Hi Kids. So here we are poised for another year of fruitless job hunts, endless expensive schooling complete with another cycle of loans and just to make the taste of failure complete I thought I’d add a few failed start-up businesses. I’m already told that YMCA also known as Mama’s Boy for Hire has already been mistaken for an illegal prostitution ring catering to older women. So sad. Anyway, here is what you can expect from us this fall and beyond.

Familiar favorites such as “Post of the Week” and “Pay My Student Loans” will be making a return.  In addition a bi-weekly “So, New to Debtor’s Prison?” will
Provide summary info. To people who are checking us out for the first time.

Administratively you may have noticed some bottlenecks aka a few days with no posts and then four or five show-up.  We are trying to monitor our posts a bit more closely due to past incidents (ahem Triforce) and that pertains to comments too so bare with us ye few yet faithful.

So anyway thanks for reading these past seven months or so and please stick with us as we march on to 100,000 hits and hopefully a one year anniversary!

I’m coming off the best summer I’ve had since the one before college. Finally my life has direction again. I feel like the rich kid who joins the army in defiance of the father turning his back on the family shipping business or whatever. Now that everyone is saying don’t go to lawschool it is the sexy rebel’s choice again.

I have borrowed so much money it’s criminal.  My bank account looks better than it ever has. I routinely spend more at coffee shops in a day than I used to spend on food in a week.

I love how I am treated.  Here’s a tip kids: nobody cares what you’ve done it’s all about what people think you are going to do. I’d rather be a high schooler with No. 1 potential in basketball or football than be a lameduck President. Conventional wisdom is still that my classmates and I are collectively doomed, but me personally? I could be making $200k in NY in three years and everyone from baristas to bartenders seem to know it.

But there’s also more. I studied that chart Alpha Man posted. It’s all over the net. I’ve read comments here and on other sites and suddenly I realized what Triforce was referring to – the scam he pulled that he won’t write about. Touché Triforce, I know you pretty well and I wouldn’t have thought even your miniature effiminate poodle-looking dog would have stooped that low. You looking for a job Triforce? In five years you could be working for me.

I love being a lawyer. I don’t work and get paid while many of my classmates who worked hard are out in the street. Everything is better when someone who once considered themselves your equal can’t afford it. However for the past couple of months I have been rolling with some finance kids from NY and cash has become a bit stretched keeping up with them. The downside of their jobs of course is they have to actually work. Sure, I could be a millionaire in a few years but I’d rather just take the steady paycheck that is based on a fictional abstraction than a sporadic one based on results. Also it seems like every firm in Philly and Jersey willing to meet the NY market is dragging their feet with hiring.

Which brings me to the subject of the Princess. I know many of you doubt the wisdom of keeping her around but look at it this way: Now that the till is a bit empty instead of continuing to roll with the finance kids and their model-hot Swedish entourage I can fake an emergency at work and get some free (though somewhat bland and routine) sex at home. Further, I can put some pressure on her to drum up some cash.  Now usually I would say that that is synonymous with asking her daddy. I let her run-up a 15k tab knowing she could never pay me back, charging some healthy interest in the hopes of getting a daddy check, or in leiu of that unofficially taking over one of his rental properties aka nicer place and no rent. Did I mention I haven’t paid my student loans in several months to finance these NY trips? Anyone who hasn’t deduced that has never been with a swede. Tiger is a damn fool. The only woman he should have cheated with was his wife’s twin sister.

But here is where I give the Princess her do. I think…I think she actually found a job! A real job where she’s on a payroll and pays taxes like an adult! Here are the clues- she’s gone during the day and when she is around she seems tired but not the lazy I’ve been up three hours already tired but the I have done something productive today tired. She also comes back looking borderline respectable/high class slutty.

Granted their isn’t much she is fit to do but one thing she could do is sell real-estate particularly to single male investors. Successful real-estate agents can make a mint. I’m almost proud of her.

Now before all of you go calling me a dick or a chauvinist let me say I will not be spending her first commission check wining and dining a six foot Swedish model before becoming intimately familiar with the details of her anatomy. I will use her money to pay our rent and my back loans…thereby freeing up my own money to go Ikea shopping.

This is the last post by our guest columnist Tom Wick.  We wish him the best in establishing himself as an author and thank him for his contributions to this blog.

So it’s almost labor day or depending on how quickly Benito’s admin is posting things perhaps even past then…so this will probably be my last regular post. Thank you to all the automated phishing programs that left comments.  So I wanted to do two things: leave you with some kind of departing word of wisdom and talk about the scam blogger who recently revealed her real identity while simultaneously trying to hock a self-published book.

