perfidy

Prehaps it's time to go west young man - I hear good things about Texas!

Bram,
Eeehhhhhhhh...I hear tell the place is full of Texans.

We'll have to wait for Buckethead's review to confirm that allegation.

Full of Texans? Not obviously true here in Houston. You must have heard that about Dallas.

As for the heavy thought, now that you've calculated it, and ignoring the fact that it's likely bullshit, I hope you've realized that it's a "So What?" moment.

Donald Trump's always in debt too, with the occasional traipse through one chapter of the federal legal code or the other, and he seems contented. Except for the hair, that is.

Well a couple major things separate the Don's life from my own:

-His dad was a NYC slum lord and property baron who left him a ton of $$. It helps to get rich when you start life rich.

-He has an army of lawyers to help ensure he stays rich, even when he isn't

-I keep my head clean. Matter of fact, I finally found a dude close to me who knows his way around a straight razor for a proper skull scraping. Finally! I think Don keeps his shit that way to be, I dunno, some kind of smart-ass.

As for my calculations, projections, matrices, and analyses...well, given I only have about 40 years to live, and with 10 solid years of earning data behind me, it's not hard to come up depressed. But you know, in it's way, it's kind of helpful. It's like...it's like, hey, don't get so upset every month when you feel like you're pissing against the wind, because you're going to forever anyway.

But as to my analysis being "likely bullshit"?

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Iiiiiiiiiit's been known to happen.

On my two trips to Texas - once to the west, and once to the east part - I found Texas to be, in fact, full of Texans. I don't have a real problem with that. Texans feel about their state the way I feel about my country. I can relate. East Texas doesn't have much to recommend it, being really a mildly texified sort of Louisiana. West Texas was more like the Texas you imagine from the movies. In early spring it was quite nice.

As for economic opportunities there, I have no idea whatsoever. I do know that I have more Texas mottoes than I did for Florida.

The economic opportunity to be found in Massachusetts is legendary. Which is why GL's tail of debt-peonage surprises me. I mean, sure, if he lived in a depressed, economically stagnant region like, I don't know, anywhere else in the country, you'd expect that.

Linear extrapolations of earnings (or anything) are often dangerous. If I did one for my first ten years in the workforce, and adjusted for inflation, I'd be making about a buck two-fifty. A year. Looking at the ss statement they send me is kinda scary. I have no idea how I lived on 11 grand a year while supporting a staggering rate of drug and alcohol consumption.

The next ten years will likely see our GeekLethal making more. And if our man in the wilds of western mass made a move to sunnier fiscal climes, even more cash might be in the offing.

The legendary economic opportunities in MA start in Boston and don't survive the trip west much past Cambridge.

But the bigger problem is that I only know how to do one thing. Which means that, to remain economically viable, I need to do that thing. Being intimately familiar with that thing's trends, salaries, and general life, allows me to predict a life of bondage.

But I own that I brought it on myself; the intent of the piece wasn't to cry "poor poor me." I put myself in a position where now I have to suck it. My point was trying to explain that feeling, that faced with that grave condition, it's heavy.

Move to Texas. Seriously. No state income tax, nice houses for less than $1 per square foot. It's worth being surrounded by Texans.

I prefer to think of our student loan debt as a payment on a vacation home we never visit. Sometimes it helps.