I love reading. I hate myself when I read.

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Max T Kramer

Every day on my way home from work I pass the local library, and every day I do my best to resist the urge to go in and browse.

“But Y?” you axe, “reading is gud!”

True. Reading is “gud”. But perhaps, it is a little too good. I try hard to keep my reading under control but the fact that I just made the statement “I try hard to keep my reading under control” is pretty solid evidence that I have a problem.

I’ll read everything, up to and including the labels on however many of Mistress’s shampoo bottles I can reach when i’m taking a poopy, but I vastly prefer genre fiction. I like science fiction, and I like fantasy. I enjoy them because spaceships and magic are fucking sweet, and also because the real world is dumb as hell. In the real world I have to do distasteful things like go to work, and grocery shop, and pay child support. When i’m reading a good book however, i’m no longer stuck in the real world. I’m living in whatever fantastical, outrageous, fictional realm the author du jour has created. I willingly immerse myself in this sweet escape as thoroughly as possible, and I deeply resent anything that pulls me back from it.

This is the root of my problem. Once I begin a new book, I want to finish it in one uninterrupted session. If i’m forced away from it for any reason, even if it’s for my second favorite activity, which of course is sexy sex on top of a mountain of cocaine, I grow surly and unpleasant to be around. If I’m reading a longer body of work that simply can’t be inhaled in one sitting, I tend to be withdrawn and distracted while i’m stuck doing other activities, since i’m just counting down the minutes until I can crawl back into my fortress of solitude and forget the world again.

As you can well imagine, this tends to put a strain on my relationships, since my reading process is usually to grab as many books as I can carry, and cloister myself in my reading lair for days at a time, surfacing only infrequently for snacks. Mistress understands this about me, and does her best to cater to my absurd habits, but even a saintess will eventually grow tired of having their boyfriend turn into a cranky hermit every time he discovers another mangy old paperback.

I love reading. If I had no outside obligations and an endless supply of new literature, I know I would happily spend the entirety of my existence doing my best to escape from that self same existence by reading ceaselessly, until I physically turned into an amorphous meat beast, and died alone and pitiful.

That is why I hate myself when I read. Am I the only one?

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Who exactly is the “Student Loan Fairness Act” fair for?

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Max T Kramer

If you’re not familiar with the proposed “Student Loan Fairness Act”, good for you. That probably means you don’t have student loan debt and therefore don’t give a crap what it is, or it means that you do have debt, but you are paying it off like a responsible adult without looking for ways to escape from a situation you placed yourself in.

Being a young American adult myself, I know all about that damn act, since my generational peers are the namby pambys disseminating petitions to get the act into effect. Bunch of greedy wankers if you ask me.

Here is the sparknotes version of the Student Loan Fairness Act: People decided of their own free will to go to college and then decided, also of their own free will, to take out student loans to pay for said college. People now don’t want to pay their student loans because it’s too hard, and they deserve to get things for free because they’re special. People want to convert their private loans to government loans. People want their government loans to be forgiven so they don’t have to pay them off. There are obviously more details to the proposed act, but that’s basically the gist of it.

Who is this act “fair” for exactly? The schools who fulfilled their end of the bargain by providing you with the education you chose to receive, who you now blame for your crippling debt? The rest of the American public, who will end up paying your loan balances off as taxes if you do succeed in subsidizing your loans through the government and earning their loan “forgiveness”? Or is it “fair” for you, the borrower attempting to use this act because you “deserve” to have money, and shouldn’t have to pay your debts? I’m not sure if that’s technically “fair”, or just douchey. Everything about this act is a terrible, horrible, no good, rotten idea. Let me break down why this is for you, facet by facet, using my double edged sword of logic and reason.

