Boxes of crap

I'm going through all my boxes of papers and wondering what the hell I was thinking in accumulating it all.  Seriously...I've taken out 2 bags of duplicated sheets of dead trees and also have 3 reams worth of scrap paper to do my printing on.  And that's out of 2 banker's boxes.  And don't get me started on the dozens of manila folders I no longer needed.  I won't have to buy those, again, till 2020.

It's amazing what you can build up in the way of crap in your life and not realize it.  There are some things I'll need to keep -- tax and bank records back 7 years, copies of all the scripts I've worked on as well as copyright info on them, some of my original artwork that's almost decent (there's a lot that's sloppy and self-indulgent, at best) -- but it's my goal to be rid of 90% of the junk I have now.  If it ain't been used in the last 3 years, it's never gonna be.

I'm now a citizen of NY State, BTW.  When I went to get my Texas license, it took over 2 hours of standing in line, getting okayed, photo'd up and paying out to get the job done; at NY's DMV -- 35 minutes.  Of course I hate the picture they took; I'd rather they have used this one.

It was taken my last year of college by a photography student, and it's the only photo of me as an adult that I honestly like.

FYI, I was 26 at the time.  I'd worked as a visual merchandiser for a high-end department store for several years, straight out of high school, and didn't start my undergraduate education till I was 23...for all the good it did me.  Had I been smart, I'd have stuck with my art instead of grasping for something I was never built to achieve.

Dunno why the edges were cut like that; I found this in my mother's box of photos and that's how it was.  I think it's called "pinking."  How fitting.

Ain't no rest for the wicked

Long day of paperwork, sorting through a mountain of mail, paying bills (only 2 of which were overdue), getting in some food so I won't starve, dealing with the PO and bank, finding out I have a small packing job to do right here in town this weekend so need to see what materials I need, figuring out just how broke I am and such.  Still have a lot more crap to do, but at least I'm current with everybody.

I'm becoming a resident of NY state.  Tomorrow, after I take a look at this job and buy what I have to buy, I'm applying for a NY Driver's license and will shift my car's registration to NY, as well...once I find the title.  That may take some time because it ain't where I thought it'd be.  And that will be that for Texas.  I have family down there so I can't be completely rid of the state, but now I can fake being from someplace that actually cares as much about people as it does business and won't be trying to install a theocracy as part of the government.

That's what Rick Perry's out to do -- make the US a nation run by the Talibangelicals, the "Christian" version of the Taliban but using Leviticus as their foundation in place of Sharia.  Big difference, since they're also basically saying, "The hell with the teachings of Christ; too liberal."  You'll still have to meet certain religious criteria in order to get any sort of job, women will become chattel and gays and liberals will be executed.  And if you think that sounds far-fetched, Michele Bachmann has a campaign aide who was imprisoned for running guns to Uganda and is linked to a minister who's pushing to have gays executed in that country.

There are a number of American religious leaders who're pushing the "kill the gays" law in Uganda -- Scott Lively and Rick Warren, for example -- and another so-called "Christian" singer (Bradlee Dean, which is such a GAY way to spell Bradley) who supports Bachmann actually said they have the right idea about executing gay men and women in Iran.  This is what these hypocrites want to bring to the US, all under the guise of "Christianity."  It's diseased.

But Perry's leading the charge.  And he already has blood on his hands.  He deliberately let an innocent man, Todd Willingham, be executed by the state of Texas for what has since been shown to not even have been a crime, and then shut down the commission that would have said so...all for political gain.  If that's not a definition of working for the devil, I don't know what is.

Judas would be proud, Dick.

Headin' home

I'm at the airport waiting for a plane that's already going to be 10 minutes late when I only have a 45 minute layover between flights, to begin with...but I'm finally out of here.  I've done as much as I could to get things in order.  My little brother, Kelly, was accepted to St. Philips and is being evaluated for dental work at UT's Dental school in a few weeks.  He has a place to stay where I can cover his rent if need be.  My nephew, Andrew, is going to help him apply for grants and scholarships, and my sister, Jeri, is backing him up, too.  Now it's time to deal with the mess of my finances in Buffalo.

I've already spent more than I could afford -- not even counting having to pay for more than a third of my mother's funeral expenses.  And not one person who owes me money came through with anything.  So...it's beans and potatoes and eggs for a while.  What the hell -- I've been in this situation before and lived through it.  Besides, I need to lose some weight.

I sent LD off to the publisher.  I'm at the point where if I do anything more to it, I'll kill it...or it will kill me.  It's time to let go...he says, again.  But it's as ready as it ever will be, and me trying to figure out if I want to use "a" instead of "the" as an article is getting down to just plain silly.  Daniel and Ace can take care of themselves, now; I've built them a solid enough base.

