CONTORTED PASTA

I Aten't Dead

2020-10-23T09:20:54Z

Just realised it's been nearly a month since I posted ...

I did not, in the end, die of taxes, but it was pretty close and I'm still pretty pissed off about it. For being one of only two countries in the world that requires its citizens to file even when they live and pay taxes in another country, the US is remarkably clod-headed about considering the possibility someone might be filing from abroad. So in case anyone has stumbled across this blog while trying to file via TurboTax because they can't find an accountant who will touch US tax returns, here is my advice:

When they ask you in the opening questionnaire if you are self-employed, DO NOT say yes.

When they ask you if you have any W-2s to report, DO NOT say yes.

Yes, these are lies. But if you answer truthfully they will funnel you into the default income section, and you will be trapped in a maze of numbers not talking to other numbers when they should, and it will not be nice.

All foreign income – which is all your income, whatever the source, if you are legally resident abroad – needs to be reported in the foreign income section, which is an entirely different section from the 'income' section, for some reason, and you only find it after you've gone through (or skipped) everything else. If you fill out the regular income section it will treat you as though you're in the US no matter what address you give it, and the foreign tax exemption will NOT apply no matter how bona fide you are.

I have left a note in my tax documents so that 2021 Tealin does not waste two weeks and tarnish her soul with hatred the way 2020 Tealin did, and have put them away, and am starting to move on with my life, THANK GOD.

Today, for the first time since March, I am getting on a train. I am only going two stops, and rural ones at that, during a time of day when the trains were usually pretty empty even in the Before Times, and will of course be thoroughly masked and alco-gelled, so hopefully this will not be the start of another dark adventure. I am going for a lovely walk through the lovely countryside with a lovely friend, which will scrub off some of that tarnish, I hope. Will I remember to bring my sketchbook? Who knows! It'll be a good day regardless.

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Taxes, thus Death

2020-09-15T14:13:32Z

I have been working on my taxes. September isn't the usual tax season, but I get a 6-month extension on my US taxes on account of living abroad, which puts the due date in October. (I haven't heard anything about a Covid extension as was offered to domestic tax filers, so am proceeding as usual.) UK taxes aren't due until January, but while I've got the books open and the numbers in my head, it makes sense to do them at the same time and beat the rush.

On one hand, international tax treaties mean I don't actually have to pay taxes in both countries, but the US can't bear the thought of not knowing all the financial details of one of its peons, so I have to file them just the same, and pay for the privilege of doing so.

Usually this process takes three days or so, because I need to do at least one currency conversion on all my income and receipts, and on each month's interest on every one of my international bank accounts, even when they're pennies, according to the exchange rate on the day. It's a lot of sums. Most people in my position would be working for some big firm which has sponsored them to work abroad, and can afford to pay someone else to prepare their taxes. That is very much not the case with me. I couldn't even justify accountants' fees by claiming they get me a higher refund, because I'm self-employed – I don't get a refund! Besides which, the vast majority of accountants in the UK refuse to handle US tax returns. There is a very good reason for this: they are not idiots.

This year has been even more complicated than usual as I have a mountain of receipts from my Antarctic trip, and the various personal and global madnesses of 2020 have kept me from updating my books since this time last year. Consequently, that process has taken a whole week. I sat down to file today, but quickly ended up in a dead end with HMRC, where I needed my calculated tax amount to fill out a supplemental form, but couldn't calculate it until I'd supplied the end result of said supplemental form. So I moved on to filing my US taxes, but everything is different this year: Instead of dropping in my total income and expenses and confirming that I'm still paying taxes abroad, I now have to itemise everything and move up to the higher filing package to do so. 'It's OK!' says the filing company, 'You can pay for it out of your refund!' I don't get a refund.

I have support requests in for both things, but goodness knows if/when any response will come back. I was looking forward to having everything finally squared away today, but it looks like I'll be in Revenue Purgatory for another week at least. I could keep plugging away at my US return, supplying what I know is ultimately irrelevant information because it's all going to total $0 at the end anyway, but frankly, if I have to make the numbers dance for another week I am going to be spending more time Googling 'how to fake your own death' than getting anything done. Meanwhile my email falls more and more atrociously behind, and I haven't done any work on what is, theoretically, my actual job.

