I woke up this morning thinking about my taxes. Or rather, the Herculean feat that will be my taxes, circa 2009, circa waiting-on-the-w2-to-work-out-the-two-state-nightmare form filing season. Let me recap.
January. New Year. Living in California. The state practically falls apart fiscally. June rolls around. I roll out.
Now New York. First need to figure out the new tax system. Next need to figure out the calculations for Calif. Then need to figure out the calculations for New York. Pro-rating twice, city tax and not to mention write-offs (where to apply?) and applicable laws and debits and donations and slovenly, break-your-calculator-type worksheets and side forms.
I woke up to this today. After the nightmare of moving to Florida.
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About The White Ribbon. I took the time out of my busy neuroses yesterday to view this film, running down to the Film Forum to check it out.
First off, it looks lovely. Black & white, pre-WWI farm village, slightly European pastoral, if you take European pastoral to mean a slight distrust for the more rural of settings and people to the point that everything surrounding is banal to the point of creepy. (Side note: replace banal with folksy in that sentence and you get the American version of this phenomenon.)
Anyway, the movie is a lot to digest, essentially a frame around a teacher's growing disenchantment in this village where a bunch of bizarre incidents and brutalities happen, and the weirdest bunch of kids since either Village of the Damned or Children of the Corn.
I can recommend, but don't be afraid to be disappointed.
That was day one. Not any debauched party replete with hookers, strippers, lawn gnomes and marmots and/or ferrets. No, I played with a dirty, stopped up sink.
I am going to leave now, let the chemicals work their magic. Or sit and eat at the porcelain.
Debauched, chemical-hued stories to come (probably from the fumes now permeating the suite). The scent of failure has never smelled so...heady and bleachy? The room smells like coffee made from pool water. As in swimming pool.
UPDATE: So apparently, during the writing of this post, the drain found itself to be responsive and subsequently, well, drained. As of yet, there are no reports of wet tracks on the wall below, the wall in the kitchen. Score one for 1970s and $40-worth of domestic technology. And if it does end up in the kitchen that will make for some interesting meatballs. I'll keep you posted.
So I've embarked on a Staycation, having one for this entire week. A week to myself. As distressing as that will sound to anybody who has actually had the pleasure of spending fifteen minutes with me will surely identify, and as unfortunate as having to pull that odious portmanteau out does signify. But I digress. I will have a week for this.
Do I have any goals? I hear the sirens' chorus invoke. There will be a list, but I'm not about to let this post delve into the ruminative sort. The short form: 1) declare martial law in Calif (sorry, that bad breakup will not completely end, although it's a goal). 2) delete "Thanks!" from the lexicon unless a service has actually been rendered, after the fact, and adequately so. 3) spread puppies and kittens, love and joy to everyone.
And what will I really accomplish? Stay tuned. The bloody, horrific details will be chronicled. Until then, teasers from NYE:
I'm a little bit late to this post, as it comments on a list in the November issue of Esquire (if available, you can't miss it, what with Kate Beckinsale's exposed midriff on the cover).
But I digress, digression being a familiar, joyful past time for me. One of the main articles is a breakdown of things a man should and should not say. While the list of terms that need to re-enter the lexicon are noble, notable and disastrously underused (e.g., today, with the wind, it's colder than a witch's tit. But we're not talking about that. We're talking about this one: "19 Things a Man Should Never Say."
To make the viewing of the list more appropriate, I've included my personal scorecard below for derisive purposes.
The list:
reach out(not the physical act of stretching arm in sleeve)
GM's take: Thank god I don't. For the time being, I am not one of those guys. You know who you are, California. Score: 0
panties
GM's take: Do I admit to saying "Don't get your panties in a bunch"? Do I admit to using the diminutive of the female underthings? No. Or at least, not until there's a produced recording. Score: 0
Über-
Check. Though not as much as some may think. I've relegated this to the land of surferdom and Tool albums. One of those may apply to me.
Score: 0.5(a half-point taken off for good behavior)
mixed bag
Guilty. As in, "But really, [insert the following key phrases Bellow novel, Dentist's office, my dating life, geo-nuclear Realpolitik, using a cockring is completely a mixed bag." Score: 1.5
tummy
I initially wrote "no" instead of this word, which should hint at my feelings for it. Score: 1.5
veggie
There are certain words, that, were one to fess to their usage, would completely, utterly, irrevocably resign a man to a life of solitary confinement, dick shrivel and seventeen cats in a locked room. With one litter box. Score: 2.5
vino
I want to say no. I want to say no and know there are no tapes out there, no audible record of me ensconced on lawn chair, pinkie finger extended, white shirt billowing while I stare into a red-ringed empty plastic cup. I think Cat Stevens was playing. Score: 3.5
natch
See above. And the one before it. Score: 4.5
wingin' it
Okay, I can take a breather. I have never used this phrase ever in all my days as a reckless mangler of language and colloquialisms. Score: 5.5
nippy
With the inclusion of a single letter, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation ruined this word permanently. But how else would one describe the weather? Score: 6.5
The first name of any female celebrity when you don't follow it with her last name, "Miley," for instance
If this has happened (and note, I feign innocence at all times), it's most likely because I couldn't remember her last name. See scattered comments about my dating life (not necessarily in the post). Score: 6.5
pee
Thus ends the "relatively unscathed" section of this list. Final score for section one: 6.5. Out of twelve. For the next stage, add one point for each phrase listed.
