Only one more day!

And in case you're feeling resentful about your joyful patriotic duty to pay your fair share, maybe this will cheer you up:

On these taxing days, when we become a defiantly bipartisan nation of whiners convinced that we are handing over to the Internal Revenue Service our blood and sweat and mother’s milk, our pound of flesh and firstborn young, maybe it’s time for a little perspective.

Legions before us have donated all these items and more to the public till, and not just metaphorically speaking, either. Benjamin Franklin was right to equate paying taxes with a deeply organic behavior like dying. It turns out that giving up a portion of one’s income for the sake of the tribe is such a ubiquitous feature of the human race that some researchers see it as crucial to our species’ success. Without ritualized taxation, there would be precious little hominid representation.

Yes, paying taxes is not merely a patriotic duty, not merely a way of keeping Uncle Sugar's Legions from damaging your front door, household pets and furnishings, or sphinctal diameters - it's a biological imperative! Birds do it, fish do it, and you'll by god do it if you know what's good for you. Otherwise, how would you know you live in the Land of the Free? Hmm?