I came across this interesting, weird, funny but, serious article at http://www.wisebread.com

Actually it seems so true that most of the tax payers indulge into such weird tactics in order to save whatever chunk of tax they can. Its amazing, to what an extent a mind can imagine various creative ways. Its a pleasure to share the reading here.

Imagine the Tax Fraud Tactics: 20 amazing, outrageous and just plain weird tax deductions

Tax Fraud Tactic

Well, it’s that time again. The tax deadline is just around the corner. If you’re like me, you will have taken care of your taxes months ago and already be enjoying the cash your high-interest savings account is giving you on your return.

If you’re smarter than me, you won’t have any tax return at all. It’s best to come out owing nothing and getting nothing. Evens is best here. But if you still haven’t done your return, take a look at the top 20 funky, strange and outrageous deductions that folks have tried, and sometimes failed, to get away with.

It’s ironic that I was sweating over the deduction of office supplies for my home business, when some folks out there are deducting breast implants and beer. As I’m often told, God Bless America.

1 – Free beer – YES
Strange but true. A gas station owner gave his customers free beer (brand unknown…I doubt it was Stella Artois though) in lieu of trading stamps. And the Tax Courts said yes, this is a legitimate business expense and tax deductible. Which makes the next entry even stranger…

2 – Free whisky – NO
How ironic. A cunning fella thought a case or two of whisky would make nice client gifts, and thus tried to deduct them on his annual tax return. The category he chose was client entertainment. However, not only was it not allowed, it was a gift that violated state laws. Ouch.

3 – Cost of hiring an arsonist – NO
Hard to believe, right? A man with a failing furniture business decided to hire someone to burn it down. The store-owner’s plan was not only to collect the $500,000 insurance money, but also to deduct the $10,000 expenses of hiring the arsonist! He was denied. I’m sure it wasn’t too long before the police were also looking carefully at his return. Not a smart man.

4 – Fake Boobs – YES
This one is infamous. A stripper going by the name of CHESTY LOVE used her hard-earned savings to boost the size of her boobs, to the eye-popping size of 56-FF (do they even make bras in that size?) She figured it would get her more tips. And the write-off was allowed, being considered a stage prop essential to her act. Ha!

5 – Prostitution expenses – NO
Maybe in Amsterdam or at the Bunny Ranch in Nevada, but you can’t deduct expenses of illegal professions. Trying to deduct 4000 condoms or push-up bras are no good if you put down “prostitute” as your career. Similarly, drug dealers can’t deduct the cost of baggies or soil for Marijuana plants.

6 – Cat food – YES
Junkyard owners set out bowls of pet food nightly to attract wild cats. The wild cats also took care of their nasty snake and rat problem, making the junkyard safer for customers and providing a useful business service. Yep, you guessed it…the pet food is a business expense, it was allowed. I need to get the number of their tax attorney.

7 -Your own racehorse – NO
I can see how this would be a business expense to some people. But if you just go out and buy your own prize-winning horse, name it after yourself (the ego on some folks) and then take clients out to see your horse run, you cannot deduct this. It’s not a business expense, it’s a personal expense. But hey, if you can afford a racehorse and stables, why are you worried about the deduction in the first place?

8 – A fabulous African Safari – YES
If the IRS considers a business trip “ordinary and necessary”, you can take it as a deduction. For the owners of a dairy business, this included a wonderful African Safari, because many of the activities on the trip were focused on wild animals. Please note – going to see adult shows in Vegas would not count as viewing exotic wildlife.

9 – The costs of moving…the family pet – YES
Whether you’ve got a Great Dane or a Great White Shark, your pet is considered a personal effect. And that’s great news for you. When it comes to any expenses relating to any kind move associated with a job, the tax man says yes. But I suspect hiring a Hummer Limo to move your gerbil across the state may not be looked upon favorably.

