your best at work? And if you’ve worked exceptionally hard at your job, who deserves it more than you do?

But in every crowd there’s somebody doubting you and trying to either qualify or rationalize why we need taxes more than anything else. I love people who try to argue their point, even when they are flat out wrong. The most vocal of these groups include pragmatists and humanitarians. The pragmatists continually ask who will pay for the roads, the military and their favorite pet project. They are pragmatists for a reason. What that reason is is beyond me, but they tend to deny even the possibility that there are other ways to solve problems other than the ones that have already been tried and those that are currently being utilized. The humanitarians are full of principle and have no fear of having a grandiose outside of the box solution. They want to end hunger, Parkinson’s, the use of fossil fuels, whatever. Of course, both groups are similar in that their solutions always involve throwing money at the problem. And for that, both groups need the government to collect lots and lots of taxes.

As a response to this common aspect of both of these groups, we need to find solutions that don’t involve the extortion of huge sums of money from individuals for totally unrelated purposes. One way of doing this is to tie usage to expenditure. You use the road, you pay a toll. You use a park, you pay an admission fee. You pollute a city’s water supply, you pay for the clean-up. Kind of easy, and it can all be done without an annual Tax Day. And with the money that is saved from having a drastically scaled-back Internal Revenue Service (if we need one at all), people would be free to spend their hard-earned money on whatever they want. They could even throw a bone to the humanitarians out there and give it to one of their favorite charitable organizations. As an aside, two that I’ve given generously of time and money in the past have included the National Motorists Association Foundation and the March of Dimes Walk America (just in case anyone got lucky with their tax refund).

But even if we didn’t deserve to keep the money, we’ve got to wonder what it’s being used for. The IRS itself costs about $10 billion dollars per year to operate. Then, there’s the drain created by compliance with the IRS. The IRS even puts your personal and private data at risk. Some people accuse those who suggest ending the IRS of being crazy, but you have to ask yourself at what point it becomes crazy to not do something about it. At least I know that my taxes are going to pay Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s salary. And as an ardent champion of the taxpayer, he is well worth every dollar of it.

So what should be done about this? Well, you could resist paying taxes. And with the US government’s firm committment to “liberate” every oil producing country in the world, you could even participate in that highly-specialized field of tax resistance known as war tax resistance. Naw! This site would never encourage anyone to do anything remotely illegal. Anyway, my employer did the government’s bidding by conveniently taking Uncle Sam’s share out before giving me my paycheck. Besides one person out there not paying his or her taxes would just get mowed down. A more appropriate first step may simply be to become educated and become an advocate for taxpayers and a fighter against government waste. Study, spread the word, blog about tax resistance, vote and voice your concerns directly to your elected representative. And when the message has reached enough of a saturation and acceptance in the general populace, we can all resist together. Without getting mowed down, of course.

But was it worth bothering with taxes this year? Hell yeah! And in the end, I did it for the best reason of them all — TO GET MY MONEY BACK! Now I guess I can have a truly Happy Birthday after all.

I once had a professor who said that if Christianity was only about one man dying and coming back to life, then there would be no such thing as Christianity. The experience of being a Christian must be internalized by its followers in order to mean or do what it was intended. By dying, in an allegorical sense, one may discover the opportunity to live a better life and to develop a deep sense of persistence in the face of adversity. So, as Jesus died, we too must die. But we must all die in a way that seems contradictory and beyond common logic — we must die while remaining alive. By Jesus’ death, a great lesson has been imparted to us all. There’s got to be a lesson, right? I mean, what’s the point in actively embracing a religion that does nothing for you and only serves to ruin your life and make you feel like crap?

I tried to explain this idea to a friend like this: “Let’s say Johnny gets some devestating news (well, as bad as the worst bummer news that a college student typically gets). He shuts down, closes his blinds and turns off all the lights. For the next three days Johnny cuts classes, calls off work and doesn’t move from his couch except to down another bottle of cheap whiskey and take a piss. Now on that third day, in just a brief moment of clarity, he realizes that the news wasn’t so bad. While he refused to go on, he still went on. On that day, Johnny smashed the bottles, opened the blinds and let the light shine in. That is what Jesus’ death and resurrection means to me.”

