Monday, June 16, 2014
White Lipstick?
Remember when the "Goth" look first came out? None of "us" really understood it and every one of us stared when we encountered someone trying to pull that shit off. Now, many years later, we barely notice them. At least I don't. It's almost as good as the new normal. And face it. Those kids want to be individuals, unique... just like everyone else who looks exactly like them. Let them have it. In reality, it opens up job opportunities for the rest of us.
Any ways, I caught something this morning that I don't believe I'll soon forget. White lipstick... if it wasn't white, it was a very light silver. I believe I've seen it before but this morning was different. 2 different women, very different ages, both wearing the white lipstick and they weren't even together but they were in the same place. You know, perhaps a mother and daughter might give that a go, but this wasn't the case. And the thing is, they were dressed normal so it wasn't really part of their "get up".
What they did have going on was this air of snootiness. Both of them had their heads tilted slightly back and their noses up in the air. It was like they ruled the valley and were among mere peasants. They really didn't want to be troubled by waiting in line. You could sense it. One was right in front of me and the other one was on another line, but generally facing my direction. She kept doing this weird breathing thing, like a real big inhale and this semi-agonizing sigh by being forced to wait in line amongst us peasants. So after I heard that shit for the second time, I decided to do something that I really enjoy doing.
Have you seen "Full Metal Jacket"? Do you remember Private Pyle? Remember when he wigged out and he had that "nobody home" look? His brow furrowed, head tilted slightly down and staring through his eyebrows with the blankest expression on his face? Mouth slightly agape? Yeah, I like staring at people with that look on my face, and no matter what happens, DO NOT BREAK CHARACTER. Stare at them like you are trying to burn a hole through their head with your stare. And its best if you do not blink! Eventually, they notice it. Eventually.....
When she made eye contact with me, she looked down real quick basically because I had busted her but I could tell that she saw that look on my face. As soon as she thought I broke my stare, she glanced back at me. (I cranked it up a notch.) I had a semi smile and was doing some exaggerated breathing... big chest movements, with my eyes locked on hers. She immediately turned her back towards me. She was uneasy... it was obvious. I wish everyone else in the store could turn the shit on and really freak her out, but it was just me.
As the line progressed, she again tried to sneak a peek and I still had her locked in. I hadn't moved a muscle in my face. She now appeared to have a concerned look on her face. This shit was getting to her. Line moves again and I am up at the exact time she is up, and we kind of have to look at each other. The clerk asks, "how are you today" and I didn't say anything... just stared at her majesty. The clerk said, "can I get anything else for you?", so I wanted to add a little something else, you know, a bit more flavor. (I have the worlds worst Australian accent, so I busted that out.) "No thanks mate, that'll do" and for some dumb reason I said "polly wog, chop-chop". Everyone in the immediate area kind of gave me the "WTF" look, but the royalty was doing all she could to get out of the store as fast as she could. Since we more or less got at the door at the same time, I felt like laughing like "The Count" from Sesame Street but I pulled up short because she wasted no time getting out of that joint and putting some distance between she and I.
Anyhow, I hopped in the car and had a laugh. The shit was kind of funny.
I went through all of that, just to tell you this. The white lipstick thing? Don't do it. You look like a fucking cadaver! Not hot...dead. You look fucking dead. I bet you $500 bucks that if you are wearing that shit standing in a cemetery or a field, someone will bust in square in the head and try to bury your dead/undead/zombie looking ass.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Lowering student loan rates.
Recently our friends in DC decided to vote down a law that would have allowed students with student loan debt to refinance those loans at a far lower rate. I think its a mistake to simply put the value of this argument upon opposing ideals. Obviously liberals and conservatives have different ideals but oddly enough the potential desired outcome is the same. Something happened with this bill. People on both sides of the political spectrum voted against it. Right now, its not abundantly clear how much pork was on this bill.
The talking points regarding voting this bill down are the same ones having been used for better than a decade. The republicans are trying to protect their rich buddies and the liberals want to keep throwing money around at broken systems. There are plenty enough rich democrats in congress that want to protect their money (not as philanthropic with their money as they want to be with our money) and there plenty of republicans that keep shuttling money to things that don't work and haven't worked. (No child left behind comes to mind.)
So, now we get to the meat of the subject. College is expensive. More reputable colleges are more expensive and specialized degrees are off the charts expensive. I hate the idea that people can come out of school with $100k or more in debt. It happens and its wrong. So where I start running around in my own mind with this is, who is responsible for this debt. Part of me believes that it is the consumers job to fully know and understand what they are getting into. Anyone going for a specialized degree, at least in my opinion, has spent some time looking down the road. They've crunched some numbers to see if this is even feasible. They've looked at the different schools, payed attention to the cost and had supposedly made the best decision for themselves. They willingly entered this "contract" and I believe that they are responsible for making those ends meet.
