Still Muddling Through

This week hasn't been too bad at the office. We still get the occasional person who has no idea how to do their taxes, but will insist on arguing about every figure on the tax return because they don't like the answer. I'm at the point now that customer service be damned: If you don't think I did it right, take your crap across the street so they can charge you to tell you the same frackin' thing I just told you for free. But you are not going to sit at my desk wasting my time while you demonstrate your ignorance of the tax code and basic mathematics.

We seem to be settling into a rut of going to work, coming home, eating dinner, watching something on Hulu, going to bed, then doing it all over again. So Debbie hooked us up with a couple tickets for a bus ride down to Boston to hang out there and see the stage version of Lion King. It's been a while since I've seen a stage production of any kind and we've never been to that area of the country before. Should be interesting.

Can someone explain why it's OK to take a second-grade class to a museum to view nude sculptures, but the cops force a homeowner to dress his Venus de Mil sculpted in snow? One of these days, this country will address its schizophrenic attitude towards nudity. Or it will simply continue to be schizophrenic. We seem to like being schizophrenic about a great many things.

I used to listen to NPR religiously. Trying to salvage something from the several hours in the car just getting to and from work was part of the reason, but during the 1980's and 90's, they were a fairly reasonable source of news. Then sometime around 2001 or 2002, there was a dramatic shift towards attack journalism. I just switched it off and have never listened to a minute of public radio since. I see that I haven't missed much; now they can't be bothered to check even the most basic of facts. Whatever. I think I'll keep right on not listening.

You can't make this stuff up:

In 2007, an Islington [England] officer ticketed an Islington vehicle, but the department that got the ticket appealed. Because the department is not a different entity, in legal terms the council was appealing a ticket it got from the council, and under the rules above, the council was hearing its own appeal. After the council rejected its appeal, it then appealed again to the Parking Adjudicator. But having appealed, it then presented no evidence, and the Adjudicator voided the ticket. Feeling its appeal had been an outrageous waste of time, the council asked for costs, thus accusing itself of having acted frivolously, vexatiously and/or wholly unreasonably toward itself.

Remind me again why we want to be like these guys?

Speaking of England, a couple Muslim women chose to miss their flight rather than be publicly strip-searched (which is what the new full-body scanners do) in the middle of Manchester Airport. I normally don't find myself agreeing with people who feel the need to wear giant garbage bags over their heads, but it's time and past time to decide just what indignities we are going to allow ourselves to be put through.

And that's it; I'm falling asleep on my keyboard again.