sticking it to The Man

Another Monday has rolled by, and mine was landmined by a post arriving from the IRS telling me that they had adjusted my tax bill for 2004. Thanks for looking out for me guys. They claim that there’s some $1,450 ($1,650 with interest) that is owed due to “pension and retirement funds” and “tax-exempt education fund withdrawals” that we hadn't claimed on our return. If the tax bill is nearly $1,500 then that’s a huge chunk of taxable income that I apparently mislaid. Fortunately (I think), there’s been a mistake in the art of social security number transcription. Being as neither of us had any pension or retirement activity, or funds, in 2004; nor did we have any education funds, I’m confident that it can be sorted out post-haste. Why anyone would think they could sort out an issue post-haste with the IRS is absolutely beyond me…and it’s me saying it about me. Maybe all the balloons I blew up on Sunday have made me simple. I called the 800 number yesterday and realized after 30 minutes that what I needed couldn’t be solved via the auto-menu lady talking into my head hole. I’m off early this afternoon to the Arlington IRS office to speak with an engaging IRS chap; retired G-man to G-man.

Speaking of the IRS and goof ball operations, do we all remember the ‘failure to rewind the videotape’ fines? The Eleven* was returning some DVDs to Blockbuster yesterday and X asks me, “Did you rewind the movies?” She said it in such smooth manner that I had to take pause and think about whether or not I had actually rewound them. Ha, such a funny girl! The 80s and 90s were oppressive times in video stores; bounties of late fees, failure to rewind fees, two or three copies of the newest movies available for our selection, 2.5 hour rental periods, etc. You know if was bad because every visit you were stuck behind some customer yelling, on the verge of homocide, that they were NOT going to pay that fee. The ‘please be kind, rewind’ fine was by far the stupidest – who cares? The only time I was usually caught was when I had to run out the door at 8:55pm (in jammies and a sweatshirt) in order to get the movie back to the store by 9:00pm, and thereby to avoiding the million dollar late-fee; or, when I just forgot to rewind because, like some kind of war criminal, I decided to go upstairs to bed after watching a movie. After a few un-rewind-fines I thought about buying one of those stand-alone rewind machines, I had friends who’d fallen for that trick, but all the machines were junk. Why do I need two machines in order to work a simple VHS tape? Why didn’t the video store knobs just buy four or five industrial-strength rewinding machines and rewind the few tapes that accidentally infiltrated the store? Why didn’t they show some humanity and just let me return Heaven’s Gate without the added punitive damage of $1-$3? Why? They were all bastards, and I name them: Applause, Blockbuster, all the independent family-run joints, discount supermarket chains, and innumerable military base rental shops. I feel much better.

*The Eleven: it’s been noted that the etymology of this term might be causing confusion. After so many entries of I typing “X and I did this…”, or “X and I went to…” (X being my term for Christine), I realized that the X and I, minus the conjunction, make the roman numeral XI, hence “The Eleven”. Thanks for listening.

Love.

T.