First of all, a large part of the reason why school is so damn expensive is because student loans have already been at least partially subsidized by the government, which gives schools access to loans guaranteed by the government. A university can charge as much as it damn well pleases, if students are simply accepting the price and financing their educations. This is doubly true if those students are financing through a government loan, because if the student can’t make his payments and defaults on the government loan, the University is still getting paid. The only difference is that the schools will get their money from the government, which, obviously, gets its money from me, via my taxes. If these loans are available, and students keep purchasing them, there is no incentive for schools to lower their prices to manageable levels. If government funds aren’t available for student loans however, the benefits would be twofold. First, if would-be students can’t get loans, they won’t be able to afford the outrageously inflated prices of some colleges and universities, and they won’t go there, so they won’t ever take on this crippling amount of debt. Subsequently, if the schools want to put butts in the seats, they’ll have to lower their prices to more reasonable levels, enough perhaps, that huge loans won’t even be necessary. For us consumers, that’s a win-win. Placing more student loans in the hands of the government (which, by the way, is already crippled by its own debt, and is clearly terrible with money), thus allowing schools to keep their prices obnoxiously high? Not so much.

This college-make-less-expensive process won’t help those of us who have already graduated of course, but just for once maybe we as Americans can do something for future generations, instead of just fucking them over for our own short term benefit?

Secondly, if you took out loans, and they’re too much, and you want the government to “forgive” them, ie pay them off with my tax money, you can go fuck yourself. Who should be paying the loan you chose to purchase? Probably…..you.

Couple of things to think about. College isn’t a right. Nor is it mandatory. Nor does it guarantee you a good job upon graduation.

You don’t have to go to college. If you insist on going to college, you don’t have to go straight into an expensive 4 year or longer program. You can instead enter the work force right after highschool, save money, and go to night school. Or you can go to a trade school. Or you can join the military, receive vocational training during your enlistment, and then go to school after your service. Or you can strip, and pay your tuition straight cash. Or you can do your undergrad in an inexpensive state school instead of an expensive ivy league. All i’m saying is, there are options beside taking out loans to go to college. YOU didn’t choose those options. Instead, you decided that taking out 300k of loans with a 96% interest rate for an undergraduate degree in philosophy was a good idea. Now that you can’t pay your loans, you think you deserve assistance? You deserve nothing except a slap in the face.

Let’s be honest, you made the horrible choice to finance an overpriced education because you bought into the myth that a college education guarantees you a better job with more money. Wrong. It’s true, a college education can make you more desirable to potential employers. What it cannot do, is create jobs. Once you have your degree, you absolutely have an advantage over someone without a degree that has other similar qualifications, but you’re still not entitled to a good job. If the jobs don’t exist, they don’t exist. That’s not your college’s fault. You still need to pay for the education you received. Not the government. Not me. You.

I can understand the frustration, if you worked your ass off to get a useful math or science based degree, like an engineering degree, or a medical degree, or a business degree, something that if you were able to get a job in your field upon graduation, you would be making enough money to pay off your loans. You took a risk, invested in yourself, and it hasn’t paid off. Too bad, so sad, shitty things happen to good people here in the real world. It sucks that there aren’t enough jobs available in our current economy, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have to pay off your loans. If you got some bullshit liberal arts degree however, you shouldn’t even be part of this conversation, as you don’t have a leg to stand on. The best you could ever hope for was making 32k a year even if you did get a job in your line of study, and you can make that much money waiting tables, so go fucking wait tables and shut the hell up.

If you buy a house that is too expensive for you, and you can’t make your payments, the bank takes it away from you. If you buy a Ferrari, when you can really only afford a Chevy Cobalt, eventually you lose your Ferrari. Once you’ve received your education however, it can’t be taken away from you. Your only option is to pay. And that is as it should be. So what if you have to keep living in your parents house and eating Ramen, and moonlighting as a bartender to make ends meet? That’s the world we live in now. We are going to grow old and die as a poor generation. Deal. With. It. There is nothing inherently special about you or I. We don’t deserve anything. We are not entitled to anything. Everything we have, we need to earn. Instead of whining about it and trying to get help from other people, grow a backbone, be an adult, and handle your shit.