belly button
c---
derring-do
going forward
It is what it is
boobs
folks
teens
slacks(the pants>
gen
Thus ends the lightning round. Collect your prize, run home, cry to mommy, cut out your tongue with rusty pubic hair.
Score: 16.5
In my defense, how else does one say "Shortly after dropping off my folks, a little gen-y c--- with a tulip in her boobs took a pee on my slacks in a fit of derring-do. It is what it is, I have to remind myself this. I was on the way to the dentist, which is a whole other mixed bag within itself."?
The tasks today: Finish Christmas shopping. That was fine. Fix cell phone. Also fine. Not necessarily in that order. If any order can be applied.
How to put this? What do you do when you have a malfunctioning phone still under warranty and can't find the receipt?
Rip up the apartment looking for it? Check.
Search old boxes, bags, anything that might have contained articles of paper before and after move to new apartment? Check.
Explore the contents of coffee pots, refrigerator, jackets, books, underwear shelf, guitar bags, closet floor, bowling shoe bag on said closet floor? Check (minus the refrigerator, but that might be tomorrow).
To put it into context, this was a very bad week for me and connective technology. Last Friday, my phone decides it no longer wants to allow any speech to be heard. Except on speakerphone. There is absolutely no way to validate all conversations being held over speakerphone. Even with the President.
Now, no problem, I will just run it in on the first day I can, easy as pie. Now the hitch: Saturday, the internet dies. In the ensuing days, this means the only way for any e-conversation whatsoever (email, facebook, what have you) is via my cell phone. Which throws a crimp into solution in the first sentence.
The short form of this: I run into the office, not there, I run to Sprint anyway, we interact in an essential roll of the eyes, they check for a replacement phone, give me a headset, say they'll have a new one by Tuesday or Wednesday (I had to confirm that Saturday was not a business day, a question I'm still not sure about).
Fine. Problem solved. Now to task two: Geof will not fuck up Christmas. I had made some promises, or at least said I'd look into things, and the circuitous path lead through Bryant Park to Union Square. Bryant Park being closest, I check there, and immediately realize I have no idea what I'm supposed to pick up there. Cue part three: the call to the folks.
Now usually, my conversations will look like this: [ed. note: due to circumstance will throw in a brief synopsis/dramatization. Imagine this happening in the course of fifteen seconds, via split screen of Tommie and Johnny Gavin, courtesy of Rescue Me. Also, please infer the existence of these two characters as being portrayed by Denis Leary and Dean Winters. And also scriptwriters were somewhat competent.] T: Listen Johnny. J: Tommy. T: You do not get my godson involved in this crap. J: Tommy, you told me to get some dirt, so I went to the guy I knew who could. T: You do not involve my godson. He's family, Johnny. J: The kid's a computer geek, Tommy. And anyway there wasn't anything to get. T: ...Nothing? J: The guy's squeaky clean. If we could have found some cheat on his tax records, history of beat up wives, parking tickets, whether he cheated in school, he would have. T: And nothing? Nothing at all? J: I'm telling you, Tommy, the guy's a saint. T: Okay, talk to him, Johnny, see if he can do something to him. Mess up his computers or something. But Johnny....
So, that's how it should sound. Only not in the sense that I'd be yelling at my folks and trying to hack into someone else's file for my own personal benefit. In other words, I might have messed up the details, but the tone was there.
Anyway, this, with my newfound stop-gap headset, is how I looked:
(That would be the best approximation, by the way, of me, the guy in the fence, if you add more hair, a beard, and put it in the middle of the sidewalk).
Brilliant, Metz. I can't wait for the new phone to come in.
* * *
On a final note, ended up hanging out with friend Randi at a Chelsea place called Trailer Park Lounge. And of course broke out the camera. The results: That was probably the best. The lessons:
a) Take more photos, b) Don't take photos from your camera, and c) Take more photos from a real camera and, when presented, immediately and always take the action shot in the fake bowling alley.
