My Finances

All day, every day I read personal finance blogs. Sometimes it helps me get excited about paying my next student loan payment, or saving instead of spending, but lately these blogs have given me a bad case of jealousy. These bloggers write about maxing out their employer's matching 401K contribution, or which index funds to invest in, or whether it's smart to prepay your mortgage. Suffice to say, I cannot relate.
There are two financial goals competing for my money right now. The first is to the urge to make my money doing standup and writing. The second is to not pay any more interest than I absolutely have to on my student loans. It burns me up to know I'll be paying student loans until I'm 34. But the idea that I'll be spending 40 hours a week for the next 9 years sighing and resentfully drafting motions also burns me up.
I make $25,000 a year at my job. I would be enormously pleased with myself if I could make $25,000 a year doing comedy. That works out to $481 a week before taxes.
At the moment, my average earnings from comedy over this year would probably be around 5 bucks a week. Some weeks, like last week, I'll make 20, but then I'll go without performing for awhile. I've chosen not to perform very much for the past couple of months.
So I have to come up with a strategy to increase my average weekly comedy earnings from $5 to $481. Which is just a 96 fold increase. No biggie.
As for my student loans- lots of money pundits will tell you student loan debt is 'good' debt, as opposed to credit card debt, which we all know is evil and destroys your marriage and soul. As someone who owes $16,000 on a B.A. in comparative studies and then $10,000 on an aborted attempt at law school, it is my opinion that spending on education is only good debt if you really want the future you're going to school for. Yes, student loan debt is better than credit card debt, or car debt, or god forbid hospital bill debt, but debt sucks, period. I have a monthly payment of $330 on my back for the next nine years. Ugh, that kills me. Thinking about that makes me seriously consider putting comedy on hold for two years and putting all of time into earning money to get rid of that debt. But then what if I die next year, and I never get to do comedy full time?
Point is, money is awful and not having money is worse. Yay for the market.
UPDATE: This is a really good example of why I need to stop reading so many of these blogs. What did this kid major in to earn $47,000 right out of college? Where did he find a student loan with an only 3.75% interest rate? All of my loans have a variable interest rate, currently at 7.14%. I feel like I skipped the day in high school where they explained how to not be poor.

Live Free with a Hard On

(I stole that title from my friend Justin.)

I saw "Live Free or Die Hard" last night. I learned a lot.
I learned:
- the pentagon organizes search and rescue missions
- natural gas in pipelines is on fire
- a hacker can remotely control your webcam
- pissed off government bureaucrats have tons of money
- a hacker can remotely control anything electronic
- the FBI's cyber division can be reached through a CV radio frequency
- in a fight between a fighter jet and a big rig truck, big rig truck wins
- if you are related to John McClane, he watches all of your dates

So yes, I really enjoyed the movie. I learned more, but I don't want to spoil the movie for you. I enjoyed this movie as much as I enjoyed "Miami Vice," and I didn't have to put up with Colin Farrell looking sleazy/sweaty the whole time. Although I've never seen Justin Long look sleazy/sweaty- Macs are becoming way more macho.

My Intense Phobia of Successful People.
The kind of person I find most terrifying of all is the really together, smart, going somewhere person. Holy bejesus. I would rather meet someone whose nickname involves the word "switchblade" than a together kind of person.
The more genuine the successful person is, the more my chest feels like it's caving in. Talk about the following topics is especially scary for me:

1) How much you love exercising
2) How much better you feel now that you eat healthy
3) How much you love your work
4) How taking time to meditate/pray is essential to your day
5) How loving your current relationship is

Talking to people like this feels like trying to hoist myself up onto a wet dock. Tell me something truly messed up about yourself and I can latch onto it and empathize with you. Tell me something wonderful about yourself and while I may smile supportively, inside my head red lights are flashing and the "end this conversation" siren is screaming.
Now, if you have a history of being messed up and start doing wonderful things, then I can feel happy for you. For instance, if you recently went vegan and started doing yoga in the morning and this has really helped your transition back to society after having been convicted of a sex crime, that's cool. If you recently went vegan and started doing yoga in the morning and this has really helped you manage your stress as you finish your thesis, I don't want to hear it.
As for discussing how busy you are: I am only interested if a mental breakdown looms large on your horizon. You can make this clear to me by saying something like, "I'm working a lot, I'm taking a couple classes, and I am always on the verge of tears." Please, please, please don't relay to me that you are happier when you are busy.
Topics of conversation that will make me less terrified of your success: the time you ate that whole pizza, sexual encounters you regret, crimes you've committed (please, no protest crimes), tv marathons you have watched, health problems, racists in your family, gross things you have put in your mouth, your enemies and their various reasons for despising you.
But really, anything you can do to live your life planning around my insecurities would help a lot.

