My Wacky Saturday

What a day. I decided that today would be my catch-up on my life day. I maintained my truck. I maintained my wardrobe. I spent time catching up with the child. It’s unbelievable to me that my day is already over.

I decided to get my truck it’s 30,000 mile check-up. Actually, since I paid for a maintenance plan, I figured I’d best get the service done before I got too many miles on the vehicle. I drove down to the dealership at 7:30am and in a mere 3 hours, I was finally on my way home. Whew.

Wardrobe time. I then headed over to my tailor (really just my dry cleaner) to get the work pants I bought last weekend hemmed up. When you shop at Marshall’s you can’t expect the pants you buy to fit. I also like to have my balls cupped by a strange man about once every 6 months or so. By 11:30 am my life was my own.

At least until about 12:30, then it was child time. The child has gotten itself involved at the drama club over at the high school. Today was its first play. The play was just a half hour 3 scene 1 act dealy-do. The child was pretty good. I was very pleased. Unfortunately, the school believed that they should put on 9 of these gosh darned things. Holy time commitment! Then, just when I thought it was over, the bastards put on an awards show and followed it up with more begging for dollars. Arrgh!

Anyway, it’s now 10pm, and I gotta go to bed. Apparently, I don’t have the time or energy for my life. As I retire for the evening I am left with 1 big question: who won game 1 of the series?

Having a purpose in life

I was having a conversation in a bar the other day. It was kind of a typical bar conversation for me. The person I was speaking to was talking to me about his faith and we were conversing in general about god and life and religion. Then he asked me what he thought was a profound question: “What is your purpose in this life?”

What is my purpose in life? Why do I have to have a purpose? Am I truly the only person who sometimes does things ’just because’? I choose to live my life from moment to moment.

I didn’t want to insult the guy. He seemed like a nice guy so I came up with some good non-threatening bull crap kind of answer that I personally abhor. I think I told him that I think my purpose in life is to be excellent to others. Thanks Bill & Ted!

To be fair, I do worry about the repercussions of decisions I make. I’m not so self-involved that I think I can go through life stomping on those around me. That said I don’t need a purpose or another job to motivate to get out of bed each day and do my damnedest to enjoy it. I’m quite good at entertaining myself and keeping myself busy. I look forward to every day.

What’s my purpose in this life? Apparently my purpose is to come up with non-insulting answers to asinine questions. Maybe I should consult my spirit chicken.

Blogging about the job

I like my job. I really do. I still resent the vaguely prison like nature of being employed, but I like my job. I like the people with whom I work. I like working in downtown Seattle. I like getting paid. I like my job.

Having a job means not owning your time. You go in when the boss says. You eat when the boss says. You drink when the boss says. My specific job is stricter than others, but all jobs do dictate these things to some extent. It’s insulting and belittling, but I like my job.

I like my cube mates. My teammates in general are top quality people. They’re smart dedicated and to the best of my knowledge have no dangerous social perversions. Now I feel fortunate because I don’t actually get to choose my teammates. Or even my cube mates. It’s insulting and belittling, but I like my job.

Working downtown is a treat. The restaurants, the coffee shops, the Market, are all terrific places. But I don’t get to visit them because my job won’t let me. I might try to ‘cheat’ the company out of 15 minutes. It’s insulting and belittling, but I like my job.

I understand that I don’t have to like my job. That’s why they pay me. But sometimes I wonder about the trade. I feel trapped. I feel like I’m being overly supervised. It makes me wonder if I really am capable of making decisions about whether I’m tired or hungry or bored. No sir, I do not like it. But, if I repeat the opposite over and over and over again, maybe I can convince myself to drag my sorry butt into the place I call work again tomorrow.

I like my job. I like my job. I like my job. I like my job. I like my job. I like my job.

Movies Movies Movies

I’ve been going to the movies a lot lately. I think I like this time of the year for movies best. It seems like the industry saves my favorite kind of movies for pre-Halloween. Plus you get all the great Christmas blockbuster previews. It’s big fun. I thought I should submit my one phrase reviews of these pictures for your benefit.

Wallace and Gromit: Latent homosexuals hunt rascally rabbit.

The Corpse Bride: Necrophilia fantasy.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose: Catholic priest doesn’t tamper with young boy, goes to prison.

