If you have some odd moral compulsion and actually want to pay your taxes, I’d suggest getting overdraft protection on your bank account. Most banks now offer overdraft protection credit cards, which allow your irresponsibility to soar as high as $1,500 or more. After having a party to celebrate your check not bouncing, you can begin paying off your bill at the fair and honest interest rate of 27 percent. It’s a great solution. Instead of going to jail for not being able to pay your taxes, you can be in a prison of your own making with many years of debt.

I know some of you who read this column are drug dealers more business-savvy, so I’ve got a tip for you as well: Hire someone else to do your taxes. Accountants are skilled in the art of finding loopholes that rich people can exploit. For instance, did you know internet pornography is a 100 percent write-off for anyone who makes more than $300,000 per year? When you work enough hours to make that kind of money (Ha!), release in the form of internet porn is a right, not a privilege. Unless it’s gay porn. That’s not covered under our current administration.

Speaking of the administration, did you know chastity belts for your children are also a write-off? Really! It’s part of the abstinence education bill. Even if your children are 47 years old, you can buy an unlimited number of chastity belts and then return them after you get your tax refund. Other write-offs allowed by our government include Larry the Cable Guy merchandise, cars that cost more than a house, all Banana Republic purchases, less-popular snowcone flavors like “molasses”, and any Simon & Garfunkel album where they look odd on the cover.

So basically all Simon & Garfunkel albums.

But what about people who don’t have fancy careers? What about vagabonds like myself who do odd jobs where taxes aren’t taken out of the checks? Well folks, then you’re in a tax category I like to call “screwed”. Bend over and grab your ankles, because Papa Government’s got a brand new bag, and it’s filled with 30 percent of your money. Unfortunately, we poor folks can’t afford to flee to the Congo, so my advice is to sell all your possessions, buy an old VW Van and a surfboard, and flee to the coast to spend your days sleeping by the side of the highway.

That or just don’t report your 1099 earnings. Oops, is that a police siren I hear? That’s all the time we have today for tax tips. Be sure to stop by and read my next column, where I tell you what prison is like.

Me: How come the TVs in this gay bar show nothing but music videos with scantily-clad women?

Wayne: Because gay men like boobs.

Me: But . . . I thought . . .

Wayne: We’re not sexually attracted to boobs, we just find them adorable and fascinating, like you would with a puppy or baby sea otter.

Me: Ohhh, I get it.

We started the night by eating dinner at a gay hamburger place (I didn’t know such things existed, but gay hamburgers are delicious!), had a few drinks at a gay bar (Disappointingly, gay beer tastes just like regular beer), and decided to end the night early instead of accepting Wayne’s offer to dance very, very awkwardly at a gay club. I’m an open-minded man, but a $15 cover charge is a bit much if there’s no one for me to hit on in the entire club.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been invited to tour the gay community. When I was in college, some girls I knew got sick of being molested by drunk guys at regular clubs, so when they wanted to dance, they’d bring their entourage of friends to a gay club where they didn’t have to worry about some dude their father’s age grabbing their ass. My friends and I didn’t go along often, but we did a few times for birthdays or other celebrations. This meant the girls still had to worry about me and my friends grabbing their asses, but the ass grabbing to dancing ratio was still greatly reduced.

Another time a few years after college, a female friend and I got drunk at the bars and accidentally crashed a gay after-party while walking home. We were used to crashing parties just for the fun of it, but we immediately noticed that this party was different. It was all guys drinking mixed drinks, and none of them seemed the slightest bit concerned that we were strangers.

One of the older men at the party, who looked to be in his early-30s, asked if I went to college in the area. I said no, and he asked how old I was. I told him I was 24, and he said, “Oh, you’re young and still experimenting, seeing what you want. That’s a good age.” Then he walked away. “Well, that was weird,” my friend said. A few minutes later, someone informed us that we were, in fact, at a gay after-bar party.

It would have been rude to bolt for the door, so we stood around for a few more minutes, telling ourselves we were really cool and modern, very liberal, to be hanging out at a gay party. Unfortunately, we quickly realized why straight people probably shouldn’t hang out at exclusively gay parties: Because the people there all assume everyone else is gay. Our cue to leave was when one of the men blew in my ear, nodded towards the girl I came with, and whispered, “Who’s the hag?”

Once we were outside, my friend turned to me and said, “Now you know what us girls have to put up with when we dance at normal clubs.”

Needless to say, I wasn’t particularly thrilled with that tour of the gay community. Fortunately, Wayne’s birthday party was less eventful. We ate overpriced food, drank overpriced drinks, and went home having spent all our money. To tell you the truth, that’s identical to a tour of the straight community.