It Could Be Worse

I could have worked for a company that used Axium for its payroll services, since they just declared Chapter 7, leaving many creditors (including the IRS) with questions about where all the money went.

Defamer has been covering the whole mess pretty well (with "Rhymes With Shmembezzelment" being one of my favorite tags they've ever used), but the story's barely made a ripple with most of the local media.

Pseudonymous blogger Peggy Archer, who's a lighting tech and way better at explaining this stuff to non-entertainment-industry people than I am, explains both what payroll companies are in Hollywood:

For tax and unemployment insurance purposes, when we work, we are technically employees of the payroll company instead of the production company. This is not a bad thing - it cuts down on the tax-season paperwork (16 W 2 forms instead of 138) and reduces instances of in-house rubber checkitis (back in the bad old days of tiny shows run by fly-by-night production companies, one would pick up one’s check at the office and then drive like a bat out of hell to the production company’s bank to cash it while there were hopefully still funds in the account. When everyone started using payroll companies, the checks, when they eventually arrived, were usually good).

...and the worst case scenario:

...although the taxes were deducted from my checks, as of right now there’s no way to know if I fall into the happy group who had the deducted monies actually paid to the gub’mint. Since I doubt the IRS cares that I had the money deducted, they’ll probably make me pay twice.

‘Cause that’s how the IRS rolls.

As fucked as I am being unemployed, I'd be super-duper fucked if I had to somehow magically come up with my taxes twice because some douchebag embezzled all the money from the payroll company that was supposed to KEEP me from getting fucked.

My deepest sympathy goes out to Peggy (or whatever her real name is) and everyone else in this town who's about to have a real pleasant tax season because of these schmucks.

Oops!

If you thought the incidents where various American companies lost laptops with 300,000 or 400,000 people's financial information were bad, then be very thankful you don't live in Britain.

Eep

I will worship whatever god or gods I need to, I will even sacrifice a goat on the tarmac if need be, but I really hope that what's been happening in Indonesia over the last few days doesn't happen in L.A. while I'm still alive to have it scare the shit out of me.

Reading the list of Ricther scale measurements is like looking at a gymnastics score: 8.4, 7.8, 8.1, 6.2... TEN aftershocks between 5 and 6 on top of all that.

Seriously, yikes.

Department of Explanations

Usually it's somewhat reassuring to see behaviors of yours replicated in various studies, so you know you're not alone.

In this case, however, it's a bit depressing.

Way Ahead of You

No need for anyone to send me this story about what I can only imagine is Chaplin's long-lost brother.

The detail that it was a black and white cat was not lost on me.

I Am Turning Into My Mother

I love my mom, but one of her odder habits is that she hums Christmas carols. Like, 365 days a year. And not even the whole tune, but one phrase, over and over and over again (specifically the title phrase of "Walkin' in a Winter Wonderland").

I'm not even sure she's aware she's doing it, and this is where my troubles come in.

I'm up to my eyeballs in Christmas crap for work (*cough* back at 9pm tuesdays after baseball! *cough*) right now, and it is seeping into every corner of my brain.

While finally cleaning out my overflowing inbox, I started singing to myself. And it was only when I got an entire verse in, I realized what I was singing.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know
Where those treetops glisten
And children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow...

And then I put my head down on my desk and said softly, "Oh dear god, it's starting."

Signs That Perhaps I Watch Too Much Television

I had to create a spreadsheet, with the aid of the Futon Critic's schedule, to figure out which TiVo to use to record which show for the upcoming fall season.

While doing that, I determined that, if I permanently add every show I'm trying out, I will be recording 25.5 hours of television a WEEK.

That figure is only in primetime and does not count the 4 hours a week of Daily Show and Colbert Report I always watch. Oddly, there is not one show I will be recording on either Friday or Saturday.

Thankfully, I will probably not watch entire seasons of at least some of the shows that I'm trying out, either because they get cancelled or I determine they suck.

For the curious, here's the list of new shows I'm giving at least one shot to, in the rough order of day/time they're airing:

- Heroes
- Vanished
- Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
- Friday Night Lights
- Knights of Prosperity
- Standoff
- Smith
- 20 Good Years
- 30 Rock
- Justice
- The Nine
- Ugly Betty
- Six Degrees
- Brothers and Sisters

I'm also probably going to track down Shark, but I've already assigned both TiVos when it airs, so I might have to use slightly more nefarious methods.

Having mapped all this out, I now understand why, precisely, I have no life.

Just Thinking About This Story Gives Me The Willies

Not that there was much danger of it to begin with, but I am not going anywhere NEAR Alabama anytime soon.