DEATH AND SCHOOL TAXES: Well, it's time to pay the school taxes again and once again I find myself wondering just what in the hell my money's going for. I don't suppose I'd object to paying the taxes if they uneducable dolts who infest the school buildings my money provides them actually learned something, but as we all know, the modern American school is simply a place to warehouse the young during the daylight hours so they can conduct their social lives with a minimum of adult interference and the modern American curriculum little more than a warm bath of politically correct verities that no one is allowed to question lest someone ask why aren't the kids getting a real education? Hence, my trepidation at paying for such nonsense. I would not mind paying school taxes if I could choose what schools got the money: I have no objections to paying for parochial schools or for schools of fish or even for schools that trained performing seals. In all of these cases the students actually learn something worth knowing. Parochial school kids learn their 4R's: reading, riting, rithmetic, and religion, although I suppose for the Roman Catholic kids religion and riting go together [yes, I am punning there, so kind of you to notice], as well as how to avoid mean nuns sucker punching you in a lunch line [yes, that hurts, especially when the nun in question wraps her rosary beads around her fist] school fish learn not to bunch together so closely, lest a whale whack them over their collective heads for lunch, and performing seals learn useful skills like balancing a beachball on their noses, which is a skill no one will pay an illegal alien for and guarantees the seal's long term job prospects in an uncertain economy.