10 – A Trip to Bermuda – YES, YES, YES
I love this one. I have to find a way to do it. ANY business convention held in Bermuda can be written off without even showing there was a special reason to hold your business meeting in paradise. And it’s not the only place. Barbados, Costa Rica, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, Mexico and all U.S. possessions also fall into this special tax treatment. But outside the U.S. is a different story. I guess I can’t hold a board meeting in England so I can go see my folks then

11 – Body Oil – YES
If you’re a regular Joe, body oil is a once in a blue-moon splurge. Maybe something to spice up an evening with your partner, but certainly not a write-off. However, if you’re a pro bodybuilder and need gallons of body oil to make your muscles glisten, then it is a genuine tax write-off. Just don’t turn up at a client meeting covered in oil, wearing nothing but a thong and a smile. It won’t be considered “ordinary and necessary.”

12 – A trip to the Super bowl – NO
I’d like to put this one in the ‘nice try’ category. Someone decided to take clients and their spouses to the Super bowl, but just could not prove that the shindig was in any way related to business. And even if it was, it’s an extravagant expense for a meeting and would have been disallowed anyway. Sorry bud.

13 – A Private Airplane – YES
A couple with a rental condo didn’t fancy the hassle of driving up to 7 hours to check on it. They didn’t want to be stuck to the schedule of the only daily flight available. So, they did what you ore I would do. They bought their own jet! They were allowed to deduct all expenses on the jet relating to the condo, including the high costs of fuel. That must have been some

14 – A Mink Coat – NO
And thank goodness, because I hate fur. Claiming that the Mink coat was a conversation piece when visiting clients with his wife (what was the topic…blood on the runway?) a man tried to deduct the garment. Fortunately, he was denied.

15 – Babysitting costs – YES
Believe it or not, you can deduct the cost of a babysitter as a charitable deduction, if the mother of the child is leaving the house to do volunteer work for a charity. Which, of course, we all do on a daily basis.

16 – A ‘Playmate’ Party – YES!
How he got away with this one is beyond me. The owner of a nightclub promotions firm decided that a regular party wasn’t good enough for his clients. So, he brought in a bunch of scantily clad “bunnies” as decoration. The tax man said sure, it’s a valid expense. Whether or not pictures of the bunnies were attached to the return is unknown at this time.

17 – A Nuclear Fallout Shelter – NO
This one bombed (ouch, sorry…bad pun). Yup, way back in the days of the cold war and the threat of nuclear meltdown, one clever chap built a nuclear fallout shelter on his property and then decided to list it as “preventative medicine.” The IRS gave that one a big thumbs down. But who’ll be laughing if Word War 3 does happen?

18 – A beautiful swimming pool – YES
This one’s a great example of lateral thinking. After being told by his doctor that he needed to exercise (after developing emphysema), the smart fella put in a swimming pool. The deduction was put down as a necessary MEDICAL EXPENSE and was allowed, along with the various chemicals, heating, cleaning and general upkeep of the pool. Now that’s using your head.

19 – Dancing lessons – NO
Dancing With The Stars may be popular, but it’s not going down well with the IRS as the subject of a deduction. You CANNOT take dancing as a deduction for medical expenses, and the following reason are outlawed – dancing to relive varicose veins, dancing to cure arthritis and finally, dancing to alleviate nervous disorders. Try any of these and you’ll be dancing all the way to the tax courts.

20 – Sperm donation as a loss – NO
It’s one thing to make a little extra cash as a sperm donor. It’s quite another to try and claim a depletion loss on the aforementioned sperm. Unless you’re an oil well, that kind of depletion is not really going to make much of an impact.

This morning it was 4 a.m. instead of 3:30. We were more tired than we were last week, so the sirens seemed like a dream. The helicopter didn’t seem real. But the crazy old Asian woman from four doors down running up and down the street yelling, “Yooooooohhh! Yoooooaaaaaaaaaaahhh!” finally got us.

“Who does she think she is, Paul Revere?” I asked Drew sleepily. Looking out our front window, there was nothing to see but a 4-foot-tall old woman in a stocking cap speed walking back and forth, yelling the same way she yelled when the city had to tear up the street in front of her house and accidentally killed some of her plants. But looking out our back window, there was this:

and this:

and this:

I hear no one was hurt, that it was another abandoned house, that no one knows what caused it, blah blah. It’s a little surreal to wake up once a week to a house behind you being engulfed in flames. A part of you thinks, where am I? Surely not a part of town where we paid twice as much for half as much house as we could have gotten in the suburbs, where no one is setting things on fire.

