TAXING TIMES I shouldn't be typing this nonsense this Saturday. It's meant to be a work day because I got behind, by doing too much work. Well it's my anual time of anger and frustration: tax returns are due at the end of the month. I'm really rubbish at accounting really, although I guess most of that is because I don't set up adequate systems for updating financial records throughout the year and just put it all off until now. Then at the end I'm behind with everything else and there's no chance of me wasting more time setting things up better for next year. Well it's not going to change, so there's no point complaining about it really. At least this year I have made sufficient money for myself. I mean I'm still poverty stricken by any comparative measure, but seeing as I don't waste money on all the usual stuff it's more than enough. It also reveals how much money the post office has been making out of me - they get over ten grand's worth of business out of me in twelve months and yet they still take over two weeks to reply to one of my lost parcel cases! Bloody state-sponsored monopolies! With all these dollar signs flashing about I did finally cave in and buy a new DVD, after two years without being able to access my old Op-Shop supply of used DVDs and VHS tapes I could last no longer. I really splashed out on the complete box set of the British TV show "The Last Detective", which does get repeated on commercial TV pretty regularly but they fill it full of so many ads that I just can't stand it. In fact I think it was about the time that I got into watching it that I decided to give up on picking up watching shows on the commercial channels altogether because the advertising is just intollerable. So now I just limit myself to what's on ABC and SBS. At $62 it's definately the most I've ever spent on these things except perhaps bulk buys for my Doctor Who VHS collection, which is now complete. As it stars an ex-Doctor, Peter Davison, though I guess you could say it's just me trying to keep alive an old obsession. Certainly I'm not having much luck finding more tapes of "The Stranger" with Colin Baker (and jeeze there are too many other VHS tapes that pop up when you search for "The Stranger" on Ebay, though that said the Orson Wells movie is quite good especially from a cinematography standpoint). People usually make new year's resolutions, but I always end up pondering my life at tax time, usually with an excessive sense of meaninglessness. Last year I concluded I needed to travel, but between work, state border closures, lockdowns, and other things I wanted to do, I might well have travelled more last year. Of course it would have been much worse if I lived in Melbourne, as they're still not allowed into the rest of the state (though there's bugger-all enforcement these days so it sounds like only the honest people are affected by that now anyway). This year the travel urge has subsided a bit. I'd rather work on some of my big projects like building my 'power station'. But I do wonder whether it's just because a little business success has afforded me a some more capacity to deal with failure, and maybe I'd be better off just leaving my dreams in my head, where they don't lead to misery. Actually this post is one of many that I draughted in my head while laying on the couch last night. I often spend an hour or more like that, thinking to myself in silence. It's one of the great things about living alone, because I'm no good at it when other people are about. Which is ironic I suppose because in my head I am talking to someone. It used to be mostly old school friends who I talked to more deeply in my head than in real life even back when I knew them. Now it's all you mysterious Gopher readers. The concept of you asking a question back is a bit more abstract, but there were usually only ever one word questions anyway. But it usually goes too deep and dark to actually put online. I don't hold that much back here, the "note" on the phlog index allows that, but some of the things I do believe in just seem needlessly alienating to any reader I'd imagine. Things I hate about humans themselves really, and I do include myself in this which is a perspective that some people refuse to take on. I strongly dislike children for example, and think babys are disgusting. The intellectual and the physical are two domains of humanity that I struggle to unify. In my perspective of loving and hating everything I can love one, but it means hating the other. To embrace both simultaniously seems like a denial to me. I dislike the idea of discussing topics in conjunction with eating, for example. I have touched on this before, but again I'm not going into much detail. That's because I don't imagine anyone to "get" it, I just see myself ranting on about something they see as nonsensical or even evidence of illness. They may be better off for not seeing from my perspective as well, so what point is there? Perhaps this is why "it's always the quiet ones". I did jot my conclusion last night down on paper though. I've decided to include it here. It's strong, I'm not preaching it or anything, it's just one perspective of the many that I take on. As such, I'd say that note on the phlog index probably doesn't go far enough. You probably should be offended by this bit actually. What's a plan? It's what you want to do, but what do you want to do? Always you want to eat, to sleep, to fuck. What's your plan? If you achieve your plan what do you want to do? You want to eat, sleep, fuck. If you help people or you harm people, what do you want to do? You want to eat, sleep, fuck. If you change the world, what do you change? You still want to eat, sleep, fuck. So what's your plan? To eat, sleep, fuck. The rest is bullshit. It's how you forget that you want to eat, sleep, fuck. - The Free Thinker.