Comments on: Summer Material

By: Evil Conservative

Evil Conservative — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:29:09 +0000

This post really is your second full thesis statement of your work. Your first was Ten Percenter which stated the underlying theme of nearly all of the other stories and musings of a man living a quiet life of desperation that is the price of the title – Attorney.
That man’s desperation is no longer quiet because others feeling the same frustrations have raised their voices to him over the last 4 years and now is the perfect time for the world to hear us.
PL: A number of people have told me that deconstructing things without giving even a hint of an answer as to how things might be done better rings a bit hesitant… as in afraid to step out and be criticized for actually having an ethos. I think that’s a bunch of bullshit myself, but I figure why not try to at least discuss a few things worth fixing and offer a thought on how one might do that. While writing nonsense at the same time (My next piece is about Gin).

By: Vladimir Zhirinovsky

Vladimir Zhirinovsky — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 12:33:37 +0000

Americans = Narcissistic Peasants. (Or descendants of. Either way.) Everyone is special, destined for the top, reason be damned, and despite the fact that they/their ancestors couldn’t make it in the old country. Mailroom boy-works-his-way-to-CEO sort of rubbish, with the caveat that intelligence and social skills might be requisite qualities for that to happen conveniently left out, of course. The shrinks have a term for that, eh? I hate to be such an obnoxious, didactic shill for the rest of the civilized world, but believe it or not, they had credit cards and subprime loans too. And yet…well, you know the rest.
I don’t really know how you fix something like this that’s so deeply ingrained in a culture, though.
PL: I think the success of shit like “Blink” and “Talent is Overrated” are excellent signs of our unique brand of narcissism. Tell people the guy at the top is just like them, only lucky, or a harder worker, and they’ll love your for it. Tell them that is the case in many instances, but that in just as many, if not more, the guy at the top is smarter and shrewder than they are and they’ll hate you for it. It’s like we live to prove Darwin wrong, and through our folly in so doing only manage to prove him right with more spectacular failures every day. Where there used to be an appetite for failure, pain and the loss of life that went with making mistakes, now we’ve bailouts and universal health care to keep everybody living to ninety. I have only one question? How in the fuck are we going to pay for it?
I guess the Israelis will bomb Iran’s nuke factory and this will plunge us into WWIII? Is that the next bubble?

By: micawber

micawber — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:54:34 +0000

Also, before somebody says it: yeah, a lot of the people I’m talking about (poor white trash, basically) fucked themselves out of a better life by buying 150 inch TVs (and couches fit for Roman emperors to watch them on) when they couldn’t afford them. But isn’t that what happens when you don’t teach people to be enterprising and creative in school, and leave them to rot as labor or cannon fodder? I’ve been reading Joe Bageant’s Deer Hunting With Jesus, and while he’s admittedly a socialist, at least he’s showing some compassiona and giving a voice to the “dumb redneck” we like to make fun of.
PL: Yes, that is what happens in the circumstances you describe. But this isn’t a phenomenon limited to rednecks. The overspending ran through every level of society. That you went to Harvard or make six figures as opposed to working in a plant somewhere doesn’t mean you’re not cannon fodder, or that you’re innately creative. Look at all the totally screwed consultants, financial workers and lawyers who are getting killed in the current economy. They had no creativity. They took the safest path and they;re getting their asses handed to them just as quickly, and in many cases much more viciously than the undereducated sectors of society.

