Zombie Joseph Beuys Recommends: The Tax Code

August 3, 2007 7:40 AM

For each occupation, an illustration. For some months, Dorothy of Cat and Girl has been riffing on the Schedule C Principal Business or Professional Activity Codes Table. The list is full of odd associations. Why, for instance is "Offices of Podiatrists" illustrated with a Starfleet officer? There's gotta be a story there.
posted by ourobouros (13 comments total)

I thought it was this person, but apparently she was a book bindery employee.
posted by inthe80s at 8:09 AM on August 3, 2007

Trekkie = heel
Utilities = tool
Drugs & Druggists' Sundries = (narcotic) freak
Tobacco & Tobaco Products = crutch

Given the material, she could've aimed higher for laughs. But that would've counted as working.
posted by Smart Dalek at 8:27 AM on August 3, 2007

I was expecting to see little cartoons of Germany in Poland, Japan in China, Russia in Estonia and the pile-on in Afghanistan.

But the podiatrist is cute.
posted by salishsea at 8:39 AM on August 3, 2007

It must have seemed like a funny idea at the time.
posted by rhymer at 8:41 AM on August 3, 2007

Heh, bell jar.
posted by GuyZero at 8:45 AM on August 3, 2007

Good stuff -- shades of Roz Chast.
posted by boo_radley at 8:54 AM on August 3, 2007

For the Starfleet Podiatrist I figured, Starfleet = Feet?
posted by brownpau at 9:04 AM on August 3, 2007

I enjoyed this, but there are no professional black folks?
posted by eustatic at 9:21 AM on August 3, 2007

I heart Cat and Girl.
posted by jeffamaphone at 9:21 AM on August 3, 2007 [1 favorite]

Smart Dalek, she's not going for laffs. Very Small Array Ms. Gambrell's outlet for various creative exercises, and they tend towards the idiosyncraticand personal. Which isn't to say they aren't often amusing.
posted by hydrophonic at 9:36 AM on August 3, 2007 [1 favorite]

I agree that Cat And Girl is awesome (and I have a particularly high bar regarding webcomics). And this is nifty too!
posted by JHarris at 9:55 AM on August 3, 2007

"I enjoyed this, but there are no professional black folks?"


It appears that way on the surface, but we can't be sure that the Chemical and Allied Products and the Professional and Commercial Equipment and Supplies representatives aren't black.

(Browsing the rest of the pages I saw a Sikh, an Arab and a cowboy, all identified by headware, so who knows?)
posted by salishsea at 10:18 AM on August 3, 2007

eutastic - she explains in the comments to one of the sections that she doesn't do shading/crosshatching in her comics. So the cartoons aren't particularly supposed to be Caucasian; they're just the way she draws everyone.
posted by ubersturm at 5:14 PM on August 3, 2007