I'm sticking with the TurboTax because it's not human. It wants to please you blindly and won't call bullshit on you. It won't get terse and tell you that a new home entertainment system doesn't count as a travel expense even though you've mostly been watching the Travel Channel on it.

TurboTax doesn't see you sweat when you get to the part where you have a mass of missing receipts (and it won't bring up how most of the receipts you do have smell of peppermint schnapps).

TurboTax is the software equivalent of a particularly far-fetched Choose Your Own Adventure book, where you get to skip around through the events of the last year, deciding that this computer-assisted version of tax truth is infinitely more appealing than what actually happened.

TurboTax won't judge you.

But if you ever do get audited (you filthy criminal), you can just remember that even Al Capone couldn't escape the tax man.

And as faithful, loving and extremely understanding as TurboTax has been, the folks who write the software don't like being a party to your criminal mischief. You might find that TurboTax has cleared itself from your hard drive, erasing all evidence of its existence.

Like all great getaway drivers, TurboTax knows when the going's gotten bad, and how to speed away, without a trace.

My birthday is still on Thursday, and I've already had lots of people (Okay, one person) ask me what I want.

Let me tell you.

I would love it if everyone who reads Terribly Happy would write a funny poem and e-mail it to me.

Could be a haiku, or a Beowulf-length epic. I don't care. Just something creative and funny that I can post on Friday that would save me the trouble of actually having to write something that day.

So that's your birthday challenge. Send me a funny original poem. I'll post them on Friday. Everybody wins.

Happy Birthday, Omar.

Days 9 to 11: The Amazing Skinny-Cat.

Cosa's Hunger Strike to End Third-World Debt

Days 9 to 11

I finally found Cosa. She was lying under one of the couches, taking big long breaths, with her toungue hanging out.

I took a really good look at my cat. Her fur was coming off in clumps and her skin was stretched and tight. Her big yellow eyes looked to me, and I knew what she was thinking in one of those rare moments when pets and their owners share a moment of telepathy.

"We got those multinationals on the fucking run," she said to me with her doleful eyes.

I mailed a letter to Bono today letting him know what's up. Hope to hear from him soon, although I hear he's on tour, so it may take a little while. That's okay. We can always extend the hunger strike a bit.

Already thin, Pica the Cat knows from hunger.

Oh, my friend Raul has also begun starving his -- um, I mean, helping his cat through a hunger strike in solidarity with Cosa. This is Pica, the cat, on the left.

Clearly this is a growing movement that will only continue to expand in size and scale. Why are our cats doing this? Because they're selfless. They care more about humans and their associated debt collection than they do about their own welfare.

Incidentally, it's a lot easier to clean up Cosa's litter when she's not eating.