The Billfold » John Fram

How Not to Write, Market and Sell a Supernatural Romance Novel

John Fram — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:35:11 +0000

In the heat of the Texas summer, I found myself ringing up groceries and sacking groceries and sometimes, when I absolutely couldn’t avoid it, pushing grocery carts in from the grocery store’s parking lot. That was my career. I had dropped out of school the year before to spend more time with my writing even though the only publications I held to my name were three reviews on a small (but well-respected!) video game site and first place in my community college’s short fiction contest. One day while bagging groceries, I realized that my very gay, very avant-garde debut novel would take years to finish, would make me no money when I did, and if I wasn’t careful, I could spend the rest of my life working at a grocery store. I might die of heatstroke and someone would find me when they cleared the carts out of the searing metal corrals in the parking lot.

I was making $11.90 an hour and, if I was lucky, I worked 35 hours a week. My partner Chad made something absurdly low, like $7.90, for, hopefully, 30 hours a week. We squeaked by. Our rent was $450 a month, electricity around $150 in the summer, $80 for the iPhone we shared, $45 for Internet, $50 went toward the student loans I was paying back, $15 for XBOX Live, $10 for Netflix. I can’t remember how many times that automatic Netflix deduction knocked our bank balance into the negatives.

Savings? What savings?

When I was given a week off from work, without warning, and with no way to pay for it, I needed to think of something.

I figured that if I sat down and really worked I could hammer out a novel in a week. Tons of people wrote one in a month, so why couldn’t I, with all this free time, do it in a quarter of the time? Georges Simenon wrote them in 10 or 11 days, a chapter a time, and his books were actually good.

The book I had in mind would not be very good. It would be better than everyone else’s books but it wouldn’t be very good. I was aiming for broad market appeal, shameless pandering to middlebrow tastes and prose more meretriciously sentimental than a whore on wharf. The book would be fast and it would be short. It would be published under a penname. It would help me to get by. It would become a surprise bestseller, even a solid midlist success, and it would allow me to pursue my serious work while I churned out similar books—a series, a saga!—every couple of months.

Michael Connelly said something to the effect that “the genre the publishing industry is most capable of selling is the thriller.” I had also heard from a friend that Harlequin Romance doesn’t require an author to have an agent to submit a book. The same friend told me also that Harlequin paid somewhere from $5K to $10K for a book. Five thousand dollars! I could get almost halfway out of debt with that much! Think of how my credit score would thank me.

I couldn’t imagine myself writing a traditional Harlequin romance like the ones that lined my great-grandmother’s nursing home, but a romantic thriller sounded tenable. All I needed was a leading woman, a man who would trigger some crisis the two of them would need to solve, and then, maybe, a decent villain. Somewhere along the way I could shovel in a few love scenes and have them discover their true feelings for one another etc., but really it would be about their high-risk, high-chills adventure, which I would drag out for as long as possible.

I wanted one extra twist. The supernatural was still hot. The last Twilight movie had yet to premiere, and I figured that there were plenty of teenage girls and teenage-girls-at-heart fiending for a mysterious un-human nightmare to destroy their lives and sweep them off their feet.

Vampires, though, were out, I was sure of that. Werewolves were the obvious alternative, and I’d always found them more interesting anyway (though not for the same reasons, I don’t think, as my target audience). And werewolves come pre-installed with such an easy story premise! You get a violent past, a kryptonite-style weakness, an inescapable lunar time limit. Plus, werewolves are always being hunted, so there’s your villain. This thing practically writes itself.

And what if Harlequin didn’t accept it? Anyone with eyes could see that the self-published ebook market was forming an obvious bubble, but I figured that if I acted quickly enough I could still ride that train before it jumped the tracks. I could be quick, I was sure of that.

On Monday afternoon I laid across my queen-sized bed with a spiral-bound notebook and an hour later had a functioning plot. My protagonist, Vanessa, while glumly browsing the meat department of her grocery store, would be interrupted by a handsome stranger named Christopher. He would bag her groceries for her at the check-out and they’d wind up sleeping together (though she wasn’t the sort of girl who normally did that sort of thing). The next day they would be attacked by a man with a gun and there would be a narrow escape and Christopher would take Vanessa to an abandoned, foreclosed house (a detail ripped from the headlines) to hide out. While there he would explain how he was not just any werewolf but the last werewolf ever. His family has been hunted to extinction by the family of the crazy man with the gun and now Vanessa had been dragged into the whole hot mess. Somehow (I don’t remember how; that outline’s mid-section would suffer monstrous damage once the writing actually began), after jumping through a couple hoops, Vanessa would be taken hostage by the villain and Christopher would rescue her and in the scuffle Vanessa would shoot the villain with his own gun (and with the world’s final remaining silver bullet). Easy as pie.

