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After a disappointing year of graduate school, I’ve returned at the close of summer and the beginning of my last semester (I HOPE) of schoolwork in my life. Flecks of premature grey adorn my beard as the analogous summer of my life ends and the chill of winter slowly but inevitably approaches-and a PHD still nowhere in sight due to the collapse of the American empire.
I will develop my observations on this matter in depth in future posts.
But forget the barbarians being at the gate: The guard was their all-too-willing accomplices as they walked right in and enslaved the entire kingdom under the pretexts of “free market economy“ and “lobbying“.
I fear for the future of this country. The Radical Red Staters are poised to take advantage of 2 generations of steadily degenerating education of our citizens to polarize and divide this nation, so that it’s no longer a battle of liberal and conservative ideas. Rather, it’s now between thinking, logical, scientifically objective people and obsessively tribal, dogmatic, racist, exclusionary Christian fundamentalist extremists-with the latter group being frighteningly agitated into a frenzy by a paradoxically self righteous and simultaneously self-servingly duplicitous leadership who blasts their inflammatory beacons on the internet and talk-radio.
And just think: All it took was the election of the first African-American president-and the first real attempts at social progress in over a decade as a logical response by his administration to the worst economic disaster in our history-for the populace of the US to revert socially to the 1930’s. Socialism. Illegal aliens. Doubts over evolution being forcibly imposed in school textbooks by a few concerned educators in Texas.
Somewhere in Hell, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Joseph McCarthy are laughing their asses off. I see the cliff coming and no one seems to want to slam on the brakes before we go over………
Again-MUCH more on this in future posts. But I can’t justify or contextualize this first post’s purpose without some preamble of the desperation felt by my aging self as the world I knew as a teenager slips away-to be replaced by a darker jungle of uncertainty.
The wake of my father’s death-now 4 years distant-has financially crippled what remains of my family. My father’s 18 year battle with cancer-which he ultimately lost-has now left us with a debt that barely allows my mother to buy food. I know-we’re hardly alone in that. But this has taken it’s toll on my career. I’ve had to take 3 graduate courses in the last year just to maintain my eligibility for health insurance as well as student loans to PAY for that insurance. (Of course, this being America, you’d think this would be the primary place for free health care for all it’s citizens. Of course, we don’t live in a logical or moral reality, do we?)
That alone would make struggling through these courses hard enough. But then in a moment of desperation-I made a very foolish choice regarding my health. I really can’t get into the specifics here-I hope to do so in a future post in connection to a larger issue.
I will say this: I’ve officially learned the hard way that if you have no other available methods of controlling psychological illnesses other then drugs and someone tells you to go off them cold turkey and “you’ll feel so much better, all you need is to man up!”-then if you actually listen to them, the REAL imbecile in the conversation is YOU.
As you can imagine, the long term result was somewhat less then expected. I rectified the result, but the damage was done. And now I’m stuck with 3 subpar grades in courses I didn’t even fucking WANT. It’s entirely possible now my dreams of an Ivy League PHD programs-unless I solve the Riemann Hypothesis-are out the door and my career ends here with a Master’s degree and a future as a high school teacher.
The wonderful destiny awaits of dying of cardiac complications from prostate cancer when I’m 75-face down in puddle of cold decaf tea grading high school algebra papers from student who can barely read.
So it goes.
I haven’t given up yet. I can’t. Why not? That’s what a rational person of my intelligence would do.
Well, we’re all going to die of something. I lost my youth long ago-sacrificed it for my family. I think I’ve finally made my peace with that. It hurts like hell what I lost. But we’re all losing so much as the second decade of the 21st century opens. Parents losing their children in 2 pointless wars that have bankrupted the country the survivors are coming back to. PHDs mopping floors because those educated in other nations or of higher pedigrees are preferred for the vanishingly small number of jobs available.
Again, the cliff approaches for all but the top 1% of us.
I dunno about all of you, but I’d rather go off the cliff screaming my rage at this pointless, Godless reality and fighting with my last breath against the dying of the light.
Which is why I’m taking the initiative and beginning my own online business. (Nice segway, huh?)
I began this Ebay store on whim. I’ve been selling textbooks online for nearly 8 years on and off for pocket cash-and all told, it’s worked out pretty well. But “working out” has meant what’s basically chump change by selling second hand books and cannibalizing my own library.
So I started thinking: What kind of cash can I make with a REAL inventory of books to sell?
So one thing lead to another and viola! Parthenon Academic Books.
Actually, it wasn’t that simple. History never is.
So what’s the scoop behind it?
I’d love to tell you guys, but I’m passing out at almost 3 am. So it’ll have to wait-along with several other things-for the next post.
After all, how can you build a following to a blog without good cliffhangers?
TO BE CONTINUED!!!
Be back soon,same blogsphere plane and frequency.
Beware, Citizens...........
Update 7/4/2015 : Parthenon Academic Books was a complete disaster. It may still exist in some virtual shell sense, with the original page and listings in some remote corner of the net, like an aborted fetus left to rot by some spoiled sociopathic teenage mother (EW, nice image) , but that's all it is now. An aborted dream. My dearest hope is that my latest and far larger effort at www.tuloomath.com succeeds in far greater fashion. Check it out and let me know.