My friend became silent. Then, he looked off into the distance and said, “No. That’s wrong. That’s not right.” As I recall that may have been the last thing that he said to me for the rest of the day, so I couldn’t be sure as to what was so wrong about my story. I mean, there was a guy named Johnny. There’s no keeping anyone’s anonymity here. There was, in fact, a three day orgy of whiskey where attendance at work and classes wasn’t happening. And looking all around the room, there was undeniable proof for the existance of empty whiskey bottles. I can’t be sure what was wrong, but I can stand to guess. In his mind, Jesus was some thing to be hung up on a wall. Jesus was a label that was easy to apply. “Hey, I’m a Christian!” “Wow, I’m a Christian too!” “You don’t say? Guess who’s praising Jesus right now?” And just as easily as that label could be applied, for his kind, it could be taken off. To him, Jesus was the new orange. Or the new plaid. Or even the new fuschia. To him, Jesus wasn’t even a person. And he definitely wasn’t the teacher that gave his all to teach the most important lesson ever to those who were open to learning it.

Now, I bear my friend no ill will. If he wants to live his life with his version of Jesus, that’s his business. I happen to believe in finding lessons in those times where life hands you lemons, even if the lemons happen to be nails and the person handing them to you happens to be a crucifix. Now this lesson of how to be reborn in a practical sense would make a great message for an Easter sermon at a liberal Christian congregation. I fear, though, that this important lesson is missing from many orthodox and fundamentalist congregations this Easter Sunday.

While that would be a great message for an Easter Sunday sermon, that is not the real meaning of Easter. While we are advised to persevere in our daily lives, there is a grave warning to America within the story. Jesus didn’t just happen to wake up on the crucifix and say, “How the hell did this happen?” No, there were forces at work that put him there. In church services and Biblical discussions, I’ve seen too many people quick to point out that Jews were responsible. But that’s just a convenient little distraction from the real culprit. In Jesus’ day, the entire world revolved around Rome and its Emperor’s will. Was it not Rome that sentenced Jesus? In an effort to eradicate this teacher and his ideas, Roman officials condemned Jesus to crucifixtion. Three days after his death, he rose from the dead and showed Rome, the most powerful government on earth at that time, that he could even overcome death. Death — that’s the real final frontier. And Jesus conquered it. Moreso, he showed us that we can conquer it, since this wasn’t his home and it sure as hell isn’t ours. We’re just passers by! Surely if death itself could be defeated, how hard could a Roman legion be? Or even the entirety of the Roman Empire itself.

But what about the most powerful nation on the planet today? If Jesus were around today, advocating the things that he advocated in his time, what would be the reception that he would receive from the American government? There used to be this great Christian ad campaign asking “What Would Jesus Do?” Jesus might preach that “no man can serve two masters.” This might cause some problems with the crowd who thinks that Jesus and America are one-in-the-same. But it is something that we need to realize. As Americans, we can always think that we’re on the side of right. That America can do no wrong, but what would Jesus think? Would he approve of the neo-con inspired American war machine? “He who lives by the sword will die by the sword,” he might say. It’s clear that on Judgement Day, many will get the Final Jeopardy question wrong. They will ask what it is to be a good American, when they should be asking what it is to be a good Christian.

But even more to the point is that, should Jesus decide that America really isn’t that Christian of a nation, how does this fare for the United States? One of the most oft-cited reasons for the fall of Rome was the pressure from barbarian invaders. The other reason was Christianity’s influence upon the empire. Maybe it was all of those well-meaning Christian politicians. Either by rising from the dead or by planting the seed in his followers, he got the job done. But on any account, we should take heed this Easter season and be certain that Christians put their eggs in the right basket, pun intended. Nations rise and fall. But that spark which Jesus pointed to in all of us endures forever and is the greatest power of them all.