Harlequin Nocturne, the publisher’s line of supernatural romance, wanted 70,000 words. That meant I would need to produce 11,666 words every day from Tuesday through Sunday. That’s not a lot when you’re not going to give the prose any real attention. It would be hard, of course, but I’d do it. I’d be all over it.

By Tuesday night I still hadn’t gotten Vanessa out of the grocery store. I wanted cigarettes, hard liquor, a gun, crystal meth.

Bad prose is not so much bad as unfocused. I have just discovered this. I have also discovered that constructing a plot, any plot, is difficult, what with how you have to draw up characters and invent some scenery and move them around and do it all in a way that isn’t obvious or boring.

I have learned the meaning of self-loathing, and it is writing a sentence that you know is sloppy and starting another sentence. I feel like I am harming not just my (future) reputation but also harming the English language as a whole. I am contributing to the white noise of publishing. I am pouring out more words to distract readers from the things that are actually worth reading.

What am I doing? Some day I will die. Some day every reader will die and I will have on my last conscience the fact that there are readers out there who wasted what little time they had on this awful book.

In January, the pit of the Texas winter, I sent out The Last of His Kind to Breathless Press, Loose Id, and to Ellora’s Cave. In August I had sent the first 50 pages of the incomplete manuscript to Harlequin, and in October I received a form rejection, so now I was sticking to smaller presses. I figured that modest ebook sales from one these houses, even if they only amounted to a couple of hundred dollars, would be progress.

Six months past my initial goal I had a book totaling 55,840 words. There was a thrill to the heft of its 219 pages. My boyfriend seemed a little staggered at the sight of it. Over and over he said, “You wrote a book!” I tried to explain that it’s wasn’t very good, but he wouldn’t listen.

The fact is that there are a few things I’m proud of in the novel. Maybe not a lot of things, and maybe not a lot of pride, but the ending, for one, is tightly constructed. And Vanessa’s sister and brother-in-law are decently cast and provide a grounding dose of realism when foiled against Vanessa’s almost self-destructive willingness to abandon her comfortable life for the sake of a hypersexual supernatural being (also, if you’re curious as to how I, a gay man, came up with a lingo that would make the book’s sex scenes compelling to women: lesbian erotica).

Christopher, the wolf, is blatant wish fulfillment and can go fuck himself. He’s muscled, dangerous, with a big dick while also being, when the plot demands it, a sensitive sadsack. Men like him are never good people and ideally the book would betray this fact a little more readily. But whenever I tried to make the man realistic, I felt the novel’s fantasy begin to break, so I dialed it back. I don’t show how he would probably be an extremely jealous, controlling, cripplingly insecure person.

It’s Luther, the villain, whom I’m most proud of. He, like Christopher, has a boring, involved backstory but it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is the way Luther is a violent, deranged, well-dressed speed freak hunting Christopher with an obsession that borders on the sexual. Also, the hallucination sequence near the end of the book where he is visited by an eroticized version of his dead mother is one of the coolest things I’ve ever written. Many times I considered abandoning the novel and starting it over from Luther’s perspective—make him a little more sympathetic, bring out the dark side of Christopher that was there all along, either cut Vanessa or cast her in a less flattering light, give Luther a damaged love interest to tag along with him and you have a much better (but still not terribly original) book.

I considered abandoning The Last of his Kind so many times. I would write a mystery about a murdered astrologist called His Dark Orbit and it would be so much more fun and just as commercial. Or a serial killer thriller in the Texas countryside: Silence of the Lambs meets No Country for Old Men. Or a pulpy science-fiction odyssey. Or something else. Anything else.

I learned how to use a typewriter while working on the book’s first draft. I drooled over IBM Selectrics but never could afford one. An electrical Olivetti Lettera disappeared en route from Colorado into the bowels of the FedEx transit system but was recovered at the last minute (it was broken when it arrived). Next came an electric Smith Corona and then a manual Olympia DeLuxe. Between these last two machines I finished the manuscript’s final harrowing scenes of threatened rape and gun shots to the throat and insultingly ravishing sex. I was amazed at how hammering the Olympia’s keys for two hours destroyed my triceps.