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Teachers: more heroic than Jesus? According to teachers…yes.

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Max T Kramer

teacher

I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of close friends and family members who are teachers in various levels of academia from pre-k into the university, and the one binding characteristic between them all is they love to complain about how hard their jobs are.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Teaching is tough. If you don’t think it is, you’re a dumb stupid idiot. Think about it. We can barely stand spending six minutes alone with our own horrible smelly children. Teachers, on the other hand, have to spend EVERY DAY with dozens of children that don’t even belong to them. If you think that sounds like hell on earth, you’re probably right. I think we can all agree, teaching is a challenging profession. And everybody knows it is a challenging profession. In fact, nobody is challenging the fact that teaching is challenging. So teachers, for the love of the All-Father, you need to please stop telling us how tough your jobs are. We get it. We really do. The kids are terrible, the parents are worse, the pay sucks, the hours are endless, the curriculum is asinine, you don’t get the respect you deserve, blah ditty blah dee blah. Here’s the thing about teaching, teachers. You chose it. It didn’t sneak up on you. Nobody gets tricked into becoming a teacher. They don’t make just anybody a teacher after all. To teach, you first need a highly specialized education. Those aren’t obtained by mistake.

Nobody goes to college to be an engineer, or a pharmacist, or for easy access to excellent drugs (all liberal arts majors), and then accidently applies for, gets into, and completes an education program.That endeavor requires a series of conscious decisions and efforts on your part. The process to earn your masters degree, which as far as I know is almost universally required to obtain a professional teaching position, is arduous, expensive, and often includes hands on experience student teaching. This way, would-be teachers even get a trial run to decide if teaching is really right for them. Admit it. You could have walked away at any time. Hell, you can still walk away. If your job is so terrible, by all means, quit. If it’s not so terrible after all, then shush your mouth. The next time you feel the need to complain about your job, please try to remember, you’re not some sainted martyr deserving of beatification. You’re a person, with a job. Granted, it is a valuable job. And a stressful job. But it is a stressful job YOU CHOSE.

You became a teacher because, for whatever reason, you want to teach. You think that molding a young mind is a rewarding, magical experience, or you’re a pedophile, or whatever your motivations were, it doesn’t really matter. Even knowing all of the challenges associated with the profession, you still made a deliberate decision to become a teacher. Honestly, when you complain about the job you chose specifically, it’s pretty damn hard for the rest of us jackoffs to listen to, because hey, we have stressful jobs too, and we didn’t even choose ours on purpose. We only took OUR jobs because all of our dreams were crushed by the time we were 23 years old, and we have bills to pay, and if we didn’t work somewhere, we’d die.

So teachers, please, show some compassion. The next time you want to complain about your job, think about the rest of us first.

The next time you want to complain about the cost of your education to become a teacher, please remember that you didn’t have to go to college. You could have gotten a job right out of high school. Or went to a trade school. Or the military. Or you could have gone to college, but chosen a shorter course of study. Or a course of study that pays more upon completion.

Also, regarding your pay, the next time you want to complain about your pay, please remember, there are plenty of people who make less money than you. While you’re at it, you might also want to remember that nobody, ever, in the history of your life said “if you want to get rich, you should become a teacher”. So….there’s that. Teaching, not so lucrative. Let’s face it, the money was probably not why you got into teaching.

You got into it for the kids right? So, the next time you want to complain about how shitty the kids can be, please remember that the rest of us have to deal with the one thing worse than kids, every day. Adults. Let me tell something to you. Adults are terrible people. You get to spend your days with miniature humans that like eating crayons and trying to hide their daytime boners. The rest of us have to spend our days with the assholes that will eventually corrupt the tiny people you deal with. You only have to see most adults for brief periods of time before or after school, if at all.