My photos would have been better, but Drew wasn’t keen on walking over to the scene with me to get better photos “for my blog.” He forgets that investigative journalism blood runs in my veins. This would have been the hottest story for me to cover since college, when I did a 60-second broadcast from the scene of a new restaurant that was supposedly being built over an Indian graveyard.

But my Drew, he’s always thinking. He said that in his sweatpants and stocking cap, he didn’t not look like an arsonist. And it was 4 in the morning. Who has time for police interrogation?

Obviously we didn’t start the fire. But seriously. Who did?

Yo, check out this event that Vancouvers own Pacific Boarder is holding on Mt. Seymour…

Stop by the Arson booth to say hi and grab some stickers!

See you there

There have been a lot of things about inner-city life in the nation’s fourth largest city that have taken some getting used to for this small-town Oklahoma broad. My first four years as a Houstonian were spent in the Plantation apartments near the Galleria; a crumbly little spot that high-rise developers forgot to bull-doze. I used to come home to an occasional note from management under my door that read something like this, “Dear Resident: A drunken male with a knife has been observed in the parking lot. Please be advised.” These notes were delivered in the exact same way as my lease renewal notices. Time to renegotiate your lease. Try not to get knifed while you’re carrying in your groceries. Happy Wednesday.

When I met Drew, we pooled our individual incomes and decided to move up in the real estate world. We bought a house! In the Heights! Where there is no management company to alert you when a knife wielding drunkard is on the loose! You just have to keep your head on a swivel in these parts.

I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but someone has been setting fires in the Heights. I think there have been 18 by now. Maybe 19. We’re all still debating whether this really constitutes use of the word “serial.” I mean, doesn’t he have to set 20 before we can really decide there’s a pattern?

This is all a part of the trade-off of living in the city, Drew and I tell each other. So what if we have to set up a deer camera to keep our house from being broken into? Oh well if there’s an occasional fire down the street? We’re URBAN. We’re close to work. We have fun little shops and restaurants and interesting neighbors and kitschy old houses.

And, as of this morning, we have the Houston SWAT team as an alarm clock.

It all started at 3:30 AM with lights and noises and smoke that seemed out of place at that time of night to my exhausted brain. By the time I conjured up the strength to completely open my eyes, there was a giant unmarked van in front of our house with police officers pouring out of it, all aiming guns at Drew’s car and at our house. There was a German Shepherd, sniffing around. There was crime scene tape marking off our street. There was smoke billowing out of the house behind us. There were cops, calling up to Drew, asking if he’d seen or heard anything. And all the while, there was me, in my underwear, holding a baseball bat.

Baseball bats are very good protection against fire. Especially wooden bats, like the kind we keep under our bed.

As we watched from our bedroom window, I educated Drew on the near-impossible job of catching an arsonist.

“All the guy has to do is set the fire and run away, and by the time anyone even knows there’s a problem, he’s in the next county,” I mused, mostly to myself, rocking back and forth with my bat. “Unless he’s the type of arsonist who just can’t help but stay around and watch his fires burn.”

I admit it. Living in this town has turned me into just another armchair arson investigator.

So while we wait for the fires to stop, I try not to beg Drew to move me back to a small town. I’m trying to be a cool city-dweller. I’m trying to roll with the metaphorical punches here, making pals with the SWAT team, patting dogs trained to sniff out excelerants on my way to work. After all, there are many things we don’t have to deal with here in the big city that were major problems in Oklahoma.

Cow-tipping, for instance. Or Fruit-Looping! Waking up to a multi-colored lawn! What a nuisance.

A Message from Arson Rider Ian Paone (Whistler BC)!

So Swollen Members came to town on November 11th (lest we forget) Swollen Members rolled into town and played a show with Bliss n’ Esso, one of the biggest Aussie hip-hop duos. Oh man what a show it was. Here’s a picture of just the crowd in this tiny club

Since Whistler is full of Aussies, Bliss n’ Esso were a huge hit and they got the entire bar jumping. I’ve only heard 1 of their songs before but I was getting right into it as well. They also do a cover of a really good Citizen Cope song “A Bullet and a Target.