Fortunately enough for me, I didn't accrue any college debt and I've had people tell me that I don't know what I am talking about, then. I disagree. I have entered loan contracts that at the time seemed appealing and 5-8-15 years down the road realized that I am getting burglarized. Its a hard pill to swallow but it ends up being a lesson learned. I hate taking on debt as much as anyone, but if I enter the contract of my own free will, I feel it is my responsibility to make those ends meet by whatever means possible. I had credit card debt hanging out of my ass. A good amount of it and I shuffled that debt around transferring one cards debt to another with a lower interest rate. I was still getting nowhere and reached out to "debt reconciliation" and that really wasn't any better. My fault. I accrued the debt and its my responsibility to pay it off. The government didn't help me. I don't feel that its the governments job to keep bailing people out. (Auto industry has been bailed out at least twice in my life time. That tells me that the auto industry is not learning and they commit the same bullshit moves that put them in the same bullshit position. How long do we keep doing this? Banks too... too big to fail? If the government offered to pay off my debt or to do something to make it more affordable, would I take advantage? Probably... I can't say no, definitively. But I feel, and this is just me personally, I'd feel as if I was on the dole. I wouldn't feel good about it. I don't think it is owed to me. Perhaps I see the arms of government doing something different.
I'm thinking out loud here folks, so stick with me. Now I can't but think about the cost of tuition and how that money ends up being distributed. Some professors make good money. Some maybe not so good. Some other professors make a pretty good chunk of change, and you know what? Their expertise is probably worth it. They took the risk of taking on that debt and were determined to give it hell to try to get back up on top of that debt and be otherwise successful. But what is realistic for a tenured professor to make? Does it depend on which department he/she is in? Do all tenured professors across the country make the same amount of money? Probably not, so why is there no uniformity in cost from school to schools? I looked at the prices for the nations law schools and I found it odd that they were pretty uniform, especially for the top 10 or so. Roughly we are talking about $50k a year, give or take a couple thousand, per year, per out of state tuition. But you get further down the list and still looking at accredited law schools, some are down to as low as $34K a year for a law degree from Temple University. What in the world is it that causes that $16k a year difference?
By the way, do you know what you call the guy who graduates at the bottom of his class in law school at Harvard? A lawyer...the same as you would a guy who graduated from Temple University or UNLV. Still a lawyer. Same degree, very different debts. Why? Why is there no uniformity in the cost of schools? Everyone in this particular scenario comes out a lawyer, they've accrued different debts.
I don't know where we go with this, but I am of the impression that it is not the governments job to bail us out on this. And again, I do feel bad about the debt, but I have my debt and nobody is helping me no matter how good of a guy I am. And believe me, I found and own my debt. Did it all with the space between my ears. Perhaps a bigger, better education and more debt would have been helpful?
In closing this thought I'd like to add that I don't believe that we as a nation have been more divided as we are today. People on either side downright hating people on the other side, and this shit train runs both ways on the track. We disagree simply to disagree and it seems as if neither party is willing to compromise in fear of being called some kind of a defector from their own party. I don't think a lot of our politicians have any integrity and I feel that they don't even consider the people that have voted them into office. I think its a fucking shame that the people in DC vote themselves in for "cost of living raises" while the rest of the country is trying to figure out how to put gas in their car and groceries on their plate. I find it a bigger tragedy what these sucks have done to our nations war veterans.... These people in DC have given themselves the best health care system out there and basically shit the bed when it comes to veterans. These people in DC have claimed to have "stood up for and fought" for their country all the while we have boots on the ground in foreign lands and our fighting men and women getting blown to pieces and their lives changed forever! I don't think the people in DC really know what a "fight"is, and how dare they compare what they do versus what out military does! According to thinkprogress.org, Congress got 239 days off this past year.... Are you shitting me? That had better be a misprint....
We don't help our veterans. We don't help the homeless as well as we could. We don't help the mentally ill as well as we should. And all the while there are people trying to get into fields that could be of assistance, we cripple them with debt.? Somethings got to change America and I am open to suggestions.
The talking points regarding voting this bill down are the same ones having been used for better than a decade. The republicans are trying to protect their rich buddies and the liberals want to keep throwing money around at broken systems. There are plenty enough rich democrats in congress that want to protect their money (not as philanthropic with their money as they want to be with our money) and there plenty of republicans that keep shuttling money to things that don't work and haven't worked. (No child left behind comes to mind.)
