It Ain't We, Babe!
I've been trying to read Time magazine, which Ashwin gets, because it is interesting and informative, but I just cannot stand to slog through another article about how WE brought this on ourselves because WE didn't save enough and WE spent money we didn't have and WE tried to make money from nothing in the stock market. And stupid newspaper columns written as though coupons were some long-lost secret, and treating the idea of taking your kids to free places like the library on spring break as a revolutionary spend-thrift novelty. Out of touch. Just as out of touch as the super-rich people they lambast, because they just don't get that not everyone, even during the "Me" decades, was just like them! Plus, I'm beginning to get the vibe that fake self-blame replacing "I" with "we" is the cool thing to do. No, not cool. And not helpful.
Ash and I had a fun April Fool's Day pulling strings of silly pranks on each other. Except his piece-de-resistance was supposed to be a fake love-note to me from the mailman, which he planted in the mailbox in the morning, and was gone that afternoon when I did my daily check. OOps.
I tried to read Redwall. I tried really hard. But I just couldn't take it. I found the food talk boring, the moles' portrayal slightly offensive, and all the dialects just annoying, not to mention the part where a clue or hint would make it clear to the reader what needed to happen next, but you'd have to slog through ten more pages of side-"adventures," meals, and naps, before getting to it. I probably would have been okay with that part as a kid, though. I was a really patient reader.
But I was really perplexed by the whole Abbey/St. Ninian's Church thing. The buildings seem to be built to mouse scale, not just inhabited by mice. So are these mice Christian??
And who decided that all the small woodland creatures, (plus a random badger), were good, but fish and insects could be caught and eaten, and birds were evil? Except not? Please explain!
Taxes. My dad was supposed to buy TurboTax at Costco and do my taxes for me since all my W2's got sent to CT anyway. My mom nagged him for over a month before he bought it. Then she nagged him for a month and a half to install it. But their computer is a bit idiosyncratic, and after hours of angst I told them to just mail everything to me and I'd do it. My dad took a week to just put all the crap in an envelope, and then all of a sudden got antsy, spent $20 to send it Priority Mail, and started nagging me about getting the results ASAP!
And then when I had to tell him he gets a refund from the state, but it's a hundred dollars less than he owes the feds, he was all, "But what about medical? What about deductions? Isn't there anything else you can think of?" as if he hadn't used TurboTax plenty of times himself and known that it tries everything for you.
By the way, I heart TurboTax. I do not heart taxes. I have begun to plan a crazy new put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is system where you can electronically direct however much money you want to whichever services you want to support, whenever you want to support them. You want more police on patrol? Pay them more yourself! If no one pays the police, they stop working until people want them badly enough to pay! Ta-dah! And no one is allowed to spend ANY money begging us to send more money to their organization. This idea is very flawed so far, but I do think there is merit in taking advantage of technology to give individual citizens control over how their money is spent. I think spending would get a lot more responsible. Yes, this is just another incarnation of "Take the representative out of representative democracy" dream. But representatives just cannot adequately represent such diverse constituencies on such a wide range of issues as we are presented with today. And, I repeat, we have the technology.