I start off the morning, now 12:13 or so thus perceptibly pushed towards the most scant entrance of afternoon-ness, reading an article on the potential irreducibility of mind-body dualism, although not put exactly into those terms. Substitute consciousness for soul and you have a general idea of what essentially breaks down the modern equivalent of the ongoing concern. I'm not sure how convinced I am, although years ago I would have taken on the negating position.
Put succinctly: we are organic creatures, body, brain, heart, lungs, intestines and the shit contained therein. We exist in a physical world, and, our body, the multi-stimulus-sucking antenna that is, absorbs the offshoots, the radiations, sound waves, reports and smells and lights of things bouncing and colliding with one another. But what is it that makes sense of it? I smell dog poo, which signals a series of brain bursts that eventually lead to me checking my shoe, but at what point do the words "Stinky, not cheese, I hate Fido"? come into being for me. For the dualist, that can't be measured. For the materialist, it can and eventually will.
More succinctly: Say Geof is eating a cookie. Delicious, gooey, chocolate-spattered fingers and jowls, the whole shebang. Now, Zombie-Geof comes along, thinks this looks delicious, and eats Geof's brain. First off, he is going to only taste brain, even though at the time the brain was experiencing the joyful deliciousness that was that cookie at the time. Now, not ever having tried Geof-brain before, I can make this even more hypothetical -- say I could taste the cookie on Geof's brain, the shambling decomposing festering version of myself. What I would not experience would be Geof's version of that cookie, it would be my own version of the cookie from the moment it hit my taste buds. And that was definitely a fine cookie.
[Ed. note: This is actually a paraphrasing of an argument made in philosophical circles. I cannot lay claim to it.]
So what was the fallacy of the Tallis argument (the linked one, I mean)? 1) I think in some ways he belittles the evolutionary arguments, and as thus doesn't really advance the dialogue much. 2) He doesn't seem to be asking -- or answering -- much of anything.
Get me started on this point in a little bit. I've got an entire theory of consciousness in the human species, and as should be expected from this otherwise curmudgeonly opiner, it's not pretty. And -- also a symptom, but of something probably more disturbing -- probably being conflated with another issue entirely. Stay tuned, kids.
And it's about time to break out the political shtick again. I've been avoiding the conversation for about two weeks, but the New York 23 is too interesting and, frankly, keeps getting better. A quick recap: A relatively conservative district has a dogfight between a token democrat and a semi-moderate republican. In walks a non-shamefaced carpetbagger (he actually lives in another district), from a third (literally, Conservative) party, gets national news and support from certain right-wing superficial loudmouths. Republican party candidate drops out on eve of election, not in enough time to get her name off the ballot, and Conservative party guy loses to Democrat by some 5000+ votes, concedes, Dem is sworn in.
Now: ACORN stole the election. Okay, so there was also a quick little blurb in there about unions, but really, even then it's mentioned as a castoff.
The joyful thing about this is that I think it represents an official passing of the torch for conservative boogiemen: it used to be unions (see Nixon, R.) that would hand elections to the Dems through their pandering, intimidation, etc. And sure, there might have been a grain of truth in that somewhere -- this is America, after all, and a little election fraud is usually considered par for the course, and doesn't amount to more than the usual margin of error for a completely clean vote. But the unions have gotten old, they're not a selling point, they're trite and mustachioed and frankly went out of favor whenever the Hoffa rumors died. No pun intended.
[Quick aside: to my more conservative and Republican friends out there, the left has the grand Diebold conspiracy, so this is by no means isolated.]
Okay, great, we get it. You lost, you're sore, you need someone to blame. ACORN is now big leagues, in no small part thanks to the efforts of the scree team decrying them. Great. And if it makes the conservative Mr. Hoffman, and by extension, all of the people who voted for him -- no slim number, btw -- sleep better at night knowing that they couldn't shouldn't wouldn't have lost in a fair fight, so be it as well. Also so be it that the candidate himself was nothing more than a talking points shill with no actual substance to his arguments (not, again, uncommon in American politics, esp. on the House level), whose only claim to fame was being a champion of a guy who links the Rockefeller family to communism (or is it fascism?) because of a bunch of commissioned works on a collection of buildings that bears the same-said name. So be it.
That he lost the election by stolen votes from a left-leaning organization, nevermind that the margin was well within the number of votes cast for his other, Republican, challenger, that she might have siphoned off votes in the too-late drop-out, that a movement that seemingly can't even get its act together long enough to present a unified vision and model of a candidate does not account for anything to do with it, so be it.
Hoffman, and I address you by name here -- you're a lightweight. Give it up, you've had your fame, now sit down and let the big people go about their business.
[Special points, dear readers, if you can figure out another person that last line could apply to.]
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