I trimmed over 15,000 words between drafts one and two. I had no idea that a piece could be so improved after it had been written. I marked up each page by hand in blue Sharpie pen and then retyped the whole thing, from line one, into a new document.

Gone were a good four ancillary scenes, and everything that remained was heavily truncated. I ratcheted down the flowery descriptions of minutiae and cut out almost all of Vanessa’s interminable internal dialogue. To my surprise the book took on a relatively consistent momentum.

Not quite enough momentum, though. Breathless Press and Ellora’s Cave both sent me form rejection emails. I was briefly heartened by Loose Id’s much more considered declining which gently pointed out all of the faults I was keenly aware of (the actual romance between Christopher and Vanessa is rushed and tacked-on, the narrative is, even after so much revision, still shown rather than told), but they don’t offer to look at it again should I fix these issues. They call the writing “strong,” whatever that means.

My boyfriend never got past the first ten pages. I really don’t blame him.

In April I uploaded the book onto Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform. By then I had put enough distance between the manuscript and myself to lose all interest in it. I knew that I wasn’t about to rewrite it or fix any of its problems, and I knew also that the chances of even a semi-professional outlet picking it up were slim to none. I had no interest in it but I still wanted it to make me money, which I suspect is how most self-publishing authors feel.

On Creative Commons I ran a search for “full moon” and browsed through four pages of werewolves that looked like they were sketched in the middle of a math class somewhere in the Midwest. I found a photo of a moon as seen through some trees and downloaded it. In Microsoft Paint I added the words “The Last of his Kind” in white block letters along the top of the frame and “By Alexandra Stewart.” Alexandra would have been my name had I been a girl. Stewart is my mother’s maiden name and my middle name.

I gave the book a title page and a copyright page and I put page breaks between the chapters. I set the book’s price as $2.99 USD and allowed Amazon to set its rates in the U.K., Germany, India, France, Spain, Japan, Portugal and Canada.

I clicked Save and Publish. I am told that the book will be available in 12 hours or less in English and in 48 hours or less in other languages. Does that mean that the book is going to be translated for me? This may surprise you, but I have no interest in seeing what Vanessa and Christopher sound like in automated Portuguese.

I waited.

Initial sales were sluggish, which is to say nonexistent. To drive word-of-mouth sales I made the book free for a weekend. It was downloaded over a thousand times. That must mean something!

Every day I logged onto Amazon to check my downloaded copies. After the freebie promotion ended I saw a brief upward slope in my numbers before a precipitous drop.

I made it free again! Diminished returns. It moved some 300 copies.

In May, the book became number 55,000-something on Amazon, whatever that means, before falling back into the 700,000′s. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe these points are meant to be higher, like basketball, not golf. Amazon told me that I would need to pay them to make my book free for another five days, which sounded like a bad deal.

You have to get the word out about yourself somehow, and I sure as hell was not going to spend all day on Twitter spamming every post tagged #werewolf or #romance with a link to my Amazon page. Through Google I found a freelance publicist who offered a wide range of “virtual book tours,” all for very reasonable prices. I sent her $20.

Three days of no response later, I emailed Jan, the publicist: “Just wanting to make sure everything came through OK.” She responded to say that it had and seemed almost to be chastising me for bothering her so soon: “I sometimes take a week or more to get to my confirmations, especially during busy times (like now).”

My confirmation email arrived six days later. It informed me that Jan had been feeling “‘under the weather’” (her quotes) for the last few weeks and has been a bit behind. I am told that I will be getting a plan for my virtual book tour “soon.”

After six days I am sent a copy of the information that I sent Jan when I signed up for the tour two weeks earlier. I confirmed that all of the information is correct. The tour is scheduled for June 4^th through 17^th.

On June 4^th I received an email from Jan telling me that all of my virtual tour “stops” are in place for June 11^th through the 20^th.

On June 10^th I sent Jan an email saying that I still hadn’t received any questions for the interviews that are scheduled to run in the coming week. In reply, I am sent an automated response from Jan; she’s on vacation until the 16^th and will have limited Internet access.

The interview questions never arrived. For the following 10 days I am featured on “Erotica for All,” “Full Moon Bites,” and “Coffee Beans and Love Scenes.” Several of the book’s scheduled stops fail to materialize.

