N is for...

Nachos. 

Two weekends ago, I was at one of my haunts and the people at a neighboring table gave me a free plate of nachos.  They'd ordered them but decided they were too full to eat them. So they gave 'em to me. 

That was the most exciting thing that happened that night. 

Sadly, I haven't been having any awesome dance experiences, no righteous makeouts, no bone-bruising liaisons, and no mind-blowing parties lately.  I'm okay with that.  I'm sort of saving my money for my move, which is happening within the next few weeks. Well, I'm trying to. All of a sudden, as mentioned in an earlier blog, people are even more eager to take my money than usual.  

The only reason I've been going out at all is to try to say my goodbyes to the few people around here who will actually give a shit that I've gone. Sadly, most of those were bartenders. 

That's going to have to change when I move. I won't have as much disposable income unless I can get a few things straightened out. But it'll be worth it in many ways. For one thing, the fact that I'll only be able to afford to eat ramen for every meal will allow me to lose weight quickly! In a few months, my skeletal appearance will be a guaranteed chick magnet. And naturally I'll be in LA, where the cool people live.  So who cares if I can only afford a room in the basement of a flophouse.  The kind of chicks I'll bring in won't care about the peeling wallpaper, or anything else -- as long as I can score them a hit. I figure I can lie about that. 

Okay wow, that went way darker than I set out for, ha ha.  No seriously, I've got some really good prospects. I'm going up there tomorrow to check out a couple of rooms that seem reasonably priced, and also -- more importantly -- to have my job interview.  Which I'm gonna rock. And it's a really good company in a lot of ways, so I think I'll be in good shape. 

I will definitely have to watch my money a bit closer but with everything I've got going on, I figure that'll be a temporary issue. Because soon... SOON I will rule the world!

Excuse me. I just finished watching an outrageous B movie. Heh. 

K is for "Kill me now"

My head hurts. It's not as bad as it was when I woke up this afternoon, but it still hurts. 

I got way too drunk last night.  The "falling down for no reason" kind of drunk.  The "willing to at least mack on anything with a vagina" kind of drunk. But unfortunately, not the "can't remember anything that happened" kind of drunk. 

Not that it was all bad. But seeing a beautiful young girl with red underwear throwing herself at men old enough to be her grandfather still causes me emotional anguish. 

No, I wasn't at a strip club. That I would have understood. It was one of my two local bars, and it was thanks to her low-riders that I know the color of the pretty girl's undies. I forget her name. I learned it when I offered to dance with her. (She refused, citing exhaustion. Thirty seconds later she was dancing with her friend. Mmm-hm.)

I did end up dancing. Some woman whose name I also forget. She was probably about 40 and frankly not very pretty. But she had on blue suede boots. Royal blue, my favorite color. And she was friendly. So I danced with her because she wanted to dance, and a few drinks later there was some macking outside. I'm not proud of it but at that stage of insobriety I'll kiss pretty much anyone who's willing. It's one of the major reasons I don't drink that much anymore. 

The irony of this, of course: If I'm that drunk, my junk goes on strike.  Essential services only. Which is actually kind of awesome. Because it prevents me from going too much further down the "anything with a vag" path.  

Before the debauchery I was up in LA visiting a friend and her friends that she wanted me to meet. That was interesting and fun.  But the night would have been a lot better -- and the two hour drive there more worth it -- if I could have met up with some of my other friends in the area afterward.  Sadly, my primary contact wasn't returning my calls or texts. 

Note to self: Don't drink a can of Red Bull immediately before plunging into the Friday-Night Crawl.  Not unless the drive also involves a catheter.

This put me in a somewhat foul mood exacerbated by the endless stream of Valentine's Day-themed commercials on the radio.  Hence: debauchery. 

I know. I'm telling this all out of order. This is essentially a stream of unconsciousness blog, a otnemoM blog; ramblings of a man drinking lousy coffee and pushing too-curly hair out of bleary eyes.  Trying to jump-start my mind, trying to bootstrap myself to humanity. This is my second cup of coffee and I want to go back to sleep. 

This morning my phone chirped from somewhere. I'm pretty sure it wasn't what woke me up. Might have been.  More likely it was the necessity for various types of excretion. My clothes were all over the room, my computer was on the floor, unplugged.  Miraculously, the half-emptyfull can of beer on my makeshift bed-table was still upright.  

