Recently Benito singled me out as not having written anything in a while. Of course I am actually interviewing people for a post good enough to sit on the blog for a solid 3 months which it seems is par for the course now that everyone is “occupying” or similarly indisposed. Oh wait, that’s just Benito. I’d love to hear everyone else’s excuse. But rather than rush my article or take Benito’s jab lying down I thought I’d comment on a recent ATL post about the Cardozo kid who was “homeless” for 9 weeks.

I am not going to rehash the obvious which is that this stupid kid wasn’t homeless in any real sense of the word. What I am going to say is that what he did is not only easy, but when taken in conjunction with M.I.T.’s new program could also be a part of the new future we are looking at.

Here me out.

Say Benito is right and M.I.T.’s solution actually takes hold. Education becomes cheaper, MUCH MUCH cheaper…around the price of room and board. A rational actor could choose in that situation to be…I’m sorry I can’t disrespect millions of Americans by continuing to use the word “homeless” let’s go with transient.

You’ ve got a food plan, facilities that are open close to all night, gyms with showers, common areas in dorms where you can crash, etc. Really only one thing suffers: your social life. And that just means you study more.

I did the math recently and figured that if I had started working at my food truck when I was in school and hadn’t borrowed money to live like I was a member of the middle class I would be almost debt-free today.

I spent the best Thanksgiving I’ve had in ages with the Occupiers.  People were very generous with food and I even had a few friends stop by.  Best of all there was no judgment and that suffocating feeling of failure that permeates your being as you feel all eyes around the table judging you each time you dip your eyes to the delicious meal before which suddenly you have no appetite for, even though you fasted for days in preparation.

I know posts have been light, virtually non-existent, but I think its important to be a part of what is actually happening in the streets all across the country.  As far as the blog goes, I am keeping the domain and PROMISE to check in more often to approve comments.  I am also opening this space to guest writers. Also remember, there are hundreds of posts here, and each one is part of the story of why we’re all out here. I’ve reviewed some old entries and 95% are just as relevant now as whenever they were written over the last two years.

So read the Ghost of Entries Past if you want to understand, or if you want assurance that you’re not alone.

…And I have been trying to resist the urge to write about it.  Part of it is because everyone with ten minutes worth of charge on their I-Phone here is blogging about it, and part of it is because of embarrassingly low page hits…I suppose together that would constitute most of it.  But there is another reason too.  I want to “experience” something.

I spent most of my life through school with distance, time, paper and a host of other obstacles between me and experiencing the reality where I spent my life.  Then I experienced something-losing my job and being unable to pay my student loans which in all honesty was hard enough even with a six-figure salary.  After that experience I spent the rest of my life up until now trying to write about that experience, particularly on this blog.  Whereas before I was reaching out to an intriguing reality that would always be behind a veil of secrets, now I am holding on to a painful reality kept fresh by picking scabs…all the while I miss the world around me.

Well no more.  Or at least not for awhile.  You can’t live in the moment and capture it for posterity at the same time.  Besides, posterity is always colored by ultimate outcome.  Right now I have no idea what that will be.  Or when I will start writing again more regularly.

I normally don’t participate in discourse of this sort unless there is an immediate and tangible benefit like taking an attractive young coed to bed. I need to work on my conservative asshole shpiel because I had a misfire with a girl I chose because I didn’t have the energy to compete for her more attractive cousin. In reality I just don’t care.

Ok, I make no secret of the fact that if I want something I get it. Alcohol, cars, electronics, travel, premium housing, the latest trends and newest sports equipment…only the best for yours truly, and I have a crushing debt load. I also make no secret of the fact that paying my loans is my absolute lowest priority. I have told stories about gambling with my loan balance for a month just to prove a point. That point is paying my loans is like letting the Princess sleep in the bed after I have defiled her (if she is indeed still capable of being defiled) just because I usually do it doesn’t mean I have to and I am the one in control.

So if my loans magically evaporated I wouldn’t necessarily spend more money. I might, over time, carry a lower credit card balance. Eh.

