Category: General

I’ve decided that “deleting entirely” is not the same thing as “editing”.

If any of you saw my previous post, now gone, know that I’ve saved a copy of it for myself but decided not to make it public.

If you’re dying to see it, email me and I might send you a copy. More than likely I’ll just tell you about it, instead…

I was on the bus today, a full bus, so I was standing near the back door.

A tall, cute brunette almost-punk-rock girl got on the bus and was standing just in front of me. Her hair was short and hung down longer in front than in back; she wore a black tanktop and a denim skirt over black leggings and canvas Chuck high-top sneakers, and a bike messenger bag slung around her thin shoulders. She was almost elfin and pale.

As we hung on to the bar and swayed back and forth on our feet, I noticed that her bag/purse was decorated with a single, black, button. It read:

Don’t fuckin’ tell me I’ll be OK!

I wondered what her reaction would be… she seemed more of a fashion punk than a hardcore punk.

As my stop approached, I tapped her on the shoulder and said, softly, gently, “Excuse me, miss.”.

She turned, a little startled, and moved aside as if I was trying to get past her. “Sorry..?” She said.

In my calmest, most reassuring, most sincere voice (and, having worked in phone support for years and years, I can be very calm, reassuring, and sincere when I want to be) I said, “I just wanted to tell you… You’re going to be OK.”

She smiled, puzzled. “What?” she finally offered into the pause between us.

The bus was stopped and the door to my side was opening. Maybe she hadn’t heard me? I am a very quiet person normally. I raised my voice a little but tried to keep oozing calmness and sincerity. “Really. You’re going to be OK.” I enunciated carefully. I still hoped that she’d get the joke but it looked as though she wasn’t making the connection between what I was telling her and what her button said. I turned and stepped off the bus, her puzzled grin framed by the windows in the bus door the last thing I saw of her.

I kept my calm poker face until the bus pulled away, then burst out laughing. At some point in the future, maybe in an hour, maybe longer, she’s going to see the button on her bag and realize what I was telling her.

I hope she gets as much a laugh out of it as I did. It wasn’t meant to be at her expense…

What to do, when the playlist of songs you have that are supposed to make you happy…

…doesn’t anymore?

I mailed off my tax forms for tax year 2001 and 2002 (as mentioned previously). I sent them Certified Mail so that I can verify that the IRS has recieved them. Just a simple precaution.

My first pass at what I owed for 2001 was the fear-freighted amount of $666.00. At least, it scared my friends.

But then I discovered (it pays to keep complete records, and I am so glad I did because this would be a very scary proposition otherwise) that I earned a total of $18.00 in interest income that year, which raised my total income just enough to bump me up a line in the tax charts, bringing my owed tax to $674.00.

Digging back into the recesses of Quicken, I found that I had sent the Feds a check for $601.60 in ’02, meaning I still owed them another $72.40.

Then, going over my form for tax year 2002, I found that I owed them $35.00… however, I can’t find any record of paying that amount, so I may still owe it. Ugh.

Luckily they’ve got my $686.00 refund to take all this out of (I was guessing at the amount in my previous post), but I still want to figure out what kind of penalty I’ll be paying. It’ll likely be small, sure, but it’s better knowing in advance. I turned to the page on the IRS website…

Could it be any more confusing?

I found another page on About.com that explained it more simply. Plugging those numbers into a spreadsheet, and my total penalty and interest comes out to $87.63. If you add in the owed tax the total comes to $164.91.

That could be higher or lower, depending on if they calculate the interest based on the current rate, or if they use a different rate for each 3 month period, and how they compound it. I just wanted a ballpark figure.

The hardest part is that I’m not going to hear back from them for 6 to 12 weeks or more. Ugh. I hate waiting.

But at least my part is behind me.

I’ve been feeling very bogged down and tired and heavy-hearted lately. I’m not sure why, it’s just a seasonal thing (I hope). But I’ve had a growing list of to-do items. I don’t normally even keep a to-do list so that shows you just how deeply in to-do debt I’ve been getting, if I feel the need to start keeping track I’ve got too many to-do items, baby.