So I'm putting the books away. I still have a month until the US taxes are due, and what little I can do on that front I could do just as well when my query gets a response. If there's any comfort to be had, here, it's that next year should be a lot simpler: no research trip, no teaching in a country that docks its own taxes before sending me the cheque (thanks Switzerland), and I've stocked up on the work supplies I need for the foreseeable future. I really wish I could move ahead with the decks clear, but that's obviously not an option this year.

Every time I go through this process I come out hating the world, but planning to be back in Canada soon, I am extra determined to go down to ONE bank and stay in ONE country, and pray my family quits the US so I can finally kick off that ball and chain. I liked paying Canadian taxes, and that's the one country I belong to which doesn't ask me to do it every year!

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How Do They Rise Up

2020-09-12T08:47:02Z

For the last month or so, I've been volunteering with a grassroots organisation of animators offering feedback to animation hopefuls who might be at a disadvantage for the sort of connections and attention that are often necessary to get into the industry. Ideally this would be for minorities and people living a long way from an opportunity to make those connections. There is no way of policing this on the sign-up sheet, however from what I've seen, people have been remarkably honest about this.

I think its founders may have been hoping to uncover some hidden gems of talent they could hook up with a job. I am sure this has happened some – the 'job recommendations' messageboard gets a few new posts every week – but from my end, reviewing 2D animation hopefuls and the occasional character design person to relieve the backlog there, I am mostly frustrated at the apparent lack of quality teaching when it comes to basic drawing skills. I have repeatedly had to tell someone who's just spent three years of their life at animation school that, in short, they need to go away and learn it all again properly from a handful of books and online tutorials. Who is getting away with bilking these students? If you're going to put no effort into milking a hopeful generation for tuition fees, then at least throw some free online tutorials at them so the resulting graduates make your nothing school look good! One afternoon on Google should bring up enough tutorials for a semester, and you can have a couple beers while you're at it.

Along with the frustration I am also perplexed as to how, in this age of tech-savvy youth doing everything online, and an internet crammed to the gills with learning resources if one but looks, people can get to an employable age without basic fundamentals. When I fell in love with animation and determined to make it my life, I was lucky enough to have occasional feedback from some pros, but most of my work was done hand-in-hand with the animation art books at the West Jordan Public Library. Somehow I still learned how to use basic construction to build a drawing in 3D, and that the best thing I could do was take a sketchbook around with me everywhere and draw everything I saw. Nowadays the internet is FULL of skilled professionals shouting advice into the void, and explicit tutorials, and working artists' blogs and portfolios. I know what a boon this is because I am now teaching people in their first year of animation school who are better than I was when I applied to Disney! At the same time, there are people graduating animation school who aren't where I was in high school. What gives?

I am having to remind myself that it is not my job to fix others' educations singlehandedly. Yes, it is a problem. Yes, I can fix it. But it is not my job, and in fact it is keeping me from doing my job. But ye gods, it is stoking the fires of righteousness and making me want to march through the land shouting THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT.

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100 Cans of Soup

2016-04-15T18:51:37Z

When I scanned the news headlines this morning, I saw something about Ted Cruz having bought 100 cans of soup. Why is this even a story I wondered, before turning my mind to the important matter of whether it was too early for breakfast.

This afternoon, this Tumblr post crossed my dashboard, and I realised that there were lots of people out there who didn't understand why this was a non-story – a hundred cans of Campbell's has some sort of inbuilt fascination, as Andy Warhol discovered, and it was a funny story, and we apparently needed some way to caricature Ted Cruz because Donald Trump sucks up all the available satire in the room. I am no fan of Cruz, but it bugged me that Tumblr, international HQ of outsiders aggrieved that no one makes the effort to understand people unlike themselves, should be pointing and laughing like this, so I wrote something. I don't expect its presence here to make any difference, but I know I'll lose it forever if it only stays on Tumblr, so here it is crossposted with very minor rewrites (I can't help picking at things).

Dear Internet,

I know you like a story about The Crazy, and doing down politicians you don’t like, but I think a lot of you are missing what might be important cultural context here.

