So I am on call and it’s Christmas Eve. So far it’s been pretty standard. Alot of drunk driving fatalities, alot of long suffering cancer patients going home and alot of sick children. I wasn’t even going to bitch but for two things 1) I am covering for someone who doesn’t even celebrate Christmas and 2) I just got a text from Mike Triforce reading “I’m working. R U?”

First, that bastard is working by choice. Every year he goes into the office on Christmas Eve and stays until late on Christmas day to get face time with the movers and shakers in the firm and to make up for 11.5 months of not doing shit. He then makes his family wait (he insists they not but he knows they will anyway) for three hours before eating Christmas dinner, until he arrives, looking extra frazzled and of course bearing extremely extravagant gifts. It also allows him to avoid bringing the Princess to his parent’s house because even he has the decency not to bring that filthy tramp into his parent’s home on one of the holiest days of the year.
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 for one don’t give as many tips as I used to because I am tired of being the only one with entries under “questionable advice.” But ok, even my co-bloggers can’t object to a guy defending his girlfriend which is half the reason I am writing this.

Look, everything you do you do to get ahead. Your recreation is drinking and golf even if you detest both. You read WSJ regardless of your political leanings. And as far as dating goes you have two options: you date rich or you date HOT. Not real world hot. Sports Illustrated Maxim Hot. I chose the latter.

Dating rich is obvious particularly for those six figure student loan debtors among us. The price of dating rich (and probably less hot than you are able) is fidelity. Cheating on someone richer than you is scandalous. Cheating on someone poorer than you is a break-up/divorce.

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Simon is perfect. That’s not good enough. My student loans are manageable. That’s not good enough either. Sadly good enough can only be used to describe the work of my incompetent interns who I routinely flog verbally until I see their little spirits die behind their eyes.

Simon has to walk a fine line. He needs to have money, but not TOO much money lest I develop a lifestyle dependent on him. He needs to be forceful and strong like a man but I always have to have my way. He has to be able to fix things but can’t have that “blue collar” essence otherwise he is beneath me. His racial/ethnic background can’t be just like mine otherwise every black woman I know will get on me about snatching him up, but he also can’t be good old boy white because the chances of that being a turn-on are close to nil. Eastern European works. And of course he has to be model hot. I want big muscles and eight pack definition just like a man wants large breasts and a small waist. I feel the same way about my debt.

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Sigh. I am in line at Costco. Who can tell me three things wrong with that? 1) The Princess should be doing this kind of crap. 2) I shouldn’t have to use condoms with my live-in girlfriend of going on three years to not catch the latest strand of Herpes from a mediocre frat and 3) I shouldn’t have to be at Costco at all. Costco is expensive as hell and the Princess has a very expensive BREAKFAST and LUNCH meal plan only. I didn’t even know that was an option. Not wanting to go hungry, I occasionally make it to campus only to be greeted by asanine questions from her idiot friends “don’t you have a job? Shouldn’t you be at work? Aren’t you like 30?” I was so angry I almost didn’t get a third helping of eggs. I do have my pride though. I am not Benito. I refuse to bring Tupperware.

Oh but get THIS – the Princess isn’t even 100% daddy-funding this. The trifling, shiftless, spaghetti-legged trollup actually took out loans. She’s taking out loans to fuck fratboys while owing me 15 grand.

What does debt for a partner mean in a longterm relationship where you don’t plan to marry that person? Read on to find out.

I mean first there’s the obvious. In a relationship like mine where it’s understood that when you get a better offer you’re gone, if someone else starts borrowing tons of cash to be around good looking people in great shape you expand your search to include not just better offers but comparable ones. Also the cashflow in the household comes to a standstill. The student partner is naturally strapped for cash and the other partner doesn’t want to pay for joint goods like groceries , rent etc. because they know the chance of being paid back is virtually nil.

There are also new turns on the emotional roller coaster. Specifically there are two possibilities: most likely the student partner, racked by guilt and stress fails in every respect and comes crawling back more willing to take the abuse they most likely deserve until the non-student partner leaves for greener more successful pastures.

Now there is the outside chance that the student partner becomes very successful and earns a previously non-existent respect from the non-student partner. The student partner then is put in the tough situation of choosing to stay with their partner who supported them when they were garbage or move on to the untested fellow student-weighing the fact that the sex isn’t stale on one hand to the fact that the student has never been in the real world.

Sigh. But joke’s on the Princess. She will be walking to CVS for the morning after pill from now on. I’ve already got the Herpes cream. Also I am spending the last of the abortion fund here at Costco. In my book for a kid to really be mine and hence obligate me to kill it or raise it is more than just blood and DNA, it’s also a level of exclusivity, otherwise I am just a sucker who got unlucky.

Good luck on your midterms honey!

There’s nothing like creeping up on 30, barely out of school and making less than a janitor (they have unions) with mounds of debt, turning on the TV for your 15 minutes of television a week and seeing a teenage barely literate deadbeat high school dropout dad running for mayor. Anger. Then I listened a little closer and realized that this fool was being asked the same damn questions that his almost mother-in-law was asked in 2008. So basically this idiot was at the plate in a Major League Gsme a d he’s allowed to use a tee like in tee-ball (what you play before little league).  The fool answered “I don’t know” to about half the questions. And you know what? He still outperformed a woman who could have been President of the United States. Believe me, I know how to read McCain’s health chart.