And the list just gets longer and longer and I just keep ignoring it and ignoring it… and I get tired-er and tired-er and I avoid thinking about why I’m so tired…

It always comes as a surprise to me, then, that actually tackling some of the higher-priority items on my to-do list can make me feel better. Why would that suprise me? The psychic weight of all those things on the list tugging at my brain, waiting for me to give them the (usually) minor attention they require and then move them off the list… it only makes sense, right?

And why do I avoid the items? Perhaps an example will help. Number one on my list is filing my Federal tax return… for 2001.

Before you say I’m crazy (I am, but not because of this) for ignoring the Internal Revenue Service, hear me out. In tax year 2001, I owed both the Feds and the State of Oregon money. I filled out the forms early, even, and knew how much I owed. When Tax Day, April 15, rolled around, I dutifully mailed off a check to each taxing authority… and filed an extension.

I don’t know why I didn’t just go ahead and file. My mental state back then is murky to me now. I do know that I at least sent them the money I thought I owed – I knew that filing an extension didn’t mean you didn’t have to pay. Maybe I thought I could find more deductions or something, and reduce the amount I had to pay? Whatever, I didn’t. And since they didn’t complain right away, I assumed that the IRS’s were OK with that.

Except this year, when I was expecting a nice big $650 refund (which will help pay for my new sexy thing), the IRS puts a hold on it and ask me to file my return for 2001. Ugh.

I have all the paperwork for the past several years. It’s all just jammed into a big box and stored in the bottom of my computer room closet. Which explains (maybe) why I’ve been putting off digging out the paperwork (mostly my W2 forms), filling out the forms, and mailing them off, so I can get my refund finally.

Or, at least, part of the refund. If there’s a difference between what I actually owed and what I sent in, there will be a penalty to pay. And, somehow, I suspect that there will be a difference. Problem is, I don’t remember exactly what I sent them four years ago – that information is locked away in my Quicken data files, from back when I used Quicken on Windows. Of course, now I can dual-boot my new sexy thing, install a Windows-version of Quicken, dig out my backup CDs and find my old Quicken data file… meh. Too much work. I’ll just send the forms and let them figure it out.

So… tick, tick, tick… my $650 refund is draining away, and all I have to do is clean out my computer room closet, find my old forms, fill out the form and send it in, and optionally dig through my data backups and install a program I’ll only use once.

See why I’ve been putting it off?

And in the meantime, while I’ve been stalling on re-filing my 2001 taxes, I’ve gotten another notice from the IRS saying that they’ve lost never recieved my 2002 forms and I need to resend a copy of those. Which is starting to seem like harassment but OK. Not gonna fight the IRS. I’ll just have to find those, too. I know I have them.

At any rate, yesterday I spent most of the day organizing my computer room, including cleaning out the closet, digging through my box, properly filing away all my important paperwork, tossing out the stuff I don’t need, looking through old photographs… I did way more than just find my old W2 forms. It was a happy/sad day. I found notes from old classes I’ve taken, pictures of friends lost and found again, reminders of past mistakes, reminders of past battles…

But this morning I feel better. Not only because I’m one step closer to finishing up this tax thing, but because now my computer room is organized and neat. I tossed out bags of papers and garbage, I have a pile of stuff to sell either on craigslist or at a garage sale, and my to-do list has gotten smaller, not larger, reducing the mental weight holding me down.

It’s raining in Portland, OR today. Dreary day. My allergies are kicking up, and I figure it must be the mold rather than the pollen.

I breakfasted at Starbucks. Delicious soy chai and cinnamon roll. Times two. Yes, I had two of each. It’s a double-serving kind of day today.

Worked a little on my site. Added two new feeds to the sidebar down there – in addition to the standard Blogger Atom feed, I’ve got a generic RSS feed and a link to add my site to your Bloglines page. I can tell from the webserver stats that some of you are using Bloglines and figured I’d make it easy for anyone else to try it, too.

It was easier than I thought it would be to add those. I started out investigating using PHP and PEAR to parse the RSS feeds, but it turns out that Atom is different enough that the script I found didn’t work. So I had to find a way to add a standard RSS feed to my pages… and that led me to Feedburner, and that gave me simple code to copy-and-paste into my template… easy-peasy.

I love Powell’s City of Books. Some may only know it as a kick-ass online bookstore, but book lovers in Portland, like me, know it as a giant warehouse of dreams. It may not be the largest bookstore in the world, but it’s up there, taking up a full city block and four floors, each filled to the ceiling with stacks and stacks of new and used books of every genre. Each section has a better selection than some whole bookstores.

