Tag Archives: money

Financial Leaders of the Future

16 Oct

nigerian scam

This woman is never going to come through with the money. The check with the funds was returned to her client, she says. It was money to turn my apartment into a Home Office. Insufficient address. It will be re-sent to me today by UPS or Fedex. The sufficient address was on my resume. The sufficient address was presented clearly in the body of an email. But the check was returned. How long until they ask for my bank account. I give it two days. I know you prefer to be paid by check. But in the interest of time can we send a Western Union money transfer. Can we wire it directly to your account. We will need your routing number, account number, online banking password, and Social Security number. Her English is out of Google Translate. She is in Thailand for eight weeks teaching a seminar. She is a portrait photographer. I am unaware of a market for eight week portrait photography seminars in Thailand, but– what if. She offered me the job. The unemployment claim form says: did you REFUSE any work? Continue reading →

Tags: , , ,

Reader Mailbag: Career Advice

10 Aug
image stolen from nynjgoodwill.wordpress.com

image stolen from nynjgoodwill.wordpress.com

Bob Marley writes:

Since you know so much about careers, I wanted to ask for your personal opinion on which would be wise for a young lad in England to pursue.

I’ll take to heart whatever your decision may be.

Work is fundamentally evil. No matter what, it will make you unhappy. If you do what you love as work, you will come to hate it. Maybe this is not true of rock stars. But no future rock star ever asked for career advice.

So it doesn’t matter what you actually do for work. Live cheaply, and work at the place with the most pretty girls. Continue reading →

Tags: , , ,

The Phone Bill

2 May

is due. Way past due, months. We’re at the two missed calls every hour stage; they come from different numbers. My phone number is 831, from Santa Cruz, and they mix it up lobbing calls at me from 408, San Jose. Their computer thinks I’m in Santa Cruz so therefore I would see a number from a neighboring county and think: that’s legit. I’ll answer, since it’s obviously a person and not a computer from the phone company looking for money. Maybe it’s a chick.

Of course, I’m in L.A. No one in San Jose would ever call me. And I know I owe the phone company money, and I want to pay them; I just don’t have it. Even if they hadn’t sent me emails and texts and paper bills with sternly worded warnings on the inside and IMPORTANT CONFIDENTIAL ACCOUNT INFORMATION on the outside to fool you into thinking there’s some contract change and it’s not just “give us money.” Even if I hadn’t had a previous round of missed calls from 800 numbers and weird area codes; I’m aware that the phone costs money you are supposed to pay every month. I paid them what I had. It wasn’t enough apparently. Continue reading →

Tags: ,

Unemployment Diary: Money

6 Feb

Handling_atStore

Fuck– I gotta get gas.  Money down the drain.  Gas is too fucking expensive.  I hear there’s an oil boom in North Dakota; domestic production is gonna outstrip imports and we’re closer to energy independence.  Great, I’m sure we can all expect gas prices to drop real soon.

But, fuck it.  Who cares. I have no money, and I don’t give a shit.  I have no wife; I have no kids; I have no ailments.  Whatever education I need I’ll get off Wikipedia.  I have cheap internet so I can beat off and a bigass package of Von’s brand assorted chicken parts for 87 cents a pound.  What more do you need.  My car cost twelve hundred bucks and if it breaks I’ll buy another one for even less.  You can buy an old car for how much fixing a scratched bumper costs on a new car.  The Cubans are onto something; you can keep these old beasts running forever. High priced liquor is bullshit; all alcohol is caustic poison and it all tastes like ass.  So Von’s store brand brandy at 6 dollars a quart is just fucking fine.  They give it some fancy Dutch name, Van Der Hobo or some shit.  Getting drunk on it feels just as good. Continue reading →

Tags: , , ,

The Socialist Nanny State Sounds Pretty Fucking Awesome

27 Apr

My friend had an abortion in Holland.  She’s hot, so my initial reaction after she told me was to go home and masturbate to the thought of popping off an unprotected nut in her.  But after that, I started thinking about socialism.

