People without a sense of humor are giving the IRS a hard time over a line-dancing video.
I applaud these jolly tax-masters for having a sense of humor. Do you know what librarians do when they have conventions? Powerpoint presentations, that's what! I'll take line dancing any day.
An article about the current Miss Delaware in the local paper is making me crazy.
A paragraph about how pretty she is includes the following statement: (her two twin sisters – one identical, one fraternal – are knockouts as well).
How can she have two twin sisters, one identical, one fraternal? Is she a triplet?
I am continually getting offers from "financial planners" who want to "educate" me in how to save and invest my money. This is quite a common way for financial planners to troll for new customers. Usually they bribe you to attend by offering a free meal. The one I got today was a little different. Of course it was from a self-seeking "investment counselor," but this was under another guise. The offer was sent by the University of Delaware, and advertised as a "course" given through the university, at the university campus. Instead of getting a free meal, the university required a tuition payment of $39.
When I was a library director these financial gurus were always after us to let them offer a seminar in our library. I always refused because it was all about a hidden agenda, and I didn't want the library to be used for profit. Not that I am against making money--I'm all for it. But the library is a tax-supported institution and should not be recommending an investment scheme under the pretense of educating the public.
Why is the University of Delaware pimping for some financial advisor? Are they that hard up?
In December, I decided to get a pedicure from my bespoke pedicurist, Mr Tran. Mr Tran used to have a special way of doing Mr Charm's pedicure. He would roll the chair out to the car and help Mr Charm out of the car. The pedicurist used to josh with him, asking what color polish he wanted and sometimes getting a smile for her pains. She also washed his feet and lower legs, put lotion on his skin, and massaged him. When we were ready to leave, Mr Tran would help him into the car.
I continued to go there after Mr C had moved to a nursing home. Wouldn't you? He knew our whole family and asked about them. The pedicure and manicure were the same as offered everyplace else, but the service made us feel loyal.
So, back to December. I chose a color for my toenails, a shell pink. Mr Tran countermanded my choice. "No, no! Not festive enough for holiday season!" He chose a bright red, and I went along with it and achieved festive feet.
It was April when I came back, just for a manicure. "Manicure and pedicure?" asked Mr Tran. No, just a manicure. "Get manicure and pedicure," he insisted. So I did.
The Boston Bombers' mom clearly needed Dr Kermit Gosnell's services a couple of decades ago. It would have saved everybody a world of trouble.
Years ago, when my grandson was in elementary school, I would occasionally drive him and a few of his buddies to a movie or baseball practice. They were a noisy and unruly bunch, and the topic that amused them most was, er, digestive problems. Mostly farting, but they also enjoyed talking about belching, vomiting, and diarrhea--or anything else that was gross. Twenty years later, and this mindset has taken over the film industry. I just watched the movie Bridesmaids. Vomiting, diarrhea? You want it, you got it.
Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun
Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
Fear no more the frown o' the great;
Thou art past the tyrant's stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:T
he Sceptre, Learning, Physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.
Fear no more the lightning-flash,
Nor the'all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.
No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have,
And renownèd by thy grave!William Shakespeare
Well, folks, Obamacare just gave me a big wet smacker in the form of a massive increase--$60 per month--to my health insurance. Thanks ever so. In related government news, Social Security wasted a stamp telling me to apply online for a death benefit, but when I got on their website they informed me that you could not apply online. So why are people so down on the Postal Service? It does what it is expected to do. I write a letter, put a stamp on it, and mail it. The recipient receives it. They don't charge $500 for a stamp, either. Not even when you are a republican.
I found myself thinking of this poem today, as the weather was so lovely. I wanted to go somewhere to savor the day. Instead I went to Macy's.
Anyway, it is National Poetry Month.
THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 10
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
There's no amusing way to say this: The man I called Mr Charm died a week ago, so the world no longer has his smile or his hearty laugh. His long, brutal illness took everything away, and then took him.
Someone left a message on Facebook that she is really enjoying Downton Abbey. Really and truly? This is confirmation that the Internet rots the brain. And yet I recently subscribed to tumblr, so that intimate friends can inform me over facebook, twitter (which scares me, it's too difficult), google + and my e-mail that they have a hangnail. I can't read my favorite bloggers, because they have stopped posting to their blogs and use twitter mostly, which @#I don't understand, mainly because I don't feel like wasting my time trying to master it.
Blogger is starting to be frustrating to me too. I used to think I had it mastered, but they have improved it to the point that I can't do anything with it, like post photos. Ah, the dear old days!
I only know how to do three things on the computer: 1) backup and restore; 2)control, alt, delete 3) answer e-mail. That exhausts my little bag of tricks.
I ran out of mysteries to read, so decided to improve my mind by reading one of Mr Charm's biographies, a book about the Duke of Wellington by Christopher Hibbert and well worth reading. He was an authentic hero, who defeated Napoleon and cared not a rap what anyone thought of him. He had a chest full of medals and was beloved by the ladies.
Like Ulysses Grant, who had been a quartermaster, Wellington understood the importance of supplying his armies, above all with food. Send enough bullocks and sheep, and your army will be assured of victory. It sounds very quotidian, but it worked for him.
The citizenry loves military heroes, especially handsome ones. He went from triumph to triumph, including serving as Prime Minister.