On the 17^th Jan emailed to apologize for any mishaps that may have occurred while she was gone. It’s very confusing to keep up with multiple emails just from her phone, apparently, and due to “stress-induced health issues” in the week leading up the vacation, some things “may have fallen through the cracks.” In a PS, she asked me to please keep all business-related emails to her business email address, not her personal address. She knew it sounded “nit-picky”, but “I am under doctor’s orders to keep my stress levels manageable and keeping organized helps me to do that. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to throw in the towel with everything and I really don’t want it to have to come to that. Thanks for understanding.” I wasn’t sure I had more than the one address for her.

The missing posts appeared in the next week, and the week after that, I saw two reviews for my book appear on its Amazon page. They were both four star reviews and both have been copy-pasted from the blogs that reviewed the book during its tour. FortheLoveofFilmandNovels.com said that it is “definitely a suspenseful film.” And Andrea J Guy from TheCertifiableWenches was really excited to learn that Christopher was a werewolf because “she’s getting pretty tired of vampires.”

Told you.

Congratulations, John. You paid money for good criticism.

If The Last of His Kind was going to become a breakout franchise in this modern age, it was going to need a lively fan base, and the first stop for any fan would inevitably be the author’s website. At a friend’s recommendation I opted to create a Tumblr blog for Alexandra Stewart rather than a full site, for simplicity’s sake.

I made two posts. The first was the book’s “hook” summary, as seen on its Amazon page, complete with my cover art, and the second was my About the Author. “Alexandra Stewart is a native of Washington State who now lives in Texas with her husband and four dogs. The Last of His Kind is her first novel. She can be reached at Alexandrastewartauthor (at) gmail (dot) com.”

That’s a real email address that I set up for Alexandra. It’s supposed to funnel all of the email it receives into my personal email account, but I just checked it and found 32 Google Plus updates I’d never seen (I forgot Alexandra was on Google Plus), a “s e CU r e” business proposition and someone promising to write posts for my blog “Absolutley free.”

Alexandra has her own author photo, which I found by running a Google image search for “woman turned away from camera“. When I found her on the first page of results I downloaded her picture without looking at the page she came from. I don’t want to know who she is.

I just did my taxes. The Last of His Kind made me $42.49 in the U.S. (and India) and $20.80 in Europe. After the $19.99 for my virtual book tour (which led to no noticeable increase in sales), the book made me a total of $43.40. If we are to estimate that I worked on LoHK for at least 10 hours a week—and doesn’t that seem low? Don’t you remember, John, those mornings when you would wake up at 5:00 a.m. and work until you had to go to your day job at one in the afternoon?—that means I invested about 240 hours into the book. According to the free market, I am worth $0.18 an hour as a writer.

After a short break, the book is now back on Amazon. I made it free for another weekend and it was downloaded 707 times. A friend of mine says that he’s going to proofread it for me (for free!) and when he’s done, I’m curious to see how many more copies a cleaned-up manuscript will sell. You don’t need to tell me that I’m a bad proofreader. ReadingontheWildSide already told me (and anyone else who read her review) that without the book’s errors in spelling and tense it would be “perfect.”

Previously: Five Points of Advice on the Spending and Earning of Money

John Fram is a freelance writer whose public records show him living in Texas. He has a dog and a guy that lives with him. He tweets here, and you can contact him here.

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Five Points of Advice on the Spending and Earning of Money: Point Five

John Fram — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 17:40:40 +0000

by John Fram

1) Do not trust Financial Advice from a man who identifies himself as John (middle name: Stewart) Fram.

a) Young Spender, wherever you are, if you are reading this, if you hear only one thing that I, Author, tell you, if you take to heart only one of these Five Points I have prepared for you so carefully (because you see that, don’t you, Young Spender: You see that I have prepared them for you and for no one else), then let it be this: Do not trust a single word that comes from John Fram’s mouth.

i) John Fram cannot be trusted. He is as honest as a snake.
ii) John Fram has no grounds on which to speak of saving or wisely spending money, as he himself is shamelessly, hopelessly, irresponsible with it.
iii) John Fram’s priorities are deeply questionable. This is the man who has spent $300 on a single shopping trip at the same time he was late on his rent. This is the same man who drove on a spare tire for months until it burst in the middle of the night. This is the same man who has, in his 21 years, spent untold hundreds if not thousands of dollars on such valueless properties as books, films, and music; who throws away his money on rent rather than purchasing property; who has invested hours of his time in sex rather than in stocks or dividends; who has to his name only a savings account that has never in its six years seen more than $30. Beware of him, Young Spender. Beware of him.

