OUR column usually focuses on serious (and sometimes boring) subjects of tax and finance. Let’s depart from that dull setting and explore the lighter world of Murphy’s Law:
1. If something can go wrong, it will. At the worst possible time.
2. Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
3. Brain cells come and brain cells go, but fat cells live forever.
4. The fastest lane on the freeway screeches down to a halt as soon as you move to it.
5. That stuck elevator moves. As soon as you head for the stairs.
6. You will find it in the last place you look at, right at the bottom of the pile.
7. The item that has taken you so long to buy goes on sale right after you buy it.
8. A $3,000 computer will blow first to protect a 10¢ fuse.
9. If a computer software rejects all bad inputs, an ingenious idiot would discover a way to accept it.
10. In any company, each worker rises to a level of incompetence. And remains there.
11. It works better if you plug it in.
12. When in doubt, mumble. When in trouble, delegate.
13. The lights at the end of the tunnel are the headlights of an oncoming train.
14. Beauty is skin deep, ugly goes kilig right to the bones.
15. Anything good is either illegal or fattening.
16. If you circumvent what could go wrong in four different ways, a fifth way promptly develops.
17. If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
18. Anything that begins well ends badly. Anything that begins badly ends worse.
19. Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
20. And after things have gone from bad to worse, the cycle repeats itself.
21. If at first you don’t succeed, stop!
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Victor Santos Sy, CPA, MBA, provides professional services in accounting and tax controversy including IRS audit defense and offers in compromise. He also advises clients on choices of entity including corporations for small businesses and LLCs for rentals. Vic worked with SyCip, Gorres, Velayo (SGV – Andersen Consulting) and Ernst & Young before establishing Sy Accountancy Corporation at 704 Mira Monte Place, Pasadena, CA 91101. The firm celebrates its 35th anniversary this year. You may email tax questions to Vic at [email protected]. You are welcome to visit our website for more than 300 tax tips at www.victorsycpa.com.
