My Secret Life
No Country For Young Men
In my time writing in this space I know that my readers have ever held me to the highest standards of integrity, and of late I am afraid that I have not been able to live up to that lofty goal. I have, in fact, let you all down- and it weighs heavily on my heart to have done so, a great bubbling cyst on my soul, even.
Yes, I slept with Eliot Spitzer for money.
You all know that I’ve had a great many money problems lately, particularly concerning school. I had no choice, really. But I know that by being a ho-bag I’ve failed to live up to your expectations and therefore must resign… Oh wait, this is Radio Free Slug, what am I talking about?
So, it looks like I’ll be keeping my job, partially due to tenure, and partially because said job wouldn’t exist if I left it. I will be taking a pay cut, however. Less imaginary dollars for my invisible coffers; it is a cruel world indeed. The price I have paid for my lust for powerful, balding governors. He was just such a mountain of man, whose very power had rushed through him like a radioactive surge and thereby deprived him of hair. That night will always be cherished by me.
While I am aware of the media’s incessant lies about this “Ashley” who claims to have been the governor’s hooker, I respectfully submit that they cannot handle the truth of the fact that it was indeed your humble correspondent who was the hooker bit of Eliot Spitzer’s ‘hookers and blow.’ I know you all believe me.
However, laziness and depression over my unrequited (read: unpaid) love for Eliot Spitzer, prevented me from going to press with this before Ashley Dupre could stake her claim on Governor Spitzer’s man-meat. What all of this means, aside from this glaringly obvious truth never seeing the light of day, is that I can’t pay the bills with the heaps of lucre that Dupre is now reaping from her myriad of photo, music, and book deals. She’s already made about two hundred thousand dollars from selling her own songs at 98 cents a pop. The correlation between having sex and getting people to pay for your remixed belching has always been an obvious one to me. But again, I was too late on the scene here.
I’m sorry Eliot, farewell, my Captain! (He asked me to call him that.)
As we here at Radio Free Slug move on from this sordid affair, your correspondent is still left with the pressing question of “how am I going to pay the bills?” It’s a difficult question, to be certain. The whole reason I took up prostitution is because it’s the only way to keep a roof over one’s head, of course. Take a good look at Ashley- before this scandal broke she was living the good life in a Chelsea apartment. She has since been kicked to the curb because the other people that lived there were not amused by the newfound fame of their penthouse girl and the gaggles of press that ganged the front door. But hey, that's only because she was a *famous* hooker; and it's not as if she's not setting herself up elsewhere presently. Her disposable income has multiplied as a result of all this, you know.
To understand what I’m getting at here, let’s look at a very interesting situation going on in France right now. The BBC recently filed a special report on their housing crisis which included the following:
Take a quick look through the bookshelves of any decent-sized newsagent, and tucked between the biographies of the former French First Lady and the former American First Lady is the extraordinary account of Laura D. Her book, My Dear Studies (Mes Cheres Etudes), details the anonymous young woman's slide from being a fresh-faced undergraduate, to a poverty-stricken student, to a 19-year-old selling her body to pay the rent.
She’s not alone. Laura goes on to state “Looking at friends, people I know, they live in places that are unhealthy, squalid. Or they negotiate with landlords who rent them rooms and who sometimes abuse them.” The author of the article, after perusing through a few local newspapers and websites points out that instead of the usual ‘750 a month, but pay for your own damn cable, bitch’ one finds that “the requests are sexual, demeaning, bordering on the perverse. "Sex twice a month," is one blunt demand. Another asks for someone "open in spirit and elsewhere".”
Open in spirit and elsewhere, yes. Only for Eliot, though.
While certainly one does not have to pimp themselves out in a very real way in order to make the rent, it is increasingly surprising that this is going on in a wealthy country. I’ve little doubt that similar things are occurring here and in other prosperous nations as well. The path to avoiding this is, mercifully, supplied by the BBC as well, in a different article about France.