Ted Cruz is Penetcostal (on the Evangelical fringe of the Evangelical Christians) and from Texas (if we’ve all agreed to forget that he was born in Canada). He is not Mormon from Utah, yet there is enough cultural crossover between right-wing Christian sects in the Western US that some of my experience living amongst Utah Mormons in Middle America might help make this story comprehensible.

In Mormonism, and in Utah especially, you’re strongly encouraged to have a large stock of food and survival supplies on hand because, as we all know, the End Times will shortly be upon us, and you will need to keep your large family fed and secure while the world outside your house falls to pieces.

It is also a fact that an inordinate number of recipes common to middle-class Utah Mormon families start with a can of Campbell’s Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup.

As the Mormon expectation of an imminent Armageddon is shared by many other Evangelical Christian groups, and the suburban middle class in Utah shares many other characteristics with analogous populations throughout the West – not least the delight in loading one’s enormous vehicle with several months’ worth of supplies bought at wholesale distributors like Costco, which is considered completely normal behaviour – it is not in the least bit surprising that a newly married man should embark upon his new life by supplying the family home with a large quantity of a staple foodstuff. The story doesn’t specify the soup, but in spite of an aversion to gambling I’d happily put $10 on it having been Condensed Cream of Mushroom.

To be clear, I don’t like Ted Cruz. I don’t like his policies, I don’t like his rhetoric, I don’t like his style, and the little I’ve seen of him, this far away and without a television, rings all my bells for ‘phony.’ While it rankles to step into the shoes of a Cruz apologist, there’s a more important motivation here than politics: A lack of understanding of the other side – a lack of trying to understand the other side, or indeed even wanting to – is what has made the current political and cultural situation in the States so vitriolic and hazardous, and it’s a phenomenon that, having become standard on the internet, is spreading. 100 cans of soup may be inherently funny, but pointing and laughing is just deepening the divide that is causing so many problems. If you want others to understand your group and not point and laugh unthinkingly, then don’t do that yourself. Golden rule, Humanity 101.

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Letters of Annoyance

2012-08-20T17:21:32Z

Dear National Public Radio member stations,

   Please stop pretending during your pledge drives that you know anything about how the BBC license fee works, because you clearly don't. Also, while I'm sure it's very affirming to have British expats call in and leave messages about how NPR mitigates their sorrow for loss of the BBC, that does not mean the two are equatable. Listen to Radio 4 for a week and show me any slate of NPR programming that approaches its breadth, depth, and intellectual prowess (and that's not even considering the brilliant comedy).
   I will forgive you for not phoning back your expats and informing them that they can access the radio iPlayer from overseas, because that's contrary to your interests, and because you don't know how the license fee works you probably don't know they can.
Concerned,
      Tealin

Dear National Weather Service,

   There has been a pattern established: on Monday morning you forecast that Monday will be 97º, Tuesday 91º, and Wednesday 88º; by Tuesday morning Monday's high was 101º, Tuesday's forecast is bumped up to 97º, Wednesday 91º, Thursday 88º; Tuesday turns out to have been 101º, etc. I understand that weather is a chaotic system and all forecasts contain an inherent amount of uncertainty, but after two weeks of this pattern, I have become better at predicting the weather than all your fancy math and equipment. At what point do you say "Hmm, we have been consistently wrong in exactly the same way; maybe there is a problem with our formulae"?
   Until then I will continue adding 4º to the day's forecast high and assuming it will be roughly the same until further notice.

   Irritated by the heat and incessant glare of the cruel daystar,
Tealin

Dear Angelenos,

   Seriously, does anyone ever do anything in this town? Getting anyone to go anywhere besides work and home is like pulling teeth, and the majority of the time plans have been made, half the people flake out, and the other half don't want to go if the first half aren't going. I feel like I get out more than most of my friends and I am a homebody who doesn't have a car. I am increasingly coming to believe the only thing I can depend on is that I can't depend on anyone. FINE. I don't mind doing things by myself and it's your loss. I hope your television enriches your life as much as actual real-life experiences, but I have seen television, and I am extremely doubtful.

Cheesed-off,
      Tealin

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Lovely Lenten Ladies: Enjol-lass

2012-02-25T05:13:42Z

Inspired by a comment on the last entry – the awesomeness was too much to deny.

