Hey, if someone looks really pissed off, a really good way to piss them off even futher is to come up to them and say, "are you okay? Is everything all right? Is there anything I can do to help?"
Just leave them the fuck alone, asshole. You're not the fucking pope. Who the fuck do you think you are, that you have all the magic fucking answers that they must be missing? On top of that, why the fuck does everyone think that 'talking it through' is the answer to all the world's problems? Oh fantastic, I've been able to express how I feel! Why, having you tell me that "everything's going to be okay, I just know it" has suddenly dug me out of debt, got me the perfect job, and cleaned up everything that's wrong with the world.
Unless you're fucking Jesus, eat shit. I'm competent enough to fix my own fucking problems, I don't need your fucking charity.
20080729
20080722
Move back to the trailer
Hey there, guy who bought his house at eighteen. We had a little chat about ten years ago, and I just wanted to revisit that discourse, see how it went. You see, when I hadn't even started college yet, a lot of my friends were already buying houses. They couldn't afford them, mind you; they were just buying them. Viva la difference.
You see, out of the two of us, myself and this group of trailer trash hosers (for the sake of readability, we'll refer to the demographic collectively as "Jake"), I was really the more responsible spender. Even at that, though, I still proved incapable of managing a $10,000 debt. See, ten thousand dollars seems like a pretty piddly amount of money to an eighteen-year-old. I used to do official surveys of college students, and whenever I asked how much they expected to make right out of college, most of them said "well, obviously I expect at least $60,000 to start, but I expect to be into six figures soon enough." Oh really, and what's your major? "French Humanities." Good luck, kid.
They also miss another pretty important point. Even if you do have a job paying sixty thousand dollars, you don't get to keep all of it. To be generous, let's say every month you spend $100 on food, $300 on healthcare, $150 on bills, $50 on student loan payback, and 30% on taxes. If you're earning $40K a year (i.e. what I make now after 10 years experience and a college degree) and you have no credit card debt to pay off, that leaves you with about $1700 a month to spend on housing and everything else in existence (toothpaste, couches, porn, etc.). That's still a decent amount of bread. So let's cut to my conversation with "Jake" from ten years ago.
With my money, I spend $775 a month for a downtown apartment in Portland and $500 a month on paying off debt (though no student loans). My overhead is actually significantly higher than what I stated before, but let's say that leaves me with about $400 a month to spend on everything else. That's really not too bad. But here's what Jake dwells on— he considers that $775 a month to be "throwing away my money." That was the catch phrase at the beginning of this century. I heard it everywhere– on TV, from friends, in restaurant discussions. Why are you throwing your money away on rent to some landlord?
Well, here's one: my landlord pays for busted water mains, unlike my mom, who was hit with a $6000 bill the first month she bought her $250,000 house. Second, I can move at any time, and do, because I have no responsibility to find someone else to occupy my house, unlike many of the Jakes' parents, who tried selling their homes in the late nineties when people just weren't buying. They would buy a new house, and put their old one up for sale, only to be unable to sell the old house. One set of parents ended up selling their house at a loss, while another set had to move back into their old house, and lost tens of thousands of dollars for reneging on the new purchase. Third, I don't want to throw my money away on interest payments. Even after a solid down payment, you're dealing with a bill of $2,000 a month on a house in Portland. Even in smaller towns you'll be paying at least a thousand. Taken out of that thousand is interest payments on a $150,000 debt. I don't know the exact math, but that comes out to about 600-700 dollars a month. The only intelligent way to buy a house is by making double payments, which I can't afford.
Ahhhhhhhh, what were those magical words? I can't afford to buy a house. Thaaaaaat's the step we're missing. I have to save up just to buy furniture, so why is it presumed that I can buy an entire fucking house!? Well, I can't. And neither can the Jakes of the world. That doesn't stop them though. Not because they REALLY believe that they're throwing their money away on a house, but because they are deluded into thinking that they can just possess a house and everything else just works out.
Well it DIDN'T.
Suddenly, to nobody's surprise, we hit the subprime mortgage crisis. Oh really? So you're telling me that lending HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS to people who can't even afford an iPod is a bad business move? Tell me more. I'm fascinated. I am SOOOOOO shocked. So while I've been "throwing my money away" on eight years of rent payments, with no debt to speak of, having lived on a college campus, an affluent neighborhood (I lived three blocks away from Paul Revere of The Raiders), a liberal paradise, a church property, a kooky inside-out castle with two balconies, and a downtown historical apartment with a view of the Fremont Bridge, and once October rolls around, I can just get up and move somewhere else, the Jakes have been stuck in one place, fixing up their homes, trying to make ends meet, and FAILING, resulting in foreclosures and auctions, taking losses of tens of thousands of dollars that they don't have, because they were naive to think that I was the one making a stupid business decision.