France may be a global leader in high technology, but employers complain that today there are far too few students studying science and technology and there are far too many studying "soft subjects" which leaves them ill-prepared to join the real world of work.
I have indeed found my chosen major of Sociology to be squishy soft. Doubtless, few employers in the fast track world of business will have little use of no holds barred, gumbo style journalism such as Radio Free Slug is able to provide. After all, as the article goes on to say:
Among the youngsters I met searching for jobs at the careers office was 23-year-old Aurelie. She is still baffled as to what she wants to do.
"I have studied so much, I am almost overqualified. And now I need a job to get money and I can't find one," she said.
"Everyone tells you to get a good education but my parents studied much less than I did and yet they didn't have such problems finding work."
Aurelie, my fellow youngster, expresses a sentiment that I have often felt, along with many others in my generation. The reason is that Aurelie’s parents came from that remarkable generation that was able to grasp the mass produced Holy Grail known as ‘job security.’ These days employment is like a box of chocolates, or a box of hand grenades, take your pick. For those lucky enough to find gainful employment, it usually has to be in the field of ‘soul destruction’ or ‘brain eating.’ In these highly specialised fields, the souls and brains in question are your own. Or you can do TV/VCR Repair.
This, indeed, has become the great problem facing the youth of today. If I may artificially inflate the length of this article by quoting the BBC one more time:
I asked a passing student what he wanted to do when he left university. "I want to be an eternal student, " he said. "Just learning for learning's sake."
A noble sentiment perhaps, but an impractical one in 21st Century France…
The author’s glum acceptance of the supposed pragmatism of slaving away somewhere is a sign of our times. In the past I’ve quoted a sociology research paper that showed the differing attitudes between students of the past and students of the 21st Century. “Developing a Meaningful Philosophy of Life” was the number one thing students hoped to get out of higher learning, back in the day. Today it’s “Making Money” by a pretty wide margin. This was, of course, an American study- but I would not be surprised if numbers are similar in France now.
You may wish to think that having to give BJs as rent and being mocked for majoring in something other than Business is a uniquely French phenomenon, but in our globalised economy and political system, the very forces that shape France hew the stone of America as well. The experiences and worries of French students are no different from those in this country. Increasingly the idea of majoring in ‘soft’ subjects is a scorned one. Everyone from my uncle to the BBC casts doubt on the utility of such degrees, and many of you have likely heard similar grumblings from parents who don’t quite realise how bad things have gotten.
Pursuing dreams is still an oft quoted ideal, lifted from that handy toolbox of inspiring manure to hurl at impressionable young children. But as the children of the 70s and 80s grow older they see what the ‘knowledge economy’ is really about. The potential of globalisation is being truly squandered, and I can’t help but feeling that it’s not really going to get much better. Humanity doesn’t have a good track record on their anti-Midas Touch.
We are crossing a point of consciousness as a society, one where we move beyond a healthy value for hard work and towards a conventional wisdom that says the only work that has value is that which an elite assigns value to. As I sat in class just two days ago I overheard one student telling another quite happily about her art major and all of the things she was learning, sounding fully excited over her command of esoteric knowledge of the arcane artists my teacher would be speaking about that day. I couldn’t help but smile weakly on the inside at her enthusiasm. The next second saw me frown as I feared for her future. Because society tells me to fear for the future of art majors.
Is it wrong? Absolutely. But Humans are the masters of self-fulfilling prophecies. If we believe such degrees are useless, we’re just a generation away from that becoming the case. Is academic pursuit really about to become so shallow as to restrict majors to math and science? Diverse and rich subjects, yes, but should we be forced to study only that? And for what world would we be doing it for? One that would seek to reward us only with menial labour in an economy where each trip to the supermarket brings some new shock? After having paid thousands of dollars to go to school for the pleasure? Extra rhetorical question?
I suppose I’ll find out. Stay tuned over the next few years.