Because the whole story started out with this horror– there was some painful complication; she’d had to be hospitalized for weeks after, and it would have been a nightmare for this broke, wayward girl who is about as organized in life as any good looking unemployed actress in her twenties– it would have been a nightmare, except everything was taken care of and free.  There was no bill at the end of this abortion and then internal bleeding and weeks of inpatient care and then follow up home visits and friendly helpful people telling her what the next step would be at every part of the process. It was all free, and the people helping her out, who were employed by the government, were actually knowledgeable, caring and nice.  And from scraping Johann van der Guyinaband’s baby out of her to her final post-treatment evaluation was all part of one system, so, the nurse who told her there was some kind of ovarian hemorrhaging was able to say “don’t worry, we’re gonna take you to the state run hospital right next door and check you in and do some tests, and from there after you get released we’ll come to wherever you live and keep checking up on you for free.  So I know this sucks,” they would say compassionately, “but don’t worry, ’cause we’re gonna take care of you.”

In America, it would have been: you looking down between your feet in stirrups and seeing the abortionist cock an eyebrow suspiciously, maybe mutter, but ultimately say nothing.  And then afterward a squat, surly nurse in a briefing  room would force some forms on you saying you weren’t gonna sue before telling you you had some kind of complication and might want to go have a doctor look at it.  Wait, what?  What is it? Ma’am.  Ma’am– please, calm down ma’am.  I’m not allowed to discuss this with you, we recommend that you go to a qualified physician… and if you have insurance, you get home with your insides stinging and bleeding from having the guy in a band’s baby scraped out of you and the first thing you’d have to do is call the phone number on the back of your insurance card and ring… ring…

Para Español marque el numero “dos” … Welcome to Blue Shield of California. If you are a health care provider, please press “one” now… (wait)… if you are a member, please say “I’m a member.”   “I’m a member”  I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. If you are a member, please say–”  “I’M A MMMEMMMBBEERRRR!!!!!” All right. Please say or enter your ten digit policy number... (beep beep boop beep)… Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

To My Future Son: Don’t Have a Career

10 Feb

They tell you, and I don’t know who “they” is because frankly nobody ever told me this but I somehow got the impression anyway—they tell you to get a job and have a career and make money and women will be attracted to you.  “Men like looks,” they say.  “Women like success.” It’s a common countercomplaint when feminists accuse men of objectifying women; the guy will say back “well, you women better stop objectifying my wallet, amirite?” The “take my wife, please!” of antifeminist arguments.

So you go out and get a job.  You try to get into a good college and you study and you intern and you get a toe in the water of some status-y “career” field and you get up early and you stay late and you read work-related material after work and you network with work-related work jerkoffs and you suffer under some cruel old work prick who believes himself better than other human beings because of his work in some lofty status-y career field and you work and you work and you work and you work.  And part of what drives this is the dread instilled in you when you read that in 2020 to put a kid through college will cost sixteen billion dollars and Social Security will have dried up and you better be sitting on a cash hoard of ten million billion trillion dollars conservatively invested because health care costs will have reached the level where only a class of feudal overlords can afford a tongue depressor. And there will be no “safety net;” there is literally nobody who believes programs like Social Security and Medicare will still exist in our financially post-apocalyptic future.  We all know we are headed toward a Randian thunderdome where our old age will be spent guarding a 55 gallon drum of drinking water with a shotgun and removing our own tumors with steak knives.  If you don’t want this to happen, you better sink a bunch of borrowed money into school, and then work. And you better not spend whatever pittance is left of the 22 grand your post-college job earns you on fun; you better save and invest, according to the 401k presentation the commissioned salesperson who gets a small piece of what they withhold from your meager check tells you, because if you don’t, at age 23, begin taking advantage of logarithmic growth to accrue a massive privately-invested nest egg, you will be cannibalized by gangs of cyborg Hottentots, and your bones picked clean. And your children.  And your children’s children. Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

This American Life

14 Jan

Good morning. The fucking car is breaking. Now it starts overheating the same day you put water in. I should just fix it, but that requires money. I should pay my bills, but that requires money. I should get my car registered properly, but that requires some lengthy process because while I’ve already paid for it, somehow the insurance wasn’t paid up at that time, which requires money, and so, the fucking registration didn’t stick, so I got a ticket, which requires money. And now I have to park on the (REDACTED STUDIO NAME) lot in their impossible parking structure, which requires time. How are they even checking expired registrations? It’s not like the thing was from fucking 1978, it says 2010. Fucking DMV. Requires money. Requires money. Requires money.
Continue reading →

Tags: , , ,