April 8th is a day that has two particular significances to me. This year, however, with the haste of daily life, I almost forgot about both of them.

The first is that April 8th is widely celebrated as the Buddha’s birthday. While not being a Buddhist, Buddhism played an essential role in my life during my college years. Before realizing that I was really a Gnostic, I “experimented” with some of the thoughts, ideas and customs associated with Buddhism. I became vegetarian. I contemplated moving to a Buddhist commune in Arizona. I went to see the Dalai Llama. I did everything except shave my head, listen to the Beastie Boys and watch a Richard Gere movie. I still think that no matter what faith one might proclaim, the Eightfold Path of Buddhism would make a valuable study to gain perspective on how to live a practical spiritual life. For example, even if people would just put Right View, the first step of the Eightfold Path, to work the world could be immediately and drastically transformed for the better.

The second important thing about April 8th is that it is the twelve year anniversary of the discovery of Kurt Cobain’s body. Kurt Cobain was in a band that was big in the 90s called Nirvana. Back when I heard about Nirvana, I thought they had some good songs and all, but I wasn’t really taken by Nirvana in the way that everybody else seemed to be. I was a huge pop music type of guy at that time. Nirvana seemed way too loud and unintelligible to warrant much of my attention. I mean, if they had something to say, maybe it would have been different.

The turning point, however, came when I awoke one evening during my ultra-depressing “first” freshman year of college. I turned on the TV to catch whatever show would make me forget about the struggles I was having at school. Lo and behold, the Nirvana Unplugged special was on. Maybe I was carried away by the lyrical sensitivity of the thing. Maybe it was all of the flowers and candles on the stage which made it look like a solemn funeral. Maybe it was the slightly more acoustic renditions of songs that I’ve heard on the radio. That performance changed my whole view of Nirvana and of music in general.

I went out and bought an acoustic guitar with a couple hundred bucks my dad gave me for Christmas and started taking lessons. When I got fed up with the structure of lessons, I played around on my own and started networking with other musicians. I wrote my own lyrics for a few songs the world may never hear. I expanded my musical horizons, knowing that this music was an alternative. The “alternative” to what, I always asked flippantly. In retrospect, it was an alternative to Color Me Badd, Milli Vanilli and New Kids on the Block and all sorts of other late-80s garbage that did a real disservice to me by turning me into a complete pussy.

Three months after the original airing of Nirvana Unplugged, Kurt Cobain shot himself. There is some “allegedely” in this, depending on who you talk to. Some days I tend to give credance to these rock-and-roll conspiratorialists. The state of music today might be a hell of a lot better with Nirvana still around. It’s not like Hole was able to carry the banner of rock-and-roll righteousness into the twenty-first century. So maybe someone offed Kurt Cobain and destroyed Nirvana so that the airwaves could now by ruled by Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Hillary Duff and other tone-deaf sluts from the Disney Channel. Maybe one band didn’t make a difference in the overall scheme of things, but to me it did. Whenever I’m tutoring a high school student, the discussion of music usually comes up. I typically say something like, “In my day, we had a band called Nirvana”. They would give me the official “you’re a stale fart” look and tell me that they have never even heard of Nirvana.

So what do these two seemingly unrelated things have in common? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Well, close to absolutely nothing, other than Nirvana being a concept in Buddhism and part of Kurt Cobain’s ashes having been spread at a Buddhist temple. To me, however, they’re commemorations and reflections on two things that were important to me more than ten years ago. Thinking about them makes me a little happy, but also a little sad. But like some sappy lesson from some tear-jerking movie, no matter how removed from the everyday, these things are still with me. So perhaps this week, I’ll fold my legs over each other, take a few deep breaths and clear my mind. Then, I’ll pull out my old six-string or maybe even rip an oldie-but-a-goodie and rock out for a few hours. Either way, I’ll just end with a “Hey Man, Nice Shot“.