Plane's due shortly.  Got to get food since I'm traveling the cattle car line and won't have time to buy a meal in Orlando.  What a pain.  But I got it for free -- well, used up my miles.

Oh...and THIS is what the GOP means by "shared Sacrifice"

Got this from the "Chicago Sun-Times" via TPM...and there were idiots in the comments section saying closing these loopholes amounts to communism and/or socialism.  This country is truly fucked-up.

Tax Time? Not for Giant Corporations

Sanders Calls for Shared Sacrifice

BURLINGTON, Vt., March 27 - While hard working Americans fill out their income tax returns this tax season, General Electric and other giant profitable corporations are avoiding U.S. taxes altogether.

With Congress returning to Capitol Hill on Monday to debate steep spending cuts, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the wealthiest Americans and most profitable corporations must do their share to help bring down our record-breaking deficit.

Sanders renewed his call for shared sacrifice after it was reported that General Electric and other major corporations paid no U.S. taxes after posting huge profits. Sanders said it is grossly unfair for congressional Republicans to propose major cuts to Head Start, Pell Grants, the Social Security Administration, nutrition grants for pregnant low-income women and the Environmental Protection Agency while ignoring the reality that some of the most profitable corporations pay nothing or almost nothing in federal income taxes.

Sanders compiled a list of some of some of the 10 worst corporate income tax avoiders.

1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.

2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.

3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.

4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.

5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.

6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.

7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.

8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.

9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.

10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.

Sanders has called for closing corporate tax loopholes and eliminating tax breaks for oil and gas companies. He also introduced legislation to impose a 5.4 percent surtax on millionaires that would yield up to $50 billion a year. The senator has said that spending cuts must be paired with new revenue so the federal budget is not balanced solely on the backs of working families.

"We have a deficit problem. It has to be addressed," Sanders said, "but it cannot be addressed on the backs of the sick, the elderly, the poor, young people, the most vulnerable in this country. The wealthiest people and the largest corporations in this country have got to contribute. We've got to talk about shared sacrifice."

LOOOOONG couple of days

I've been trying to get my little brother up to where he can use the internet and do online job applications.  It seems the vast majority of employment opportunities and school registration require you complete everything online...and have an e-mail address as well as phone number for them to contact you.  Hell, St. Philip's College even requires an e-mail address for an emergency contact or they won't let you go forward with the application.  It's insane.

I'm finally getting an idea of what they mean when part of the working population will be left behind by the technology age -- they just don't have or have easy access to the tools they now are forced to use.  Kelly can access the web at Workforce Texas or the public library, but he doesn't have much of a clue as to how to do it.  Even after a coupe of days of hands-on practice, he's still inconsistent and brutally unsure...but at least now he's willing to do it on his own.  Yesterday we spent nearly 2 hours at Workforce on their computer, and I let him do everything, only stepping in when he'd made a mistake that needed someone to back things up.  We got one application done.  Maybe now he'll take one of the free courses at the library on using computers.

Another drawback is, almost everyone asking for maintenance people requires they have a driver's license and/or car with insurance.  Kelly has none of that.  And far too many want HVAC certification (AC repair) for a $10 an hour job.  That's a position that requires training and skill, and the wage for it is little more than $20K a year, borderline poverty level for a single person.  But that's San Antonio -- minimum-wage-ville.

Of course, this is coming at the same time that so-called Republican leaders are calling for elimination of even the minimum-wage.  Talk about despicable people being out of the reality-loop.

Anyway, looks like I'll be supporting Kelly for a while, but that's better than letting him go homeless and wind up in a shelter, like was suggested.  I couldn't sleep at night if I let that happen.

Dissonance expands

I was a wary child, far more uncertain and sadder than I ever thought.  Looking at pictures and portraits taken over the first 18 years of my life have startled me with this realization.  I mean, I've seen all these photos before, but this time they're mixed in with photos of my brothers and sister and instead of viewing each one separately, as I have in the past, I'm seeing them juxtaposed and noticing the happy optimism and certainty of their expressions while I stay reserved.  And this is visible in my portraits as a pre-schooler as well as later.

The only one that doesn't fit that category was taken when we lived in London, while I was at Eastcote American School.  I think I was in second grade, and I'm wearing a white shirt, pullover sweater and a bow-tie, and I'm seated before a panorama of Westminster Abbey.  I have a completely unreserved grin on my face, and DAMN do I look like a British kid -- short hair, sly eyes, full cheeks and freckles to the max.  It's my favorite one, so far.

I've been going through old photos my mother had piled in boxes, unsorted, unprotected, unseen for years and years.  Many of them are photos belonging to other, older members of our family -- like great aunts and uncles and the great-great grandparents from Minnesota and Iowa, on my grandfather's side.  There are a few from the Texas family of my grandmother, including a copy of one taken of her great-grandparents in the 1850s, shortly after they'd left South Carolina.

