march 2004
Taxing
It’s that time of year again: time to file taxes. I’ve left it rather late, as usual, but at least I won’t be in line at the Post Office at midnight on April 15th, like so many people. That is, unless it takes me more than two weeks to fill out these tax forms, which at this rate is starting to look like a distinct possibility.
What should in theory be very simple is, in practice, horrifically complicated. I honestly feel like banging my head against a brick wall after an entire morning of going round in circles, from form to form, and from one instructions packet to another, trying to reconcile blatant contradictions and fathom some meaning from completely incomprehensible statements.
Here’s an example of the kind of madness I’m talking about. As an alien, I have to file Form 8843, Statement for Exempt Inidividuals and Individuals With a Medical Condition. I’ll leave aside the extremely complicated definition of “exempt”: suffice it to say that after almost ten years in the US, filling out tax forms every year, I still have almost no idea what it means, or why the IRS seem incapable of writing about it in plain English.
OK, so I’m filling out Form 8843, and in the instructions I read the When and Where to File section. There are two choices of where to send the form: to one place if I am filing federal tax form 1040NR or 1040NR-EZ, or to another place if I do not have to file a 2003 tax return.
The problem is that I do have to file a 2003 tax return, as I had US income, but I’m not filing 1040NR or 1040NR-EZ. Because I have been in the US for over five years, I am now considered a US resident for tax purposes (but no other purposes!), and must therefore file the standard 1040 or 1040EZ that US residents and citizens file. So, where do I send my Form 8843? Do you see my point?
At a more fundamental level, it doesn’t even make any sense for me to file 8843 in the first place, as its primary purpose seems to be to determine tax residency on the basis of days spent in the US, yet it has already been established that I am a US resident for tax purposes. I have been expressly told to file as a resident. However, I have also been told to file Form 8843.
Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhh!
I’d be really upset if I weren’t getting a federal tax refund ... now, what can I spend it on?
31 march 2004 
Photographs
I picked up a new digital camera last week, the compact and very light Fujifilm FinePix A303, for a bargain price (I think it’s a discontinued model). I haven’t taken that many photos yet, but I’ve been very pleased with the results so far.
Here’s a photo gallery (opens in a new window) of San Diego State University, where I study and work. I took the photos a couple of days ago, and today I used the incredible (and free!) JAlbum software to build the gallery itself - code, thumbnails, and all. Very impressive, and it certainly beats handcoding it all oneself. The skin is BluPlusPlus.
If it’s going to be this easy, I’ll definitely be putting more galleries up here soon!
28 march 2004
A night on the town
Went out again last night; it’s becoming something of a Friday night habit. As usual, we dropped in at Top of the Park for a gin and tonic or three from our favourite bartender, Bob, before heading over to Pecs to detox with water and watch people play pool. The scenery’s better there, and we usually run into a few people we know, which always makes it more fun.
I got talking with someone who looked extremely familiar, though I couldn’t place him until I realized that I didn’t know him at all - I just knew his face from an ad he has in a local paper. So that was a little weird, as I had been talking to him as if we had met before. Anyway, after a while, we got to talking about his numerous tattoos:
He: ... and I have two more back there.
Me: Back where?
He: On my butt. One bear paw on each cheek.
Me: Hmmm ... can you make them touch?
He: No, they’re spread pretty far apart.
Me: And how about the tattoos?
That got a laugh, anyway.
After that, we went grocery shopping (at midnight, yes) at Albertson’s, where I bought crispy Japanese snacks for a pre-party party this afternoon. After those two parties, I’m heading up to North County for another party. Sheesh. You wait for ages, then three come at once.
Anyway, at the grocery store, we stood in line for twenty minutes while a deranged woman tried every which way (but cash) to pay for her groceries. At one point, she actually started to freak out, as card after card was rejected. It seemed pretty obvious that she was a crystal addict. All the signs were there: the nervous twitching, the fast talking, the pasty, wasted complexion, and the oozing facial scabs (sorry if you’re eating right now). What a mess. I’ve lived next door to tweekers (actually, I still do), so I’m familiar with the signs.
Seeing people like that every day is the best anti-drugs advertisement I can think of.
27 march 2004
Feed me
This site now has an RSS feed, for your newsreading pleasure.
27 march 2004
Spring has sprung, Break has broken
For Spring Break last week, as usual, I stayed at home, wallowing in the pleasure of not having to go to classes or work. It’s so great to be able to catch up on other projects, go for long walks, read non-school things, and generally vegetate. I actually went out for the first time(s) in months, which was also most refreshing.
