TJ of Twisty posted Chapter Three. Admittedly, I am biased, but I think it’s farookin’ great. Go read.

Chapter One is here.
Chapter Two is here

Next week: Chapter Four by Liv of Not a Shrinking Violet.

Roberto, New Jersey Blogger, and proprietor of DynamoBuzz, points us to an article in Forbes Magazine, about an attractive home that is for sale in the Garden State. This charming residence is nestled in the surburboland of Alpine, New Jersey, a small town, located across the Hudson River from New York City.

This 60,000 square foot beauty, which is perfect for the couple just starting out, boasts 13 bedrooms, 23 bathrooms (toilet paper not included), a guesthouse, two pools – one inside and one outside, and a 2,000-gallon aquarium (fish apparently are extra).

You say that you don’t feel like sleeping, shitting, or looking at tropical fish? No problem, as this “must buy” also features an arcade, an ice cream parlor (butter almond is extra), and a two-lane bowling alley.

I know you are thinking, Yo, Jimbo, it all sounds great, but what about the neighborhood?” Fear not, because Alpine only attracts the best of the best. As an Alpiner, you’ll be rubbing elbows with Stevie Wonder, Chris Rock, and Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs. You can invite them all over for burgers and beer and howl with laughter as Chris uses the “N-Word” on Stevie and “Puff Daddy.” Don’t worry, because the Beautiful People in Manhattan say it’s OK to laugh when Chris says that kind of stuff.

This can all be yours for a mere $40 million, however, I am quite sure that I can get the seller to come down to $39.9 million.

I figure that with a can of Spackle and a couple coats of paint, the place might just be presentable.

Cousin Jack, who is a Tax Law Professor, considers whether the “donations” that bloggers receive in their online “tip jars” are reportable as income for tax purposes. Jack concludes that such “donations” are reportable as income, and he points to a site laying out the reasoning behind this conclusion.

Stripped of detail, here is the deal. If the money people place in the online tip jars is deemed to be a gift, it is not reportable as income. If, however, it is viewed much as the tips given to cab drivers or waiters and waitresses, it is taxable income. The cited case law suggests that the government would consider such online “donations” to be analogous to tips given to waiters and waitresses or dealers at a casino and, as such, are reportable.

Memo to Andrew Sullivan: Call your accountant!

Update: I had originally posted the following thoughts in the comments, but I decided to put them here instead.

***

Not having a tip jar, for me, this is merely an interesting academic exercise. Having thought about this a bit more, I sense that the government either doesn’t consider (or only pays lip service to) the intent of the “donor.” Were it to examine the intent of the donor, I think the conclusion might change for certain “donations.” Consider a couple examples where the intent of the donor is more apparent.

1. Suppose a Joe Blogger, with a tip tar on his blog, does a post in which he mentions that it is his birthday. Further suppose that reader X deposits $25 tip in the tip jar along with a comment saying “Happy Birthday, Joe Blogger!” Gift or “taxable tip”?

2. Suppose that Josephine Blogger posted a blog about a recent financial setback in her life, and, after having been moved by the post, a long-time reader deposits $25 in the “tip jar” along with a note saying, “This is for you. I hope things turn around for you.” Gift or “taxable tip”?

I think, in both cases, it is clear that the donor intended the money as a gift, and I think that their intent should control. However, making such determinations would require a donation-by-donation examination by the IRS, which would make administration a nightmare.

Fortunately for the IRS, I doubt that Joe or Josephine Blogger would bother going to the mat over the tax on $25 (particularly so, if they were conscientious enough to report it to the IRS in the first place). However, what if the gifts to Joe and Josephine had been $25,000 instead of $25, a sum worth arguing about? I think on those facts they’d win.

So, what really is the intent of the people who make deposits into blotters’ tip jars, and should it matter? Suppose a blogger’s tip jar contained “donations” from 1,000 readers of $5 each and that all 1,000 were prepared to march off to the IRS office with the blogger to swear that they intended their $5 strictly as a gift, with no strings attached and in anticipation of nothing in the future. Again, on those admittedly tortured facts, I think the blogger wins.

Waddya say one of you fine folks sends me $25K on my next birthday, and we’ll test my theory. Hell, I know a good tax lawyer.

The Lovely Rita tossed this turd in my punchbowl handed the following meme off to me. And, I always thought the lady liked me. 🙂

Anyway, here goes:

What’s your favorite kind of cookie? Chocolate chip.

