Instead, I quickly found myself on an unlit, half-paved drive, surrounded by overgrown brush. The drive narrowed as I crested a small rise—only to find myself at the edge of a vast expanse of muddy gravel. S. 14th Street, it seems, currently dead-ends in a vacant lot behind a currently under-construction Walgreens. The only way out, since S. 14th is a one-way street, appeared to be driving toward the already-constructed parking lot. I drove slowly across the gravel, headed for the parking lot—only to find myself stuck in the mud right next to what turned out to be a curb. After a series of fits and starts, I finally got my car unstuck—and came down with a big crunch on the other side of the curb.

Hyperventilating, I parked next to the building, where the light was better, and got out to check the car. Nothing creaked or popped or looked obviously broken, so after moving a traffic barrel to secure safe passage out of the lot, I made my way home on I-44.

Tomorrow, Alderwoman Phyllis Young is going to be hearing from me. I can't believe they don't have that street blocked off.

Edit 1: I moved my car the following morning and checked the street where I'd been parked, and saw several fresh oil spots. I took a flashlight and peered under the car, and it looked like the plastic housing over the oil-filter area had come partially dislodged. I couldn't see anything else that looked obviously damaged, but it was clear a visit to Dobbs was in my future. Thanks, Ward 7 and Koman Properties!

Edit 2: Read my letter to Alderwoman Young (which I addressed to her and a small selection of others by certified mail) here.

Edit 3: Read a transcript of Alderwoman Young's response here.

Pro tip: When correcting someone else's work, get your facts right. There is no such car as a "SmartCar," at least not as named. In addition, even if the aforementioned SmartCar does exist, well, I'm not sure what style guide they're using over at the Telegraph, but I would guess that "20km" isn't proper. Also: The "when" beginning the phrase "when fleeing from the police" should be capitalized, as it begins a complete sentence.

"OK, that makes sense," I thought. But then I came to this quote from publisher Gregg Hano:

Oh. Yeah, that is a challenge. An unfortunate conundrum, if you will. [slaps forehead] Haven't these people ever heard of PayPal?!

I'm all for diversity of URL shorteners—that's one reason why I roll my own—but when 90 percent of a service's links never manage to load, well, I'm all for the inevitable evolutionary progress that follows.

In an odd burst of synchronicity, in fact, I just this afternoon found a scribbled Post-it note to myself from July 2:

But outrage makes careers these days. And it's a habituating drug—the more you read, the more it takes to create the same high. I can often tell when someone's been paying too much attention to the news by his or her overall agitation level.

This is also (one of the reasons) why editorial cartoonists are difficult to date.

After calling around to a few numbers in the Missouri capitol Friday, Mary Cottom of the Missouri Women's Council (who administers the state's Breast Cancer Awareness Fund, an entity completely separate from the Cervical Cancer Prevention Fund) was able to connect me with one Joel Allison at the Department of Revenue. After calling around a bit himself, Allison explained to me just what had happened.

It seems that a glitch occurred when I e-filed through TurboTax, and the $4 value entered on line 45 was lost or discarded. Thus when the return was processed, the system deduced that I had overpaid and summarily (er, four months later) cut me a check for the overage.

To remedy the situation, all I have to do is return my check to Allison (with a Post-it reminding him of where I would like the money to go) at the following address:

So if anyone else out there on the Internet happens to have this problem, that's the solution, and I'd suggest calling Allison at 573-757-5855 to give him a heads up—he said I was the first person he'd heard of this happening to, but if this is a genuine glitch in the system, I fear I may not be the only one. If so, it could be a major problem for this (and perhaps other) state trust funds.

To wrap things up, Allison checked with the website folks at the DoR about the trust fund listing. In his words: "I couldn't find any reason why it wouldn't be there." A day later, the Cervical Cancer Prevention Fund was listed.

The site still claims "There is a total of seventeen trust funds eligible for contributions on Missouri’s income tax returns," which is too low by three; in addition, the entire DHSS subdomain, including the Show Me Healthy Women site, seems to be down at the moment—but hey, we're making progress, neh?

Doing that was supposed to ensure two things:

1. That the total amount I paid in both federal and state taxes this year wouldn't end in three sixes, a.k.a. the Devil's number

2. That my additional $4 would end up in the hands of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services' Show Me Healthy Women Breast and Cervical Cancer Prevention Program

Apparently neither of those things happened, and I now have a completely unwanted check for $4 sitting on my desk.

When I called the number listed for the program in the MO-1040 instructions, I found that it had been disconnected. A call to the new number listed on the website went unanswered, though admittedly, I did call after-hours. More to the point, though, the trust fund is no longer listed on the Department of Revenue site.

I'm calling again tomorrow. I mean, seriously, WTF, Missouri? Did some wires get crossed? Was there a reorganization of some sort? Did the Breast and Cervical Cancer Prevention program lose its funding within the last three months?

I want some answers! I don't want this money.

So I wasn't wrong when I saw Goldman mentioned in this Boston Globe story Tuesday and immediately thought (and wrote in my delicious comments), "Goldman is involved with fucking everything—you see a disaster, and there they are."

Nice to know my instincts were telling me right on this one. Or at very least that my instincts are in line with Taibbi's.

It's all pretty spot-on, but of particular note to me so far, as it confirms some of my conjectures in this earlier post about the cultural differences between Facebook and Twitter, has been the section called "The Social Practices of Facebook." Writes Peterson:

Exactly.

Alas, when I clicked on the survey link, I found that they basically only wanted to know two things: my age range and my income bracket. That was it; end of survey. Could it simply have been a screening questionnaire?

If it turns out that it wasn't, and that that's all they want to know about me for all time, that would be unfortunate, as I'd appreciate the opportunity to tell them a thing or two about their publication. I figure they might want to know, for instance, that

1. They sent me the wrong selection of articles in Issue No. 1, which unfortunately included pieces from Travel + Leisure and GOLF in place of the requested ones from Food & Wine and Money. (Thankfully, this has since been corrected.)

2. My coworkers and I have been creeped out by the tone-deaf wording of some of the Lexus ads, including the back-cover ad on Issue No. 1 that stated, "The all-new 2010 RX. Now with more [your name]," as well as the advertising band around Issue No. 2 that claimed the issue to be "Inspired by someone we're both familiar with. You."

Um, clearly you're not that familiar with me, guys.