Handful of people asked about the Bookend book. It is now available for purchase at IndyPlanet.com. If you buy it, please contact us at encrew@exterminatusnow.co.uk and let us know what you think.

In order to set this up, I had to provide some foreign tax information to the IRS. The form has been sitting open in a tab for a week and a half before I filled it, and I’m still not sure it’s right. I am beyond caring.

I fucking hate legalese. Despise it. It makes me uncharacteristically angry like few other things can. Now I am not an unintelligent person. I am at least familiar, if not deeply educated, on a wide range of subjects, grasp new ideas quickly, literate well above average, and just generally a smart-arse. I could have a casual conversation with a neuroscientist, or an astrophysicist, or a quantum physicist, and just about hold my own and take away something of worth. But anything to do with legal matters or tax or finance, my eyes glaze over and I stop absorbing the words halfway through the paragraph. Many fields of science can be complicated and hard to follow, but it is always fascinating and elegant and beautiful. On the other hand, legal-speak is intentionally designed to be as impenetrable and obfuscated as possible so average people need a fucking overpaid translator to turn it into something that makes sense to someone who’s not a raging bellend. SCIENCE IS HARD BECAUSE THE UNIVERSE IS COMPLICATED. BUSINESS IS HARD BECAUSE CONNIVING MOTHERFUCKERS INTENTIONALLY MADE IT THAT WAY TO TRICK YOU OUT OF YOUR TIME AND MONEY.

Here is the instruction for Line 1 – Name:

Enter your name. If you are a foreign individual
who is the single owner of a disregarded entity that is not
claiming treaty benefits as a hybrid entity, with respect to
a payment, you should complete this form with your name
and information. If the account to which a payment is
made or credited is in the name of the disregarded entity,
you should inform the withholding agent of this fact. This
may be done by including the name and account number
of the disregarded entity on line 7 (reference number) of
the form. However, if the disregarded entity is claiming
treaty benefits as a hybrid entity, it should complete Form
W-8BEN-E instead of this Form W-8BEN.

That is for your name. Whichever twisted facsimile of a human being wrote this, fuck yourself. Take a sizable potted cactus, embed it with razor blades and used syringes, and ram it savagely and repeatedly into your into your person. I’ll even let you pick which orifice! But do it. For you are a monster and the world would be a better place without you in it.

Well, that was incredibly frustrating.

Oh hey. Long time no see. What have you been up to? Me, I was working on a thing for a thing. Took longer than I thought. And cost more than I hoped, and I still don’t know if I’ll get them in time. But I’m looking forward to seeing EN in print at last, if only one short story.