It took a few minutes to find my phone. It was in my pants pocket, half under the bed. I had three messages; the first made no sense but appeared to be a recording from Verizon. I think someone paged me, but the recording doesn't wait for your greeting. It just starts.  Another was from a friend here in OC who wanted to go see a movie tonight. And the third was from my buddy who didn't return my calls last night.  Apparently he's been unwell and had gone to sleep at an early hour last night, well before I called him.  

So I needn't have been worried about possible friend alienation. But I could still be annoyed by the Valentine's Day commercials. 

I is for...

It's been awhile since I've blogged so I'm doing two today, both of which will be on the abecedarian* list.  

I is for Income Tax!  

Yes! Because it's that time of the year again, as a million pieces of junk mail, banner ads and spam emails make painfully clear.  We gotta get it done early, we gotta get the maximum refund, we gotta do it from the convenience of our own home, and for free using this infallible special software! Or else we gotta visit the friendly staff at H&R Block, who will happily take a large bite out of your refund for the privilege of filling out a few fields of their electronic forms. Most of which are already filled in from last year! What a deal! 

Last year I paid them roughly $200 for ten minutes' work and a significantly smaller refund than I was hoping for.  Don't know whether they're to blame for that but I still wasn't all that happy about it. I haven't decided whether I'll do that again, frankly. I know piss-all about doing my taxes, so yeah, I probably will have to bite the bullet. At least I can be fairly certain of a refund, rather than actually owing. Because that would just suck. 

But none of that is the actual subject of my blog.  I'm not even going to get into the inherently anti-Constitutional nature of Income Tax itself.  Nope, this is about the "gotta laugh or I'll cry" condition of the state treasury.  

California, as probably everyone has heard, is going bankrupt by the end of February.  This is the alarming news trumpeted from news headlines and on talk radio, but no one seems to want to say how this will affect the common man -- except in one fashion: Supposedly the state wants to give us I.O.U.s for our state tax return this year.  

I'm guessing Schwarzenegger ain't getting reelected. Hell, I'd be surprised if he even runs.

Okay, that's silly enough but then I get this thingy in the mail the other day.  It's some weird, nigh incomprehensible form (I don't speak bullshit -- also known as legalese), but near as I can see, it indicates how much money I got last year for my state tax return, and warns me that I must report this amount or face penalties. 

So, wait -- let me get this straight: The State of California considers my tax return to be taxable income?  I'm going to have to check this out with someone who knows, but that's sure what it looks like right now. 

Am I missing some vital datum when it comes to tax returns? Because I thought they gave me money back because I overpaid them.  So that would mean it's not additional income, but a return of previously earned income.  It's like buying a toaster, finding it defective, and getting your $30 back from the store.  How is this "new income"?  If anything, it's still money lost because of the added time and effort -- and that's just the toaster metaphor; I gotta pay some dude to do my taxes, so I'm totally losing money to get my bloody tax return. 

I know there are no easy answers in politics, the way things are now. Everything is all complicated and there are special-interest groups all over the damned place.  Everyone wants a piece of the pie, everyone wants their laws in place which may have intended or unintended consequences for someone else. If nothing else, money is spent and since money is poorly understood and fucks mightily with peoples' heads anyway, our country and every part of it is currently strapped for cash (apparently).  

I know these guys do not have an easy job, that they're only human. But for fuck's sake, can they not think?  For the money I'm giving them -- the money everyone is giving -- I frankly expect a lot better service. But we all know what happens at the DMV, for example. 

Personally, I'd agree that a government has to be supported; that's fine and good and understandable. But when the government turns it into extortion and yet searches for still other means to live off the sweat of my brow, other than by properly providing valuable services, that's when I start to disagree. No, I don't think my money is being wisely spent. If it were, California would not be facing bankruptcy. 

Go ahead. Disagree. I wanna hear your reasoning.  I will grant that I myself, couldn't do a better job -- but I never said I could. Those in power, who are not overwhelming me with their awesomeness, did. So yeah, I do feel somewhat justified in stepping back and saying WTF. 

This is not a call to arms. I'm not advocating treason against state or country. I don't advise anyone break any laws -- quite the opposite.  I just wish, as I always wish, that the stupidity would go away. I've better things to do.  We all do.

*Abecedarian means of or pertaining to the alphabet. In case you didn't know.