On Friday evening, Robbie and I headed up to Top of the Park, a weekly bar night on the rooftop of the Park Manor Suites hotel. The place is always packed, the crowd varied, and the view spectacular, with sweeping vistas of Balboa Park and downtown. From the terrace one can watch the planes make their final descent, surreally passing directly in front of the city’s skyscrapers. I ran into some old acquaintances, as always, and had a long and fascinating conversation with an American woman who had lived for a while in Ashford, a town in Kent, England, near which I grew up. It was interesting to hear an outsider’s take on the town; as I always had, she found the place small and totally uninteresting.
After that, we headed to Pecs, which is always fun, despite its atrocious (in a good way) name. Again, I talked to someone who had lived in England, this time a guy who had been sent there as a Mormon missionary. He said he had been very well received there, and loved it so much that he wants to move back. I made a bit of a faux pas when I asked him in jest if he wears the garments, to which he replied that he doesn’t, but that he is still a practising Mormon. Whoops. Forgive my naïvety, but for some reason I didn’t expect a half-drunk man in a gay bar to be a devout member of a religion that calls him “sinful and unnatural.” Silly me.
On Saturday night, I went to Rich’s, one of San Diego’s biggest nightclubs, for the first time, which is pretty amazing considering that I’ve lived here for a total of over three years now. The place has something of a reputation for being rather élitist, in the sense that one gets frowned upon if one hasn’t spent most of one’s life in the gym, at the tanning salon, and undergoing eyebrow-shaping. But, in the spirit of the new monthly L. L. Bear (surely they will eventually be sued because of that name?) night, we decided to give it a shot, and headed over, bolstered by a fortifying libation at nearby bar Flicks beforehand. Predictably, we ran into a lot of people from the previous night, as well as a bunch of people we knew from elsewhere, so what could have been awful was actually great fun. And many thanks to the delightful Fred for dragging us out onto the dancefloor instead of letting us stand on the periphery all night.
I finished up Spring Break with a concert on Monday night. The show was Sweet and Tender Hooligans, a Smiths cover band who were actually amazingly good. Their versions of Ask, London, and particularly The Queen Is Dead were blistering, and stunningly reminiscent of real live versions by the Smiths themselves. Best of all was the singer, who had Morrissey’s movements and gestures down pat, to the point where it was hilarious to watch him. And although he didn’t look terribly like Morrissey offstage, there were moments during his performance when he looked uncannily like the Moz; if one had squinted, one could quite easily have believed oneself to be at a Smiths concert circa 1984.
The band admitted that they were trying extra hard that evening, because in the audience were none other than Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke, drummer and bassist for the Smiths respectively. After the band finished, they did a DJ set. It was amazing, incredible, surreal to be standing literally three feet from them both as they span records, made banter with the crowd, swigged beers, and hugged fans. As I stood there, I was thinking, alternately, “Oh, they’re just two guys, like anyone else,” and “Holy crap, that’s Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke!” Those fingers on the fader right in front of me were the very same fingers that played the classic bassline in Barbarism Begins At Home, which I listened to a million times in my teenage bedroom. Those hands clutching the Rolling Stones CD a yard from me were the same hands that pounded out the unforgettable opening drum roll of The Queen Is Dead. It was just astounding.
So, now I have seen all four Smiths in person. One of these days, I’ll tell the stories of what happened when I met Johnny Marr and Morrissey.
24 march 2004
This and that
This week I switched the web hosting company for this site, and it all seems to have gone smoothly. (If you notice any broken internal links or other weirdness, be a dear and let me know, ta.) My annual hosting fee will now be a paltry $27, instead of $96 with the old company, for the same functionality (well, a few features missing, but nothing I’d ever use anyway). So, the total annual cost to me of running this website is less than $40. Amazing.
It has been brought to my attention that the link to the news article with the amusing headline that I blogged the other day no longer works, so here’s what the headline was (from memory): Rosie weds longtime girlfriend, slams Bush. (It refers to Rosie O’Donnell’s gay marriage in San Francisco and her denunciation of the President ... if you don’t get the double entendre, I’m certainly not going to explain it to you.)
Joe Clark has written a very interesting article about web standards, design, and accessibility: High Accessibility, High Design. If you’re at all interested in making your sites look good and be available to as many users as possible, read it!
It’s been hot, hot, hot here in San Diego. Some days, anyway. Today is coolish and greyish, but there have been several days in the 80s, and I swear it must have been over 90 one day earlier this week up at my workplace, which is about ten miles inland, where it’s usually ten degrees or so hotter than it is on the coast. One completely forgets that it’s still snowing in many other parts of the country, and in parts of Europe, especially when one is surrounded by people wearing shorts and flip-flops all day.