In my time writing in this space I know that my readers have ever held me to the highest standards of integrity, and of late I am afraid that I have not been able to live up to that lofty goal. I have, in fact, let you all down- and it weighs heavily on my heart to have done so, a great bubbling cyst on my soul, even.
Yes, I slept with Eliot Spitzer for money.
You all know that I’ve had a great many money problems lately, particularly concerning school. I had no choice, really. But I know that by being a ho-bag I’ve failed to live up to your expectations and therefore must resign… Oh wait, this is Radio Free Slug, what am I talking about?
So, it looks like I’ll be keeping my job, partially due to tenure, and partially because said job wouldn’t exist if I left it. I will be taking a pay cut, however. Less imaginary dollars for my invisible coffers; it is a cruel world indeed. The price I have paid for my lust for powerful, balding governors. He was just such a mountain of man, whose very power had rushed through him like a radioactive surge and thereby deprived him of hair. That night will always be cherished by me.
While I am aware of the media’s incessant lies about this “Ashley” who claims to have been the governor’s hooker, I respectfully submit that they cannot handle the truth of the fact that it was indeed your humble correspondent who was the hooker bit of Eliot Spitzer’s ‘hookers and blow.’ I know you all believe me.
However, laziness and depression over my unrequited (read: unpaid) love for Eliot Spitzer, prevented me from going to press with this before Ashley Dupre could stake her claim on Governor Spitzer’s man-meat. What all of this means, aside from this glaringly obvious truth never seeing the light of day, is that I can’t pay the bills with the heaps of lucre that Dupre is now reaping from her myriad of photo, music, and book deals. She’s already made about two hundred thousand dollars from selling her own songs at 98 cents a pop. The correlation between having sex and getting people to pay for your remixed belching has always been an obvious one to me. But again, I was too late on the scene here.
I’m sorry Eliot, farewell, my Captain! (He asked me to call him that.)
As we here at Radio Free Slug move on from this sordid affair, your correspondent is still left with the pressing question of “how am I going to pay the bills?” It’s a difficult question, to be certain. The whole reason I took up prostitution is because it’s the only way to keep a roof over one’s head, of course. Take a good look at Ashley- before this scandal broke she was living the good life in a Chelsea apartment. She has since been kicked to the curb because the other people that lived there were not amused by the newfound fame of their penthouse girl and the gaggles of press that ganged the front door. But hey, that's only because she was a *famous* hooker; and it's not as if she's not setting herself up elsewhere presently. Her disposable income has multiplied as a result of all this, you know.
To understand what I’m getting at here, let’s look at a very interesting situation going on in France right now. The BBC recently filed a special report on their housing crisis which included the following:
Take a quick look through the bookshelves of any decent-sized newsagent, and tucked between the biographies of the former French First Lady and the former American First Lady is the extraordinary account of Laura D. Her book, My Dear Studies (Mes Cheres Etudes), details the anonymous young woman's slide from being a fresh-faced undergraduate, to a poverty-stricken student, to a 19-year-old selling her body to pay the rent.
She’s not alone. Laura goes on to state “Looking at friends, people I know, they live in places that are unhealthy, squalid. Or they negotiate with landlords who rent them rooms and who sometimes abuse them.” The author of the article, after perusing through a few local newspapers and websites points out that instead of the usual ‘750 a month, but pay for your own damn cable, bitch’ one finds that “the requests are sexual, demeaning, bordering on the perverse. "Sex twice a month," is one blunt demand. Another asks for someone "open in spirit and elsewhere".”
Open in spirit and elsewhere, yes. Only for Eliot, though.
While certainly one does not have to pimp themselves out in a very real way in order to make the rent, it is increasingly surprising that this is going on in a wealthy country. I’ve little doubt that similar things are occurring here and in other prosperous nations as well. The path to avoiding this is, mercifully, supplied by the BBC as well, in a different article about France.
