There is no witty headline that could do this justice.

A recent screenshot from the Washington (IN) Times-Herald's website, about halfway down the page:



Wait - what's that in the lower center area? Columnists from the Times-Herald have started blogging? Apparently. Let's look closer and see what they have to say:

Oh my God!!! Is that even for real?

Hey, I'm not one of those folks who anticipates with bated breath the death rattle of the mainstream media - but, then again, I've never seen the mainstream media be as candid about their role in this New Media age as the Times-Herald was right there: "In an attempt to stay relevant ..."


Well, welcome to the "blogshere," Washington Times-Herald. Hope you post lots of "photo's" (*giggle*) on your (*snort*) blogshere. You "should" (oh my God again) update your blog fairly regularly, since that's the point of all of the blogs in the (holy cow) blogshere.


That is priceless, and quite possibly the Local Media Blurb of the Decade.

Why you need to read Bramble Tamble more:

... so that you, too, can be ahead of the curve! You'll know about 7 months in advance what they'll be talking about in your run-of-the-mill liberal elite circles!

I'm never one to say "I told you so," but I'd like to point something out for my own personal amusement (and, yes, to say "I told you so"):

From Bramble Tamble on July 10, 2006:

Global warming deniers are now being shoved off into that same crazy house that holds Holocaust deniers and 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

And from Ellen Goodman of The Boston Globe, February 9, 2007:

Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.

I doubt that Ellen Goodman comes here for the witty repartee. In fact, I doubt that she comes here at all. But it was interesting to read this, regardless.

I really need to market this blog more.

Helpful hint of the day: Avoid CitizenTax.com.

Typically, I don't use this space for product endorsements or disendorsements. Y'all are adults, and you can make your own decisions or choices, and you can live with the consequences.

I will be more than happy to make an exception in this case.

My previous preferred website for e-filing my taxes does not support Schedule C forms, which is used for income from self-employment, so I had to do some digging to see what sites did support the use of Schedule C.

"Oh, here's CitizenTax.com - and they can file your taxes for only $7.77, which is cheaper than $12 or $15 on other sites!" I said to myself. "This will work!"

This ... didn't work. You do, after all, get what you pay for, right?

So, yeah. I ended up going to CitizenTax.com. I may as well have given $10 to two homeless guys and a wino to e-file my taxes, for all the good it's done so far.

The first time I submitted the completed package to the IRS, it was rejected. Interesting, since I completed everything that was asked of me - or so I thought.

(Interesting, also, since it took me actually *going to the site* to find out instead of getting a courtesy e-mail from CitizenTax.com, so thanks for that also!)

The reason that the form was rejected was not listed; rather, a "reject code" was supplied, and it was up to me to download a 130-page file of IRS reject codes to glean what the reason was. (CitizenTax.com: "It's your fault, so you figure it out.")

Here is the full text of the definition of my reject code:

0010 o Each field can contain only the type of data specified in its Field Description in Part II Record Layouts.

o Significant money amount fields must be right-justified (and zero-filled when transmitting in fixed format).

o Money amount fields must contain whole dollars (no cents).

o When a field is defined as "N (positive only)", the field must be present and must contain an amount greater than or equal to zero.

o For numeric fields that can contain a literal value, entries must be left-justified and blank-filled when transmitting in fixed format. When transmitting in variable format, only significant characters are transmitted.

o When transmitting in fixed or variable format, significant date fields must contain numeric characters in the following formats, unless otherwise specified in Part II Record Layouts: Year fields with a length of four positions = YYYY, date fields with six positions = YYYYMM, date fields with eight positions = YYYYMMDD unless otherwise specified.

o All alphanumeric fields must be left-justified (and blank-filled when transmitting in fixed format) unless otherwise specified.

o Form Payment - Taxpayer's Day Time Phone Number (SEQ 0090) is a required field and cannot equal all zeros or all blanks.

In other words - except for the very last one, the majority of these codes are the software's fault. And on the last one (regarding daytime phone number), there was no place to input a daytime phone number. You are required to input a phone number on the very first page, the taxpayer information screen, but there's no other place in the "interview" portion to put the preparer's phone number. There is no place there.

I resubmitted the form last night, making no changes whatsoever because there were no changes that I could make.

Now we wait once more.

Thanks a million, CitizenTax.com. It's not like I don't need the money.