Joe Jack Talcum at the Happy Dog

I saw Joe Jack Talcum from the Dead Milkmen at the Happy Dog last night. He was really good, and it wasn't very crowded. I love going to shows where it feels like a secret that everyone else is missing out on.
So of course he played "Punk Rock Girl," which sounded really really good acoustic and live. I wasn't expecting that. He played lots of Dead Milkmen songs, but he also played some newer stuff that tended to be softer and sadder. I loved it. At one point he apologized for all the soft stuff, so I'm saying this now: if you see him live tell him you want more of that new soft stuff. He doesn't know people like it yet.
See, this is why I wouldn't want to write reviews for a living- all my review would just come down to "you should go see this person" or "you shouldn't bother going to see this person." You should click through to his website and listen to all the mp3's there. Ok? Thanks.
Also, I'll perform at Chucklefuck tomorrow, so come on out.

I'm 25, I have no money, everyone hates me, I'm never going to be cool....



What was I talking about?

Boyfriend-o-rama

I don't have a boyfriend, duh. Sometimes I want one. The thing about me wanting a boyfriend is, the boyfriend in my head doesn't resemble any person I've ever met. He is constantly doing things like bringing me delicious food, and taking me out to introduce me to interesting people, and impressing my friends with his wit and charm, and looking adorable, and of course, doing the things that people do when they love eachother very much. So he's not so much a person as he is a concierge/gigolo. He doesn't do any of the things boyfriends usually do, like be moody when I'm busy being moody, or talk down to me about computers or music or bikes or cars, or go out with his friends when I need someone to listen to me talk about my no-good, horrible, very bad day, or leave a dirty toilet. I hate those things.

Why don't I have a boyfriend? Probably because I am more interested in propping up my self worth by pursuing men who I've objectified and think that the person I would like to be would date, rather than pursuing real intimacy. Or because I don't wax my mustache enough.

But I can kinda get into the persona of "the single girl." People expect me to go out drinking a lot and have crazy stories and engage in lighthearted man-bashing. Except for my man-bashing getting inappropriately heavy ("All rape is lame. All sex is rape. Therefore...") I can live up to those expectations. If I was a wealthier single girl I'd probably be a really fun person to know. But I might be a really sad person on the inside, because I'd probably use the extra money to drink more.

Hmm. No concluding thoughts here. I just thought there wasn't enough content on the internet today.

Men: Glass Half Full Edition



I have been in kind of funk the last 25 years. I am crazy good at seeing the downside to things. Ask me sometime to play my favorite game: "What's wrong with this thing most people like?" I always have innovative replies.




What's wrong with parents loving their kids?




You think there's something honorable about putting your snotty little offspring on a pedestal?




What's wrong with people exercising?




Those jerks run around in their spandex gear like they're doing the world a favor.




What's wrong with kittens and rainbows?




Kittens will spray your coach and we're not living in the bible, got that noah?









But I saw a picture this weekend that threw into sharp focus the many good dudes that are out there, trying to support the liberation of women even though they're not entirely sure what that entails and they have a gnawing fear they're somehow to blame for us needing to be liberated.

This is Andy Samberg, and he's wearing a NOW shirt to the Spike TV Men's Choice awards.

Yay for Andy and yay for all good dudes!

Biking.
I still haven't gotten the brakes or inexplicably loud whirring noise from my engine fixed, so I have been biking a lot in the past two weeks. I've discovered that while I may be a plain jane in a car, or on the bus, or on foot, when I get on a bike I become crazy attractive- mind-blowingly, cattle prod to the testes, yell to the high heavens sexy. All around the city, while I am on my bike, men are compelled to yell at me, either giving me direct orders ("Come over here!") or commenting through sign language on my beauty (through motions exaggerating the movement of my breasts) or unintelligible noisemaking from a moving car ("hey raraghalasaras!!...").
I have never felt like such a valued member of society. To know that the sight of me causes the love and affection and joy buried so deep within men to leap up and claw its way to verbal expression! To know that when he goes home, my street admirer writes the following imagined journal entry:
"Today I saw an angel on a bike ride past me. Struck by her charms, I flirtatiously screamed that I'd like to see her ride over a speedbump. She rode off to her destiny, leaving me with only a treasured memory of our brief romance to keep me warm at night."
Then I bet he sings "Angel Flying too Close to the Ground" and hits the Paramount pretty hard.
Other thoughts in my head about biking:
- One of my more favorite bartenders once told me that while biking she crashed and got a bruise down to the bone on her shin. My shins have a weird nervous ache when I ride.
- I still miss my car and all the support she gave to me. The problem with not using credit cards and having a car with limited braking ability is that driving the car to a mechanic means you have to drive a car with limited braking ability, and you have to hope that the repairs don't ruin you. Although "ruin" for someone who is living in her parent's home is a relative term.
- I was optimistically hoping that biking a lot would make me lose weight, but I hadn't counted on getting INTENSE cravings for milkshakes and their ilk. After biking downtown on sunday I walked to McDonald's, got a hot fudge sundae, and polished 3/4 of it off within 2 blocks. Then I threw the rest away because I knew I would finish it before I got home and feel deeply ashamed. My body will not change it's fat/muscle ratio without a fight.