I am Jack's Smirking Revenge

little, yappy dogs

Friday, February 16, 2007

For More, or For Less

People, its seems, rationalize their behavior so that they don't feel too bad about living the lives they live. Whether you are a very bad person, or a very good person, there are things you do which you don't want to think about, and you find a way to define you life and actions such that you don't need to think about the downside of your behavior.

This is all perfectly natural, and really there's no problem with it.

The overall picture of us humans getting along on this planet can be expressed simply as: the way all of us generally get along either has a beneficial outcome for a majority of the people, or it has a negative impact on a majority of the people.

The latter, it seems, has always been the case.

So here we are, as we have always been, not getting along and not helping each other out. Par for the course, right?

Well.

It isn't our nature to be more interested in helping those we know and who are like us for no reason. Time has enforced upon us so many deep animal behaviors we can't possibly separate ourselves from them entirely, and thus we remain human and do not turn into creepy unfeeling beings.

This animal behavior has served us well for millenia, and it does yet- however, this nature is the same thing that modern society seeks to curb, tame, and contain.

Society has laws which tell us not to kill, steal, rape, and generally act like a wild monkey.

Religion has rules which tells us to marry, to procreate with those we married, not to steal, not to be an ill-tempered git, to be kind and giving and turn the other cheek.

These are all rules designed to make an animal into a person. They serve many purposes, but in general, they are beneficial.

It's odd, then, when supposedly educated people can be called upon to go against their religion, go against their social rules, and be convinced of something by how it makes them feel (afraid).

So, here we are with our fancy rules and large brains and history of still generally treating our fellow man like crap and supporting the general ill-ease of our fellow man.

How grand are we?

You can take the position that you really do mean well, but can't save the whole world, but truly, exactly whom do you suppose will believe you?

So here is where it gets ugly. The world has changed faster than previous generations have ever had to tolerate. There are now more new things to know than any man could possibly hope to master in 100 lifetimes. We have studied our world and ourselves so well we can now do things completely unimagined only a few years ago. People specialize in subjects so narrow and precise it's hard to imagine you can make a career out of it.

The system we live in has become our enemy. Corporations spend millions of dollars trying to figure out how to make you pay attention to something for a few seconds longer, in the hopes that you will maybe buy it. They spend millions of dollars lobbying to assure that they can continue to pollute they way they always have, so they can contiune to manufacture that item affordably- for you. They bribe and connive to keep that thing legal and prevent regualtion of it...

Through the interaction with the public, the legal system, and the economy, the corporation has evolved to be the equivalent of a sentient, evolving, social cancer.

Wherever you have a weakness, it is there to exploit it.

Wherever you have a doubt, it is there to assure you're just distracted by something else.

Wherever you have a fear, it is there to enforce it.

If there is anything poised to take over our country and ruin it, it is the horrible multinational corporation.

If there is anyone who stands to profit from the horrible global mayhem our war is currently generating, it is the horrible multinational corporation.

And lastly, if there is a thing more scary than terrorists, killer bees, storms, floods, aids, sars, and global warming, it is a horrible multinational corporation which owns all the television stations, newspapers, media outlets, major printing presses, and is also beyond the true punitive reach of any legal system and not bound to the laws of mortality, like we are.

The global cancer evolves, and very soon we may find how incurable and terminal it truly is.

So, more, or less?

Are we here to continue to act like animals because we are unable to escape our own physiology and psychology, or are we someday to push forward that extra inch in the world and assure that 50.000001% of the people have some kind of well-being?

The world's corporations will certainly be there to assure you that it's a bad idea. That the first few people who tried it suffered a horrible fate. That people of other races and nationalities took advantage of them and imprisoned them and sodomized them and sold them into the sodomized prisoner slave trade.

I do go on at length.

I suppose I should know better. You either already know this, or stopped reading a long time ago because I am full of crap.

Do we continue to just schlumpf along doing what we have always done just because that's what we're encourage to continue doing?

I guess I am just angry at the fearful and ignorant I have to share this world with.

You fearful and ignorant are ruining my day.

I am momentarily taken away to a little scenario where some dumb herd animals find themselves in a pinch, follow their herd instinct, and it fails them and they are butchered in a way that only a hollywood cinema can portray.

It's really no different, I guess, than the butchering delivered to the world by corporations. I am not a cow, but I am stuck in their sights because of all the slobbering lommoxes around me.

Thanks.

Monday, February 12, 2007

The End is Neigh?

We've all heard about reaping what you have sown, about a ship of fools, about ignorance being bliss...

