Got the last form in!The penultimate form, yesterday, mailed. The form before that, sent special USPS fast-fast-fast tier, can’t remember what it’s called. The form before that, faxed. The form before that, emailed, and the form today, emailed as well. I don’t think there are any other forms. I have done what needed to be done and now I sit back and wait for . . . the request for additional information because the form was wrong, or something like that.

It’s tiresome and seems needlessly complex. All the systems are set up to satisfy The System, and every time there’s a new law here or a new regulation there it rolls through the whole System like the shockwaves of an earthquake rolling through the mantle. What once was a single-page form is now three pages, because you have to choose rather you want to defer or agree or roll-over or jump or use the compounding option approved by Congress in the 2023 Omni-Contrusion Bill, which included an extension of the 1974 Micro-Farking Adjustment Act.

So I view Friday with a certain relief. The weekend brings work - I have to paint the shed - but also a few dinners-out with people, which will be fun, since I only talk to my wife and retail clerks. And the dog. As noted, I don’t miss the office, given what it became, but I do miss the gym. That’s the challenge of this period, I suppose: finding a place to which to belong. The thought of moving makes it worse. It is entirely possible that everything at the end of this year of transition finds me in a diminished place, and I’ll be codswaddled if I know how to keep that from happening. So far.

Well, off to the IPG, or impersonal purple gym (sigh) and more later.

UPDATE: In fact, a form was wrong, and a correct form had to be supplied, but it cannot be supplied until the First, because it would not be accurate on the 31st. Also, the trust lawyer and the mortgage holder want a bunch of documents which, to me, are entirely Greek. The reason my wife is a lawyer and I am not is because I have - not suffer, but have - Document Blindness. It is all a mass of hieroglyphics. The concepts are not graspable by my puny brain, which apparently starts to spark and steam if more than 14 neurons are employed on the matter. I don’t even know where to start. It’s like someone came up and said “I need six cups of ambergris and fifteen sheaves of raw barley.” I would not know where to begin.

"Do you mean ambergris, the whale by-product?"

"No, we mean ambigres, a French word for plaster shavings that have been bombarded by the Hadron Collider."

"Okay well I can probably find plaster but how do I get it to the Collider"

"You will have to request a visitation permit from the County office, which takes 7 to 10 days, and have it notarized by someone wearing plaid, but it has to be a plaid recognized by a registered Scottish plaid-certifying body."

You somehow get all that done and you’ve forgotten entirely about the barley.

The interesting thing about the last few weeks, with all the forms and deadlines and roll-overs and disbursements and transferring from here to there: this is all outside of what we will call my core competencies. I am simply useless with this. On top of this, my core competencies do not seem to be in demand much at the moment, except as I summon them myself to do this and that. I have to remind myself what I’m reasonably good at doing, then do it reasonably well. But that’s the baseline in life, no?

In short, I feel as if I was in a cartoon and retirement struck me hard on the head with a mallet, and there are all these stars rotating above my noggin, and I have to pull them down and arrange them by orders of magnitude and classification, and hope my wife doesn’t come steaming down the stairs and ask why I sent the lawyers a blue dwarf when they needed a red giant.

Well, it's the end of the month - in Bleat numbering terms, anyway - so let's see what Detritus I've snipped over the last few weeks. Junk ads. The things that spoil our Internet.

		What am I supposed to think? Am I supposed to be intrigued and confused by the statement? Might I be in danger? BIMBAMBAM, your source for important internet information.
		Let's check out the "About" page. Looks legit.
		A week later, this
		I remember why I clipped this: because it's a lie, and we all know it's a lie, and no one one will ever buy that vehicle for $1500, and no one will ever sue the ad provider for false advertising.
		HA HA HA Day officially brightened! Thanks, "Your Bump," which sounds like a bad shitechum site devoted to stories for pregnant women, but drifted into AI webjunk.
		This was the trending AI art style for a couple of weeks, so they used it. He is mad so this must be bad news! I should click and sign up for the newsletter and discover these six strategies for investment I can learn if I buy the book!

I spend a not-insignificant amount of time looking at TV ads from the 60s - 00s, and the commercials that used to make us roll our eyes - so dumb, so banal! - now look like documents of an elevated and highly civilized culture.

At a friend’s house, reading her work. It wasn’t very good, but I didn’t say so. As I was leaving in a chaffeured car, she started firing from the roof, first with a sniper rifle, and then with a grenade launcher. I thought that my lack of enthusiasm for the work must have been quite obvious.

 

 

 

 

 

God, what a buzzkill he could be sometimes.

 

Lori's really shedding the Qs on this one. Solution here.

That'll do! Chinese money awaits, and you can't say that about any website. I hope I earned your patronage, and I'll see you Monday.