But I was reading an article out of Money Magazine that stated, "Spend no more than 2 1/2 times your income on a home."
How fucking ridiculous. Do they know where I live? Who is this article supposed to be for? Now, by virtue of my profession my income is unsteady (something that makes buying property all the more difficult) but according to my tax records, I've made between twenty-five and thirty-five thousand dollars each of the last three years. My most successful friend only makes a bit more than twice that and he is considered, by the standards of our generation, quite well off. Presuming that these are representative of people of our age, the very age at which one begins thinking of things like starting a nest egg and buying a home, who the hell is finding houses in the 65k - 150k ranges? Provided I am unwilling to live somewhere that I am likely to get shot simply for being outdoors, where in greater Atlanta can I find a house for that much?
I have one friend that recently bought a two bedroom bungalow in town for 180k. I had another who sold his two bedroom fixer - upper with no yard in one of the aforementioned common gunfire neighborhoods and got something like 120k. Even my parents' post-war era, 3 bedroom ranch house in Marietta would fetch close to a quarter million on the open market and the house is nearly sixty years old.
Am I actually living in poverty and don't realize it? Are property values in Atlanta inflated or wages suppressed by something like four times what is reasonable? According the the last census I'm at precisely the median income for a man of my age and education so am I being bamboozled? Is there some repository of cheap property that everyone else knows about but me? Or, are the professional investors and moneymen that write Money Magazine totally out of touch with the real world?
10/22/2006
She Asked me if I was Happy...
I don't think anyone has asked me that question since I was barely more than a toddler and back then I didn't comprehend the question. She said that the things I write and the way I carry myself say to her that I am, at my deepest, very sad. I don't know about that but she is right insomuch as I am certainly not happy but what she didn't seem to understand is that unhappiness is sometimes by design.
Happy is what you get when you have nothing to struggle over. Happy is the way one can only be with one's eyes closed. Happiness is ignorance, feeling safe in a world that offers no safety. People's lives wither in the pursuit of happiness. Happy people have nothing to fight for, nothing to strive towards, no seed of discontent to drive them forward. All the greatest people have been, at their deepest, incomplete. Alexander the Great, Socrates, Napoleon, Mark Twain, Ayn Rand, Martin Luther King Jr., Van Gogh, Nietzsche, Marconi, Einstein, Marx, the Wright Brothers, Neil Armstrong, Lance Armstrong, Muhammad Ali, Emile Durkheim, Orson Welles, Susan B. Anthony, Christopher Columbus, Thomas Aquinas, all had an axe to grind. There is something innately pathological about greatness. None of the people behind the engine of history have been, at their core, happy. Indeed, they may not have been capable of the emotion. It may not have been part of their being and this is part of why they fought and strove and risked and made a part of the world over in their image.
I am not so much of an egomaniac as to suggest that I am on the level of any of these people but I do know that I am not fodder and that I will never be content to be part of the vulgar mass. In the words of Bob Fosse "My friends know that to me happiness is when I am merely miserable and not suicidal." Happiness is settling. Happiness is blindness, powerlessness, hopelessness. Happiness is mediocrity. Happiness is surrender. No, I'm not happy and I don't ever want to be.
7/14/2005
6/01/2001
The 30th Birthday Extravaganza
Those of you that plan on joining me for my marathon jumping / 30th birthday weekend, please read the following.
You do not have to jump to come and party. Everyone is perfectly welcome to come hang out, watch cutes come down and, once the sun has set, do keg stands. Lots of people come down to the drop zone to encourage others and to spectate. The big night for partying is going to be Saturday 1st of August.
If you've ever considered coming to jump with me, though this is the weekend to do it. I invite and encourage everyone who's ever entertained the idea.
There are two ways to go about your first skydive.
1. Tandem: the training takes about half an hour. You get clipped to an experienced jumper and get to spend 60 glorious seconds in freefall. If you know for a fact that you only ever want to go skydiving once, cross it off your bucket list and never do it again, this is the way to go. It costs about $200 plus video if you want it.
2. AFF Level 1: This is the first level of true parachute training. You will go through a six hour ground school that details equipment, safety procedures, dive flow and landing pattern. You wear our own rig and altimeter and run your own skydive. Two instructors accompany you and are physically holding your jumpsuit as you fall. They watch your dive flow, give you instructions, keep you safe in the air and make sure that you deploy on time. You are then talked through your landing by radio. This method costs about $300.