So, anyway, here's my the question, not just to the Jakes, but to their lenders, the financial giants who provided the money, and the realtors who closed the deal:
WHY THE FUCK ARE WE BAILING YOU OUT?
Government support is for people who were failed by the system. You're just white fucking trash. The only lesson there is for you to learn is that you can continue taking more than you can afford, then giving up and leaving us with the bill. I made all the right decisions, and now I'm stuck paying your bill? Fuck you. I don't have a single drop of sympathy for any of you shitheads. you know who I have sympathy for? The Mexicans in Hillsboro, with eight per apartment living in secret because their lease only allows for four, pitching in on a $600 rent because $75 a month is all they can afford. You fuckers are white, spoiled little shits, and now the Government is cleaning up your mess with my money. Fuck you. The subprime "crisis" is not a tragedy. It's punishment, and now daddy is going soft on you because of all your fucking whining. Well, don't expect me to care. You know how you could have avoided this "crisis?" Rent a fucking apartment.
20080718
It's an indicator of morale
when one of the senior team members gazes longingly out of the window and says to me, "I think I'll become a window washer."
I say, "are you fond of heights?" He looks at me with a terrified look in his eyes and replies, "not at all. But I'm not really fond of what I do here, either. It'd be something... different." He sighs, and walks out of the office.
I say, "are you fond of heights?" He looks at me with a terrified look in his eyes and replies, "not at all. But I'm not really fond of what I do here, either. It'd be something... different." He sighs, and walks out of the office.
20080717
No Honor Among Thieves
When I was fifteen I was a fairly habitual shoplifter, and had been doing it for years. I wasn't so much a thief as I was fascinated that I could just walk out with something and completely violate the agreement that I would pay for it. Then I got stopped by security. A man had reported that he saw me pocket something and they wanted to check my pockets. I had a jumbo candy bar in my left pants pocket, but I just looked at the security guard with a confused look and said, "what do you mean by 'pocket' something?" He explained that he meant "steal," and I just glared at him like the concept was completely foreign to me.
I shrugged and told him that I respected his job and encouraged him to check all my pockets, as was his responsibility to keep the store safe. I gave him my jacket, and as he rifled through the pockets, the man who accused me of stealing kept his eye on me. While the man watched me, I calmly slid the candy bar out of my pocket, into my sleeve, and into the band of my jeans. I then pulled out my front pockets and showed him my sleeves. He asked to pat me down, so I slipped the bar of candy into my sleeve and held up my arms. He patted me down, apologized, and let me go, and I vowed to never steal again... it was just too easy for me to get away with it, and I knew I was heading down the slippery slope into a criminal lifestyle, which it seemed I would have been very successful at living.
In April, I made a boneheaded mistake at work and ended up costing someone hundreds of dollars. I prolonged the situation for months, and now our client is outraged that they were cheated out of money they earned. I made no conscious effort to screw them out of their money, and I profit in no way from it, but that didn't mean I wasn't responsible. I went straight back to the client and said nothing could be done about it, which was true, but of course they still wanted someone to blame. I explained the situation in full fact to both my supervisor and the client and at no point making any effort to defend myself, yet both of them are now walking away thanking me for going to such great lengths to try and make everything go right, and for helping them fix the mistake that they are now convinced I had nothing to do with.
Not once did I lie, I omitted no facts, and yet I have again been absolved of all responsibility for something I unequivocably made happen, and once again, I'm walking out of the store scot-free with the candy bar still in my pocket.
It's not always a good feeling to succeed.
I shrugged and told him that I respected his job and encouraged him to check all my pockets, as was his responsibility to keep the store safe. I gave him my jacket, and as he rifled through the pockets, the man who accused me of stealing kept his eye on me. While the man watched me, I calmly slid the candy bar out of my pocket, into my sleeve, and into the band of my jeans. I then pulled out my front pockets and showed him my sleeves. He asked to pat me down, so I slipped the bar of candy into my sleeve and held up my arms. He patted me down, apologized, and let me go, and I vowed to never steal again... it was just too easy for me to get away with it, and I knew I was heading down the slippery slope into a criminal lifestyle, which it seemed I would have been very successful at living.
