So apparently My sexual escapades are not fitting for blog entries. Now, any sensible person will tell you that your choice of life partner has more effect on your financial well being than any other BUT since certain of those among us who are celibant against their will are hating…let’s try a new topic, the art of casual conversation.

When I ask you, peon in Debtor’s Prison, how your day was, how you are doing, etc, the correct answer is “fine.” I don’t care if you just got your arm amputated and your puppy died in a vain attempt to save your mother from a burning building.

Next if I ask you a question you should immediately identify how I am trying to seguay into a conversation about myself. Obviously I don’t care what you think. If you just stare blankly I will eventually launch into a monologue that will amount to talking to myself without the stigma BUT you can create the illusion of dialogue with phrases like “I don’t know what do you think?” I could ask for your frikkin name and that is still the best response you can give.

Next if I ask “Are you around at [such and such time]” the correct response is no response simply wait for me to tell you where to be at that time. Of course you are around, you’re unemployed or underemployed. You have no money therefore no worth therefore no life. But for the pathetic sound of your voice a thank you might be in order.

The point is you are a non-entity. That’s why people talk over you, cut you off or treat your latest contribution to a conversation as if it never happened. The sooner you learn this and start playing by the rules the sooner your life will start to make sense albeit in a tragic sort of way. But buying into the rules has it’s advantages. It’s like hazing. Play by the rules, believe in the rules, work to get to the other side of the coin.

In addition to trying to find another conservative voice for the blog I’d love a writer who has kids.  I mean I know I pursued higher education almost entirely for selfish materialistic reasons but what about someone in a lousy dead-end job who goes back to school to get a better job so he can buy a house with a yard and a white picket fence for junior?

This is usually the subject of ITT commercials, which I’ve noticed cater more and more towards recent immigrants. I assume all but these recent immigrants see right through them. But then I saw the Will Smith movie “The Pursuit of Happyness”. For those of you who don’t know, the movie involves an unemployed father who takes an unpaid internship for a chance at a job that will make him a gazillionaire. While not quite the tear jerker that was “The Blind Side” it had it’s moments, was based on a true story, and everything worked out. But what about real life?
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Mike Triforce here.  Hold the applause.  I am just not in the mood.

A few days ago I wrote a post about how the Princess was around less and given our financial bind I naturally assumed that that was due to finding or at least actively seeking gainful employment (though the couch, unwashed dishes and unwalked dog surely missed her) but I was wrong. I am still in shock but I had to…I don’t know…let me just say it.

The Princess…went back to school.

What. The. FUCK?! This trifling, shiftless, good-for-nothing waistrel has been nothing but an anchor around my neck.  She can’t…we can’t…there’s no…

I mean, where to begin?  Ok, I’ll just say it.  I was counting on her daddy’s money.  Money that could have floated some of our bills or paid off some of MY LOANS for the education that is PAYING OUR BILLS.  Instead that money is going to pay her tuition so she can study Art History or some other useless endeavor.   I just wanted to tell her that those people leading the guided tours at museums aren’t speaking from academic knowledge, they are just repeating what they are listening to…they’re not deaf, that’s an earpiece. 

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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.

Please Take What is Left of Me
Though I Must Admit
It’s Not Much

I Cannot Take Care of You
In the manner you deserve
I owe so much

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If you’re living off the grid summer is the best time to travel – less clothes to take, easier to hitch hike since more students are on the road, and you’d be surprised how much free food you can get if you know how to find a barbecque honoring a grad, dad, country or a vet, and that’s not even counting block parties.  Recently I have been traveling and I found myself in Washington, DC where I saw Laurence Fishburne at the Kennedy Center in the one-man bio drama Thurgood.  Just in case any next of kin ever read this, yes I wore a coat and tie.  And I was blown away.

Benito says he’d give back his JD, earned in the guilded halls of the ivy-league, if they would just relinquish his debt.  He calls the piece of paper worthless.  It is of course an understatement to say that Justice Marshall’s JD, earned in extremely more modest accommodations at a time where most law schools were still segregated was priceless, not just for him personally but for our country.  The play alludes to the fact that Justice Marshall saved up enough for tuition working in the service industry and that his mother sold her engagement ring and wedding band in order to help pay his way.  I know an author at the New York Times that would have frowned upon that.

Read on to find out why I think debt might be the new Jim Crow.

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Here at Debtor’s Prison, we’re not big on posting links within articles.  But here’s one

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/your-money/student-loans/29money.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1275242514-wCTp6UtEV1S1hPtiShkU6Ahttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/your-money/student-loans/29money.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1275242514-wCTp6UtEV1S1hPtiShkU6Ahttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/your-money/student-loans/29money.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1275242514-wCTp6UtEV1S1hPtiShkU6A

I could respond to this point for point but that wouldn’t be fair to our readers too lazy to click the link and in order to provide themselves with the necessary context SO instead I will give the opposite scenario so my post stands alone.

Johnny and his parents approached college with a grim determination: to get through the process with as little cost and effort as possible.  Like many parents with their own lives Mr. and Mrs. Johnny were anxious to get another body out of the house and college savings weren’t what they could have been if certain cars hadn’t been leased and certain boats hadn’t been purchased.  But you only live once.  Besides, if Johnny possessed any particular gifts there would be scholarships.  There were no scholarships.

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I graduated from Medical School two weekends ago.  For those of you non-doctors imagine your college graduation plus winning the Nobel Prize and the Super Bowl.  That’s how you are treated by friends, family and people who would like you to think of them as friends or family.  The best though is the love you get from doctors…the same ones who will be treating you like garbage once residency begins. But for now it’s all good.

All the attention though attracts it’s fair share of haters and the numbers are multiplied when for whatever reason people think you don’t deserve what you’ve got or getting what you’ve got would have been harder for them.  Think Obama’s Nobel Prize or Eli Manning’s Super Bowl.

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Being a mother is tough today.  Particularly if you are the mother of an inmate in debtor’s prison.  At a stage in life when you the parent should be looking forward to weddings and grandchildren, to eating holiday meals in the first homes of your children, and to finally receiving a little financial help, whether its to take a dream vacation or simply so you don’t have to worry about coming up short when the mortgage is due…you instead are finding yourself financially supporting your children.  And let’s be honest, you’re not “giving them a little help” like a down payment so they can afford a nicer home for their young family, you are providing them with all the essentials, shelter, food and transportation.  Just like when they were 10.

However here’s the difference.  Even a parent of a ten year-old who is doing rather poorly in school expect said child to be relatively self-sufficient by the time they are in their mid-twenties.  However if you are the parent of a child in their late twenties or early thirties with no job prospects and a crippling debt load you must deal with the uncertainty of whether that child will EVER be self-sufficient even if they have been academically successful all their lives. 

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