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
David Brower is a national hero. In Ralph Nader's address to the press core this morning (saw it on cspan...watch it here, it's great), he mentioned that he recently visited David Brower at his home in Berkeley. There he urged Ralph to keep up the fight to protect the environment.
He said: Let the trees breathe for us.
fuck. bush won. (now, which country am I going to move to?) UPDATE: Dewey Defeats Truman.
Here are the Sonoma County, California presidential election results where I voted.
The people with blogs have a lot to say about Nader today.