Today’s deck is the Nova Witch Tarot.
My only complaint is the size, I’ve said it before but the reason “tarot size” is long but narrow is that it’s more comfortable on the hands compared to “playing card but x3”.
Today’s reading has an interesting message of “lack of cooperation will result in overspending”, kinda like “imagine all the money you could save if you had extra hands to help” or something like that.
It reminds me of a Venezuelan idiom: “Flojo trabaja doble” or “A lazy person works twice as much”, which… doesn’t roll off the tongue as well, especially compared to the theoretical (as in I just came up with it) Japanese 怠け者台無しもの.
Today’s title comes from the main thing I had to work on today.
So to simplify a daisy chain of annoyances and convoluted matters: Our company here in Japan gets its funds from our main company without being a subsidiary. You might be wondering why or how but here’s the thing: I’m not drunk enough to talk about financial matters beyond “We do this”.
It’s all above board stuff, though. It has to be when TWO banks in TWO different countries are involved and I gotta report to an accountant.
Anyway, the funds transfer that would’ve taken place around December was delayed because it was the end of the year and then bounced, so there was a hiccup in the flow of cash.
I decided while things were sorted out to prioritize employee salaries and leave company payments that CAN wait like the pension fund and such until later.
So between delaying that until the money came in and getting absorbed in other matters I had a “Very Urgent Please Open” letter going “You haven’t paid in months, if you don’t we’ll have to take action”, which made me go “Oh right…”.
Thankfully it’s all stuff that’s accounted for in the finances, the only difference is that I paid it all at once instead of paying it once per month… and yeah, the amount was a couple of bills short of one million yen.
For those concerned, by the way, everything’s fine, it was more a case in the end of the money being gated, we’re not anywhere near any pinch. Despite all the weird purchases I talk about I consider myself very financially responsible. I have to be, I have employees and a family that depend on me being responsible.
Also, for the haters: We’re nowhere near any pinch, get fucked.
Anyway, the reason why I wanted to talk about this despite the fact that as mentioned I need to be drunk to start rambling about finances and taxes, is that “Very important, please open” envelope.
That envelope means nothing.
They’ve made it mean nothing.
I get like 5 of those and they’re only ever actually important every other month, the rest of the time I open them and it’s the gas company going “hey handsome, don’t you wanna be cool and defer your payments to your bank account instead?”.
Even the supposed urgency of “please pay or we’ll take action” feels kinda blunted as a result, it’s so weird.
The post office staff did actually hit me with the 久しぶり ’cause as the whole situation clearly paints: It had been a while since I last visited.
Love to feel like a local not gonna lie.
Oh yeah, I pay at the post office, that’s also where my personal bank account in the country is. super convenient stuff.
After that bit of adulting I had to wait for the psychiatrist to open and see if I could reschedule, so I went to the Volks shop and left them new photos for their doll mural.
I also dropped by the Games Workshop shop to pick up some preorders and now I had way too much and had to make a pit stop at home.
After that I haul my ass back out and… it was closed today.
Oh well, I got groceries on my way back and I sent them an email. I might call them or try again tomorrow, but this raises the chances they see the message before then so…
All the while I was running around I actually finished the book I mentioned yesterday, The Guns of John Moses Browning.
The most fascinating bit about it is just the idea John Moses Browning and many of his era had of war being something that you could help by making it so effective people won’t wanna fight. The man reportedly wanted to make guns so good that they would dissuade people from wanting to be faced with a gun.
It’s very Gundam Wing, where Zechs had his whole plan about making a war so nasty that people won’t wanna do warfare ever again. Revisiting Wing as an adult is fascinating in the sense that Zechs is painted as a man from the wrong era, trying to apply a romanticism that doesn’t have a place in the current environment.
Incidentally, just like how Gundam Wing shows the folly of such a concept with things like soldiers that cannot go back to normal life or the inevitable escalation of war, the book has a very sobering closing chapter where it talks about WW2, which is relevant because Browning died before that war and before then the book traces other conflicts like WW1 and the Philippine–American War.
And the stories picked for WW2 are just such an escalation of nastiness compared to the already nasty stories told before then.
Incidentally the book closes with the story of Audie Murphy and I’m there like “this sounds like Sabaton’s To Hell And Back, somehow…”.
Gee, I wonder why.