In April, I made a boneheaded mistake at work and ended up costing someone hundreds of dollars. I prolonged the situation for months, and now our client is outraged that they were cheated out of money they earned. I made no conscious effort to screw them out of their money, and I profit in no way from it, but that didn't mean I wasn't responsible. I went straight back to the client and said nothing could be done about it, which was true, but of course they still wanted someone to blame. I explained the situation in full fact to both my supervisor and the client and at no point making any effort to defend myself, yet both of them are now walking away thanking me for going to such great lengths to try and make everything go right, and for helping them fix the mistake that they are now convinced I had nothing to do with.
Not once did I lie, I omitted no facts, and yet I have again been absolved of all responsibility for something I unequivocably made happen, and once again, I'm walking out of the store scot-free with the candy bar still in my pocket.
It's not always a good feeling to succeed.
20080714
20080707
God Help Us All
The "Alternative" genre is now "Adult Alternative" and includes such acts as John Mayer, Jack Johnson, and Lifehouse. Am I the only 29 year-old in this country who hasn't already turned 40? Are they afraid that they're going to get a high blood pressure from listening to musicians who aren't on Oxycotin and Valium?
20080702
I spoke with God today
There's a preacher out today. He was going on about how we were all sinners, waving his bible and telling us how we're all going to hell, blah blah blah, so I just sit out there smoking a cigarette and wait for him to get to the part where his church wants our money. Sure enough, suddenly he says, "you can get to heaven, but you can't get there alone. Man can help you. Are you a private believer? Are you someone who says he believes in Jesus at night, but doesn't act upon it in public? You must show your faith before man!"
Sweet macrame, he couldn't have set it up more perfectly. I shout out, "what about Matthew 12?" He stops and looks at me. He says, "I'm not familiar with..."
"Matthew 12. You've got your book on you, look it up." "We'll talk later," he says, and starts up his spiel. "Talk later? Then what are you telling us? Are you speaking for God or for your church? What about Matthew 6?" He just starts talking right over the top of me.
Then, this girl with a shirt from his church on comes up to me and asks, "what were you saying about Matthew 6?" I reply, "well, are you familiar with Matthew 6?" "Sure," she says, "the Lord's Prayer."
"Right, where it says Our Father, who art in heaven, all that. Well, have you read just before it?"
"No, what does it say?"
"It's a part with Jesus talking to his followers, they're asking about church—well, synagogue—and he says... well, God says..." and then I completely blanked on the passage. So I say (verbatim), "Oh, God, what is that passage?... Oh! 'Speak not before man, as the heathens do, but speak privately at night with your father in a manner such as this.' Then he recites the Lord's Prayer, but it's a paraphrase, not to be recited in church. It actually says specifically in the Bible, do not pray before man, but pray privately to God, at night. It's the exact opposite of what this guy is telling us."
She just stares at me for a long time. Finally, she just says, "thank you," stands up, and leaves the square completely, while her church mates are still busy trying to recruit people.
Sweet macrame, he couldn't have set it up more perfectly. I shout out, "what about Matthew 12?" He stops and looks at me. He says, "I'm not familiar with..."
"Matthew 12. You've got your book on you, look it up." "We'll talk later," he says, and starts up his spiel. "Talk later? Then what are you telling us? Are you speaking for God or for your church? What about Matthew 6?" He just starts talking right over the top of me.
Then, this girl with a shirt from his church on comes up to me and asks, "what were you saying about Matthew 6?" I reply, "well, are you familiar with Matthew 6?" "Sure," she says, "the Lord's Prayer."
"Right, where it says Our Father, who art in heaven, all that. Well, have you read just before it?"
"No, what does it say?"
"It's a part with Jesus talking to his followers, they're asking about church—well, synagogue—and he says... well, God says..." and then I completely blanked on the passage. So I say (verbatim), "Oh, God, what is that passage?... Oh! 'Speak not before man, as the heathens do, but speak privately at night with your father in a manner such as this.' Then he recites the Lord's Prayer, but it's a paraphrase, not to be recited in church. It actually says specifically in the Bible, do not pray before man, but pray privately to God, at night. It's the exact opposite of what this guy is telling us."
She just stares at me for a long time. Finally, she just says, "thank you," stands up, and leaves the square completely, while her church mates are still busy trying to recruit people.
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