Then Swollen took the stage, I dragged my broke and tired ass out of bed after skiing to go see them(I drove up to Kadenwood in whis to sesh the mini jib park that was built up there, no photos though sorry!) and oh man they didn’t disappoint . My first ever concert was these guys back in 2001 in Victoria but this show was 100x better. I was 2nd row, center stage and had a prime view of the show. Here’s some photos

So yea that was my Wednesday night. I may be a reggae kid now but I will always listen to Swollen Members. They’re music has always been a huge part of my life and my skiing. I have so much respect for these guys. Madchild is going through so much shit right now and he’s still going strong

If you get the chance, go see a Swollen Members show. It will change your perspective on live shows forever. Keep shredding. Peace.

WOWOWOWOW…Illmind got robbed…

Some of the illest producers in the game participate in a friendly beat battle. iStandard is the shit for putting the spotlight on the guys that usually play the background.

Oh and btw, if you don’t know who these guys are, do some research. These cats are definitely responsible for a lot of your favorite songs….trust me when I say this.

I just came back from my euro trip two weeks ago and last days have been pretty hectic.

Trip was awesome, 7000km in a van down south to France, Spain and Portugal.

I had some surf every day 3ft to 7ft, only sun and a lot of fun.

I ended my journey with one of my best friends wedding, facing the ocean, in guethary, french Basque country. Best scenery ever!

Having a break is honnestly the best feeling and a nice way to fill up the battery with fresh energy.

As you can imagine, I have hundred of stories and anecdotes, travelling brings many surprises, far away from home, with different cultures, landscapes and paces.

Back in the game..

Matthieu

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to let you know what happened to me this past season. I moved to Whistler and spent the year here. Worked on progressing my skiing and maturing my style. Here’s some photos from this past season.

My season was fun and I am super stoked on what I accomplished. Learned a ton of new tricks and matured my style significantly. Unfortunately, my season was injury filled with a knee, shoulder, and ankle injury sidelining me for about a month in total. Despite all the injuries I still managed to compete in the Telus Fest. Big Air, coming 28th out of 97.
My summer was very rough. I broke my thumb and had to get surgery which took a month out of my summer. Also, on July 28th I had to very unfortunately and sadly, say goodbye to my little brother Andrew

He was one month shy of turning 17. He inspired thousands of people with his Youtube Episodes of Japanese Anime. If you want to view his work please search for RestInPeaceRayms on Youtube.

I miss you so much Andrew. RIP, 27/08/92-28/07/09.

On a happier note, I recently bought a house in Whistler and plan on stay here for awhile. Here are some photos

Now I’m just waiting for the snow to fall so skiing can start again. It’s gonna be my year this year. Watch for me

Keep doing what you want in life,

Don’t let anyone tell you what to do.

Peace.

Ian Paone

Missy “Mistrial” Elliot

Missy “Conspiracy” Elliot

Missy “Wire Fraud” Elliot

Here is another great article regarding some legislation that our political hacks are discussing in Washington.

Congress is considering a tax credit for businesses who hire employees.

So here is what is wrong with it:

1. This comes straight from a labor run business model – go ask GM and the State of NY how that is working out when the prisoners run the asylum.

2. Any uptick in hiring will only be temporary, in order to sustain growth in business people have to be buying what the business is selling.(Wait I here the argument that hiring key people to a business could increase revenues etc… and yes I understand the value human capital but if a business finds that key person a small tax credit isn’t going to be the difference of hiring or not hiring)

3. If people aren’t buying what you are selling you aren’t going to hire anyway, which means that companies that might actually be hiring are going to wait because if they can get some welfare from the taxpayers why wouldn’t they. What business would not want to reduce their employee cost?

4.If you claim the tax credit is the reason a business will hire then what happens after two years and the tax credit goes away. One of two things – either the program will have to be extended or people will have to be let go, so now we just push the underlying economic problems down the road a bit further. I know of no for profit business model that uses welfare as a source of revenue, it does absolutely nothing to build a foundation for long term profitability. Short term maybe, but over the course of time it will not sustain a business.