The only unsatisfactory thing in his life was his marriage. He had proposed to a woman when he was a young man and unable to provide for a family, and she refused him. When he achieved success, he felt honor bound to renew his proposal, though he no longer cared for her, and she, who also had doubts, felt honor bound to accept. So, despite the misgivings of both, they were married and lived together uneasily ever after. He avoided her company whenever possible, and she was obsequious and timid, which made him him more impatient with her.
They were totally unsuited to each other. He was the first man ever to say, for the record, that his wife did not understand him, although doubtless not the first to feel that way. But as she lay dying, he was at her side.
My local newspaper features almost daily articles on the front page about climate change or global warming, with a generous side helping of beach erosion. So, in order to limit my personal contribution to these momentous issues, I have decided to cut back my carbon footprint by canceling my subscription.
I haven't posted anything on Facebook for months and am unlikely to. My life, while it interests me, is both stressful and boring. s for Twitter, I can't even figure out where to start. What are all those symbols and what do they mean? Suppose I did it wrong? I would feel like an un-with-it klutz, which I am, but why flaunt it? I will still blog when I feel the urge, if I ever climb out of the ditch I'm in.
But the real reason I want to steer clear of these activities is that they are a terrible time-suck. I can almost hear the remaining hours of my life circling the drain, while I ponder the mot juste. So until someone figures out how to stretch 24 hours into 28 or 30, I think I'll abstain from social media.
I totally take back all the mean things I said about your tax problems with TurboTax. I used a different online tax program & it was horrible. I had to print out the forms and fill them in manually to figure out what went where. I'm still not sure I got it right. They are still sending me "Pay or Die" letters about my 2010 return, which I filed two years ago.
There's nothing more to say except I'm sorry.
How are the taxes in the Cayman Islands?
So I received a phone call from someone with a heavy almost undecipherable Indian accent about my internet problems. Calling herself Cindy, she said she was something to do with Windows, or Microsoft. Whatever she said was unintelligible but sounded important. The accent lent plausibility to her claim. What phony would try to swindle someone without being intelligible?
It was a scam, but luckily my daughter arrived and got on the phone and scared them off. So no harm was done, except to my faith in human nature. Dishonest people with Indian accents--who knew? I thought all people with heavy Indian accents were IT specialists, or at the very least, doctors.
The University of Texas is facing steep budget cuts. To hear the administration tell it, if the university gets one penny less than they received last year, essential research will be sacrificed and the University will lose its first class status. Important projects vital to the welfare of the nation will be lost, catastrophe will no doubt follow and the research necessary to invent radar will not take place and we will probably lose World War II and the cold war--oh wait, we already won those didn't we? Well, anyway, something disastrous will happen.
The more likely scenario is that one or two assistant associate deans of diversity won't receive cost of living raises and the official who plans and coordinates University Sex Week will have his/her travel budget cut. Administrators now out-number faculty in most colleges; the tail is busily wagging the dog.
I remember when Mr Charm worked for the State of New York budget cuts were in the offing. Our whole way of life was threatened. Heads would roll, people would lose their jobs, the staff would not be able to purchase paper clips and its vital functions would be endangered. A black cloud hung over the people of the State of New York.
In the event, two part-time charwomen were laid off and everybody lived happily ever after. Except for the two charwomen, of course.
We got the latest issue of Columbia's alumni magazine, which I call the Smug Report, because it is. The last page tells about the visit of our beloved President to Queens or someplace like that. I'm surprised they found this lowly place, which is even lowlier now that Sandy has wreaked havoc upon it. Must have used GPS.
Obama mentioned the Arctic ice cap, which, according to him, had been melting at a rapid rate. I am so damn sick of this ice cap and all its brother and sister ice caps around the world. Obama seems to think it is melting, but others whom I respect deny it.
Isn't it possible to go and measure the damn thing? Like with an airplane? and settle this controversy once and for all. If it is not melting, the media ought to make that a page one news story. If it is, tell us.
And then let's never hear about ice caps again. Ever. They are so twentieth century.
I'm considering what to do with my blog, which I think 3 or 4 people actually read. I have signed up for all the social media stuff, but I don't know what to do with that either. Shall I discuss my visit to Whole Foods? My skull x-rays? Who cares? As for Twitter, most of the bloggers I enjoy are posting there, but I can't even begin to figure out how it works. It seems to have enlisted all the characters on the keyboard which were formerly used only in comic strips when one of the characters inadvertently hits his thumb with a hammer and said something like: "@#*^$$$!"
Also, politics isn't fun any more. I can't believe the people we have in positions of authority are the best we can find. What a dreary lot! What happened to the quality of citizens? There are 300 million people in this country, but the voters are offered a candidate who believes a woman's body will reject a fetus that results from rape. Whether he also believes that the stars are God's daisy chain was not revealed.
I am reading Shelby Foote's enormous tome on the Civil War, which is teeming with interesting and distinguished people, so much so that you have to keep a list to remember which side some of them are on, very much as I had to do with War and Peace. I am still reading about 1861 and have four more years to go. What a cast of characters!
Funny how now that we have a Democratic president the media are not banging on about how many American lives have been lost in Iraq or Afghanistan. The total casualties in the Civil War are estimated at 600,000. No one knows for sure. Don't hear much about no blood for oil either.
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