I've also found out my grandmother had 10 brothers and sisters in Texas, all but one of them born to a different mother (who apparently died in childbirth after #8...who also died).  My great-grandmother, Cora, was the man's second wife and younger than him by 25 years.

It's weird, going through all of this and finding out not only where you came from but who you really seemed to be.  My mother often told me I was a very adult child and now I finally understand where that came from...to an extent.  I'm still not sure why I had that attitude or if there even was a reason.  No...I know why.  Things that happen to you as a baby can scar you deeply, even if you don't remember them, explicitly.

I just had another weird moment.  I'm seated in a Starbuck's sipping a Refresh tea when this girl comes up to me and says, "Ryan?"  I looked at her, saw in a split second she was dressed like a stripper (from carefully curled hair to thick makeup to French nails with rhinestones on them to "Daisy Dukes" to 6" heels to way too much jewelry with skin carefully tanned to perfection) and shook my head no.  Then she saw the guy she needed to see over at another table so went to him.

But with her was a boy of about 5 -- California blond and just as tanned and with the saddest, wariest, loveliest face I've ever seen.  And he just stood there and looked at me, as if in accusation, then realized his mother was elsewhere and followed her.  A moment later, his father (I think) came in and took him outside.

My immediate thought?  "This is me, fifty years ago."

And now my mind is a blank.

Forward movement

Little brother has a home to move to on September 1st.  Nice and convenient to the bus and possible employment...but that's still the next step -- getting him a job now that he's been out of the workforces for the last year and a half.  At least half the concern is gone.

So far we've applied to a couple of school districts and some temp agencies as well as signed up with Workforce Texas, the state's employment commission.  It's hard to get Kelly going, at times, but he's moving forward, finally.  All it takes is patience and consistency, like dealing with a 5 year old.

I got the okay from STARbooks Press to redo LD...though they were not happy about it.  But after a little begging and playing beta-dog to their alpha, they sent me the prepped version and said I could make my changes within that.  Just no new page breaks or paragraphs, which I can work within.  I'm lucky they said okay; it got close to them deciding not to publish...but the fact is, LD was in no condition to be released in its current version and to do so would have been an embarrassment.  I think that helped make then see I wasn't being flighty about this.

Now I'm beat.  More of mom's things are gone and bit by bit we're pulling together enough to pay back the money we borrowed for mom's funeral.  My hope is to have that finished by the end of the year...but I'm not sure about that.  I'm in the hole, too, and need to reduce the amount on my business Visa card.  It's not going to be an easy time of it, the next few months.

I should not be proofing anything

Right now I HATE what I did with LD...including using caps for words I wanted to emphasize.  It's amazingly juvenile and I want to redo the whole fucking story.  Jesus, it barely makes sense, contradicts itself and jammers on and on, sometimes.  I was told I'd have to the end of August to submit a final draft by the publisher, but I sent it in early because I was coming to SA and had no idea how long I'd be or if I'd have a chance to work on it, anymore.  Now I just want to crawl under a rock at how embarrassing this thing is.  I'm asking the publisher if they'll let me resubmit.

Of course, I'm probably being hyper-critical.  I can do that, at times...and all over nothing.  One of the joys of being a writer, I suppose.  From now on, I should put the story in a drawer for 6 weeks to get some distance from it before I do a rewrite.  I used to do that before I got so sure of myself.  Guess I need a little slap now and then to remind me of reality.

Next week will be spent ferrying my little brother around to find an apartment he can afford and a job...preferably not in that order.  It's been suggested he be dumped at a homeless shelter called "Haven for Hope" but I can't do that, and my sister agrees.  We promised our mother we wouldn't and besides, when I went by there, it was anything but inviting.  It's a couple blocks from the county jail and surrounded by a freeway and sad, run-down little shotgun houses where the poorest of the poor live.  No grocery store or even a convenience store that I could see...though it does have a dental clinic.  It also has fences and bars to keep the uninvited out.  And this is considered the best way to handle what could be a problem.

People keep amazing me with what they think are acceptable solutions to difficult situations.  For example, rather than raise taxes on billionaires and companies that take American jobs overseas, the GOP instead worked it so the US's credit rating took a hit, thanks to their intransigence on lifting the debt ceiling.  (Of course, S&P are hardly credible, themselves; they liked Lehman Brothers right up to the end, and their reasoning for the downgrade used figures that were off by $2 trillion dollars...and that is NOT a typo.)  But none of it was necessary and all of it was ludicrously childish...and most of that was thanks to Obama behaving more like a parent trying to silence a 5 year old lost in hysterics than a president out to lead the most powerful nation in the world.

