CONTORTED PASTA

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!

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.

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.

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.

I'm still nibbling away at my more in-depth review of Up, but in the meantime I was reminded of something I read back when I was in high school that made a lot of sense and has stayed with me ever since. Italics are the author's, bold text is mine.

Basil's character has many strengths in itself, but it has in addition an extra one which originates in the relationship between him and his audience. This is that, adult or child, we identify with him. If we are not Basil, we would like to be, and for an hour and a quarter we believe that we are.

[...] Many [Disney features] have a central character whose personality is two-dimensional. It is this character with whom we are intended to identify, and the two-dimensionality is deliberately created so that we can graft onto the character sufficient of our own attributes for the identification to be successful. In The Rescuers, Penny is 'everygirl;' in The Sword in the Stone, Wart is 'everyboy.' In The Great Mouse Detective, however, the character who might might have been expected to take on this role, Olivia, is far from two-dimensional, and it is Basil with whom we are intended to – and do – identify.

Basil is more than just a collection of behaviour patterns. One leaves the cinema feeling that one knows him as a personality – every characteristic rings true. When, for example, Ratigan escapes the palace in his bat-powered dirigible, we may be surprised at the nature of the Heath Robinsonish vehicle which Basil devises for the purposes of giving chase, but we are not surprised that Basil would have been capable of inventing it.

– John Grant, The Encyclopedia of Disney Animated Characters

I wish Mr Grant would have written succinctly enough that I could print this out onto a poster that I could pin on the outside of my cube where people might actually read it, but that's what blogs are for!

I'm about to launch another 'What I Love About X' list/thesis/rave (already taken the notes, nothing's stopping me but time and cowardice) but remembered that I hadn't quite finished the Going Postal one I'd started last fall. When I moved, I found the folded up piece of paper that had been my notepad and carefully put it with my computer stuff, so now I am finally typing it up and calling it done. I don't remember most of the thinking behind the notes, now, and I'm coming at it with a bee in my bonnet about character development and audience involvement so it's a different list than it would have been a year ago but dangit, it is completed!

So, starting at pg. 342 (341 for context) of the Commonwealth edition ...

( Needless to say, Spoiler City )

In case you missed the previous episodes in this series of insanity, here are some links:
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Dear National Public Radio,

( I think it's time for you and me to go our separate ways. )

With sincere regret,

      Tealin

P.S. KPCC: Did you not just have a pledge drive in March? What is up? You're still in my good books for playing As It Happens and seriously disrupting my sense of place but seriously...

Night Watch, Part 5

That's all, nothing more to see here, folks, get along home...

Unless you're a radio play director (or Jim Dale), in which case ( I have a question for you. )

I wonder how directly descended from Carcer Moist is. Charming criminal who can smile his way out of anything? You just have to make him not a murdering psychopath and you're on your way to a great character. Hmmm...

I'm halfway through my last pre-Making Money re-read of Going Postal so now seems as good a time as any to transcribe my list, so far. It's just a jumble but it's in roughly chronological order. I strongly recommend anyone who has not read the book to turn away now as I give away all the cool stuff without letting you enjoy the story at all.

( Obsessiveness Ahead )

Part 2