The first part easy. Success is like a wave, once it reaches it’s foamy peak, it’s too late to ride it if you’re still on the beach. What I mean is once you’ve read Hairy Potter or Twilight it’s too late to write about sorcerers and werewolves EVEN IF you have a very original take, because your good work is going to get lost in the noise of the copycats. If you’re successful most likely it will be by doing something nobody has thought of or by writing something that becomes timely on the verge of it’s completion. This is more than just being lucky. Ever wonder how the championship hats for the winning team get made in time for the post game interview? Of course the hats are made for both teams ahead of time. If you want to guarantee success you need to take this approach…except for you there are more than two possible answers there are infinite and it’s a book not a hat.

Now for this other blogger. Purely from a publishing standpoint she did everything right…generated publicity, sold out her ideals and has avoided plagiarism allegations. But none of that matters because her book is “self-published.”

It’s fitting that my parting words are a warning about another scam. Self-publishing is alot like higher education or insurance where you pay alot for a false peace of mind but if you actually need it you get nada. Basically a company tells you they love your work and wants to publish it but they want to “split the start-up costs.” So they charge you two to three times the actual cost of printing the book and slapping a cover on it, charge YOU for your own BOOK and of course all marketing and sales falls on you. Then if you happen to sell any books they take a second cut, all the while pedaling trips to useless bookshows and anything else they think “authors” will pay for.

These vultures pray upon people with the same dream we have and exploit people’s emotional attachment to their work and the desire to prove critics (who are often very cruel and very right) wrong. There is a special place in hell for all of them.

Well everyone it’s been fun. I’ve got some great ideas lined up for the fall. I will check back in with progress if there is any.

This is it in a nutshell.  I’ll see if I can get the gang to weigh in…

So there have been alot of things to get used to working at my new job.  Just about everyone goes on vacation between the 4th of July and Labor Day.  Just about everyone works between 8 and 6.  Many people are content with their current jobs and plan to work there until they retire.  They see their children and significant others.  If you refer to someone as the “nice” guy that’s usually not enough to identify them.  If you refer to someone as an “asshole” usually that is enough to identify them.  But there was always something more…and unfortunately for nurses that “something more” was the fact that my new profession wasn’t subservient to another.

I know being a paralegal and a nurse have many differences, but at the end of the day they are subservients to lawyers and doctors respectively, and it doesn’t matter if the former has been on the job 40 years and the latter is on their first day…JD equals “Just Do what I say” and MD equals ”My Decision.” 

So what do we do? We live with it.  Paralegals because we need a check.  Nurses because they do a valuable service and help people.  That is the first major thing that separates a nurse from a paralegal.  Their job has meaning.  Yay! Plus for nurses…except that doctors know this and they abuse nurses even more because of it.  The second and last major thing that separates nurses from paralegals is that it’s relatively easy to go from being a paralegal to lawyer, relatively difficult to go from nurse to doctor. 

I am not all that familiar with the nurse/medical school curriculums.  I would think as a matter of common sense that the bodies of knowledge overlap.  Therefore, if medicine was not a profession, and medicine was not a business, and we as a society simply wanted to provide the best healthcare to as many people as possible it would SEEM that nurses should have expediated ways of getting their M.D.  If doctors looked at nurses like people who were simply taking the long way around to their eventual destination they would treat them with a little more respect.

But let’s be real.  That’s never, ever going to happen.  If you’re in nursing school and you’re already bitching about how med students/doctors say that you should breeze right through your curriculum then this really isn’t the job for you.  Nursing curriculums are getting harder, longer and more expensive and nurse salaries and prestige are not rising accordingly.  If you already have significant deposits in the resentment bank and you’re several years away from day one get out now.  Not for yourself but for your future patients.

I know this one nurse in her fifties who after thirty years of getting passed by doctors in the parking lot in beemers she decided to mortgage everything she had and get one for herself.  Naturally she couldn’t afford it so she “traded down” to a lexus after transferring the lease to her debt-ridden idiot son fresh out of lawschool.  Then she got laid off and now works as a low-level pencil pusher in some insurance company.  Her son and husband lost their jobs in the same period of time…so her son “traded down” to a brand new Mustang ala Mike Triforce.  Like mother like son.  At least he’s not dating a diseased bar skank (love you princess!) The point is don’t be this woman.  The question is…how?

The key is to define yourself as something that’s not your job.  That’s one reason why the best nurses are mothers…though not the one above.  Maybe you play/coach a sport.  Maybe you love dancing, or traveling.  Maybe you love write or garden.  If you’re a nurse you care about people.  There is SO MUCH more you can do to help people (particularly kids)…but don’t do it for people.  If you’re a good nurse you’ve done more than your fair share.  This you need to do for yourself because it will help you on the job and give you something that a doctor can’t belittle.