Who is America’s most overrated actor? William Shatner. I read that the guy recently won an Emmy or some such thing. Holy crap. The guy wouldn’t even be cast in the local high school play. At least he can sing. Gag………sputter…….cough……..cough.

Name a guilty pleasure. Good cigars.

“Scrubs” or “Everybody Loves Raymond”? I’ve never seen “Scrubs,” but I have seen “Raymond” a few times, and, like “Everybody,” (except Rita), I love “Raymond.” Actually, I like the rest of the cast more than I like Raymond.

Name two things you can’t live without. Peanut butter and booze.

Your first pet’s name + your mother’s maiden name = your porn star name. I think I’ll pass on the pet’s name and the mother’s maiden name part. Will my social security and driver’s license numbers do? On second thought, I think I’ll just give myself a porn star name. How about “Biff Sharona?”

What song are you listening to right now? None. Friends don’t let friends mix memes and music.

Name your celebrity crush. At first, I could not think of anyone who fits this description. However, with a bit of thought, I have come up with two. First, is Rachel Ray, the cutie who makes the thirty-minute meals on the Food Channel. I like everything about her, even her sorta crooked smile. Next is Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles. It’s that sideways glance while she’s playing that rings my bells.

Favorite punch line from a joke. “Got any grapes?”

Who do you want to pass this meme off to? Christina (I owe her one) and KarbonKountyMoos (I figure a Brooklynite who lives in Big Sky Country on a serious farm with crops and animals and stuff might have an interesting take on things).

I have been spending a bit of time reading the stuff over at The Idiom. The proprietors of this joint venture call themselves Kid Various, Mr. Surly, and Mr. Scribulus. They value their anonymity, as is evidenced by their self-description in the “About Us” Section of the blog, which states:

“We’re no one special and you don’t know us.”

Well, they may not be anyone special (Who is, anyway? Except for maybe Eric Clapton), but the fact is that I do know them. However, under no circumstances will I divulge their identities. Well, maybe I would in response to a properly served subpoena, or a properly served bottle of good bourbon. Maybe even average bottle of bourbon.

I note that this site enjoys a prominent place on what is, at this time, a veddy, veddy exclusive short blogroll. I am quite sure that having been placed at the top of their blogroll was strictly a favor to the oldish fart with the great farookin’ hair who has been known to pick up a bar tab based solely on their appreciation of first-quality content.

As for content at The Idiom, so far, the entries pretty well cover the waterfront and are quite entertaining (even if the occasional esoteric sci-fi digression sails over my cruller). I urge you to go take a look at The Idiom.

Tell ‘em you know me. It might increase your chances of winning a bobble-head doll, if they decide to give out prizes.

Over the weekend, I found myself on the wrong end of a merciless comment and trackback spam attack. While dealing with these vermin is never fun and is always time consuming, MT Blacklist makes the process tolerable. With a couple clicks, MT Blacklist deletes the spam, rebuilds the entries, and imports the offending URL into the Blacklist, thereby assuring that future spam containing the offending URL will be blocked before I ever see it.

However, when MT Blacklist is not working properly, as was the case this weekend, an attack that would normally just be a routine royal pain in the ass becomes downright maddening. This weekend, for techno-reasons beyond my ken, MT Blacklist would delete the spam and rebuild the entries, but it would not permit the importing of the URLs contained in the spam. As such, there was nothing blocking the ensuing onslaught. Trying to delete the crap faster than it came in was like trying to kill a zillion ants by stepping on them. It made reading or writing impossible.

I finally gave up, hoping that by today whatever was wrong with MT Blacklist would somehow “fix itself.” When it didn’t, I did what I have done in the past in such circumstances. “Craig!!!!!!!”

I wrote to Craig, raving like a nutbar explaining my problem. Craig provides the home for this blog and has always been willing to help, even if it means interrupting his life (as was the case last Easter), or dealing with my problems when he is sick (as was the case today).

He looked into the problem and learned that the best fix would be a download and installation of the latest versions of Movable Type and MT Blacklist. In a few minutes, he had me up and running and re-armed to deal with the scum of the earth doing their damnedest to foul this site.

I have often said that Craig is the nicest guy in the Blogosphere, and he proved it once again today. I owe him big time.