We've all heard those older than us complaining how the younger generation is somehow going to bring about the end of the world.

We've seen the stereotypical loony person, if only in a cartoon, wearing a sandwich board warning us the end of the world is coming.

The end of our modern way of life is indeed coming to an end soon.

However, you only need to look to any mass-produced 'source' of 'news' to find out that everything is going to be ok, those scientists are reactionary communist idiots who want to steal your freedom and destroy Mmerikka.

There are a very few ultra rich people in this world. They own every major 'source' of 'news' you look at- if it's readily available and free, it's theirs.

The economy we are part of and the Wall Street which leeches off of it count on one gigantic factor: that things don't change very much.

We've all heard about how cheap, renewable energy would destroy the world's economy.

It's true- there'd definitely be a huge hit to the world economy. Would it end the world? Hard to say.

But that same big bad world shift will come someday soon anyway. We're going to run out of oil, no matter what those 'sources' of 'news' tell you. And that oil doesn't even have to run out. It just has to get so expensive that transporting food and goods to all the edges of our country is so expensive that people cannot afford to eat.

Is it going to happen soon? Hard to say.

If the figures the evil pinko commie scientists publish are even a little correct, within the next 50 years, as a result of global warming, we will see Greenland, Antarctica and the North Pole completely melt.

The ocean levels will rise more than 20 feet when this happens, and displace more than 100 million people. Many well-known places will end up under water.

A global event such as this can have genuine end-of-the-world effects. At the end of the last ice age, a frozen lake in Canada melted and all at once dumped itself into the Atlantic ocean. The result was Europe being plunged into an extra 1000 years of ice age.

On a different note, kids are abusing drugs, themselves and each other in ways I don't ever recall when I was young, and that's not-so-distant past.

Our political structure is more corrupt, less accountable, and more despisable than it has ever been, even since 1776.

The educational standard has gone out the window.

People drive huge, wasteful vehicles. They live in huge, wasteful homes, and they are huge and wasteful people. The most well-known restaurant, beneath its golden arches, serves food which everyone knows is not even a little nutritious.

Televisions encourage you to go buy things, make you feel insecure for not looking like Angelia or Brad, and play off of every fear and vice in order to 'make a buck'.

Magazines are produced monthly or even weekly- not because they have a valuable payload of life-changing or vastly entertaining content, but because the ads inside of them are already paid for.

Radio stations play less and less music, more and more commercials, and more and more idiots talking, even just to hear themselves talk... and people listen to it.

The world outside your home, if you are so lucky to have a place to call home, is one contiguous advertisement.

The possibility that the system we inhabit might be more cancerous than any chemical is far too diffucult a subject for Joe Average.

There is nothing that can be done about it, either. The republicans show their true prowess in elections by capturing the hearts of the ignorant by pandering to their lack of a brain- pulling heart strings and playing the religion, abortion, and gay cards- fear. We will protect you from all the other fine people you share this country with, and make sure the pinko commie scientists can't take away your hummer or your ATVs.

The time to wait for the hardcore denial cases to come around on their own is over.

We're screwed.

Our world is >rocketing< towards a cliff, the inhabitants can see for themselves but don't bother to look, and the people we trust to take care of us are more interested in taking us to the cleaners.

I think I'll go play some video games now.

Hey, Terrorists!

After much thought, I have come to the conclusion that the terror scare in Boston was an intentional open invitation by our government to terrorists.

How's that, you say?

Let's analyze the situation for a moment.

The police in Boston are apparently so stupid that they thought a lighted sign was a bomb.

This is as believable as the garbage people forward in e-mails, because people tend to go right ahead and accept that other people, even cops, are idiots, and look how dumb they are in this home video, ha ha.

Now. I simply refuse to accept that there was not a single person in the chain of command smart enough to swat down this obvious bad PR before anybody ever heard about it.

I think someone who wants a terrorist attack to happen, but knows they can't directly provoke one else they risk discovery and no war in Iran- that kind of special chickenhawk politician concocted this.

Point out something seemingly innocent like "ha ha, dumb cops, thought this was a bomb."

Subsequent news stories go on to point out that similar signs had been posted in many other major metropolitan cities.

Perhaps what nobody bothers to mention is: nobody stopped to care anywhere else, when the signs were being hung or afterwards.

Result?

If you want to stick something which is not a blinking sign in the shape of a cartoon character giving you the finger to bridges, overpasses, train stations, napping policemen, just go right ahead. We're too busy here in the USA to notice.

The only thing missing from the invitation is a map to all the local bomb-makers in town, with their office hours and maybe a handy list of the components you'd need.