But this is one of the rare times when it’s not all about me. Let’s take my polar opposite in every way: Benito. When Benito was working he dutifully saved his money, denied himself most extravagancies, and when he got canned he had saved just enough to pay off my buddy’s share of the rent and mine since my buddy ripped me off before we left. I gave him a cold offer to stay with the Princess and I – took him three nights to figure out the key I gave him didn’t work and it wasn’t an accident.

Anyway, a working Benito is just going to save that money. Benito in his current state either isn’t paying his loans or is committing sexual misdemeanors to do it which he would presumably stop if the immediate need to whore himself suddenly evaporated.  Net effect on the economy = zero.

But that doesn’t mean it won’t get done. We’ve got gays in the military and at the alter, we have pan handlers and servant’s children getting medical care, and we STILL have old people getting a check for doing all that they do…causing traffic jams at 2 pm, paying for groceries with pennies, lying about potential inheritances, exaggerating ailments and getting other special treatment like parking and movie discounts.

Just like everyone hates old people and hates black people who went to a private college, public college in the south, UCLA or Michigan soon everyone will hate former student debtors and everyone and their mother will say “I got into Harvard but didn’t want to take out the loans” and just like with Social Security and Affirmative Action Joe Everyman will eventually convince himself that he would have gone to Harvard if he’d known…just like old people make him poor and blacks keep him out of school.

What I want is a tax break. Why? Because taxes are automatically deducted from my check. I won’t spend more when this happens either but a bigger check will make me feel like a bigger man.

Ugh. I feel like I am the only person who still posts around here. That is one of the problems with a blog like this – everyone thinks someone else will pick up the slack. But on to the point at hand.

When you’re black one of the difficult things about dealing with non-black people (Asians, South Asians and “mixed” people are also notorious for this) is figuring out which ones are sheltered/ignorant/slow and which ones purposefully propagate falsehoods in order to serve their own self-interest.

Take the Internet meme where the black woman thinks she doesn’t have to pay her mortgage because Obama is President. The first non-black thinks this is a representation of a large percentage of blacks. The second circulates it to perpetuate that type of nonsense and add to the plethora of material non-black children are exposed to in order to condition them to think that black = inferior. After all, the schools have been almost desegregated for almost a generation now and look who is in the White House?

But I digress. Drum roll please…the reason black unemployment is still so high is discrimination. Yes! Believe it or not folks holding all other factors from education to industry constant there is a much higher unemployment index for blacks and it’s discrimination.

But Alpha Man, shouldn’t a black President help, just a little?

No! Here’s why. All major progress with respect to race has with it a brutal backlash. After the Civil War we saw the rise of the KKK. After Civil Rights we saw the rise of Southern Republicanism and after Barack Obama we have the Tea Party. Also, more than ever white people feel threatened, like maybe after 500 years the get out of jail free card that is being white has finally expired and that is causing them to hold onto what is theirs like never before.

There is also another issue here. A lot of white (as opposed to non-black because only white men once owned slaves here) men are threatened by this tall, handsome black President…whose mother happened to be white and whose beautiful wife happens to be black. See, it used to be the white man who had both a black family and a white family. But here this man is with both and he didn’t have to be a rapist to get it and all of his children are with the same woman. For historical reasons this bothers a lot of white men (to be fair I met an Indian guy who had the same problem). If you ever meet a guy who will at once trash Obama for being black and then in the next breath say he’s not really black because his mother raised him and she was white, then you have met someone with the hang up by just described. A lot of these men unfortunately make hiring decisions and THIS phenomenon explains why black male employment is lower than black female employment.

The point is to change our culture. Because after countless articles in real newspapers nobody cares who isn’t directly affected. Here is the thing most people don’t care about other people’s problems. I mean if we’re honest with ourselves we don’t REALLY even care about stuff we pretend to like veterans, children and animals. So we have quite a job on our hands.

First I mean did people ever care? I mean REALLY care? Yes. Once upon a time. Back in the day, during the Depression, when a family in the neighborhood got evicted the neighbors would break the locks on the old house and carry their furniture and other belongings back in. A lot of times the family got to stay in their homes.

