Thank God I escaped with only $5500 in Stafford Student loans. I've read today that even state universities are so expensive, $100,000 in loans are normal. So, instead of putting that towards a mortgage, you have to live as a rentier for 10-20 years before settling down. These guys don't miss a trick to tie-down the youth by any means necessary. At least in my day it was the proliferation of easily-obtained credit cards at 21% APR.

#143 He's more of a Dr than you are, and familiar with pharmacology, so go sit on a carrot.

I suppose those adjectives and nouns are better than -------------, -----------, ass-reaming, dick sucking, ------------, half-sister banging, ----------, -------------, whore-frequenting, dirty ----.

:>)

Good point, Eberly. Adverbs generally that modify verbs or clauses. Adjectives are generally auxiliary words that modify nouns.

When I "took", as the British like to say, my MS in Chemistry, I had a minor in English/Technical Writing, so there is no excuse for my formatting errors.

On topic, one thing tbat saved me from enormous debt was that the last year of undergraduate training and during the study for the Masters program, you were paid a small stipend to do research for a professor, and your credits were compensated by the university. Granted, you ate beans on toast most of the time, but it kept me to a bare minimum of $5500 in Stafford loans.

During undergraduate courses in independent research, the stipend was $300/month tax free. I was still able to afford a 1/4 bag each week. I lived with three girls in a semi-fancy trailer with the master bedroom equipped en suite with a gigantic spring bath, that we used to take turns bathing in when the girl who occupied the room was gone for the weekend.

One of the girls put black eyeliner and brushed my red lashes with black mascara before an REM concert at the Cynthia Woods-Mitchell Woodlands Pavillion one evening. Another one pierced my right earlobe with a diamond stud. I went with one of my friends common-law wives who worked for Ticketron and had 3rd row seats. Her husband didn't want to go, so she called me up and I said, "Hell Yes." It was loud. My ears rung for 12 hours. That was in about October 1995. Grabbed a bunch of subversive political material on the way out.

Correction, left eaerlobe.

You've got that right, Sitzkrieg. The community college I attended was $21/hr plus fees. Thank God I got a job as stockroom assistant in the chemistry/physics department that paid for full tuition and fees, even though the wage was $3.00/hr. When I went to university, I applied for the same position and got my tuition and fees waived, as well as when I became a TA. I was paid $5/hr. But even at the state university, tuition and fees were $33/hr. I could afford a dirty shanty of a trailer for $180/month. I also worked at a chemical company in town loading tractor-trailers with 55 gallon drums and other --------. And I could afford a 1/4 ounce of weed, to boot.

I have no idea how kids are going to afford college now. I checked my alma mater's current tuition and fees schedule and its $330/hr...the same rate as Baylor University was charging in the late 1980s. My old school's campus has radically improved. It's a no-brainer where all that extra money came from.

I'm going to do everything within my power to send my kids through college, not like mine did. Mine didn't do anything except have a home to come to once a month to wash all of my dirty laundry and raid the refrigerator for meat. And free toilet paper.

My dad was an invalid after having a massive stroke and my mother worked evenings and night shifts as a dispatcher for a neighboring county. So, as you could imagine, her income wasn't great.

I got ~130 per weekend as a USAR reservist, and it paid for my car payment.

Unfortunately, the USAR unit at Huntsville was an MP Battalion and had no use for a 52D power generation and equipment repairer, so I went into the Individual IRR. The only MOS I could've used was as an infantrymen. After 4 years of weekend drilling I'd honestly had enough of Army life.

I let my hair grow out and one of the dudes in my dorm gave me a fresh fade. It's where you cut off most of the hair around your ears and leave a big, floppy top on which you could part either way.

#196 Believe me, Eberly, I did feel as if I'd won the lottery. I had no other way to pay for college and opportunities seemed to drop in my lap continuously. You'd be surprised how much -------- professionals have to dole out so they don't have to do it. All they require is trust. So, you must behave trustworthy, show up to the interview in a suit, and they'll hand you the keys to the Kingdom.