I feel I need a signature line to add to these ranty posts.

"I was going to cut this tree down, but I thought I'd check to see if you didn't want to hang yourself from it first."

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Contacted the IRS, too

Here's a copy of my "website related support" message that I sent to the IRS.

I'll be filing a complaint with the better business bureau against their main office in Kansas City as soon as the BBB's website database comes back up.

/////////

I would like to point out that on your Free file page, H&R block is listed.

However, H&R block has instructions listed which they know are misleading. A returning user cannot file for free, but this is not mentioned anywhere- unless you contact support.

Case in point: if you ALREADY have an account with them, and you follow the 'free file' link from IRS.gov to their 'click here to file for free' link, you will come to a "create a new account or log in with your account", accompanied by "if I am a returning user, can I file for free? Yes, go ahead a log in to file for free"

However, you cannot file for free as a returning user, you MUST create a new account. There is no mention of this anywhere, and they KNOW it. I have contacted their support, asked specifically where that is outlined on their website, and they refuse to tell me where I can find that information.

Translation: they are intentionally wasting people's time and hoping that they will just decide to pay instead of fuss with finding another site or bothering to contact support which (as we know) is often a big waste of time.

For a complete rundown of my exchange with them, please feel free to check out my blog (two entries):

[links to this site here]

Thank you for your time, I'm certain the importance and integrity of a citizen's federal taxes is as important an issue to you as it is to me.

H&R BLOCK: SUCKS, part 2

So, here is my part two. The adventure began when I tried to file for free on H&R BLOCKhead's website.

I immediately pointed out to them that it did not appear that I could file for free.

I was a returning user, and once logged in (despite following the 'file for free' link), I found there was no option for me to file for free.

Well.

What I wanted to know now was:

Was it possible to file for free and I just missed the button?

Was there an instruction I missed telling me I was not qualified?

Was it possible, short of contacting support, to find out what I needed to know concerning filing for free?

(it turns out that the answer to all three of these questions is NO.)

I decided to write to support again, only this time, I'd pretend that I didn't know there was an issue.

What follows below is a complete transcript of my e-mail exchange with their support, but here is a brief rundown in case you'd rather not read it all:

Me: Golly, what's wrong here?

Them: You must go through IRS.gov (Useless response number one. this may be true, but it is not an answer, because I did that, and it did not result in me getting to file for free.)

Me: Saaay now, I did that, and it did not work. What's wrong here?

Them: You must qualify for the free file, and also, you must create a NEW account. (brand new information.)

Me: Where is this information posted on your website?

Them: Go to irs.gov and create a new account. You will have to do this every year in order to file for free. (not the answer I was asking for.)

Me: (I point out how their free file page has a log in for returning users, and how it also has instructions telling retuning users they can log in to free file)

Them: Thank you for your comments, we value them.

Me: Thanks for the brush-off.

Them: (indignant "that-wasn't-a-brush-off-reply" reply)

Me: I should bill you for my time

Them: Here's a discount code for getting your money back


/////////////

Will Von Wizzlepig TO TaxCut

Hi, I followed the 'free file' link over from the IRS website, but when I logged in, there was no free option. How do I access that? Thanks.

//////////

TaxCut Online Support TO ME

Thank you for contacting H&R Block TaxCut Online Technical Support.

In order to use the FFA offer through TaxCut.com, access and sign in to TaxCut Online through the IRS.gov site - www.irs.gov. There is no other entry point.

If you have further questions or concerns, please reply to this e-mail. H&R Block values you as a TaxCut customer and we look forward to serving as your tax and financial partner in the future.

Sincerely,
H&R Block TaxCut Online Technical Support Team

/////////////

Will Von Wizzlepig TO TaxCut

Your answer does not tell me anything.

I clicked the link from the IRS site to your site, clicked the 'file
for free' link on the page on your site which I was taken to, and I
was presented with two options- register or log in. When I logged in,
there was no free option. How do I get the free option if I am already
a registered user?

Thanks.

///////////////////

TaxCut Online Support TO me

Thank you for contacting H&R Block TaxCut Online Technical Support.

In order to recieve free file you must qualify. If you do qualify you must create a new account and go through irs.gov
If you have further questions or concerns, please reply to this e-mail. H&R Block values you as a TaxCut customer and we look forward to serving as your tax and financial partner in the future.

Sincerely,
H&R Block TaxCut Online Technical Support Team

/////////////////////

Will Von Wizzlepig TO TaxCut

Where is this explained at any point between the irs.gov free file
page and the point at which you log in on your website? Please send me
the hyperlink to that page so I can see. I have been looking for it.