France may be a global leader in high technology, but employers complain that today there are far too few students studying science and technology and there are far too many studying "soft subjects" which leaves them ill-prepared to join the real world of work.
I have indeed found my chosen major of Sociology to be squishy soft. Doubtless, few employers in the fast track world of business will have little use of no holds barred, gumbo style journalism such as Radio Free Slug is able to provide. After all, as the article goes on to say:
Among the youngsters I met searching for jobs at the careers office was 23-year-old Aurelie. She is still baffled as to what she wants to do.
"I have studied so much, I am almost overqualified. And now I need a job to get money and I can't find one," she said.
"Everyone tells you to get a good education but my parents studied much less than I did and yet they didn't have such problems finding work."
Aurelie, my fellow youngster, expresses a sentiment that I have often felt, along with many others in my generation. The reason is that Aurelie’s parents came from that remarkable generation that was able to grasp the mass produced Holy Grail known as ‘job security.’ These days employment is like a box of chocolates, or a box of hand grenades, take your pick. For those lucky enough to find gainful employment, it usually has to be in the field of ‘soul destruction’ or ‘brain eating.’ In these highly specialised fields, the souls and brains in question are your own. Or you can do TV/VCR Repair.
This, indeed, has become the great problem facing the youth of today. If I may artificially inflate the length of this article by quoting the BBC one more time:
I asked a passing student what he wanted to do when he left university. "I want to be an eternal student, " he said. "Just learning for learning's sake."
A noble sentiment perhaps, but an impractical one in 21st Century France…
The author’s glum acceptance of the supposed pragmatism of slaving away somewhere is a sign of our times. In the past I’ve quoted a sociology research paper that showed the differing attitudes between students of the past and students of the 21st Century. “Developing a Meaningful Philosophy of Life” was the number one thing students hoped to get out of higher learning, back in the day. Today it’s “Making Money” by a pretty wide margin. This was, of course, an American study- but I would not be surprised if numbers are similar in France now.
You may wish to think that having to give BJs as rent and being mocked for majoring in something other than Business is a uniquely French phenomenon, but in our globalised economy and political system, the very forces that shape France hew the stone of America as well. The experiences and worries of French students are no different from those in this country. Increasingly the idea of majoring in ‘soft’ subjects is a scorned one. Everyone from my uncle to the BBC casts doubt on the utility of such degrees, and many of you have likely heard similar grumblings from parents who don’t quite realise how bad things have gotten.
Pursuing dreams is still an oft quoted ideal, lifted from that handy toolbox of inspiring manure to hurl at impressionable young children. But as the children of the 70s and 80s grow older they see what the ‘knowledge economy’ is really about. The potential of globalisation is being truly squandered, and I can’t help but feeling that it’s not really going to get much better. Humanity doesn’t have a good track record on their anti-Midas Touch.
We are crossing a point of consciousness as a society, one where we move beyond a healthy value for hard work and towards a conventional wisdom that says the only work that has value is that which an elite assigns value to. As I sat in class just two days ago I overheard one student telling another quite happily about her art major and all of the things she was learning, sounding fully excited over her command of esoteric knowledge of the arcane artists my teacher would be speaking about that day. I couldn’t help but smile weakly on the inside at her enthusiasm. The next second saw me frown as I feared for her future. Because society tells me to fear for the future of art majors.
Is it wrong? Absolutely. But Humans are the masters of self-fulfilling prophecies. If we believe such degrees are useless, we’re just a generation away from that becoming the case. Is academic pursuit really about to become so shallow as to restrict majors to math and science? Diverse and rich subjects, yes, but should we be forced to study only that? And for what world would we be doing it for? One that would seek to reward us only with menial labour in an economy where each trip to the supermarket brings some new shock? After having paid thousands of dollars to go to school for the pleasure? Extra rhetorical question?
I suppose I’ll find out. Stay tuned over the next few years.