Oh, and before the doctors start commenting…this was written with the blessing of Simon’s Girlfriend

- Do Not be Paralyzed

By Your Ability to See Both Sides

Look Towards Your Anchor and Act

However, Choose your Anchor Cautiously

For it is the basis of all your journey’s decisions

Lest you be lead in the circle of hypocrisy

- Anonymous –

These aren’t my words but I thought I’d share them because they illustrate the other “law school scam” that has nothing to do with the fact that it’s an overpriced waste of time that has little chance of getting you any sort of gainful employment, much less one that might help you pay off your loans and start a life before you’re dead.  I also am not going to take issue with professors whose only job is to write and consider teaching a nuasance.  I am taking issue with the fact that a legal education is an enemy of “truth” as defined in the discipline of philosophy and as such eliminates the anchor spoken of in the prose that introduces this entry.  Allow me to explain.

There are those who seek a legal education because they honestly feel that the law is a vehicle for change.  A cursory look at American History may support this as Brown v. Board did proceed the bulk of the popularized activity that is generally known as the Civil Rights Movement in this country.  Unfortunately this is an aborration.   Law almost always trails an awakening to truth among the general public subject to said laws and this is evident in all the great social justice struggles (gay, women and animal rights).  Let us also not forget that the same institution, the Supreme Court, that delivered Brown v. Board, also delivered Plessy v. Ferguson and Sandford v. Dred Scott.

Before I proceed I am purposefully not commenting on whether I attended law school.  To say that I did would cause many to dismiss my words because I’m just another bitter scam blogger.  To say that I did not would cause many to dismiss my words as an outsider.  I am forcing you to evaluate my words at face value, for truth is truth regardless of who utters it – friend, enemy, young, old, wise or foolish.  “Law” is whatever a judge says it is regardless of his motivation for saying it.

Now let’s examine this for a moment.  What would it do to have this “Law” as an anchor and what might it do to the student of truth who mistakes this pyrite law for gold?  If you care about truth and study law you will become overwhelmed with the cognitive dissonance associated with constantly trying to reconcile isolated, self-serving declarations with some kind of greater legal truth that doesn’t exist.  Your grades will suffer.  That, in conjunction with being exposed to a population of the most insipid, amoral, self-entitled and materialistic jerks on the planet and you will begin to doubt the existence of truth.  Further, you will develop (although too late for first year exams) the ability to see both sides of everything.  And you will have no anchor to reach to in order to make your decision about anything that ultimately matters in life.

You will be lost.

At that point your job/income or lack thereof won’t be so important.  Remember that the next time you wake up in a cold sweat unable to pinpoint the source of your anxiety, the focal point of your fear or the ultimate source of the horror just beyond your grasp.

So my cousin Bobby was making his college decision last year around this time. He committed to Maryland (where he’s from) but then got into Johns Hopkins off the waitlist. At the time I encouraged him to go to Hopkins because Maryland kids are thuggish and Bobby was still known as “Young Breezy aka Bitches n’ Tits also known as TYD.” TYD stood for “Throat Yogurt Dispenser.” However Aunt Jenine wasn’t rich so Bobby had to take out a fair number of loans.

So I spend a weekend with him this summer and instead of listening to my helpful hints about orgo this silly ass can’t stop talking about how healthcare reform is going to adversely effect his earning potential. Seriously?

Look young bucks- you’ve got 15-20 years before you see a DIME from practicing medicine. Undergrad, Med School, and Residency alone is 12 assuming no time off and graduating as fast as possible. Second, We are NOT bankers…we’re not activists either but definitely not bankers.

Here’s what I mean. It’s fucked up but understandable that Wall Street bitches about financial reform BECAUSE the assumption is they are trying to get paid as much as possible period AND because Wall Street Reform lowers what a banker with said mindset can make. As doctors we 1) are supposed to at least pretend to care about patients and 2) healthcare reform doesn’t affect doctors who are just trying to get paid.

I think the first point is self-explanatory. As for the second hey, if you want to become a highly specialized doctor in dermatology, plastic surgery or some other useless field and make a killing nothing is stopping you. Join a lucrative private practice that only caters to individuals with Cadillac Insurance policies. Quietly stop accepting Medicare and Medicaid patients…once you have a decade’s worth of loans to pay off. But please don’t let me hear you bitching about your future salary when yo Mamie was paying for the paper you wiped your ass with 18 months ago.  That goes double if your parents are paying for the whole multiple decade endeavor. Seriously fuck you.