I once said civilization is headed into a new dark ages...meaning deliberate ignorance and selfishness will take us over...and damned if it isn't happening right before my eyes.  When Rome collapsed and the world careened into chaos, it took over 500 years to bring us back to the point where we were able to see learning and intelligence as positives instead of something to be feared and jeered.  And even then, it was another 300+ years  before the Renaissance took over and catapulted us into the stratosphere.  Now we're crashing back to stupidity like Icarus did when he flew too close to the sun...and the Tea Party is leading the way in the US.

There's no excuse for this.  None.

Me and Texas dust

The damned stuff hates me.  Digging through my mother's stuff I'm stirring up dust that's thick enough to grow crops in...and it's attacking my nose and eyes with a vengeance.  Even with me wearing a water-soaked bandana, I'm sneezing my guts out and my eyes are close to puffy.  But it's beginning to settle down, finally; we have most of the stuff gone.

I knew mom had a lot of crap but suddenly it just seems to be multiplying.  I unloaded 6 bookcases filled with not just books but papers and tidbits and videos and such, and we sold all 6 for $20...which is 19.99 more than they're worth.  The wheelchair is going back to the rental place and most of the furniture is gone to storage for later yard sales, all of which will go to paying down the debt incurred by my sister and me for her funeral.  Even a simple service and internment in a small single plot cost over $7000...and that's not counting a gravestone.  Jesus.  I'm joining the Neptune Society and arranging for a cremation and having my ashes dumped out by Catalina Island.

In coming down when I did, I got to see mom and talk with her and try to help her get better, then I sat with her while she drifted away.  It meant losing out on seeing the reading of the first 10 pages of my script in Toronto, but it's good that I chose this.  I can see the script online at WildSound's page.  It's an okay reading and they cut it off before the final setup was revealed, but it's fun to see.  The link to it is below.

http://www.wildsound.ca/find_ray_tarkovsky.html

"Find Ray Tarkovsky" is my most commercial script...and did well in other competitions but, as with all my screenplays, went nowhere.  I'm open to comments...and if all goes well with "The Lyons' Den" I may use the same formula to make it into a book.  We'll see how that goes.

I'm proofing LD now...well, beginning tonight.  I did a pass through it but my head wasn't in the right place for it so I'm doing a real one, now.

A "real" proofing.  How silly a thing to think...but I can be.  And want to be.  I'm not ready for stillness, yet.

A breath...then stillness.

That is how my mother left this world, yesterday.  She was breathing steady and strong...and then she wasn't.  It sounds like such a simple thing to say...to have happen.  Like one moment you're writing a letter and the next moment you're just looking out the window at the flowers.  But now she's gone.  And she'll be buried on Thursday, August 4th, at 10:30 am under an Oak tree about a hundred feet from her mother and grandmother.

It's an odd feeling, finally having no link to your birth beyond yourself.  There's a certain sense of unreality that accompanies it, almost as if the anchor to your life has lost its hold and you've begun to drift out to sea.  It's worrisome, true, but also oddly...well, liberating.  I didn't feel this when my father died, and the same goes for my step-father.  They just ceased to be part of my world.  But mom...it's like I...well, I hate to say it this way...but now I'm free and can go and do as I want.

This sounds callous and cruel.  But the truth is, so long as mom was alive I felt a responsibility towards her.  I couldn't go live in another part of the world because she needed me to be available.  Had I done that, I'd have been abandoning her, too, and I just couldn't.  Maybe it's weakness on my part.  Maybe it's just me trying to justify my own fears and uncertainties about making major changes in my life.  Maybe it's me rewriting history.  I don't know.  I'm just aware of it, now.  I sense it.

My mother was never abusive to me.  Many's the time she didn't understand me and fought to make me change from the course I'd been set upon, which caused me grief, but eventually she accepted me for who I was and how I was and what I was and grew close despite the miles separating us.  And as I mentioned in an earlier post, her legacy in film is greater than mine...and I'm glad I helped her do that.

Now my responsibility is to my youngest brother, making certain he does not wind up on the streets or in a homeless shelter.  But that is easy to handle.  He wants to stay in San Antonio and try to make a go of it, so all I need to do is provide him shelter.  Our sister will also help him, even though they irritate the hell out of each other...sometimes in ways that are so funny, I have a hard time not laughing.  But he'll be fine.

So, mom will be buried day after tomorrow.  My sister'll be having a yard sale for mom's things, like my aunt did for my grandmother when she was dying, and the money will go to pay off what we borrowed to handle the funeral home.  I've already set up my return to Buffalo in 2 weeks and am making preparations for paying off the burial expenses I ran up on my business card.  And next week we'll find a place for my brother to live.  He may even find a job by then.  Who knows?  But that's for later.  Right now...right now is letting my mind drift and get used to this new reality.  And see if I feel the same way in a week.

No guarantees there, that's fer dang sure.