Tax Season Funny Quotes

Good heavens, those men really did hit your head hard, didn’t they?” Millie pressed the wet cloth into Reverend Gilmore’s hand before heading Everett’s way. Reaching out, she plucked the meat off his face and peered into his eyes. “Your pupils seem to be working all right, but . . . perhaps we should summon the physician to make certain you haven’t been grievously injured.” “My wits aren’t addled.” “I imagine that’ll change once Caroline hears about your latest foray—which means venture—into brawling.” Everett simply stared at Millie for a long moment before he laughed. “There’s nothing funny about this, Everett. Caroline is determined to pull off the ball of the summer season tonight, and she’ll be hard-pressed to do that if everyone at the ball spends their time discussing your recent activities.” “She probably won’t even notice the new bruises I incurred today.” “Do you think she’s not going to notice that your father is sporting bruises as well, and Reverend Gilmore’s lip is twice its normal size?” “I wasn’t planning on attending the ball, dear,” Reverend Gilmore said. “And I was only punched because one young gentleman got a little too enthusiastic when the mayhem began.” Fletcher smiled but then winced as if smiling caused him pain. “That certainly did put an end to everything rather quickly, once everyone realized an elderly gentleman—and a man of the cloth, at that—had been pulled into the fray.” Reverend Gilmore suddenly looked a little smug. “I’m sure the local churches will see an increase in their attendance, especially since I just couldn’t seem to resist suggesting all those gentlemen repent and make reparations for speaking such vile things about my lovely Lucetta.” Everett grinned. “That was the best part of the whole brawl.” Reverend Gilmore returned the grin. “I do still have my uses, son, but . . .” He rose slowly to his feet and sighed. “I think I’ll go have a nice lie down. As Fletcher so kindly pointed out, I am an elderly gentleman, and brawls can be rather taxing on us, even though, truth be told, I’ve never been in the midst of one before today.” Everyone

The most important mystery of ancient Egypt was presided over by a priesthood. That mystery concerned the annual inundation of the Nile flood plain. It was this flooding which made Egyptian agriculture, and therefore civilisation, possible. It was the centre of their society in both practical and ritual terms for many centuries; it made ancient Egypt the most stable society the world has ever seen. The Egyptian calendar itself was calculated with reference to the river, and was divided into three seasons, all of them linked to the Nile and the agricultural cycle it determined: Akhet, or the inundation, Peret, the growing season, and Shemu, the harvest. The size of the flood determined the size of the harvest: too little water and there would be famine; too much and there would be catastrophe; just the right amount and the whole country would bloom and prosper. Every detail of Egyptian life was linked to the flood: even the tax system was based on the level of the water, since it was that level which determined how prosperous the farmers were going to be in the subsequent season. The priests performed complicated rituals to divine the nature of that year’s flood and the resulting harvest. The religious elite had at their disposal a rich, emotionally satisfying mythological system; a subtle, complicated language of symbols that drew on that mythology; and a position of unchallenged power at the centre of their extraordinarily stable society, one which remained in an essentially static condition for thousands of years. But the priests were cheating, because they had something else too: they had a nilometer. This was a secret device made to measure and predict the level of flood water. It consisted of a large, permanent measuring station sited on the river, with lines and markers designed to predict the level of the annual flood. The calibrations used the water level to forecast levels of harvest from Hunger up through Suffering through to Happiness, Security and Abundance, to, in a year with too much water, Disaster. Nilometers were a – perhaps the – priestly secret. They were situated in temples where only priests were allowed access; Herodotus, who wrote the first outsider’s account of Egyptian life the fifth century BC, was told of their existence, but wasn’t allowed to see one. As late as 1810, thousands of years after the nilometers had entered use, foreigners were still forbidden access to them. Added to the accurate records of flood patters dating back centuries, the nilometer was an essential tool for control of Egypt. It had to be kept secret by the ruling class and institutions, because it was a central component of their authority. The world is full of priesthoods. The nilometer offers a good paradigm for many kinds of expertise, many varieties of religious and professional mystery. Many of the words for deliberately obfuscating nonsense come from priestly ritual: mumbo jumbo from the Mandinka word maamajomboo, a masked shamanic ceremonial dancer; hocus pocus from hoc est corpus meum in the Latin Mass. On the one hand, the elaborate language and ritual, designed to bamboozle and mystify and intimidate and add value; on the other the calculations that the pros make in private. Practitioners of almost every métier, from plumbers to chefs to nurses to teachers to police, have a gap between the way they talk to each other and they way they talk to their customers or audience. Grayson Perry is very funny on this phenomenon at work in the art world, as he described it in an interview with Brian Eno. ‘As for the language of the art world – “International Art English” – I think obfuscation was part of its purpose, to protect what in fact was probably a fairly simple philosophical point, to keep some sort of mystery around it. There was a fear that if it was made understandable, it wouldn’t seem important.