So, now we get to the meat of the subject. College is expensive. More reputable colleges are more expensive and specialized degrees are off the charts expensive. I hate the idea that people can come out of school with $100k or more in debt. It happens and its wrong. So where I start running around in my own mind with this is, who is responsible for this debt. Part of me believes that it is the consumers job to fully know and understand what they are getting into. Anyone going for a specialized degree, at least in my opinion, has spent some time looking down the road. They've crunched some numbers to see if this is even feasible. They've looked at the different schools, payed attention to the cost and had supposedly made the best decision for themselves. They willingly entered this "contract" and I believe that they are responsible for making those ends meet.
Fortunately enough for me, I didn't accrue any college debt and I've had people tell me that I don't know what I am talking about, then. I disagree. I have entered loan contracts that at the time seemed appealing and 5-8-15 years down the road realized that I am getting burglarized. Its a hard pill to swallow but it ends up being a lesson learned. I hate taking on debt as much as anyone, but if I enter the contract of my own free will, I feel it is my responsibility to make those ends meet by whatever means possible. I had credit card debt hanging out of my ass. A good amount of it and I shuffled that debt around transferring one cards debt to another with a lower interest rate. I was still getting nowhere and reached out to "debt reconciliation" and that really wasn't any better. My fault. I accrued the debt and its my responsibility to pay it off. The government didn't help me. I don't feel that its the governments job to keep bailing people out. (Auto industry has been bailed out at least twice in my life time. That tells me that the auto industry is not learning and they commit the same bullshit moves that put them in the same bullshit position. How long do we keep doing this? Banks too... too big to fail? If the government offered to pay off my debt or to do something to make it more affordable, would I take advantage? Probably... I can't say no, definitively. But I feel, and this is just me personally, I'd feel as if I was on the dole. I wouldn't feel good about it. I don't think it is owed to me. Perhaps I see the arms of government doing something different.
I'm thinking out loud here folks, so stick with me. Now I can't but think about the cost of tuition and how that money ends up being distributed. Some professors make good money. Some maybe not so good. Some other professors make a pretty good chunk of change, and you know what? Their expertise is probably worth it. They took the risk of taking on that debt and were determined to give it hell to try to get back up on top of that debt and be otherwise successful. But what is realistic for a tenured professor to make? Does it depend on which department he/she is in? Do all tenured professors across the country make the same amount of money? Probably not, so why is there no uniformity in cost from school to schools? I looked at the prices for the nations law schools and I found it odd that they were pretty uniform, especially for the top 10 or so. Roughly we are talking about $50k a year, give or take a couple thousand, per year, per out of state tuition. But you get further down the list and still looking at accredited law schools, some are down to as low as $34K a year for a law degree from Temple University. What in the world is it that causes that $16k a year difference?
By the way, do you know what you call the guy who graduates at the bottom of his class in law school at Harvard? A lawyer...the same as you would a guy who graduated from Temple University or UNLV. Still a lawyer. Same degree, very different debts. Why? Why is there no uniformity in the cost of schools? Everyone in this particular scenario comes out a lawyer, they've accrued different debts.
I don't know where we go with this, but I am of the impression that it is not the governments job to bail us out on this. And again, I do feel bad about the debt, but I have my debt and nobody is helping me no matter how good of a guy I am. And believe me, I found and own my debt. Did it all with the space between my ears. Perhaps a bigger, better education and more debt would have been helpful?
In closing this thought I'd like to add that I don't believe that we as a nation have been more divided as we are today. People on either side downright hating people on the other side, and this shit train runs both ways on the track. We disagree simply to disagree and it seems as if neither party is willing to compromise in fear of being called some kind of a defector from their own party. I don't think a lot of our politicians have any integrity and I feel that they don't even consider the people that have voted them into office. I think its a fucking shame that the people in DC vote themselves in for "cost of living raises" while the rest of the country is trying to figure out how to put gas in their car and groceries on their plate. I find it a bigger tragedy what these sucks have done to our nations war veterans.... These people in DC have given themselves the best health care system out there and basically shit the bed when it comes to veterans. These people in DC have claimed to have "stood up for and fought" for their country all the while we have boots on the ground in foreign lands and our fighting men and women getting blown to pieces and their lives changed forever! I don't think the people in DC really know what a "fight"is, and how dare they compare what they do versus what out military does! According to thinkprogress.org, Congress got 239 days off this past year.... Are you shitting me? That had better be a misprint....
We don't help our veterans. We don't help the homeless as well as we could. We don't help the mentally ill as well as we should. And all the while there are people trying to get into fields that could be of assistance, we cripple them with debt.? Somethings got to change America and I am open to suggestions.
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