By: micawber

micawber — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:02:18 +0000

I’m probably too young and stupid to make a clear point here, but I’ll try: One of the things I love about your writing is the way you illustrate the petty viciousness of the corporate environment. And while I agree about the general undesirability of left wing crony capitalism, I’ve never been able to embrace total laissez faire (Maybe because I read too much Emma Goldman at an early age). The members of my family who didn’t get degrees (and now drive trucks or work in the baked bean factory) are probably the most fervent opponents of welfare and government handouts that you could imagine, but their lives are a brutal grind, and they’re basically part of a huge farm of cheap labor that thinks its somehow middle class. Is it hopelessy wrong headed and idealistic to think that these kinds of folks could have a better life (or is it just “you should have gone to school, so fuck you losers”) ?
I’m about to enter that class myself (Fed Ex package handler woo hoo!), but its because I’ve got the music bug, and I’m not too passionate about academic pusuits at the moment. After reading your posts, I came to the conclusion that I have to sleep at night, and I’ll sleep better on a ratty futon after playing a kickass set than on a waterbed in a McMansion after a day of timesheets.
PL: I’ve always wondered why the people who get their brains beaten in daily in those “grind” jobs don’t unionize more broadly. The idea of Capitalism is that capital is used to create more capital. Okay, well, what capital do these workers have? Their sweat. If pooled, they could turn it on and off the way the Arabs play us like a fiddle with their oil supply. If the lower class worker shut out of the system wants to get more, his only option is to unionize and take it. Bullshit to all the people who say unions are anti-Capitalist. Unions are totally capitalist endeavors – using the supply of something to shake the best price out of its buyer. I can’t think of a more capitalist concept. I also can’t think of any other way workers with fungible skills can get ahead. Management will otherwise get all it can out of them and financial architects will find ways, in concert with management, to cream maximum income out of the companies, with little or none of that money going to the lower rungs of the hierarchy. That’s the natural cycle. If workers want more, they have to band together and take it. Instead, they’re believing, admirably, that they can somehow rise through the ranks and make it to the top. This keeps them fragmented, and when they’re fragmented, they have no capital. So the question is this for workers: Do you get together and force a decent standard of living for all, or do you retain an every man for himself approach and hope to be the one in a hundred guy who rises through the ranks to become a well paid exec? I’d take the latter because I like to gamble, but there are a lot of arguments for going with the former.
The caveat being, a union can’t be a pig any more than management can, or you wind up with GM.
By the way, there’s also the “opt out” revolution. If the middle class in this country got fed up with the policies of the government, it could just “opt out” and tank the whole system. I’m not talking about any Ron Paul stuff like not paying income taxes. I’m talking about a collective default. It’s near impossible to pull this off, and almost sounds like something from a Palahnuik book, but if say, 30 million households all decided not to pay any bills until the govt agreed to pass a policy they wanted, they could drive the financial system right off a cliff. The destruction to the concept of credit rating alone would confound our financial system for years. This is more a joke than a serious suggestion, but if Obama could amass so many people via cell phone technology, it’s not unrealistic to foresee a future in which people take such collective actions to make their voices heard.
That’d be a great screenplay, I think. Amuse the hell of out frustrated audiences and probably get loads of Opeds in the papers from people calling the dramatization of such irresponsible behavior as comedy “dangerous.”

By: Marty

Marty — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:45:47 +0000

I’ve just finished reading your book. One word–Fabulous. and highly entertaining –okay I guess thats four words. Everytime I finish an interesting book I feel oddly attached to its author, and I’ve been reading your blog for a while now so I’m genuinely happy for your career move :) I guess you could say I went through the whole “law school” phase myself. I think it happens to everyone who’s towards the end of their “four-year-long-party” and realizes the party favor they’re leaving with isn’t an ipod phone or a berry-scented aroma candle but a degree in something picked at random sophmore year–because heck, everyone was doing it.
I’m just happy your 10yr im-stuck-in-the-wrong-job-phase has ended. I think mine will probably never begin due to the current state of the economy. Maybe I’ll pick up another major and stay an extra year. Or go to law school. Ha.
I live in Philadelphia (well Im stuck at home this summer, so currently and unfortunately I live here right NOW) but thats why I particularly enjoyed all the Philadelphia references..especially when you talked about Show n Tel–first strip club I’ve ever went to. Classy place.
Well, good luck in your next book! I’m sure it will be great. If not I know this guy at this law firm…
PL: Thank you. If you can, please lend your copy to someone else. Whether they buy it, steal it or borrow it, I think college kids looking at careers should read it, and things like it. Knowledge at your age is worth three times what it is at my age.
Show n Tel is just Wrong. Amusing, but Wrong. It’s the only strip club I’ve been to where the strippers are an added bonus. The real entertainment there are the patrons. The gangrene of society. I’d never walk in the place with an open sore.
By the way, unless you’re wired with business connections in the area, when you graduate, do not go back to Philly, or at least the city proper. I may be wrong on this, but if you look at its demographics, its brain drain, its lack of industry, its tax policies, its union problems and its lack of any plan to address its long term downward trajectory (the city was just listed “least entrepreneurial” of any large city in the US by Forbes), I see the place turning into “North Baltimore” down the road. I know lots of people in business in Philly and few are setting up shop in town. They’re all out in the suburbs. I think the future of that town is in towns ringing the city. The city itself is looking down the barrel of an economic nightmare.
(BTW, as to the section of your comment removed, you’re close.)