The next time you want to complain about your hours, please remember that you don’t have a monopoly on working late. The average actual school day is what, 7 hours long? While you undoubtably have hours of work a day beyond that period of time, doing all of the corrections, revisions, and preparations needed for a successful school year, you don’t necessarily need to be in the school building to do it. You can do this portion of your work naked, at home, while receiving blumpkin on the toilet if you wanted to. When the rest of us have to work late, which is pretty much always, we have to do it AT WORK. In clothes. Also, you get summer vacations off. YOU GET SUMMER VACATIONS OFF.

So teachers, please. We love you. We respect you. We understand, you have a hard job. But so do we. So nut up, shut your faces and keep teaching our kids shit they’ll never actually need in the real world. Or, quit and join the rest of us hacks in the real world. You’ll hate it, I promise.

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The 7 people you meet working in an office

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Max T Kramer

So you work in an office. Congratulations, you’ve made a series of poor decisions with your life. Really though, things could be worse. You’ve got your cubicle, full of knick-knacks and paddy-whacks. You’ve got your cat calendar. You’ve got your ergonomic chair of doom. It’s not so bad, is it? The worst part really, is that sometimes you’re forced to talk to other human beings. A bunch of them. Chances are, unless you’re the phantom of the call center, you will have to interact, at least superficially, with multiple people throughout the day. Maybe you’re stuck making awkward small talk with some dingleberry in the break room while your coffee is brewing. Maybe you’re trapped on the elevator for 3 floors with Chuck-with-the-bad-breath from accounting. Maybe you’re forced into a competitive game of battleshits with your boss’s boss during the 2pm bathroom rush. Maybe Paula from HR with the sweet ass stops by your cube to remind you for the 30th time about your upcoming sexual harassment reeducation training. No matter how much you try to avoid it, if you work in an office, eventually you will come in contact with other people. This is, naturally, to be avoided at all costs, but sadly, sometimes it is inevitable. When confronted by another human being, your best bet is to enact the possum defense and play dead. The experienced employee knows to keep a jar of maggots on their desk for just this eventuality, to sprinkle liberally upon themselves as added camoflage. Most office workers are mindless drones, place fillers incapable of individual thought. They will likely be fooled by your trickery, and wander off. If the person talking to you proves a canny or stubborn adversary however and sees through your ruse, it is best to know exactly what type of threat you are dealing with. It is for this reason that I give you in no particular order: The 7 people you meet while working in an office (it was going to be 10, but then I got bored)

1. The new hire – You can spot this person coming a mile away. Mostly because they’re the ones still walking with an upright, erect posture. They don’t hiss in pain if they happen to move past an open window in the day time. If they stand near a mirror, you can see their reflection. They do strange, unfathomable things like smile and laugh and hope. THREAT LEVEL RED. No good can come from an association with such a creature. At best, they will remind you of what you once had. At worst, they’ll ask you questions and ruin your productivity.

2. The lifer – The exact opposite of the new hire in every way. You know those horrible Johnny Depp Pirates of the Caribbean movies? You know the bad guy ship with all the tentacly clam monsters growing into the walls? That’s what a career office worker looks like. Man or woman, it makes no difference, somewhere between year 2 and 26 they lose all vestiges of dignified humanity and turn into balding amorphous meat beasts. Like a fish or a reptile they grow to fit their cube, until they become a wheezing, diabetes riddled flesh-colored garbage bag that looks like its full of cottage cheese and doorknobs, with the cold dead eyes of a lovecraftian horror. THREAT LEVEL GREEN. These poor lost souls pose almost no threat, being almost completely sedentary and near sighted to boot, they are easy to avoid.

3. The almost friend – This one is sad. This is the person who you can tell you would have totally been best friends with, if only you had met somewhere else at another time in your life. Unfortunately you met at work, after you had already lost the ability to feel feelings or connect in a meaningful way with another human being, and your friendship potential will simply never be given an opportunity to flower. C’est la vie almost friend. It could have been magical. THREAT LEVEL ORANGE. Even though you know better, you’ll still allow yourself to be drawn into conversations with this person, all the more painful because you know whatever you talk about would be 3 million times more awesome if you were talking about it while tripping on peyote during a camping trip in Peru, like you would be doing if you were real friends, but you’re not, you’re just coworkers and that’s all you ever will be.

