what he said. (and mad props should be sounding throughout the blog universe for the Java wizardry of matt. woop.)
I picked up a great CD this weekend. Dave Brubeck's Time Out. It's so laid back. Perfect for a lazy fall Sunday like this. He reminds me of Vince Guaraldi (or vice-versa)...and though it's a bit too early now, I'm looking forward to listening to my favorite Christmas CD soon. Anyway, this is the kind of album I hear and think, why haven't I heard this sooner?
more radio madness: Heard H. J. de Blij discuss geography. It was interesting to hear him speak because from his perspective, most social change flows from environmental change. He also had several stories about maps solving social problems; including snow's cholera map.
Gary Snyder said: "The world is our consciousness and it surrounds us."
Day Without Weblogs is coming. Last year, I put up this page in place of the one you're looking at now. (it looks kind of like my old design.)
I went out to breakfast with the (p)B-List this morning. Well, it wasn't so much going out to breakfast as it was toasting a bagel and eating it on the way to work. There was much lively discussion about what I should do first at work, and talk of this post. There was also a unanimous vote not to increase the number of members past one in order to perpetuate the belief that the list in fact exists. I wasn't satisfied with this result so I thought about starting a new, more exclusive group with fewer members, but realized I would never join such a radical organization. What was I thinking? meeting time: 15 minutes.
I saw Legend of Drunken Master this weekend. I hadn't seen a Jackie Chan film in the theatre since Rumble in the Bronx. Instead of a Chinese film trying hard to be a Hollywood blockbuster, this one felt like a film in its own style with its own ideologies. Spectacular, spectacular fight choreography. It's really incredible and entertaining. Probably the best film I've seen so far this year...next to Best In Show.
So I got a letter in the mail from the IRS the other day. That's never a good thing to come home to. It was a "first contact, warning" letter about my tax return from last April. "Ugh," I said to myself. You see, I filed electronically using the online version of TurboTax. Apparently, they didn't receive form FUPB-5 of my return. The consequences of not sending a new FUPB-5 within 10 days of receiving the warning were clear: "great harm to you and your descendents through this life and any other you may believe in." I clearly remember sending them my properly completed FUPB-5 last April. "Harassment!," I screamed in my kitchen!
After I calmed down, I thought, "thank humankind for the web. I can go to my trusted web application and download the completed form." I chipperly connected to the Internet. I forthrightly surfed to TurboTax. Horror: "You can no longer access or modify your 1999 return with TurboTax for the Web. If you need a printed copy of your return, please contact the IRS at 1-800-829-1040." Expletives streamed forth. They scared the cat.
I inadvertently enlisted skp's help at this point. We went to the IRS website and downloaded some forms. So on a chilly night in November, I re-did my taxes, on paper, to be able to fill out the required form. I only hope I can get it to them in time.
Speaking of the New Yorker and cartoon issues (we were), I heard a great interview with Art Spiegelman on the radio the other day. He mentioned that our culture experiences everything in quotation marks. We are defined by nihilistic irony. (I'm paraphrasing "big-time".) He said that as he's getting older, he's tired of experiencing everthing like this. So he's starting a movement called neo-sincerity where the quotations marks are gone, yet there is an acknowledgement that the quotation marks (irony) could exist. (eg. His friends used to wear safety pins in their ears...and now they're using them on their kids' diapers.) So there's that. It was also interesting to hear that Scott McCloud was a student of his. I need to read Maus.
"Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything." - Rainer Maria Rilke