By: Kakutogi

Kakutogi — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:15:08 +0000

I’m excited for your new book, now that I know what it’s about. I think my frat is going the same way. I’m pretty sure next semester is the deciding factor, if it turns out even mediocre, we’re sunk.
The most sickening part of it is that half our problems could easily be solved, if it weren’t for the fragile fucking egos of certain individuals within the house. Too bad i’m too abrasive to convince anyone of anything. Logic never works when you’re an asshole, they just end up resenting you and cementing their position more.
If being in a house has taught me anything, it’s that apathy is always the ‘Final Boss’ of life.
PL: We drove ours off the cliff. It was a question of keeping things as they were, with a charm and carelessness that made the place what it was, or adjust. No regrets. Everything has a life span. When it can’t be what it ought to be, it ought to go.

By: Farkov

Farkov — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:01:43 +0000

I’m curious as to which of the four categories you place Ron Paul and his growing band of supporters? And what your thoughts are in general about libertarianism and the concept of inalienable individual rights. Thanks in advance.
PL: I think Ron Paul is important, and quite rational and has a lot of good ideas. But he can be a bit extreme, which causes him to come off as too much of a joke. And many of his followers seem most interested in revolution purely for revolution’s sake, as sport. A lot of confused anger anger there, using the candidate as a focal point, but not really on board with what he’s saying so much as his outlaw image.
I am Libertarian, with caveats. And I believe our “rights” are limited to rights to be left alone. We lost our way in this country long ago and people like Scalia, or anyone on the Supreme Court, call themselves tradtionalists or strict constructionalists is ridiculous. Our right to be left alone was trampled over long ago. But the sad truth is, there are too many people in this country for us to be free in the sense the Founders suggested. Too many bodies, too many expectations, too little education. We’re stuck with a Big Govt managing the lives of millions upon millions who can’t manage their own.

By: Garibaldi

Garibaldi — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:07:21 +0000

To be honest I’m not sure if the “moderate middle” is particularly worth listening too. Too many people look at two extremes and say “well, the truth must be somewhere in the middle” and then pat themselves on the back for being so reasonable, which is a facile and ludicrous approach to problem-solving.
PL: My choice of term there might have been less than ideal. “Burned out,” “Irritated,” “Frustrated” or “Apathetic” might have been better. Most of the middle of this country just wants to feel safe and secure. Nothing wrong with that – except that they’re looking to someone else, or some system, to bring them comfort.

By: NimhOfJoy

NimhOfJoy — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:53:23 +0000

Two comments:
First, I love how all of your blog posts strike dead at what I think about things. It’s nice to see another voice speaking similarly (although I don’t think I share your cynicism towards the future; I’m young, so I can remain optimistic). I look forward to possibly participating in some of these discussions as the time goes on.
Second, if you do end up starting a message board on RMMB, please do inform us about it.
PL: Thank you. Will do.
I’m not so much a cynic as a realistic skeptic.

By: notion

notion — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:25:47 +0000

Shitter was full!
PL: A simple sign, “No newspapers inside,” takes care of that.