4. The “hot” one – In the real world this person is a soft 4. In work world however, compared to the other freaks and troglodytes you’re surrounded by, they’re a hard 9. THREAT LEVEL AMBER. You’ll spend far too much time contemplating grudge fucking the shit out of this individual, club foot, hair lip and all.

5. The Religious – THREAT LEVEL VERMILLION. From their pedestal of righteousness, they judge you.

6. The ugly soul-mate – This is the person the universe meant you to be with. And you would be with them, if you weren’t such a shallow piece of crap and they hadn’t fallen out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. It’s a damn shame really. They’re funny as fuck, super trill to hang with, and they totally get you. Sometimes they’re so cool you think you can even get past the physical horror, but then you remember that one time you saw them in their bathing suit at the company picnic, and you have to stick pens into your eyes to make the vision go away. THREAT LEVEL MAGENTA. One of these days you might have too many beers at happy hour…

7. The wizard – THREAT LEVEL YELLOW. This person is actually useful. Characterized by a complete lack of social graces, this gentle, if abrasive being from the magical kingdom of IT won’t waste your time with inane chatter. Instead they will appear suddenly in your cube, preceded only by their impressive beard, body odor, and dorito stained iron maiden t-shirt, they will mutter some arcane incantations to rebind the electrical demons back into your fritzed out computer, and then they will depart upon another esoteric quest without so much as making eye contact.

Please remember, this is hardly an exhaustive list. The above listed 7 are just some of the people you might encounter as you go about your work day. Stay calm, keep your wits about you, and you’ll be able to get through any situation. I have faith in you.

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Artistic Renaissance Man seeking Renaissance style Patron of the Arts

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Max T Kramer

It’s been over a month since I last posted. Normally I’d apologize for that…but none of you even checked to see if I was alright. Really? I’m gone for a month, and…nothing? No phone calls to my next of kin? No slightly out of date black and white photo printed on a milk carton? Not even a global mass suicide? I’m disappointed in you world. You let me down bro.

I wish I could say I haven’t posted anything recently because I’ve been so busy working on my other creative projects, or I was kidnapped and forced to lurk in a basement pit slathering myself with moisturising skin creams. At least then I would have soft skin.

Unfortunately, neither of those were the case. I’ve just been working. I received a “promotion” you see, to a salaried position, ie my employer can now give me infinite hours of work a week, and only pay me for 40 hours, and make up the difference in beatings about the face with an argyle style sock full of nickels, which would be alright if I got to keep the nickels, but I don’t. For a young gentleman who enjoys using his “me” time for various beloved activities like writing, reading, writing, stencil style graffiti art, working out, writing and vigorously masterbating to internet porn, losing 99.2% of my “me” time to a soul-destroying bill paying job is eminently frustrating.

Luckily for you, I,  being the eternal optimist that I am, have come up with an elegant solution.

Bring back patronage of the arts, as it existed in medieval and Renaissance era Europe, and give me a patronage.

What I require: Shelter (preferably in a secluded tower or dungeon style suite of rooms in a hopefully drafty and ominous castle), food (the blander the better), a modest living stipend, and free reign to pursue my creative impulses.

What my patron receives in return: My slavish devotion to any particular artistic pieces they commission. The social benefits of having a half-mad art wizard lurking in the shadows of your manor. My dazzling company, should you choose it. My not-inconsiderable sensual prowess, should you demand it. (caveat: be female, don’t tell Mistress)

Interested applicants may inquire via email, facebook, and aeronautical sky writing.

 

 

Smashing Pumpkins said it best. Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage. Please, rich, eccentric, patronly types. Help me escape from the mundane. Allow me to create. Who knows, given the opportunity, I might even create something good.

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