One of my best toking friends, an Iranian dude sent over during the Iran-Iraq war, didn't have to work because his father was a physician back home in Iran. He told me everything there was to know about the middle east without having to ask. His dad was rich enough to send him tutition/fees room and board money every month. He was an American citizen by then and used to get into melancholy moods when he realized he could never go home again to Iran. So, there is always someone battling internal demons worse than yours (mine) are.

Actually, he was the one who put the seed in my mind concerning retirement homes. I would drive by one on the way to the middle of town and he always became incredulous after passing it and would say, "Why you keep your old people stacked in these places? It's disgraceful. I though America was a Christian place. In Iran, we take in our old people and men marry a second or third wife simply because their husbands have died." "Not to have threesomes with like your sick country."

That, and after watching the Exorcist for about the 10th time, I'd made my mind up I'd take care of my mother when the time came.

In the Exorcist, there's a line spewed out by the demon Pazuzu though Reagan: You left your mother home to die!!

Still to this day I don't know why that line resonated with me so much, but it did. My mom got to die peacefully in her sleep at my home without going to a nursing home.

You make it sound like you won the lottery with that story.
What you described is what any college kid can do.
#196 | POSTED BY EBERLY AT 2021-04-07 04:30 PM

Perhaps you're right; however, most didn't because their parents were paying their way and had no need to offer up their time as servants to the University or Capitalists. I ended up agreeing with them...college is for studying, not for toil. Unless one's degree plan was filled with so many easy three-hour lectures that outside employment was seen as a bonus.

#210 That was exactly my point. Unfortunately I have a bad habit of dancing around the point with references and anecdotes and forget to end the post with its most important point.

It's impossible for someone to work and go to college now and escape the adventure loan-free. I felt awful for garnering $5500. That's peanuts compared to what young adults are facing now.

The University system found out that they could keep raising tuition rates and the federal government would foot the bill through Stafford loans. So, now my alma mater looks like a fortress.

As another example, my mother won a special country-wide scholarship, which I forget its name, and decided to enter the University of Texas at Austin as a physics major. She kept the telegram informing her of the scholarship in a photo album with pride. She spent two years there and dropped out and went to California where the money was. She was also having problems with her boyfriend and was spooked by the Charles Whitman mass-murder scene. She eventually got her BA in Psychology from the University of Mary Hardin Baylor at Belton, TX 30 years later.

She made $2.13/hour working for the Austin Statesman newspaper as a proofreader and had enough money for room, board, outside dining, gas, etc. and leftover spending money on various sundries. She never had to go home to her parents for money. This was around 1964-66.

She didn't understand why my sister and I were having so much trouble affording college.

Just remembered it, it was from the Minnie-Stevens Piper Foundation. It paid for room, board, tuition, books, and incidentals. They also gave her a motorcycle.

Tao, that was when I tried to explain geometric expansion to my mother. $2.13/hr in 1965 should be $17/hr in the mid 1980s and early 1990s. And well over $20/hr now.

I was paid a perfunctory salary of $1000/month by the sole proprietor of the first company I worked for after just graduating college. I was the Vice President's personal bitch. The next month it jumped to $30,000/year. This was back in 1994. One of the criteria was you had to smoke dope. He used it as an albatross over each employees' head so they wouldn't turn him in for being a potheaded, drunken, pill-popping lecher. After the thousand dollar amount was agreed upon, he took me privately to his office and offered me a $2000 cash loan until I got on my feet. He was a very mobster-esqe businessman and knew how to tap people based on their weaknesses. A cou;le years later, after paying him $100/month for the loan he cancelled the loan and tore up the piece of paper I'd signed acknowledging the loan.

As a warning to parents: if you don't help your kids in their early 20s, there are plenty of nefarious entities out there that will make use of your starving children. Some of them make extra cash by peddling their -----, or stripping, or being hired by a company that is constantly being sued, or drug dealing.

