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03/06/2023 Monday. Cardboard Box, Basement. Beaver Haus. Lower Granville, Vermont.
Well, one jerk roommate moved to Berlin and now another jerk roommate moved in. Just joshin' ya. But Professor Curly is in Berlin and The Publisher moved in to Beaver Haus for the week. Scott and Grit got rabies. A rascally fox has been running around the henhouse. Double josh. But that is how it goes at the Brewery, you can't say the "C" word because it stigmatizes people, so...but Scott and Grit have the "C" word and now I have a "C" word living in G's room. See You Next Tuesday.
The thing though is that we are heading to Seattle on Wednesday. The AWP book thing. You know? The thing where you stand around half hungover while people ask you questions about your book and then don't listen to the answer. That one. I mean, I am a horrible salesperson, so that is more likely the reason nobody listens, but engagement is 50/50, remember that Professor Curly. Whenever you see a dotted line next to an X, think: "50/50 Joe." I mean, I actually do love talking about writing or my writing, writing in general I can have a conversation with anyone, anywhere about, but my own writing, I kind of need to have a Q&A after a reading before I can open up. And a Q&A to get me to get you to buy my fucking book? How about instead I pay you $16 to punch me in the balls. But this stuff is good for the Tit and what is good for the Tit is good for ol' 50/50 Joe.
We leave Wednesday morning. I mean, hell flight from hell. Stupid Vermont. I fly to Queens and then Cincinnati then Sea-Tac. Three hours of waiting. Plus the three hour time difference. It will be 15 hours of travel by the day gets done. But on the way back, whoa boy. I couldn't even buy the ticket. It would have meant hanging out in Newark I think for eight straight hours. So I am going to just fly to NYC, hang out for couple weeks, G is gonna come down and then I am going to fly to Berlin to see ol' Curly Red and hang out for a week, then come back to NYC, then take a bus, then go to the dentist and then go to Portland for three weeks to work at the Brewery.
Man, Saturday we had a whopper. It must have been a foot and a half of snow. I kept waking up all night because the snow was sliding off the roof. And then I got up and looked outside and said; "Damn!" Then I was glad I had no plans to do anything all day, and I could not feel guilty about it and catch up on some sleep and listen to my stories and have a chilled out 50/50 Joe day. But then the word came down the wire. Hurricane Publisher was blowing into town. Which, at first still didn't mean anything to me, she was going to get a friend of a friend to pick her up from the train station in Middlebury because she was coming back from the City because she had been down in the Dominican Republic on her hot/drunk moms retreat getting tantric pedicures and playing just the tip with the pool boys. And, you know, just the tip when the guys got a foot long is, how do you say, more than you're used to?
The ride didn't work out though. Which meant that I had to dig out Junior Mint from his snow cocoon. Which was kind of wild. There was so much damn snow. It took quite a while. And when I finished I got inside the rusty sedan and attempted to back out and, nope. All the rocking and squealing I could do was getting me nowhere. Anyway to make a tedious story exhausting, I got out of Junior Mint and went to work clearing off PC's Real Estate Wagon. Which was more work than Junior Mint because the thing is what, three feet taller? And whoever designed it was a jerk and the wipers don't pull up and there is a horse trough in front of the windshield. But I got it cleared off. And was able to back it out of the driveway, mostly because it is all wheel drive. And I don't know. All was good. I waited until 7:45, then drove over the mountain, it was snowing again, so it was some real slow going, but I made it, a little time to spare so I bought some baby spinach and iceberg lettuce from Hannaford's and then went to the train station to wait for the train.
[Insert Snow Photo]
This was from today. Two days later, so some of the snow has already melted. But you can see the door to the Garbage room. That pile of snow was 6 feet high. I am exaggerating, but not by much. My only real surprise about it all is that the power never went out, not once. Never even a flicker. What's up with that?
Portland was funny. I guess. It was kind of the same. It snowed like a mother one day though. And those fools do not know how to drive in the snow. Not only that, but they don't plow the roads, they just salt the things and hope for the best, so when it snows, like really snows, there is a river of Slushy everywhere you go. I was genuinely astounded I made it to work without getting in a fender bender. And then it snow all day, and I was double astounded that I was able to make it back without getting into a fender bender. Every light I stopped at I braced for impact. Every hill I had to go up I assumed I would peel out and get stranded on the side of the road. It was quite nasty.