Unfortunately as a (former) lawyer I know that possession is 9 tenths of the law. I also know my non-existent friends can’t help me take back my life because it’s not a physical house it’s an “education.”

Ok, so what would an equivalent story be? How about this – imagine if a determined group of individuals, some student debtors and others not literally occupied the schools and disrupted classes until the schools paid off the debt?

Yes, pay it off. They can’t forgive it because the lending institutions hold it and if we went there we would be arrested or shot.

Yeah. We are a long way away. Perhaps we are not even closer.

Ok, I’m sorry but I am too good for this. It felt good being “normal” after turning my back on the law (education wise then quitting my job as a paralegal) and doing normal shit like leaving a bar at 11 pm and having co-worker friends I neither love nor hate. But I just can’t work for Olla, my bitch manager with an Associate’s degree who is a year younger than me and has three kids (which we fucking talks about all the time like I give a damn the goofy looking titty parasite rolled over at three months).

I realized I hated her when I caught myself fantasizing about killing her during a presentation I was giving and my remarks deviated from reality to fantasy. Of course nobody noticed because nobody was fucking listening but that is neither here nor there.

Now there are many reasons I could hate her (did I mention the kid thing?) the lack of education, the amazing luck she’s had during her career, the condescending way she talks to subordinates (kind of like we are her children) the way she bitches when she’s at the office past 6 because she runs the risk of missing her kid’s bedtime and the way she owns a sporty little convertible that costs three times the amount of a mini-van yet complains that not all her kids fit in it. Oh and of course I could do her job much better than she can.

But here is the reason I can’t work for her. She thinks I am stupid. Not despite my education but because of it, and she doesn’t even know about the year I spent in law school. She views my education as compensating for something that she was just born with – like four year college degree was special Ed or something like that. She always asks the same question with her eyes “why did you go to school for twice as long for three times the cost per year to make less than a third of what I make? Don’t you like money?”

This isn’t going to work. I would rather be unemployed than deal with this garbage. The only question is whether to quit and live like Benito or do the unthinkable – double down on education FULL TIME.

Doctor beats Lawyer. I-banker beats Doctor…Lawyer beats I-banker. Wait! Here me out. What do the best I-bankers do? That’s right, white collar crime – Madoff! Madoff! And they either go to jail, or worse, chicken out with money still on the table, never knowing if they have the hottest chick, fastest car or biggest house money can buy. If you’re going to play the game like that please just go live in your mother’s basement and learn to make cucumber sandwiches and Sangria for your mother’s book club.

Ok so what about doctors? They’re chumps. I mean in theory being a doctor should be the highest paying job in the world because what’s more important than human life?

Ha! Human life. It takes doctors until they are well into their thirties to realize that we as a human society don’t value human life for shit. That’s why people in the third world die of shut we cured a hundred years ago while the best and brightest researchers are trying to figure how to regrow hair and prolong erections.

So we come to lawyers. Traditionally they are at the bottom of the professional pyramid…but when was the last time you saw a lawyer go to jail simply for knowingly and repeatedly breaking the law and then getting caught? I can’t think of one either, and as it turns out a of illegal activity is extremely profitable and easy.

Like with the great scam I can’t go into too much detail about the shit I have pulled but I can let you know enough to get some of you out there thinking of ways you too can be as cool and financially awesome as me.

Now in addition to being an attorney I am also an actor and musician. Actors and musicians have certain common attributes including being lazy and good looking. They also tend to commit crimes and know career criminals that is to say individuals who draw their lively hood from breaking the law.

There’s more to it than just drugs though that is number 1. Stolen and counterfeit merchandise is huge. Number 2 is the large, difficult to classify area of grifting and scams.

So now you are probably wondering where is your cut and what do you have to do to get it? First if you are still thinking about representing these criminals you’re fired. That’s alot of work (which you don’t know how to do because you have been in Big Law all this time) and it’s not nearly as lucrative. What you DO know how to do is look busy, turn people on each other and disappear when the shit hits the fan.