As an example, one of the managers I worked for at a Dairy Queen told me she made extra cash by giving -------- for $50. I was too young to take advantage of the opportunity, and felt sorry for her instead of aroused.

Maybe it's different up North, or along the Eastern Seabord. From what I gleaned from my boss from Cincinnati, most of the labor stuff not only be unethical, but unlawful. He noted the good-ole-boy attitude toward developing reservoirs down here. Before the reservoir is built, a bunch of businessmen in the know would buy up all the property surrounding the reservoir when it finally topped out at its mean sea level. He said up north there would have to be bids and environmental impact studies done first. He was referring to Lake Conroe and all the swanky gated-entry homes situated on the water. Most of the land was bought up by Cynthia Woods Mitchell's father by no-bid contracts and he became a billionaire. His daughter constructed an outdoor amphitheater in the Woodlands to compensate. That's where I saw REM, Aerosmith, etc.

Seaboard

Two of the lab technicians I was responsible for bounce off me the idea of going into stripping. I told them you wouldn't want all those drunk dude pawing at you all the time, would you? The responded that it's better than working an 8-5:30 job doing mind-numbing experiments all day.

Thankfully, they got married. One to an electrician and the other to an Airline Pilot. They'd never phone in advance, but they'd drop by our apartment from time to time and keep me up to date on their lives, and take a peek at what was going on with mine.

It always reminded me of the saying by Socrates, "To the homes of the good, the good go unbidden."

Oh, yeah, as Sitzkrieg mentioned above, there are no more Quack Shacks on campus to get free medical attention. You have to pay for insurance to obtain medical care now.

Why our elders sanction this indentured servitude is beyond my comprehension. Not only have they mortgaged our futures with incredible government debt, but stolen and squandered our birthrights out from under us by getting rid of their homes and possessions to the medical and rest home industries. Not to mention cruise lines. My father's mother was adamant about leaving my sister and I the small savings she had insisting it didn't go toward the government or assisted living arrangements.

Once, around 9pm, I was well into my cups and heard a rapping at the front door. Being inebriated, it was no shock as would've been had I been sober. I looked through the peephole and there was a lanky dude standing outside. I opened up the door and he presented himself as a new Russian emigre' and would like to sing a Christmas holiday song and give me a quite nice artistic photograph of a night scene in Russia. So I said go ahead. He sang for about 3 minutes and I reached into my wallet and gave him a $20. I hung the picture up in our apartment with pride. What people force themselves to debase themselves to to make a living is heartbreaking sometimes.

With the religion-peddlers, it was a different story. After they'd introduce themselves, I'd ask them to come in and have a spot of tea or coffee, or a screwdriver or G&T. The Mormons, refused of course, and the others would always say, "No".

They were men and women on a mission; got a serious mind.

Got the saints and apostles
Backin' up from behind.
Black eyed looks from those bible books.
He's a man with a mission
Got a serious mind.
There was a woman in the jungle
And a monkey on a tree.
The missionary man he was followin' me.
He said "Stop what you're doing."
"Get down upon your knees."
"I've a message for you that you better believe, believe, believe, believe."

--Partially taken without authorization from either the group Eurythmics, their distributor, or ASCAP.

But using elementary reverse-psychology, it was child's play to make them leave me alone in the future. Not being self-aware enough that they recoiled at someone intruding on their space by inviting them to come in. That was their job to make people uncomfortable.

Jesus certainly should've clarified evangelizing the gentiles more clearly. Not to send innocently brainwashed 20 year old girls into the night knocking on doors about the good news.

That old boss was so corrupt, he asked me if I knew how to make meth. I told him yes and I also knew how to make marijuana and morphine stronger by adding acetic anhydride to it and letting it dry. He never asked me to make illicit drugs for him, though. I wouldn't have anyway. The consequences of a Type I Professional Chemist was 20 years in the hole in Federal Prison.