-Will

//////////////////

TaxCut Online Support to me

Thank you for contacting H&R Block TaxCut Online Technical Support.

Please go to the

http://www.irs.gov
to get information for free file. Also iIf you used TaxCut last year to process your return you would need to change your user and password and create a new account. You will need to create a new account every year in order to take advantage of the free e-file. If not you will be charged. If this is the first year you used this or you created a new account please let us know by replying to this email.

If you have further questions or concerns, please reply to this e-mail. H&R Block values you as a TaxCut customer and we look forward to serving as your tax and financial partner in the future.

Sincerely,
H&R Block TaxCut Online Technical Support Team

//////////////////////

Will Von Wizzlepig TO TaxCut

I see.

If I have used your system before I have to create a new account in
order to file for free.

What I want is the link to the spot where I am told this specific
information on your website or on the IRS website.

Their site says: "Before selecting a company link, review the tax
software company's criteria to confirm that you meet their eligibility
for preparing and e-filing your federal return for free."

Your link on their site says: "Free federal online tax preparation and
e-file if your adjusted gross income is $52,000 or less and you are
age 50 or under."

In the informational text on the page which comes up after the "start
my free file return" link on the page I am taken to, which contains a
login for a returning user: "If you completed this program last year
and you remember your username and password, sign in as a returning
user."

Would you agree that your program is currently quite misleading? I
have not been able to locate a spot where I am told to create a new
account- I have to write and ask. Why is that?

Thanks,

-Will

/////////////

TaxCut Online Support to me

Thank you for contacting H&R Block TaxCut Online Technical Support.

We appreciate your comments and always value the feedback we receive from our customers. Your comments will be forwarded to the appropriate department, and taken into consideration as we work to develop next year's programs.


If you have further questions or concerns, please reply to this e-mail. H&R Block values you as a TaxCut customer and we look forward to serving as your tax and financial partner in the future.

Sincerely,
H&R Block TaxCut Online Technical Support Team

///////////////////////

Will Von Wizzlepig TO TaxCut

Awesome, I've been given the "thanks we're done with you now" message.

Well, I am contacting the IRS website to report your misleading
behavior, and I will be adding on to my weblog concerning this matter,
so that people can find out what you're up to.

So you might want to get around to fixing that. I ought to bill you
for my services. Is there an address I can send an invoice to?

-W

///////////////////

TaxCut Online Support to me

Thank you for contacting H&R Block TaxCut Online Technical Support.

Mr. Wizzlepig, I do apologize for any inconvenience you may have incurred in filing your taxes this year. Also, it is not our intentions to make you feel as tho "thanks we are done with you now". We value you as a customer and wish to provide your with as much technical support as possible. Again, we do apologize for your inconvenience.

If you have further questions or concerns, please reply to this e-mail. H&R Block values you as a TaxCut customer and we look forward to serving as your tax and financial partner in the future.

Sincerely,
H&R Block TaxCut Online Technical Support Team

/////////////////////////

Will Von Wizzlepig TO TaxCut

Oh, don't get me wrong- I've worked in tech support. I know you are
actually trying to help me. I also know the people in tech support are
not the problem, it's a pointy-haired boss somewhere else in the
company.

However, my point is that, for a returning user, there is no free file
unless they write and ask for help or GUESS and set up a new account.
The effective end result? H&R hoping: well, if they can't ask for
help, they should just pay for it.

And that's not cool. There's not a peep about that anywhere in your
help or documentation, in fact, you're told to log in if you already
have an account.

So.

I'm fine with my own situation, and I am actually pretty impressed
with the response from your support department. Support, though, is in
many cases just a clever PR move.

The fact that the 'free file' link is not fixed, right now, for the
peak tax season- that's why I am making a stink, and will continue to.
People have enough frustration with their taxes as it is, and from the
biggest name in the market, H&R Block, I don't feel even the slightest
bit of hesitation to hold you to a higher standard than, say, K-Mart
Tax Services.


-W

//////////////////////

TaxCut Online Support to me

Thank you for contacting H&R Block TaxCut Online Technical Support.

Again, we do apologize for the inconvenience this matter may have caused you. We are experiencing some glitches with the link. We are providing you with key code to cover the mistaken charge. If you are filing a state return, please know that you will be charged $24.95 for the preparation fees.

Key Code XXXXXXXXXX
Amount $9.95

If you have further questions or concerns, please reply to this e-mail. H&R Block values you as a TaxCut customer and we look forward to serving as your tax and financial partner in the future.

Sincerely,
H&R Block TaxCut Online Technical Support Team