Personally, I recommend that everyone that has even the tiniest inkling of an interest in parachuting spend the extra hundred dollars and do AFF 1 rather than Tandem. Why, because you get so much more out of it. First, AFF is a huge learning experience. You get so much training in so little time; you are smarter for having done it. More importantly, you get a huge sense of accomplishment. When you land from that first skydive, it wasn't just a Six-Flags ride. You accomplished something. You get to look up at the sky and say with pride, "Fuck yeah, I did that!" Finally, if you find that you really loved it, as I certainly did, you are now already over the biggest and most expensive single hurdle towards being a trained skydiver.
Other weekend details:
There are couches to crash on in the airplane hangar for those that want to spend either friday or saturday night there. That's what I'm doing both nights. There are also showers if anyone's going to be there the whole weekend. I'm going to try and arrange to grill out on Saturday. I'm going to get a keg if the DZO will allow me. Like I said, you don't have to jump to come help me celebrate being older than I ever thought I'd be so Come one, come all.
Those of you that do plan on jumping, I know that it's expensive. That's why I'm sending out this invite two months in advance. Trust me; it's worth every penny.
Please Note: If you're going to be doing a first jump, by either method, you must be 100% sober. Do not show up crazy hung over or having imbibed something to calm your nerves. You will be kicked off site and they will not refund your deposit. Part of the reason that skydiving is safer than fishing is that you're not allowed to do it when you're fucked up so, seriously, nothing stronger than coffee.
Unfortunately, you cannot go skydiving if you've ever ruptured a major joint, like a knee or a hip or if you've been SCUBA diving in the last 2-3 days. In both cases, it's an air pressure thing and it's for your own safety.
All Tandem and AFF dives must be scheduled in advance with Skydive Atlanta and require a deposit. I leave it to each of you to call 1-800-276-DIVE (3483) and arrange this.
Anybody who has the balls, I'll see you there.
You do not have to jump to come and party. Everyone is perfectly welcome to come hang out, watch cutes come down and, once the sun has set, do keg stands. Lots of people come down to the drop zone to encourage others and to spectate. The big night for partying is going to be Saturday 1st of August.
If you've ever considered coming to jump with me, though this is the weekend to do it. I invite and encourage everyone who's ever entertained the idea.
There are two ways to go about your first skydive.
1. Tandem: the training takes about half an hour. You get clipped to an experienced jumper and get to spend 60 glorious seconds in freefall. If you know for a fact that you only ever want to go skydiving once, cross it off your bucket list and never do it again, this is the way to go. It costs about $200 plus video if you want it.
2. AFF Level 1: This is the first level of true parachute training. You will go through a six hour ground school that details equipment, safety procedures, dive flow and landing pattern. You wear our own rig and altimeter and run your own skydive. Two instructors accompany you and are physically holding your jumpsuit as you fall. They watch your dive flow, give you instructions, keep you safe in the air and make sure that you deploy on time. You are then talked through your landing by radio. This method costs about $300.
Personally, I recommend that everyone that has even the tiniest inkling of an interest in parachuting spend the extra hundred dollars and do AFF 1 rather than Tandem. Why, because you get so much more out of it. First, AFF is a huge learning experience. You get so much training in so little time; you are smarter for having done it. More importantly, you get a huge sense of accomplishment. When you land from that first skydive, it wasn't just a Six-Flags ride. You accomplished something. You get to look up at the sky and say with pride, "Fuck yeah, I did that!" Finally, if you find that you really loved it, as I certainly did, you are now already over the biggest and most expensive single hurdle towards being a trained skydiver.
Other weekend details:
There are couches to crash on in the airplane hangar for those that want to spend either friday or saturday night there. That's what I'm doing both nights. There are also showers if anyone's going to be there the whole weekend. I'm going to try and arrange to grill out on Saturday. I'm going to get a keg if the DZO will allow me. Like I said, you don't have to jump to come help me celebrate being older than I ever thought I'd be so Come one, come all.
Those of you that do plan on jumping, I know that it's expensive. That's why I'm sending out this invite two months in advance. Trust me; it's worth every penny.
Please Note: If you're going to be doing a first jump, by either method, you must be 100% sober. Do not show up crazy hung over or having imbibed something to calm your nerves. You will be kicked off site and they will not refund your deposit. Part of the reason that skydiving is safer than fishing is that you're not allowed to do it when you're fucked up so, seriously, nothing stronger than coffee.
Unfortunately, you cannot go skydiving if you've ever ruptured a major joint, like a knee or a hip or if you've been SCUBA diving in the last 2-3 days. In both cases, it's an air pressure thing and it's for your own safety.
All Tandem and AFF dives must be scheduled in advance with Skydive Atlanta and require a deposit. I leave it to each of you to call 1-800-276-DIVE (3483) and arrange this.
Anybody who has the balls, I'll see you there.
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