I'd had the hospitality of the county sheriff a couple times in the holding tank earlier in my youth and had no desire to expand my knowledge on being a fully-fledged inmate. One strange observation I made was that when the female inmates were being marched to chow, they were all beautiful. I expected them to look like haggard heroin victims. So, I supposed that most of them were in for credit card fraud or passing bad checks.

And if anyone is unaware, holding tanks are 30 x 30 rooms with concrete floors, no blankets or pillows, and one roll of toilet paper that the most senior captive used as a pillow. There was a toilet/sink combo in the corner with no privacy barrier. So if you had to take a dump, you did it with 30 people trying not to stare at you. Having to ask the guy for a few sheets of TP wasn't hard. He seemed to acknowledge your predicament.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were simply brown paper sacks with a dry bologna sandwich, an orange, and a half-pint of reduced fat milk. I lost about 20 lbs over the 48 hour span of time before getting to plead my case too a Magistrate. I had told the deputy numerous times I wanted to consult my attorney, so when it was time to go in front of the Magistrate, I was first in line. Holding my Levi 501s up by my left hand so they wouldn't fall down. (They'd taken my belt, watch, wallet, workboots, and my drivers license. She summarily dismissed the charges against me and I was free to go. They returned everything but my drivers license. So I had to get my attorney to get it back. That was $300 for the effort.

So, like the old addage goes, "You might beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride."

I was arrested for being drunk in public. The arresting officers didn't take a breath test to prove it, so the Magistrate had no choice but to let me go. I have to believe asking for my attorney several times also helped my case.

In case you're ever arrested, don't argue with the cop. Just get booked and ask politely for your attorney. They'll ignore you, but they know that you've got an Ace up your sleve. And when you're arraigned the Magistrate will most likely let you go if the offence isn't too antisocial. And she knows you've been trying to get a hold of your lawyer for two days. My sister is a probation officer and she told me they're supposed to let you contact your attorney as soon as possible and there's no law that says you must spen 24-48 hours in a holding tank with a bunch of drunks.

I'll ignore #246 and add this all took place in Texas. I've no idea how other states deal with inmates.

Family Values, I, quite intelligently, took Typing for one year as a Freshman in HS. I can type about 180 words per minute. It's been a very marketable tool over the years, and I have no shame in admitting it. So, go stick hemlock parsnip up your ass and let it dissolve until your body has a strange numbing effect and your breathing becomes laboured.

#251 The only cocaine I've experimented with was once at a party with some of the ex-cons that worked in the warehouse of a manufacturing plant about 25 years ago. It was truly for experimental purposes only...so I could recognize the effects on other people in the future. After the party, the host passed around a fifth of Jack Daniels to help us deal with the side-effects of coming down from it. His common-law wife laughed and said, "Payin' tha piper's a bitch, ain't it?

Anyway, I'm a redhead and subject to cyclothymia like all readheads. Sometimes you retreat into your cave and sometimes you come out to play.

Have you researched why gingers have no souls?

Whether or not people possess "souls" is best left to psychologists, philosophers, and theologians. I do possess what is known in psychoanalytic theory as a tremendous superego. This was told to me by a college girlfriend who had an MA in Psychology and used me as a guinea pig for all her psych tests. Thankfully the only bump was on the MMPI for paranoia, but she said that was normal for college-educated people.

I took an IQ test for her in front of her class, once. I'm not going to reveal the number, but it made her so wet I got laid that night.

Family Values, I'd urge you to read "Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus." I think you'd find it interesting. Personally, I've read it twice.

And FV, were I a betting man, I'd wager you're a pathetically lonely incel who hasn't been near a mons pubis in a decade or two. And that booze is your go-to substance to enhance your spirits. Amiright?

It doesn't take a lot of time to recognize other peoples' personalities by what they don't talk about, as opposed to what they do talk about.

