Many of you may wonder why IMAO has so many ads and is always trying to sell you t-shirts and books and kidneys (subject to availability). That's because blogging is actually a costly effort. Also, I am not a rich man in any way. I currently have one dollar in my wallet and SarahK won't let me have anymore money. Hence the ads to raise money so we can continue to blog and I can continue to pay my mortgage so I can live in a house while blogging. Anyway, here are the many different costs involved in bringing you "teh funny" on a near weekly basis:

COST OF BLOGGING

* Website Hosting: We actually have to pay money so a company has the privilege of hosting IMAO. And, they're always yelling at us for using too much bandwidth and then shutting off our ability to accept comments. Thus, it's kinda hard for us to argue we should get hosting for free.

* Taxes: IMAO is part of an actual corporation now, which means the government is always looking over our shoulder on our spending asking, "Why are you paying for that? Is that really a business expense? Why don't you just give that money to us?" And do you know how much the Social Security boondoggle costs if your employer isn't paying half of it for you? About half of every dollar that goes to IMAO goes to the government who then gives it to the unemployed so they're able to blog all day long.

* Legal Defense: Inevitably, someone is going to notice one of our many copyright violations, and then we'll get sued. I could have Cadet Happy be our lawyer, but do I really want to put my life in the hands of someone who would probably use a court case as just another opportunity to make me look gay?

* Ham: Since we're supportive of two countries that annoy terrorists - America and Israel - we have to be wary of terrorist attacks. That means protecting everything involving IMAO by gluing ham to it. That's not cheap. We could use Spam, but some terrorists may risk touching something that isn't guaranteed to actually have any pork in it.

* Rugby Scrum Cap: SarahK has seizures. Right now, it's just tingling and with no loss of muscle control, but I figure I better get her a helmet just like the one the girl in Garden State wore to be on the safe side. Otherwise, she could injure herself while working and then I'm back to needing legal defense. Plus, I think she'd look cute in a helmet.

* Kung Fu Lessons: The way this new media is developing, it's quite certain we will have to one day challenge another group blog to a kung fu fight. Right now, though, our kung fu is weak. The other day when SarahK was mouthing off to me, I was barely even able to throw her across the room (another reason she needs the helmet). Were we to lose in a kung fu match with another blog, no one would ever read us again. Thus, we all need kung fu lessons which are expensive unless you find some Japanese maintenance guy for your apartment who takes pity on you. But he'll probably make you do tons of chores and always put "san" after your name until one day you just snap and punch him in the face but then he'll punch you back even harder since he's got the skillz. Thus, it's probably better to pay for lessons.

* Wives: All the IMAO bloggers are married, and you know how wives are. I'm always like, "We have lots of blog expenses." And SarahK is like, "I don't care! Buy me something pretty!"

* Research and Development: Anyone who reads IMAO for any length of time will notice there is a specific pattern to my humor. I'm hoping to develop software that emulates that pattern and all I would need to do is input a topic and it would spit out a humor post. This would increase IMAO posting and also allow me to save money by firing all the other bloggers (who could be emulated in software as well). While this would be a cost saving measure, it takes a good deal of money to invest to see it through. While it's easy to kidnap children in foreign countries to make shoes for you, it's harder to find kids who know how to program software algorithms. I blame the educational system of third world countries. I also blame the Jews.

As you can see, blogging is a costly operation, so it's either lots of ads or we do a fundraising drive. If we did the latter, somehow I don't see us raising $80,000 like Andrew Sullivanist. So click on the ads and buy my book and buy stuff from CafePress and we'll continue to occasionally write humor posts. Otherwise, I'll end up homeless and crazy, and you don't want that because I'll be heavily armed and out for revenge. How many state troopers will it take to bring me down? And you know that expense will come right back to you in the form of taxes. So basically you have the option of paying for IMAO now or later.