History of Violence: Café owner puts on show.

I can whole heartedly recommend the popcorn with extra butter.

IRS. Round 2

Back to the sad saga of my battle with the IRS.

To recap: The IRS received a 1099 and a w-2 form from a company claiming that I had received monies from that firm. The IRS matched that firm’s claims against my tax return for 2003 and discovered that I did not claim that income. The reason I did not claim that income is that I never received that income. Here’s where things get fuzzy, the IRS believes that is my responsibility that I did not receive that income. How can you prove a negative? I think this is some kind of logical fallacy.

I contacted the IRS and I managed to find the company who claims to have paid me. I actually got an explanation from the company that sent the IRS the 1099 and w-2 forms. It seems they did cut a check to me, but they then cancelled that check. Further in 2005 this company sent me another check to cover the amount of the check that was not sent in 2003. Got it?

So, I sent the IRS a letter detailing my phone conversation with the company in question. The IRS sent me a letter back saying, “We read your cry-baby whining-ass letter and deem it insufficient to change our minds. – Love, the IRS.” Maybe it didn’t say exactly that, but close enough. And of course “Love” is the polite term for the physical activity the IRS advised me to take. Once again, I paraphrase.

So now I have contacted the firm in question 3 more times to try to get their customer service people to send some kind of proof to me that they did not send me a check in 2003. I am still waiting.

In the mean time, I decided to call the IRS again to see if I could at least talk to someone with a little empathy for my situation from his/her side. I know and knew before I made the call intellectually at least how things would go. I suppose I had fooled myself into thinking that there was a human being on the other end of the telephone. I was wrong. Maybe this person is mentally challenged. Maybe the IRS hires sociopaths to work their customer service phone lines. I don’t know. But Maria Andersen and her coworker Michelle are totally incapable of human emotion. Thank goodness the IRS does not engage in any discriminatory hiring policies.

What I really want of course is for the IRS to leave me alone and for me not to have to defend myself. I don’t expect that to happen. I would be satisfied if Maria or Michelle would simply say, “You’re being screwed. I’m sorry.” But I’m not allowed to have that either.

The worst part about this is of course coming face to face with your own impotence. There is no threat I can make to the IRS. They don’t even care about my little blog where I say bad things about them. They just don’t care. They don’t have to. I can’t force the IRS to do anything. Yesterday I came face to face with just how impotent I am in the face of this random and capricious beast. It felt bad.

Happily it didn’t hurt the IRS one bit.

deserves

My sister-in-law called yesterday. I have written about the wife's family before so this should come as no surprise. The sister is down on her luck and needs some cash. In and of itself this is not a blog-worthy event. However, the story behind this song is noteworthy. Apparently God does not only exist in prison, but he also frequently visits the downtrodden. This is not news either; I seem to recall stories about how God protects the least of our brethren from my religious training as a youth. But God has actually spoken to the sister.

As it turns out the sister, because she is the fifth child of the mother, is due some amount of money. Also and I did not know this (nor can I confirm it) the bible back's up the communication from God to the sister. The sister is expected to receive some amount of money to help out with all the families’ fiscal woes. I can only assume that this is money that God has put aside for the fifth child. All the sister needs to do is call God and withdraw her just reward.

Here's the problem. Some nefarious person or persons, known and unknown, have stolen the sister's identity and absconded with the cash! Wow! What a brilliant and devious criminal conspiracy. This criminal genius has not just stolen the identity of the sister, but they have duped God into believing that they are the deserving siblings. That's more organized than organized crime. Tony Soprano couldn't pull that off. These guys must be good. I can only assume they called the Vatican (isn't that where God keeps his petty cash?) and fooled the Cardinal in charge of handing out the fifth child's dough. I find this very disturbing.

It's got to be a conspiracy. According to the sister everyone is in on it. The ex-husband (well kind of, they never really got married), the other sister, at least one of the brothers, and several others are all part of the conspiracy. The sister called my wife to enlist my wife’s help to right this biblical wrong.

Unfortunately, the wife doesn’t believe the sister’s story. The wife’s advice was to “get a job” and “stop blaming others for your mistakes.” The wife is pretty damn smart sometimes. Me, I just hope that when I’m standing in front of the pearly gates awaiting my admission into heaven, no one has stolen my identity.