WARNING- Careful for those business’s who want this program for the tax credit, because if I know one thing about Pres. Obama and our Government, if they give you something, they will want something in return. Just ask the all the bail out companies who are being told how much they can compensate their employees.

Our Government shares the largest portion of blame for our economy being where it is. Their fiscal and bank policy, lack of smart regulatory policy and enforcement, massive entitlement program spending, massive spending in general, and massive tax burdens, are the largest contributors to the financial crisis that we are currently in. The Dems and Rep. both contributed to the problem.  So now here comes the Government with another entitlement program to try to fix it.

Maybe the single most important thing to understand is how the Tax Code is being used once again to control behavior. The Government has three sources of power – military, law creating and enforcement(the threat of incarceration), and the US Tax Code. The most often used of these is the tax code and arguably it is the most powerful tool the Government has to controlling people and the economy. Obama wants a controlled predictable less volatile economy, otherwise known as Socialism. The Obama kind of socialism is when the State controls the capital and allows the quasi free market to exist as so long as the Government controls the majority of the money.

If the US Government really want to fix the economy they would get the hell out of the way, set a fixed tax rate for everyone; get rid of every single tax credit, deduction, rebate, loophole; monitor, regulate, and enforce laws on business for corruption, stealing and cheating, not for paying the execs too much and picking winners and losers based on some special interest or lobby group who says the earth is burning to a crisp.

Once again I would like to thank all the people who voted for Obama, heck let me also thank all the people who voted for Bush, and every other incumbent politician who has been sucking up to the American people with another funding program for some group of people.

HEADLINE SPEECH FOR DEMS AND REP

“We worked in a bi-partisan fashion to bring about significant job creation by passing legislation that will put back to work millions of people and we did it by not increasing taxes on anybody. It is refreshing when the two parties can cross the isle and find common ground to do what is right for the American people and jobs. These new jobs that are being created, right now as we speak, will save countless families from the pain of losing their homes, losing their health care, losing the ability to send their son or daughter to school. These jobs will help bring our economy back to a level of the likes that we have never scene. The days ahead are now filled with optimism and hope, but let me remind you that our work here is not done yet, the road is still long and hard, it will take more time and effort, but at least we can start to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. We will get there because we will continue to work tirelessly in our effort to once again return this Nation to the Greatness that we know exist. Thank You and God Bless America”

Jackasses…

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A message from Warless:

Hi everyone,

Rika here, Well, If there is ONE Warless show you will see in the near future make it this one! We are proud to finally be playing the illustrious RAILWAY CLUB. YAAAAH!!!! A Vancouver live music landmark! It is a band milestone and a show we are working hard to make our best yet!! Come down and dance we will love you for it!
It is in conjunction with Vancouver City Limits and we will be sharing the stage with James Lamb & Miss Emily Brown along with Dawn Mitschele and Parker Ainsworth.

Great Love and thanks
the band

Vancouver City Limits
Wednesday Sept 30th
Railway Club
579 Dunsmuir st   Van
Doors 8:30 pm

Here are some pics from Arsonist Matthieu Perez’s summer around Europe! thanks for sharing dude!

If you’re in Vancouver on Friday Aug 28th, check out the Warless concert at the Backstage Lounge

We hope that you’ve got car insurance.

San Francisco, CA. Since July 23^rd, 2009, 13 cars have been destroyed by an unknown badass. The epic destruction has followed this epic path of destruction:

Date:           Time:           Location:
July 23        6:20 a.m.     Geary Street and Van Ness Avenue
July 23        12:05 a.m.   Post Street and Van Ness Avenue
July 25        3 a.m.          200 Block of California Street
July 25        11:30 p.m.   Franklin and Fern streets
July 26        4 a.m.          Van Ness Avenue and Olive Street
July 28        4 a.m.          Geary Boulevard and 48th Avenue
July 28        4: 25 a.m.    Geary Boulevard and Bertie Minor Lane*
July 28        6 a.m.          Geary Boulevard and 29th Avenue
July 28       11:23 p.m.    Newcomb Avenue and Selby Street
July 29        2:05 a.m.     350 Francisco Street*
July 29        3:15 a.m.     700 block of La Playa