Like ancient cave paintings of the silhouettes of hands made by spewing pigment all around the hand and then removing it. It's not a painting of the hand, but you know it is one because of what is left over afterwards.

#266 I started recognizing it as a kid with my drop-of-the-hat willingness to get into fist-fights with bullies. Maybe it's just me, but I've seen other redheads with fiery tempers as well. Maybe it's the Irish in me? But since both of my parents carried the recessive red-head gene it could come from my Germanic father. They were both brunettes and had brown eyes.

And, FV, something that I would know, is that when you're scraping the bottom of the barrel for insults, you've got nothing. So, my advice is to simply blow away like a fart in the wind. Unless you have something more entertaining to hold us captive with. Feel free to stay and sit at the adults table. By the way, this is a formal invitation. Not a mockery.

#265 Personally, I've had little difficulty with classically defined gender specific roles. All the men I roomed with in college were expert chefs, if only because their wives/girlfriends were satisfied with eating Fruity Pebbles. And the men wanted meat and potatoes.

I do most of the cooking around here, and I don't find it effeminizing. I also empty all the trash and do the laundry. My better half does other things she's good at in return. My mom was such a quasi-feminist bitch that she wouldn't even sew up my coat for me, so I had to learn to sew and crochet by myself. I still remember her sitting on the couch watching TV and spewing, "I'm not your goddamn maidservant." My friends and I laughed one evening that we all came from post-feminist bitches who recoiled at the idea of doing something like sewing, cleaning, or cooking. So, we had to learn to "batch" for ourselves.

FV/KBM One of the most poignant examples from Men are from Mars was that both men and women retreat into their caves (for men), or holes (for women) to recoup, regroup, and reorganize. So if a woman seems disinterested in talking with you, just chalk it up to them being in their holes. Men do the same thing by retreating into their cave (safe space) where they aren't obliged to perform and be held accountable for something.

Oh yeah, Family Values, if you really are the former poster named KBM, I'm sorry what happened to your brother. You didn't think anyone was paying attention, but I was. It was the reason I stopped picking on you at the time.

On the topic of ---- jobs, I was an E-3 (PFC) for a long time at my USAR unit because I spent a year drilling there while in High School before going to Basic Training the day after I graduated. One interesting find was that most of the hair in men's bathrooms is pubic hair. I'd have to get on my hands and knees and swipe the floor with a hand brush. I consoled myself that there was no where else to go but up. In a way, I became the most valuable soldier in the company. Every time a ---- job came up, I got to do it. Everyone else were E-4 Specialists. KP, peeling potatoes, emptying water reservoirs from a hundred diesel engines. I inadvertently made a lifelong friend of the KP Sergeant 1st Class (E-7) when I told him, exhausted, that, "Y'all work hard back here." He smiled and said nothing. I always got extra helpings during chow time after that. Like ribs or brisket.

Nope - not KBM as I have already posted I was Jacques_Strap. I remember that name vaguely but no recollection on his/her positions.

Looks like Laura and her keen eye for detail fished you out correctly.

I am more concerned about the bump of coke you seemingly took an hour ago. You don't need to type out every thought that runs through your head.
#251 | POSTED BY FAMILY_VALUES AT 2021-04-07 08:22 PM

You wouldn't believe the amount of executives out there wanting a protege' as an accoucher for their thoughts. And to type memoranda and scientific journal articles as fast as they could dictate. Like I said earlier, many executives would give their right arm for an educated personal secretary.

Oh, and Jock Strap, the only drugs I take are by prescription only. I can't drink alcohol on them. The are, to wit: Lisinopril, Carvedilol, Rosuvastatin, and Trazodone to get to sleep. I'm also a patient at a pain clinic and Rx'ed 7.5mg hydrocodone q.i.d and Gabapentin. But it has long passed its euphoric properties and simply deadens lower back pain. The spongy tissue among the last 5 vertebrae above my sacrum have deteriorated and are a thorn in my side. Should've been lifting with my legs all those years ago.