When thinking up this series I didn't want just to feminise male characters, and I intend to stick to that for the most part, but this is a good excuse to bring up another topic I'd done some musing on:

( People are People, so Write Them That Way (spoiler for Monstrous Regiment) )

That's my rant for the day – I think I've got it all out now. Anyway yes, female Enjolras, awesome or WAY awesome? I'd watch it.

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A Two-Syllabled Blast of Clarity

2010-09-08T03:41:59Z

When I first started listening to Radio 4, there was a show running called The Department. It was written by Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver (who went on to team up with the Stewart/Colbert folks) and was ridiculous, cartoonish, and remarkably sharp.

I usually try to avoid political matters on this blog, but an item in the news lately reminded me of one of the clips of especial brilliance which I'd recorded off The Department back in the day. While at this moment I'm aiming it at the blockheads planning to burn copies of the Koran, this is relevant to so many situations that disseminating it might make the world a better place ... or at least slightly more bearable, through the power of comedy.

Look, there are two simple words that can solve terrorism and all its repercussive offshoots for good, and those words are: grow up. When you think about it, there's not a single social or political problem that those two little words couldn't instantly solve. All we need to do is install a wise old man to say them, in some robes, on a special plinth. And whenever anyone is considering doing anything of any importance, they should be forced to confront the codger, and receive his two-syllabled blast of clarity.

"Old man on a plinth! I am a politician, and I am seriously thinking about mortgaging the security of my nation and the future stability of the planet for short-term political gain!"

"GROW UP!" [applause]

"You're right, I've been acting like a thumbsucker!"

"Old man! I am a terrorist! I wish to impose my extremist take on the world on innocent third parties in the most violent manner available!"

"GROW UP!" [applause]

"Oh yeah! Fair call! Can I apologise to everyone concerned please?"

"Wise old man! I am a female tennis player! I'd like to be paid as much as the men!"

"GROW UP!" [applause]

"You're right! I don't play enough sets! I'm being completely unreasonable!"

"All of you, GROW UP!" [applause] "Don't applaud me, GROW UP!"

It's brilliant! Everything becomes so much clearer. If only we'd had this silver-haired panacea available before, we might have avoided some of the great mistakes that have made the world so dangerous today.

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Stand Up for What You Believe In!

2010-08-30T19:18:56Z

I had ~~threatened~~ promised to write a thing about why you should see Scott Pilgrim to reward Universal for taking a chance and delivering original, intelligent, well-crafted entertainment, but someone's already done a much better job of it:

Go and Pay to See Scott Pilgrim Right Now

Even if you aren't interested in Scott Pilgrim personally, it does a good job of laying out the state of the industry at present, and how supporting it could mean better movies for everyone in the future.

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No Change. No. Bad.

2010-07-14T15:23:37Z

I knew it was coming but it was still a bit of a shock to load the BBC News page this morning and see the new format. I don't know why they seem to think bigger images and more white space makes for a better webpage;* I am much more in favour of 'maximum information with a minimum of scrolling' so long as the presentation is clear, which it was. It made sense the last time they renovated because most people were now viewing it on monitors with a resolution higher than 800x600 – they kept roughly the same format but gave it room to breathe, and space was still used very efficiently. When they changed the format of the radio stations' homepages about a year ago they rendered them relatively useless for me** and I hardly visit them anymore ... I gotta get my news, though, so I guess I'll just have to get used to the Picture Book News. But I'm not going to pretend to be happy about it.

And they took away the 'Valued Exposure' daily vintage photo series on the In Pictures page ...

I'm going to go curl up in my little cubbyhole and sulk for a while. Call me out when the world stops fixing things that ain't broke.

*Maybe they're all viewing it on their iPhones ...
**I would go to the website to find information on radio shows, and stuff like what's coming up that I should look out for, and why, and what's all this about The ___ Season, etc. What I do not go for is a giant picture of a radio personality ... if I wanted pictures I would not be listening to the radio. But they seem to think that's the #1 priority for people visiting their page. What do they care what I think, though? I don't pay the license fee. (I would if I could!)

ETA: Well, at least there are plenty of other crotchety users out there ...

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