Yesterday an airport screener at Newark Airport was removed from her usual checkpoint for “remedial training,” when she failed to see a butcher knife in a passenger’s purse that passed through the x-ray machine. Only after having cleared security and taken a seat in the boarding area did Ms. Katrina Bell, a former Newark resident, traveling to her current home in North Carolina, notice that she had forgotten to remove the butcher knife from her purse.

When she alerted the security people (She was worried someone would see the knife and conclude that she was a terrorist), they questioned the security screener who indicated that she had not noticed the knife in the bag. Ms. Bell was asked to return the knife to the bag and pass it through the x-ray machine again. Apparently, the knife was easily seen on the screen.

Neither Ms. Bell nor her sister, Tikisha Bell Gowens, with whom she had intended to travel, was arrested. Ms. Bell continued on her trip (without the blade), but her sister remained behind because of the delay.

As I was reading the story, I could not help but wonder why the woman had a butcher knife in her purse in the first place? Only toward the end of the story were we told the stated reason for Ms. Bell’s possession of the knife.

It seems that Ms. Bell had been out on a blind date the night before and was told by her aunt to carry it “just in case.”

She may not have been a terrorist, but clearly she is not one to be trifled with. It’s a good thing the blind date guy didn’t get grabby.

The amazing Jeff Goldstein, proprietor of Protein Wisdom, a gorilla stompin’ blog on many levels, recently found himself in a bit of a dustup, arising out of the Jewish & Israeli Blog Awards and Protein Wisdom’s being one of the blogs nominated in the “Best Humor Blog” category. It seems that one of the other nominees, who was well behind Jeff in the voting, gratuitously said that Jeff was “not Jewish,” and that he was “not funny.” Ouch! Ouch!

Not surprisingly, Jeff acquitted himself admirably, but I am convinced that he was negatively affected by the experience. I came to this conclusion after having seen Jeff the other day in the supermarket, standing in front of a shelf that held jars of Gefilte Fish, and he seemed to be speaking. Knowing that Jeff is wont to speak with inanimate objects, such as apples and his Levi’s, I decided to listen in.

Jeff: “So, do you believe it? Some guy, one of our own, said that I’m not funny.”

Gefilte Fish:

Jeff: “O.K., so that was the putz’s opinion, and I suppose he’s entitled to it, but he also said that I’m not Jewish! Can you imagine that?”

Gefilte Fish:

Jeff: “Where’s the outrage here? How would you like it if someone said that you’re not Jewish?”

Gefilte Fish:

Jeff: “Well?”

Gefilte Fish:

Jeff: “Oy Gevalt!! I can’t believe you have nothing to say about that. I’m outta here.” (stomps off)

Adjacent Jar of Gefilte Fish: “So, why didn’t you talk to him, already?”

Gefilte Fish: “I smelled ham on his breath.”

It’s up, and Key hit the long ball.

If you’re new to this, the background of the Blog Noir Project is here.

Chapter One is here.

I won’t reveal the details here. Go read it.

Update: Chapter Three will come to you courtesy of TJ at Twisty, who parachuted in on short notice. Not surprisingly, she is my very best favorite, and I know she’ll do the old man proud.

I saw that lots of the cool folks had “Blogstreet” buttons on the ass end of their blogs. I wasn’t sure what Blogstreet had to offer, but I figured I’d give it a shot. So, I went to the Blogstreet site and filled in all the fields necessary to permit me to be one of the cool Blogstreet peeps. After I submitted the information, I got an e-mail instructing me to paste the Blogstreet’s code somewhere in my blog. This is the code to the cool guys’ Blotstreet button.

I did it, which as many of you know, is not an easy thing for me, being a guy who definitely does NOT like to fool with Mr. Template. But, wanting to be like the other cool guys, I did what I was told, and pasted the code into my site.

Eureka! It worked. There was the button! I thought that I would soon learn what Blogstreet was all abut. I clicked the button. It brought me to a “Add a Site” screen that looked suspiciously like the first damned screen I had previously encountered. It asked my screen name, my e-mail address and my password. Mind you, the message above these fields said that, “This site has been accepted to Blogstreet” (or something like that). So I filled in the shit again, thinking that, now that I have “been accepted,” I could experience the wonders of Blogstreet.

Horseshit.

I wound up at the same screen again, requesting the same damned information.

I’m too old and too cranky for this shit. I immediately went to my template and deleted the cursed Blogstreet button.

At this time, I don’t give a rat’s ass what Blogstreet can do or can’t do.

I want no part of Blogstreet.