2005-04-05 - 7:36 p.m.

Dad's tax preparer and the delicious horrors of imitation crabmeat

So I don't know if I'm going to be eligable for a work-study job in the fall.
I don't know because I haven't gotten my financial aid letter from the government.
I haven't gotten my financial aid letter from the government because I haven't filed my application.
I haven't filed because I require my dad's tax return to do that.
And Dad hasn't gotten his tax return yet.

Notice a trend here?

Well it all goes back to one thing- or rather one person: The trusty ol' family tax preparer. You see, Dad gets his taxes done ever-so-cheaply by a fellow who has retired but still does taxes for a few close friends. This is a sweet deal, hypothetically, but here's where the problem comes in.
You see, our tax preparer is the kind of guy who shows up at my Dad's shop at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, drinking a beer and not sure why he's there- only that he was supposed to be coming to talk about business but now he's forgotten what about business he was going to talk about.

Hey, wanna watch me drastically change subject! Okay! So I just got back from the grocery store. When I'm there I have a tendency to get distracted. I was walking past the seafood section when the Louis Kemp's "Crab Delights" caught my eye. They announce themselves to be "immitation crab." I got to wondering what exactly immitation crab consists of. According to the label it's mostly just artificially flavored leftovers from other fish (the equivalent of swimming spam). But here's the funny thing. At the bottom of the ingredients list (below the FD&C red #5) it says "Warning: May Contain Crab."
Two points:
First: Duh.
Second: What do you mean MAY CONTAIN? Like "oops, we accidentally dropped a real crab in with the swimming spam?" Shouldn't it contain crab, hence the first point? And wait, if it's not going to contain crab, then how would one get in there? Is the factory really that "Jungle"-esque? Stuff just falls in the vats and you don't know what it is?
But that's not the worst part of this- the worst part is that the more I held the packet of swimming spam the more I thought "damn, I haven't had seafood in ages." I still NEVER eat any form of bird, mammal, reptile (yes I have eaten reptiles before- I'm from Texas. Yes, 'round here we occasionally eat rattlesnake, but I assure you, we are mostly very nice people and many of us have all our teeth) but every once in a while I get a crustacean craving. I want shrimp, crab, or maybe even fish.
Unfortunately I cannot afford such things.
So I got the next best thing.
Despite the unlikely possibility of this stuff containg crab, it's quite good. Bon Apitite

The last thing I wrote before this thing. The next thing I wrote after this.