When I was a kid growing up I lived next door to a girl named Jessica. We were thick as thieves for five years until my parents moved. I only found out recently via facebook that her dad was a doctor, even though I vividly recall referring to him as “Mr. Goldman.” She told me that her dad didn’t like to use the title outside of the hospital as it created a “stay one step ahead of the joneses” mentality.

I love you Mr. Goldman. Here’s hoping in the future neighborhood kids call me Mrs. Belmont. Hint hint Simon.

As I was cutting the crusts off the cucumber and cottage cheese sandwiches I was making for my mother’s book club and looking at the automated job rejections appear on my hotmail account (after all who reads job apps on the weekend) suddenly it hit me – the idea that was going to get me the best kind of employment, self-employment.

45 minutes later as I was refilling Mrs. Beraducci’s tea I ran the idea by her. See, she’s always complaining about her no-good sons who never come by, call or visit (as if a medical residency, semester abroad or deployment to Iraq was any excuse) and is always visibly jealous of my mom whenever I replace a light bulb, clean out the garage or drive to Whole Foods with her canvas bags so she can get the 5 cents per bag discount. She loved the idea. They say every chronicly unemployed person eventually tries to start their own business. With that in mind may I present Young Men for domestic Companionship and Ambience or YMCA.

Imagine you’ve just sat down to watch The View when suddenly you realize your Orange Juice you just bought has pulp in it and you got rasberry not blackberry jam. To make matters worse you had a coupon for the orange juice…and it expires today! Fortunately you’re a member of YMCA. You call Seymore, and within 20 minutes he’s on the front porch wearing a nice button down collared shirt and khakis. He’s to the store and back before your show is even halfway down and what’s this? He brought flowers! Who needs a son when you have Seymore!

Ever wondered what a room would look like if a heavy TV or bookcase was somewhere else and wished you could find out knowing that things could be returned to their proper place on a whim? Ever wanted to re-arrange all the pictures on your wall while telling the story behind each one? Do you like cottage cheese and cucumber sandwiches?!

The deluxe package gets you a live-in young man available 12 hours a day and for emergencies at night. The Platinum package gets you a live-in exclusive young man free of all other obligations. A custom plan requires that you purchase time slots (week day or weekend) of the young man of your choice.

This is the business plan of an ivy-league trained attorney.

Aaaaaaah ha ha ha ha!

Y’all must think you’re pretty slick. Seriously, pulling something out of Reagan’s playbook: paying faux homage to King (in Reagan’s case in the form of a national holiday) while doing everything you can “behind the scenes” to promote the disparagement harassment and discrimination against African-Americans. Oh, do I have some words for you! But first let me say this to all you minority inmates in debtors prison (which like real prison is made up of a disproportionate number of us) first we’ve got to look up from staring at our own problems long enough to notice things like this and second  we may not have gotten jobs or meaningful contacts out of our fancy degrees but at least we pissed off uneducated white trash like Beck and Palin. Sure they are millionaires and we owe six figures but their jealousy and envy can at least get you through the day.

Ok now for Beck and Palin. Look, Reagan got away with what he did because 1) he was President 2) he was a charismatic actor and 3) that was 30 years ago before the Daily Show.  Glen Beck is so stupid he thought Al Sharpton marched with Dr. King…I mean can he even count to 47? Sarah Palin is on record mocking the very IDEA of being a community organizer… What do you think Dr. King WAS?! The unofficial Prince of Negroes? And these aren’t things those idiots did or said ten years ago, this is all since 2008.

Also Beck and Palin are racist, almost comically so.  Beck is one of the leading architects of the “Obama is a Muslim” movement which casts the thinnest veil over racism I have ever seen. Palin supports Dr. Laura who dropped 17 n-bombs in a tirade against inter-racial marriage.

I could write about this forever but rather than do that let me go back to and stress one of my original points which is that Beck and Palin hate all African-Americans yes, but particularly the educated ones. I can take personal satisfaction in that my existence irritates them even if idiots like them who run the world have seen to it that my education is of absolutely no practical or economic value.

I’ll leave you with this. We’re like soldiers in D Day invading the shores of elite education. Everytime the machine guns focus on one of us and guns us down we are giving a chance for another to slip through. And that other just might be an Obama. And believe me, President Barack H. Obama is THE worst nightmare of Beck and Palin even though each has made millions denouncing him. Why? Because at the end of the day they really do think minorities are racially inferior. And why not? When you don’t have accomplishments to feel good about you have to rely on genetics.  Obama is living proof to the contrary. He literally beat both of them to become President.

You all know the line paraphrased from Mississippi burning: if ya ain’t better than a Negro, who are you better than?