Whoever this badass is, we congratulate him (not her, because we don’t believe that women are this stupid) on his incredibly misguided revolutionary tactics. Historically, destroying normal people’s private property has been best way to get your point (what fucking point) across. If you are reading this, Mr. Arsonist, we highly suggest that you chop off your dick and join the Flaming Lotus Girls artists’ coalition. They like to burn shit too, and are way….way… more creative than you are.

[via Examiner]

Asshole.

[Comment Now!]

Photographer, Activist and Arsonist Kris Krug was spotted in Vancouvers 24 Hours magazine today. The article is about his role in providing independent media coverage of the Vancouver/Whister 2010 games.
(click on the image for a bigger version)

an update from Arsonist Matthieu Perez:

Now we reach the longest days in the year, warm temp and summer feeling.
As we have a music studio at work, I lately spent a lot of time playing
with my mates and friends.
Being in Austria for spring and summer means mountainbiking and
skateboarding, visiting bowl and park through Austria and Germany,
trying to find waves…made out of concrete!!
I just came back from France, for two weeks back home, family and
surfing. You guess that it was a huge breeze and I already miss the
smell from the land by offshore wind…

For the next two months, I will stay in Austria, before heading
somewhere in the world for three weeks surfing.
I will keep you updated after the summer and my trip.

The Man in Blue in Black & White

During the weekend of 13 and 14 June the jathedar Akal Takhat visited Southall. Apart from an appearance in the Singh Sabha Gurdwara he also visited a private house in the area.

During that visit somebody from the Woolwich Ramgarhia Gurdwara told the jathedar about a person who calls himself ‘the Man in Blue’, who is involved in the arson attack on the Bow Sikh Sangat Gurdwara and who is an agent of the Government of India. 

Those that read my blog know that I did visit Woolwich and was ‘apprehended’ by the Prabandhaks while committing the horrible crime of taking pictures of the Gurdwara, was accused of being involved in the fire at the Sikh Sangat Gurdwara and was also told that I was not a Sikh but only dressed up as a one. When I tried to leave my exit was blocked.

The Prabandhaks phoned the police. When the police arrived I was very happy that I could leave the company of the committee members, but I was then searched under article 44 of the prevention of terrorism act.

Of course nothing was found that was even the least bit incriminating, but I think it is ridiculous that if you take pictures of a Gurdwara without the consent of the committee, the police think that this gives them the right to search you under the prevention of terrorism act.

I feel that I have an unresolved issue with the police, but have no wish to have an ongoing row with the Woolwich Gurdwara committee. They had me badly wrong, they made a mistake and they were told by Sikhs from East London that I was not a bogus Sikh and that everything I told them was true. 

I have no appetite for a dialogue of the deaf like : You are an arsonist – No I am not; You are an agent of the GOI – No I am not. I am far too busy doing positive things, which I hope contribute to the ‘Welfare for All’, and which will give a positive image of Sikhí.

A friend gave me the contact details of somebody on the Ramgarhia Board, a number of people have offered to support me, but at the end of the day if the Woolwich Ramgarhia Committee keeps slandering me I suppose I will take legal advice about suing them. 

I would certainly win, as the committee’s accusations are a completely nonsense. The only grounds for their suspicion are that I took pictures of the Gurdwara and that I did not like being accused of being involved in arson and being called a fake Sikh. In my thirteen years as an Amritdhari Sikh I have had some adventures with Prabandhaks, but never have I been treated with such malevolence.

For more info on my somewhat  dramatic visit to the Woolwich Ramgarhia Gurdwara click on the link below :

A Visit to the Woolwich Ramgarhia Sabha and Article 44 of the Terrorism Act

Conversations about what I do for a living never last very long.

    I was having a cup of tea in Pinner with a girl who had just started working for an Archbishop from Manchester, and she asked me what I did.