I love this store even though they fired me. That’s how much I love it.

An example is my experience last night. One of my favorite authors is Philip K. Dick, and I consider myself a collector of his books and novels. His most famous novel is “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” which was made into the movie “Blade Runner”.

Now, don’t get me wrong, “Blade Runner” was a great movie. Ridley Scott directing, Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer and Sean Young… But there’s so much more to the novel it originated from, that the connection in my mind between movie and novel is thin. And… I’ve read the novel but I don’t own a copy of it.

I don’t own a copy of the novel because… well… I want to own a copy that doesn’t have the words “Blade Runner” on it. I want to own a copy printed before it became a hit movie.

I fully admit that this could be an elitist, or faux-elitist, idea. Like “I was cool before everyone else was cool”. Hopefully I’m puncturing that faux-elitism here by calling myself out. I just want to keep the novel and the movie separate. Is that so wrong?

Now, I’ve been looking for a copy of “Androids” that pre-dates “Blade Runner” for, literally, years. Maybe a decade and a half. Whenever I’m in Powell’s I’m looking for one. Haven’t found one yet. Have, several times, almost given up and bought a copy branded with a picture of Harrison Ford.

But now I don’t have to. Last night there were a bunch of old pulp paperbacks, each carefully wrapped in cellophane, in the “D” section of Sci-Fi in the Gold Room of Powell’s… Including the picture you see to the right.

I’ve finally got what I’ve wanted! Let’s hope that’s an omen… Not that I believe in those, of course.

As I was leaving my apartment tonight, I overheard my next-door neighbor lady say to someone else in her apartment,

“When I die I want to come back as my own dog.”

…which makes no sense to me.

…if she’s dead, she isn’t going to be spoiling her dog. Right?

Is there some way that that statement makes sense? I’m so not finding it.

Well, I’ve been doing the three blogs for over a month, and today was a milestone for me.

I posted something to the wrong blog. Damn.

I posted about not running to my political blog. Oops.

Glad I noticed tonight. And, no, this wasn’t a cheap stunt to get people to click through to the other blogs… probably.

There’s nothing that affirms the bonds of friendship as hearing from a friend who is going through some troubles, and having that friend say:

I’m having a shitty day. Call me. I need to hear you laugh at me. That always makes me laugh.

…and knowing that that friend is actually serious.

The power of cynicism… Heh.

After that phone call, I walked around in the sunshine in my neighborhood, watching people, thinking about how silly all this seems sometimes. People take their toils so seriously. They see doom and gloom at every opportunity. They fall in love, they fall out of love, they get mad or are filled with sadness…

My view of the base nature of humanity, the absurdity of corruption, the bonds that are forged by a lack of perspective, all that combined in me and came out as a cosmically-inspired laugh.

It didn’t hurt (or help, I suppose) that I encouraged and extended this feeling by queuing up Bad Religion on my iPod, no doubt inspired by the gravity with which I’ve been experiencing life. The brutal, cynical straight talk of Greg Graffin and Brett Gurewitz always cheers me up. Or should I say Doctor Graffin? How many other punk frontmen have advanced degrees? Not many!

The absurdist humor in the advice given in “Slumber” is a perfect example. The narrator is attempting to cheer up a sad and isolated young man by pointing out how close death is, so why not choose to live as well as possible in the meantime?

so, you’re feeling unimportant,
‘cuz you’ve got nothing to say,
and your life is just a ramble,
no one understands you anyway

well, I’ve got a piece of news, son,
that might make you change your mind,
your life is historically meaningful,
and spans a significant time

slumber will come soon,
and you are helping put it to sleep,
side by side we do our share faithfully
assuring that slumber will come soon

well, now do you feel a little better?,
lift up your head and walk away,
knowing we’re all in this together,
for such a short time anyway

there is just no time to parade around sulking,
I would rather laugh than cry,
the rich, the poor, the strong, the weak,
we share this place together,
and we pitch in to help it die

I’m not good at giving morals,
and I don’t fear the consequence,
if life makes you scared and bitter,
at least its not for very long

Even the rueful self-awareness of the narrator in pointing out their own failure in delivering good news in such a dark way underscores the humanity of the message.

What else can I say but “Fuckin’ right”.