All Done with F*&King IRS (and some other stuff)

I'm officially done with the IRS. I'm tired of the constant bullshit and expense with this whole Enrolled Agent thing and it turns out that it's been all for nothing anyway. All done. Kiss my ass.

In other news, we went to Alaska and tramped around a bit:

Anchorage, Alaska

Denali from Mt. McKinley Lodge

Talkeetna

View from our room at the Denali lodge

Denali from inside the park

Margaret Glacier

Mendenhall Glacier

Ketchikan Lumberjack Show

The weather was completely unbelievable. We went packed for 50's and rain and instead got 80's and sunny skies. We were able to see all of Denali the entire five days we were there. Normally, there is only a clear view of Denali for something like eight days a year. We managed to dodge the wildfire as well, although our train from Denali to the cruise ship did get held up for a couple hours because the fire was burning near the tracks. We finally got through and they held the ship for us (advantage of using the cruise line's transfers), so it worked out, but we were getting a little nervous. These are from the train:

Since we've been back, I've done a whole lot of nothing. I need to get outside and get things in shape. The jungle took over a bit while we were away and I need to get things back under control, get a coat of stain on the porch, get some painting and caulking done, etc. Lots to do, just not a lot of motivation to do it.

Over at John Michael Greer's Archdruid Report, he's had a series of posts on the five phases of the decline and fall of a civilization. He calls the phases the Eras of Pretense, Impact, Response, Breakdown, and Dissolution. Our current western industrial civilization is firmly in the Era of Pretense, but as John Michael repeatedly points out in his books and on his blog, the process isn't linear or coherent. Different places will run through these phases at different times and rates and on different scales. For example, right at the moment, Michigan is in a later phase than the rest of the US:

One city neglected to inform its residents that its water supply was laced with cancerous chemicals. Another dissolved its public school district and replaced it with a charter school system, only to witness the for-profit management company it hired flee the scene after determining it couldn’t turn a profit. Numerous cities and school districts in the state are now run by single, state-appointed technocrats, as permitted under an emergency financial manager law pushed through by Rick Snyder, Michigan’s austerity-promoting governor. This legislation not only strips residents of their local voting rights, but gives Snyder’s appointee the power to do just about anything, including dissolving the city itself -- all (no matter how disastrous) in the name of “fiscal responsibility.”

I knew it was bad, but not living there anymore, I hadn't realized just how far gone things really were. I'd put Michigan as a whole in Greer's Era of Response; frantic attempts to prop up the status quo by any means necessary; fair, foul, unconstitutional, etc., while failing to realize that the status quo is the root cause of the state's problems.

But, in keeping with Greer's idea of the fractal nature of decline, most of the state is still a blooming paradise when compared with Detroit:

Highland Park is a tiny 3-square-mile municipality located within Detroit. Extremely dangerous, blighted, and 94% black, Highland Park is a concentrated example of the conditions in Detroit’s poorest neighborhoods—what some call the “Detroit of Detroit.”

In late 2011, the impoverished little municipality was so deep in debt to its public electric company, DTE Energy, that the local government was forced to decommission all streetlights on its residential streets. Not only did DTE cut the power to street lights in Highland Park, it sent out workers to physically dig up and remove nearly 1,000 light-poles from the neighborhood. Highland Parkers now live in permanent, debt-induced darkness.

Six miles away, in Detroit’s rapidly gentrifying downtown area, DTE Energy runs a very different public policy. The same company that repossessed 1,000 streetlights from Highland Park, condemning its residents to permanent darkness, has recently launched a pro-bono security program in the increasingly white area.

And here we see the fractal pattern being repeated at the level of individual neighborhoods, with different parts of the Detroit Metro area in different eras of collapse.

So what about where you live? Is everyone still gliding along with their head in the sand pretending all is well, or are things a bit further along? It's a fun little game the whole family can play!!