Dear Reader, I beg of you. Avoid these people at all costs.

Let me reiterate: DO NOT FILE WITH CITIZENTAX.COM.

I don't know how I can make it any clearer.

(And you know, it's probably not a good idea to complain about these people while my taxes are still "in process" - I foresee them suddenly being "misplaced forever," along with my $7.77. But we're in the midst of filing season, and I thought it was imperative to get the word out. I'll take one for the team, and end up filing through TurboTax or something like that next year. At least I'm sure that their forms are left-justified or whatever.)

And pants are optional!

Some of you may have heard me make mention of "work" in conjunction with my after-hours activities. It's not what you're thinking.

I've been working with Denver, Colorado's The Permanent Record. For a little clearer picture of what I've been up to, check out the "intro to me" page there. (Apparently good hair and clean-shavenness are not prerequisites!)

Honestly, I count my lucky stars every day that I've come across this opportunity. I still can't believe Michelle pays me for ... writing! It almost feels like stealing.

James Lileks, I'm your #1 fan!

Many congrats to my favorite blogger/writer James Lileks on 10 years' worth of daily Bleats. You can find a short retrospective on the previous decade of work here.

I don't really see how he does it (you could spend days on his namesake site examining all manner of old matchbooks, postcards, and other "defenseless ephemera," as he calls it, and I have) - I know that I'd either have to give up the scanning and Photoshopping, or the writing, or the podcast, but he manages to pull it off masterfully without any of it sounding tired or repetitive.

If there's anything that I've tried to at least loosely model Bramble Tamble on, it's Lileks' site. I don't have his gifts as far as visual creativity goes (please see the Bramble Tamble category "Bad Photos and Even Worse Photoshopping" for an example), but I know that he's expanded my horizons as far as subject matter is concerned. It's because of him that I don't feel like it's a waste of time to write about my son or my day-to-day life and post it here. I also deeply appreciate his sense of tradition and his unstated reverence toward the vintage. And it goes without saying that I like having someone as sharp as he is on my side of the political fence also.

Here's to you, James, and here's to 10 more years!

"Barbaro was a great horse, but an even better person."

That is awesome.

Winless Watch (Girls): How now, Howe Hornets? (Plus: No Soft Landings When Giants Fall)

The Indiana girls' high school basketball tournament begins in a handful of days, so the season debut of the girls' Winless Watch list is exceptionally tardy. Better late than never - as Union (Modoc) and Rising Sun can attest! Both squads posted their first wins last weekend against fellow WW teams and have been spared the ignominy of earning a donut for the season.

(Hey, did anyone else spot an idea for a Winless Watch Traveling Trophy in that paragraph?)

Union's girls, whose counterparts on the boys team were featured in this space until the late stages of last season, appeared to be making a run for year-end honors as well - until a fortuitous quirk in scheduling that found them playing in the Muncie Burris tournament last weekend alongside WW compatriots Indianapolis Howe. (More on the Hornets in a little bit.) As predicted in an unpublished draft of this column from the first week of January, both teams lost their first-round games in the tournament and paired up in the consolation game, where the Rockets ended their season-long skid by posting a 46-31 victory over Howe. Congratulations to the girls from Modoc - third place never felt so good, did it?

Meanwhile, last Saturday's Rising Sun-Morristown game was a matchup of squads that had combined to go 0-33 for the season. (More on Morristown in a minute as well.) The Shiners of Rising Sun - I don't think the nickname denotes "black eye," does it? - dominated Morristown, posting a 51-21 win. No truth to the rumors that the parents of the Morristown girls went straight to the nearby Grand Victoria casino afterwards to lament the loss of the team's best chance for a win this year. (And what a stilted sentence that was.) Congratulations to Rising Sun!

With Union's and Rising Sun's removal from the Winless Watch list for the girls' side of the ledger, it appears that the final tally of teams to go 0-for-the-season will be around five, and with sectionals just days away, it's not looking good for most of these teams:

Special Mention: Indianapolis Tindley – This new charter school and partial member of the IHSAA is having a rocky basketball season, no matter the gender. The girls, thankfully, are playing only an 8-game schedule this season, and as such won’t be eligible for WW Team of the Year honors, but they still have managed to make a little bit of history, giving Sheridan their first win since 2003. For a real indication of Tindley’s futility so far this season, please see the current Winless Watch column spotlighting the boys.