Less than two weeks to go until the restraining order I have against my non-rent-paying, foul-mouthed, crystal addict neighbour expires. I wonder what kind of stunt he might pull. At the very least, I’m sure I’ll get an earful of abuse and the finger every time we cross paths. I’ve almost forgotten what it was like last summer, when it was unrelenting. I couldn’t even go into my kitchen without him screaming through the window at me. The unpleasantness of it all came back to me this morning when I was scrolling through the numbers programmed into my cellphone, and realized that I still have the numbers for the San Diego Police Department and my attorney on speed dial. Speed dial! That’s how bad it was. Anyway, we shall see what transpires. I won’t be at all surprised if I have to have the police at the house again. C’est la vie.
In happier news, I just found out that I passed my exams. Woo yay!
12 march 2004
Alsatian cousin
How odd - immediately after writing yesterday’s post about Morrissey, I read on Morrissey Solo that his cousin, Anthony Carey, not only lives in the San Diego area (working at Function First in Sorrento Valley), but that he also studied and worked at the same place I study and work, and where Morrissey performed on his last US tour. Small world, indeed.
If I had been drinking milk when I read this headline, I would have snorted it out of my nose. [Via Ernie.]
5 march 2004
Seven years
Seven years: that’s how long it’s been since Morrissey’s last album,
Maladjusted. It’s amazing to think it’s been that long; it seems like only
yesterday that I stood in line at the record store, waiting for it to open so that I
could rush in and grab my copy before sprinting home to throw it in the CD player, and
myself on the floor, to listen to it, over and over.
It seems like only yesterday that I saw Morrissey on tour on support of that album, at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta on November 15, 1997. After the show, I was present when hundreds of fans, male and female, in gold lamé blouses and nail polish, flattened a line of riot police outside the theatre in an attempt to rush Morrissey’s limousine. It was the most brazen act of civil disobedience I’ve ever personally witnessed. (I’ve lived a sheltered life.)
So, finally - eighteen months since some of his new songs débuted on UK radio - Morrissey has a new album, You Are The Quarry, due out in May, and an official website (well, one page, anyway) to promote it.
In retrospect, Maladjusted was good, but not great. Don’t get me wrong: there are some excellent songs on it, but there’s something not quite right about the production. It’s all sort of muddy and indistinct. The general dampness of it comes as a disappointment after the blistering ferocity of his previous (though critically panned) masterpiece, Southpaw Grammar.
I think Morrissey knows this too, as he has recruited Jerry Finn, producer of Blink 182 (from San Diego! Well, Poway/Rancho Bernardo, anyway) and Sum 41, to produce the new album, resulting in a harder, cleaner sound, reportedly. Not that I’m a fan of Blink 182 (although some of their videos are hilarious), but I think this is definitely a step in the right direction. To put it nicely, he needs a kick in the pants, in the sound department - and this should do it nicely.
4 march 2004
Technophobia
Phew! I just got out of one of the most intense periods of exams I’ve ever experienced. Well, when I say “just,” I mean a week ago today. It’s taken me since then to get my head back on straight, and to even want to face a computer again. The exams were take-home (i.e. unsupervised, open-book) and looooooooong. Over the course of three days, during which time I basically didn’t move from the computer, I wrote two huge papers, each with about thirty references from books and academic journals, which I read (or reread) during this period also.
Honestly, after three days of that, your eyes need a week to uncross, you need a day or two with a chiropractor to snap your vertebrae back into place, and you can barely hold a pen due to carpal tunnel syndrome. So, naturally, I haven’t been on the computer much. I’m just now getting back in the mood for it.
As for the exams, I’ve either done pretty well, or really messed up. I’m not too worried, but you never know. I find it’s best not to think about it too much, so I’ll change the subject now, except to say that I have to pass these exams to get my degree. No pass, no degree. So, no pressure at all there!
1 march 2004
Wallpaper
Here’s the current wallpaper on my laptop:
Nice, huh? I got it from PixelDécor, where you’ll also find tons of amazing retro patterns. This wallpaper comes as a set of five: the same illustration of trees, in different colours for different times of year. I picked this colour at random.
You’ll notice that I have only three icons on my desktop: My Computer, a general dump-all folder called Stuff (where things I’m currently using, or plan to use soon, sit until I sort them into more meaningful folders for archiving/backup), and the Recycle Bin. I like not having the desktop cluttered with stuff, especially when the wallpaper is this pretty. It helps me feel neat and organized - even though I’m not, really. Like dust swept under the rug, all my mess is hidden in the Stuff folder, unseen by anyone but me.
1 march 2004