I had some friends who were in the…companionship game let’s say. I discovered what they were doing, went to a few meetings, collected some money and when we all got arrested I walked out of the station in 10 minutes after I said I was just there because they were considering retaining me as their attorney.

Now there is one catch. Usually these people require some kind of leverage on you in order to trust you. In my case I allowed myself to be filmed with one of their under-aged employees. Of course there is no reason for them to ever sell me down the river because as far as they know I am going to jail with them.

Winning!

So it turns out my boyfriend is rich. I figure I am about a dozen GOOD blow jobs away from getting that engagement ring too, and I am not ashamed to admit that now I will be rolling them out with a bit more frequency – particularly now that I can stop rooting through his trash.

Of course now that I’m about to be Mrs. Belmont I am sort of regretting my career choice. Being a doctor is kind of like being a barber after all except your patients usually don’t look noticeably better when they leave and when they die it’s usually your fault.

I should have gone into research. I should have fucking tried to cure something. Every individual patient dies eventually but once you cure a disease…well! Lives in the bank.

Now I am a fucking doctor, and technically I could still do research but it would involve a lot of swimming upstream – the kind of swimming upstream that makes future in-laws nervous. Obviously now that I am trying to seal the deal my career ambitions have to stay exactly the same or otherwise it looks like I am counting chickens before they are hatched.

Simon could always die young. Whatever the hell it is he does seems to involve a danger element as he has often come home with injuries (it’s cute how he makes up stories about how he got hurt involving scooby doo like encounters with ghosts and ghouls). But then I would be a super-rich black female doctor and doomed to fuck only assholes and convicts for the rest of my life and that’s even if I feel like paying for dick and I am just too hot for that.  Besides I don’t want to cure cancer that bad.

So one of my closet KKK facebook friends recently started writing bullshit notes (because comments didn’t allow for enough space) and one of his first ones was a treatise on how to fix the country (or the Economy…I try not to read his garbage too carefully). Now, I’m a pretty arrogant guy, though not quite in Mike Triforce’s league. But even I wouldn’t write an unsolicited post like this one claiming that I can save the world because I am better than you. But I am. Because I’ll be damned if that Kentucky Fried Stars and Bars Good Ole Boy Saltine has the only word on this.

Ahem. Because everyone likes/only has the attention span for numbered list may I not so humbly offer: 1) social justice to include prison and drug reform 2) Adoption and 3) Inspiration

I have and will always say fuck the national debt. Never really considered it an issue so much so that if I have to take a dump and that’s the only reading material I’ll just take care of business like people probably did before civilization set in. However, you can’t argue some hard truths: We incarcerate an absurd percentage of our population, mostly for drug related offenses. If those people were working instead of costing the govt money, and the govt could tax a regulated market for marijuana and other drugs bye bye deficit, hello employment!

Adoption. Doesn’t it make you sick when some pompous asshole talks about how great his fucking parents are for basically just doing their fucking job? Does it ever occur to them that lots of parents did everything right and their kid still might not have been successful or that some people were successful despite coming from fucked up families? For shitssake people, you don’t parent because you are trying to raise the next President you parent because that is what you do. And not just for your own biological kids. Adopt people. I mean that both in the legal sense, as in get your ass to social services, and in the unofficial sense, as in observe your kids friends, acquaintances and kids you see in other situations. Do they look hungry, are they falling behind in school, do they need something? If they do that’s your responsibility. Get to work and take that fucking honor roll sticker off your newish car and don’t bitch about how you can’t afford it. It might also give your spoiled trifling children some perspective.

Finally inspiration. None of you will ever truly know what Obama’s election meant for this country or for the world. That’s because you lack the capacity to comprehend the significance of anything not directly related to your immediate self-interest. That’s not America. America acutely realized it’s unique existence despite the fact that life didn’t instantly and immediately change dramatically for colonists. This realization is a huge part of inspiration because at the end of the day America is the greatest country on earth in large part because it truly thinks it is.