4. South Newton – In the aforementioned "unpublished draft" of this column from January 3, I wrote:

With a couple of very winnable games left on their schedule, including 1-11 North White and 1-11 Caston, I don’t expect the Rebels to stay on this list long.

I was slightly off base on that one. The regular season came and went (North White beat the Rebels by 8; Caston won rather more handily), and South Newton is still on this list. My bad. And, with a first-round sectional game against 14-4 West Central looming next week, it's likely that the Rebels will still be on this list come my year-end WW honors report. But only as an honorable mention.

3. North Vermillion
2. Morristown

North Vermillion is most surprising on this list, but Morristown isn't that far behind. Coincidentally, these two teams are linked not only by their presence on this list, but also by their recent histories.

I suppose I shouldn't be quite so surprised about North Vermillion's inclusion on the WW; they were, after all, 3-39 for the two seasons previous to this. Still, the Falcons are a squad that also went 92-9 in the four years prior to *that* stretch, and having seen them during their state championship run in 2002 (as they trounced my sister-in-law's Loogootee team in the semistate), I couldn't have fathomed that they'd ever make it ... here.

Morristown's Yellow Jackets also have a recent tradition of winning. Before last year's slide to 2-18 and this year's 0-18 showing thus far, the Jackets had a 10-win season, a 15-win season, and then three seasons in which they advanced to the regional round or deeper in the state tournament. Twice in those later rounds of the tournament, they had their season ended by ... North Vermillion.

I'd hate to think that the younger girls at those two small-school giants weren't duly inspired by the recent successes of their varsity teams.

But there's hope! Both teams have winnable games in sectionals next week (assuming that they both finish the regular season as they started it - winless): North Vermillion faces a 4-16 Riverton Parke squad that beat the Falcons twice this season, by 17 and 15 points - beating a team three times in a season is a tall order, especially if the team that has beat you twice only has two other wins to its credit! While the Falcons would have had a tough time no matter how the draw came out for them, this was probably the best-case scenario.

Morristown is up against a Greenwood Christian squad with an inflated 6-8 record (if there is such a thing, and I think there is, as fans of various small Southern Indiana schools can tell you). GC's wins came against non-IHSAA schools that might inspire fear and derision from atheists, but not necessarily their athletic opponents: Fort Wayne Bible, Baptist Academy, Temple Christian and Horizon Christian (twice). Both teams share a common opponent in Southwestern (Shelby); the Spartans beat Morristown by 28 early in the season, and knocked off GC by 30 last week. I don't think the draw could have gone any better for Morristown!

1. Indianapolis Howe - Last year’s Winless Watch Girls Team of the Year is still heavily in the running to defend that honor this season. On top of that, Howe is the only alumna from last year’s final Winless Watch list to maintain its position this year, as the other five teams that finished last season without a win have all won at least one game this season. Losing by an average of over 45 points per game this season, the once-feared Hornets have dropped 47 in a row as of this writing.

Is the program about to turn the corner? The average margin of defeat improved by almost 7 points per game throughout January, and a three-point loss to Indiana Deaf in their last outing may also provide a glimmer of hope ... but maybe not this year. The Hornets (Final Four participants in 1983) wrap up the regular season against 13-5 Park Tudor before facing 10-8 Roncalli in the sectional. The Hornets are, hands down, heavy favorites to be a two-time WW Team of the Year by the end of next week.

(Special thanks, as always, to the inestimable John Harrell, whose Indiana High School Basketball site is priceless to me when putting together Winless Watch. The man should go into the Hall of Fame someday for his tireless work on compiling current and recent Indiana HS hoops info.)

In Memorandum (sic)

A word about columnist Molly Ivins, who passed away yesterday:

I know that I'm not going to change the world, and that my eventual passing will not be noted on the nightly news. If it was, I hope that my epitaph will be something of more consequence than the one I heard on the radio when I learned of Ivins' death:

"Molly Ivins, the columnist who was the first to use the nickname 'Shrub' to describe President Bush, died today after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 61."

And that was it. That was her contribution to society, her $.02 donation to the public discourse, the nutshell in which her life can be summed up: a dumbass nickname.

Wow. Congratulations on that, you know? Rest in peace, you good and noble servant; your work here is done. Or something.