Random dispatches from the office fax machine

Long before e-mail became the staple du jour of public-relations queries, unsolicited correspondence and brazen sales pitches, there was the fax machine. Rather than the click of a mouse, faxes may be discarded into the circular file with the flick of a wrist. They are more obtrusive in their paper form, piling into my physical desktop inbox in a tipsy tower of crap faster than a fast-food hamburger expands the nosher's waistline.

If you've ever wondered how people got your e-mail address, that thought has likewise crossed my mind about the fax machine, too. However, I do work at a newspaper, and there are listings aplenty where the number - established sometime during the mid-1980s - is published and dialed often.

The best spamfax that's hit my desk recently is on it now (at least until I finish typing this post). The tite, "Should a sex change be tax deductible?" It tells the tale of a woman who was a man until a 2003 sex-change operation. She is suing the IRS because it disallowed a $5,000 tax deduction that she claimed as a medical expense.

The fax is mainly a story pitch to interview an attorney who specializes in IRS-related cases. He's written a book, which makes him an Expert. Thankfully, we cover news local to our immediate area and I can easily toss the pitch aside. It's not for us because all our news is local.

As for said surgery being tax-deductible, that would depend on whether you believe God makes mistakes by putting men inside women's bodies, or women inside men's bodies. That debate only applies, obviously, if you believe in God and that He made us in the first place. I'm getting dizzy just thinking about it all.

Now, without getting into the moral, psychological and tax code end of it, I can tell you that the only sex change I would like is to have it more often. But that, my friends, depends a lot on my better half and how soon the kiddos fall asleep, not to mention whatever kind of week we're having.