   One “comedian” later, and there’s not a sound, save that of the tea slowly cooling, and the noise that sweat makes when it springs out onto the palms of your hands.

   Saying you’re a comedian is much like saying you’re an arsonist : people don’t know what to say next, wonder what you were doing last night and fear you’ll either start putting them down violently and relentlessly, or attempt to set something big on fire.

   In the end, people often either say “I must seem terribly boring,” “I don’t know how you can stand in front of all those people,” or “you’ll probably put me in your act”. That last sentence remains one of the biggest misconceptions about comedy: that all I do is stand in front of an audience and recount events from my life in which something slightly awkward has happened.

   “So anyway..the other day, I met this girl working for a senior clergyman..we had some tea, a cup of tea…you know the sort, a young lady doing some form of PA duties for a Deacon…in Manchester, working with a man of the cloth..no? Come on, this stuff is gold! What’s wrong with you all?”

   When I went to visit my old school, Mr.Carlton (who has always scared me) greeted me with the words “I bet this place will be working its way into your act!” At the time though, he was shaking my hand so hard that it was being painfully crushed, and there was no indication that the extreme pain I was feeling might end in the foreseeable future.

   So rather than thinking about comedy, and using the school in my humourous monologue, I was in fact thinking about screaming for a sixth former to beat him off me with a stick.

   This misnomer reached its apex at the start of this year when, over a family dinner, someone accidentally knocked over a glass of water, and issued forth a gleeful, triumphant cry of “you can put that in your act!”

   I don’t think audiences are quite ready to be shipped en masse to my parent’s house for a Christmas lunch (including paper crowns) wherein I, as the cabaret, surrupticiously let a glass fall over, so the liquid comes out just as everyone is about to eat, quickly bow and head out to the kitchen to get my £35 fee off of my mum.

   That said, I have just used all these genuine examples of something I couldn’t possibly use in comedy as a way of filling up a comic column.

   So, in fact, these people were entirely justified in their mistrust of me.

   Their suspicions regarding their awkwardness ending up in my routine is in fact well-founded, in the same way that were I an arsonist, I’d probably be waiting for them to go to the toilet, so I could press lit matches into the side of a sofa to watch the flames, the pretty flames, so beautiful, but mustn’t touch, no no no.

   Moral? Comedians are not to be anything but shunned. Except for me, of course. Because I could really use you in my act.

Arsonist has made beats for Lil’ Flip, Dipset, and Lil’ Wayne (just to name a few). He sat down with me in New York to talk about about his experiences being a music producer. He also talks directly to up and coming music producers about how to make a name in the game. He’s been in the game a long time and I got a lot out of him dropin’ knowledge. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Till next time,

Surpaul Cottrell
www.surpaulcottrell.tv

(Right Click and ‘Save As’ to DOWNLOAD “CUP HUSTLE” for your IPOD HERE)

The arsonist imaginary. Gasoline, kerosene, it all burns down to smithereens.

To wake the guy, I stabbed a knife into his leg. He was gagged, but he opened his eyes screaming inside. I didn’t want to take my chances of having him calling the attention of the neighbors, so I “interviewed” him, having my answers written on a piece of paper. I didn’t get much, but I didn’t want much more from him.

I made him suffer a lot. All I had in the end was his torso, in half, the members apart, and a disfigured head. It was already morning when I finished, 3 hours before he used to go to work, just as I had programmed.

So I carefully cleaned all the basement, not leaving a single hair.
Then I threw “him” in the kitchen’s floor, turned on the gas, and programmed a “detonator” I prepared to fire in about 45 minutes. And I sneaked out, taking care to don’t be noticed (as it was 5 in the morning, the city was still sleeping).

Just as I planned: BUM! After some minutes the firearm arrived and found a destroyed kitchen, a vaporized body and a house on fire.
And what the police must have figured is that the guy woke up, started to prepare his breakfast, leaving the coffee or something else on the fire and went to take a shower or to dress up, to prepare to go to work. The wind or something must have ceased the flame, the gas was kept open. When he got to the kitchen, the gas was so strong he passed out. And any spark caused it to explode. And I dare anyone to prove it wrong.

Now I gonna search for his friends.