I did my taxes. All 1099 work. Well mostly. The W4 work I did means I will get an $8 dollar return, but the 1099? I knew it was coming, and it was better than I predicted, but not by much. Suddenly I am reconsidering buying plane tickets to Seattle and Berlin and not working all March. I mean, I am working three straight weeks in April, so I am not that broke, but as the bridesmaids say; Don't count your dollars until you grab them by the bush. Anyway. I have set something in motion that is going to be quite the bane for me in the coming year/s, but what can you do? I mean, I always pay taxes, since forever, they take like 25% out of every paycheck when you do a W4, so I have never been too worried about not filing my taxes, because if anything the IRS owed me money. But when you are insanely destitute, filing your taxes kind of takes a back seat. But then, one day, a decade later, when you owe $11,000 dollars because you did almost all your work 1099? That's when being turbo-poor isn't an excuse anymore, that is when it becomes tax evasion. Which is not good. You kind of go to jail for that. My point is; Since I filed my taxes and the check is in the mail, I am opening a can of whoop-ass from the IRS heading directly my way. Which is going to be expensive because I will need to hire an accountant and pay fees and who the fuck knows what else. Scrutiny. I mean, I made more money last year than the three years earlier combined, and the seven years before that probably add up to about $140,000 dollars. But do me a favor and divide $200,000 by 10 and see what you get. Tragedy is what. And sure, I should have filed, I probably would have gotten money back and you know, like gotten stimulus checks and stuff, but if you don't think the IRS targets poor people you are living in the clouds, man. I mean, I let it get away from me, then I was too poor to deal with it, and now that I can consider myself middle-class-ish, I'm going to be fine. I mean, I will probably have to find another job, or work the other job that I can't stand that is a waste of my fucking time, but as long as $.52 goes to the military, my great big American heart can rest easy, knowing that even though I can't afford to go to the doctor, there is a $200 million dollar drone out there hunting down some poor kid and his family because of America.
I mean, The Publisher warned me about talking about taxes, but maybe the text was juicy enough to keep you engaged? It is something we all go through, right? I mean, not the poverty part, but the tax part. Especially artists who use 1099's and are grateful to have the extra money, but then when the bill comes, yikes! I am setting up a bank account in May just to hold my predictive taxes. I have to. I am too sensitive for this. My entire philosophy gets disrupted when the money in my bank account isn't real. It clouds my thinking. And I am cheap, I tell ya. I have an entire booze operation just to save money. Although, I would consider it an act of resistance. Big Tickler can suck my ass. But then I am going down to the City for a month, and Berlin, and Seattle. And I owe rent and electric bills and gas bills. I mean, I think I may be a little foolish at the moment. But Vermont is driving me crazy! I need to break free! I have become a man of stagnating habits. I don't do the things I want to do with my free time because I am always afraid that I won't ever have any free time in the future, but then instead of making changes and building for a better future, I kind of just log around and put things off. But one of these days, you'll see!
And also, if you are somebody that actually reads these things, I have some good news for you. I figured something out. Something I am still working on, as you can see, or I guess will be explained her in a second. This writing is an experiment, it always has been. The idea being that maybe there is a way to combine early David Sedaris with early Hunter S Thompson combined with minutiae and idiotic micro-observations all from the perspective of a modern day Pink Panther, the cartoon, not the films. You know? To see how far you can push it in any direction before it goes off the rails. But I started a new project that is collecting the more, how do you say, fun to digest parts of my writing style. The things that I have to say, not because it needs to be said, but because if I don't say it I will explode and it will come out double-hard, like back in 2020 with the 50/50 writing. But I had an epiphany the other day that some of that thinking and writing has a place. Just not here. So, I guess I will either have a second post each week of just that writing, which, I won't send out the second I write it, I will do an edit first, preferably the next day, or I won't send it out at all and just collate it for publication later. I mean, win-win, right? I mean, I think this writing is best when it is just me telling you what I did. Free from the inner workings and sidelines, side-winders, tangents, no politics, no tax codes, no five paragraph meanderings about something that has nothing to do with anything. And who knows? Maybe I will even take notes during my days. Maybe figure out how to stick to the narrative without having that sensation where I know there is one more thing in there that just needs to come out, but I don't know what it is, so I keep tickling away, hoping I scratch the itch and then it is midnight and I have lost the thread and suddenly a screed about having a new roommate and the new roommate is the Publisher turns into a diatribe about taxes and snow storms and how I had an epiphany that means I don't need to do that anymore because I have a different outlet and not everything has to be hyper-meta and can't we all just get along?
Then again, there isn't much to say about having a new roommate. She is as bad as Professor Curly, sitting in the office all day, coming out just to get some coffee and complain about something, then back inside to make phone calls and work and suddenly the toilet paper is disappearing at an alarming rate. And I have to write in the basement. I mean, I can't catch a break. Story of my life. Shit! I just remembered I have to take the Christmas tree out tomorrow. And pack. And get ready to be gone for a month. I should probably ditch. Smell ya.
I am always glad to read the rants. If it doesn’t serve you, do what’s in your best interests. I am glad they have C rather than rabies. Happy trails to you ✈️🌈
See you in Seattle! :)