So during another brief monthly break I mentor young girls at the Sadie Alexander School.  I asked her what she wanted to do/be when she grew up and she said she wanted to have Lil’ Wayne’s baby. I won’t tell you how old the child was because it will make you cry. I won’t tell you the race either (it’s not the one you think) because you won’t believe me. Now this girl isn’t dumb so I just assumed she was a slut, furthering my argument that sluts are born not made. But now I can see how a student could come to the following conclusion: why spend an additional 10+ years in school working hard to distinguish myself when the chance you have worked so hard for will be given to some idiot who had a child with a famous person? Why graduate high school when you can simply conceive a child with someone you plan to use for personal gain? The child will understand of course and if not they will be rich enough to afford whatever necessary therapy is required.

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So Mike Triforce recently got lit up when he commented on a guest post by Sweet Hot Justice on ATL.  The post consisted of a girl complaining that she was too perfect to date. She made too much money and was too attractive and too much fun to be around. Here at Debtor’s Prison we think you are likely to have a slightly different problem when it comes to meeting relationship material.  Like most of our problems it is a compound quandry. Whereas endless debt can be broken down into borrowing too much for too little and little to no economic opportunity and water can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen so too can stagnant dating be broken down into friend erosion and of course the constant shame of debt and perceived under achievement.

Because of Benito this blog has a tendency to treat debt and unemployment as two almost interchangeable phenomenons. This is not the case and nowhere is it more evident than dating. One of my favorite analogies is that unemployment is like race and debt is like sexual orientation (aka one is readily discernible while the other can be disguised if one so desires but both are often the cause of discrimination). An unemployed person simply cannot afford the wine/dine entertainment heavy initial phase of dating. A debtor can just put it on his or her credit card and pray.

I think there should be an all encompassing term or score that is derived from one’s employment or lack thereof, age and debt, but that is a topic for another post. The salient point here I think is that if you have trouble meeting people it’s because of friend erosion.

Face it, you’re out of school and there is nothing else quite like it for making friends. If you all don’t go to the same location afterwards you see your friends less. If your friends are somewhere where they are closer to other elements of their circle they become closer to those friends and drift farther away from you. So if you can’t afford to live in Center City like everyone else because of that loan payment or move back to the suburbs because you lost your job well…relationships change. Suddenly you are not tagging along to work happy hours or tapped to escort a friend’s significant other’s friend to a wedding or concert.

And this is the reason this ultimately may be a commentary post as opposed to advice…I have no idea what to do about this. All I can say is that anything you do to try and meet people to fill this gap be it yoga, joining an animal rights group or pretending to follow a sports team will ultimately end in failure.  The WORST thing you can do is join a faith community to meet people. This is stupid because most religions have guidelines about dating AND it’s a horribly disingenuous thing to do.

I would say as things stand now a relationship is most likely to occur in the following situations: 1) doing something you’re ALREADY passionate about 2) doing something that requires alot of sans internet downtime and 3) the internet.  If through debt and/or possible unemployment or underemployment you’ve managed to hold on to your position coaching your nephew’s swim team because you were an All-American in college there’s a chance you might meet a kid’s aunt/uncle/older sibling.  You’ll be in a familiar environment where you hold some authority and that’s your best chance to display the qualities that might attract a mate.  Your next best chance is a situation where you’re just around a certain group of people alot without internet.  Long drives and campaigns come to mind.  Hanging around a bar or convenience store doesn’t count, the proximity must be brought about for some kind of point like getting to a destination, be it physical or political.  Finally there is the internet.  Statistically this is a valid place to look for relationships and you’re not one to look down on anyone.

The worst part of all this is that it shatters another illusion. You thought if you did everything right you’d be ok even in a shitty economy. Well, you wouldn’t be here if you still believed that. You also thought your friendships were based on deep special bonds between unique individuals not simply chance and convenience.

We pray not to be brought to the test because the results are so often heartbreaking.

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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I caught the housing bug from an eighth year associate who thinks she is going to make partner. She thinks she is cute making comments about how she was being promoted at the expense of her ovaries. I thought such hackneyed cliches only existed in the nail polish smeared pages of a Lisa Scottoline novel. However I decided against it based oddly enough not on student debt but on what it might mean for my love life.

A dental hygienist friend of mine made a killing about two years ago buying stocks short. Being the responsible type she bought a house and immediately saw her love life shrivel and die until she started referring to her house as her parent’s house…parents who were mysteriously never there.

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I shouldn’t have agreed to head up what is supposed to be a regular column but as the only member in a functional relationship (Mike you don’t count) I sort of got volunteered. Now as I am sure Mike will point out, I don’t even know what my boyfriend does…but there I would disagree. I know what he does. He pays bills and he pays when we go out. What I don’t know is his occupation. I can live with that. Here’s why.

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