Kurt

He's tall, but he hopes to achieve more in life than just that.

Filed my taxes yesterday

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And no matter how many times I’ve filed them (I’m old so a lot), and no matter how sophisticated and whizbang the tax software gets, I always get a bad feeling when I’m done, that I haven’t done them correctly.

It could have something to do with my lifelong fear of any number greater than a single digit, I suppose.

Mostly that bad feeling is to no avail and everything works out fine. At least the feds haven’t come down on me yet.

But this time that bad feeling was spot on because seconds, seriously, mere seconds, after submitting my return I got an email from the tax filing service stating that my return had been rejected by the IRS.

The rejection turned out to be for a silly, easy to fix reason, but the experience left me wondering, if the IRS already knows the math, why do we have to bother to solve for the solution…

I mean, why in this whizbang day and age do I even have to do my taxes?

Is it really just so I have some skin in the game, as the silly mostly right-leaning politicians like to say?

Okay, I can understand large corporations and extremely high earners having to be obliged to keep intricate records and be in close communication with the feds…

But why must a poor swine like myself? Surely, it must cost the government more money than it makes to track the anemic, trickling cash flow of someone in my tax bracket.

And while we’re on the topic, doesn’t it seem a little immoral and against the laws of nature to tax the fruits of one’s labor?

I mean, I’m not against taxes, I understand their need, but it just doesn’t seem right getting taxed/penalized for what we earn to make our living, for our efforts to be constructive citizens.

Why not tax the hell out of us for what we consume like most of the states do? I’m all for a sales/consumption tax, provided it’s not for the purchase of basic needs that people smarter than me would have to determine what would qualify as a need, basic and/or otherwise. And for sure tax the complete hell, every speck of it, out of luxury items.

Again, I’m no numbers guy and I’m not saying an income tax isn’t the best way to fund our federal needs, and I know there’s the whole thing about taxes needing to be progressive and all that, I’m just saying an income tax just seems such an unnatural, immoral way to fund our societal needs, that’s all I’m saying.

Anyway…

Until next year.*

*Sure hope I don’t end up getting audited for this. And speaking of income, don’t forget all my books are free today! I need the reviews, yo!

A New Look

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For a (not so) old book.

Rainy Season Book Cover
click to explode

Well, I guess in this hyperfast doom scrolling timeline of a world we now live in, 2020 as a publishing date is rather old, ancient even, so perhaps a refreshed book cover is past due.

Anyway, this book, as well as all my others, will be free for 24 hours beginning midnight tonight (I’m never sure if it’s midnight my time or Bezos’s) so go ahead and set your reminders so you can get you some while they last…

Which should be until forever…

Or until Bezos’s servers become aware and the Amazonocalypse begins…

Whichever comes first, I guess.*

<3

*Best we not forget about screwball Musk and his screwball efforts to be the first to trigger the end of times so he can be the one to lord over us on Mars instead of Bezos.

Rainy Season, AI-Imagined

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I’ve always wanted to write and illustrate a graphic novel.

But that would be a lot of work.

Too much for someone as uninspired and unartistic as yours truly.

So I figured why not give one of the AI machines a shot at illustrating some of my writing since they seem to be all the rage lately…

Which also seems to be making all the human artists rage lately as well.

But hey, if you can’t beat ’em might as well join ’em, right?

I mean, hey, better take advantage of the tech now before it takes complete advantage of us as our AI Overlords, right?

Right?

Rich from Rainy Season as imagined by Mindjourney

Anyway, I fed some of the characteristics of Rich and Miko, the two main characters of my novel Rainy Season, into the AI engine Midjourney, and this is a little taste of what it came up with…

Miko of Rainy Season as imagined by Mindjourny

I must say, I’m pretty impressed. Just the vibe I was going for when writing the novel. There are other cool renditions of the troubled couple, as well as some beautiful renderings of a rainy Tokyo night filled with the hazy glow of neon, just like the story’s setting calls for.*

Pretty nifty.

And a little scary.

But hey, maybe the awakening tech might just allow me to release an illustrated edition of the novel.

Sure would be a lot easier than having/trying to draw all those illustrations myself.

I guess if I’m going to do it, I better hurry before the AI becomes fully aware…

And finds itself less interested in rendering unto us silly pictures from silly stories…

And more interested in having us render unto it our complete and total carbon-filled, mushy-hearted fealty.

Yeah.

*I tried using the same defining terms with the DALL-E AI machine and the images it rendered were lame compared to Midjourney’s.

This is a no brainer…

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Pun intended.

Comparing George Orwell’s “1984″ to Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” Postman then added that, “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”

Social media offer us two choices: Orwell’s hell, or Huxley’s, MarketWatch, September 7, 2022

I’m Team Huxley all the way.

People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. – A. H.

Anyway…

I can thank Donald Trump for at least one thing: That is, being the impetus behind my decision to abandon just about all social media and forsake you all here at my website.

For the most part I’m a better man for it because Trump and all his idiotic minions cultish worshippers political supporters were driving me on the fast track to dark, warped places I had no desire to visit.

However, two years or so on, I do miss journaling* regularly here.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to re-engage with it like I used to.

But I’m trying.

At least I think often about trying.

Anyway…

I don’t really blame social media for all our societal ills like so many do.

As I see it, we will always look to blame who/whatever we can for the ignorant/dumb things we do that only we, ourselves, can possibly be responsible for doing.

Such as hating.

Or not accepting the truth.

Or even avoiding the truth.

Et cetera.

Et cetera.

Besides, we have allowed technology to debase and dumb us down at least since the invention of the printing press.

And there’s no turning back now.

And once our A.I. Overlords are in complete control, brains will no longer be optional.

They will be unnecessary.

Superseded.

Yeah…

Pun definitely intended.

*I still cannot reconcile myself to the word “blogging”.




Literary Zen XI

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Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer*

There is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one’s efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire.

*Perhaps a better caption would be, Willem Defoe as Arthur Schopenhauer, which is why I shan’t give up my day job.

Oh yeah, my books will be free from 00:01 (PDST) tonight until 23:59 PDST) Friday.

✌️