b) A man like John Fram (especially a man named “John Fram”) might advertise himself as knowing certain things about Spending and Earning money; he might even present himself as some sort of expert on the topic, and do so completely without qualification. But he is little more than a young TV charlatan, a night walker, a smoking man.

i) Has John Fram ever told you, Young Spender, about the time he spent $30 on a “brand new refurbished” XBOX 360 game console from a website that disappeared after his purchase, a website that was littered with misspellings, grammatical flaws, a poor grasp of English, and a dozen other “red flags”? (Author’s Note: And did he then mention how he made this purchase in his father’s name, and immediately after this purchase, his father’s email account was rendered almost unusable under the subsequent onslaught of “spam”?)
ii) Has John Fram ever told you, Young Spender, wherever you are, about the time he struck, but did not kill, a small dog that was standing in the road, and then continued driving, because he did not have the money, should the dog’s owners demand it, to pay for whatever treatment it might require?

1) This was the year 2009, when John Fram was nineteen.

a. John Fram had been driving for two years by that date, and should have known better.

i. John Fram was going the speed limit (around 30 miles-per-hour) down a residential street, and didn’t see the dog (a French Bull) until it was inches away from his front tire.
ii. John Fram knew from the way the dog screamed almost like a human would scream that he and his minivan had not killed it.
iii. John Fram knew also, after a frantic look in his rearview mirror that nearly cost him a head-on collision with a car that was attempting to navigate a tricky turn in the road ahead of him, that he had not dismembered the dog, and knew that he had likely only crushed several of its bones.

b. John Fram, whatever he might tell you to the contrary Young Spender (wherever you are), did not stop his car and go back to check on the animal, nor did he try to find its owners, whom no doubt lived in one of the ramshackle houses nearby. John Fram continued driving.

2) John Fram showed no interest in either the dog nor its owners.
3) John Fram, in all of this, showed interest only in himself, in the bank account emptied by his own puerile spending habits, and, in driving on, he revealed himself not only to be a poor advisor on money matters, but a man completely bereft of Character or Values, and, thus, a man devoid of words worth hearing.

iii) Young Spender, wherever you are, have you ever paused to consider the effect the “advice” of John Fram has had on you?

1) Did you take up his advice on traveling in freight cars with hobos and vagabonds, not knowing that John Fram has never in his life traveled on a train, let alone met a hobo (or vagabond)?
2) Did you follow his advice on stealing fine art, which he presented so authoritatively, without knowing that he himself has only once been inside a museum of any real import, and while there, he took no mental measurements of doorways or tally of cameras or, in short, any other means of “casing” the building, being so distracted by haystacks and absinthe and Parisian rain?
3) Young Spender, was it the advice on drug dealing that led you astray? Did you find yourself in the bathrooms of nightclubs or the chilly walls of online personal ads, inspired by the way he made it “look so easy”? Did you follow that list of recommendations in search of a “quick buck” and find in its place all of the things that John Fram conveniently forgot to mention: the disease, the addiction, the emotional bankruptcy?
4) Young Spender, surely you were able to guess that John Fram has never burned down his house, driven the length of the Pan-American Highway, or participated in any way in the employment of “doubles”?
5) The Author is confounded, then, as to why he/she has heard on good authority that you, Young Spender, have made numerous inquiries, in dank bars and on deserted waterfronts, about recruiting accomplices for some sort of heist, about you placing yourself in danger in order to blackmail some upper-class shit in exchange for your silence on certain matters of duplication, about your pasting glossy 5×3′s of yourself in phone booths. Surely you don’t think that earning money is this simple, that surviving in the underworld is this safe?

iv) Young Spender, wherever you are, if you are listening, I tell you this for your own good: You have lost sight of the fact that money can be earned in simple, straightforward ways, in ways that are harmless and legal.

1. Even in this economy, someone as bright as the Young Spender can surely find an employer like a retail magnate to which they can sacrifice their soul, at least for a short time.

a. Retail may not be glamorous work, but it at least pays consistently, it at least keeps the Young Spender out of trouble. Furthermore, the retail magnate requires very little from the Young Spender in exchange for its safe, legal money:

i. Yes, it requires of the Young Spender the majority of his free time, his creative spirit, sense [(Edie Falco)] of identity, sense of free will, sense of overall personal ambition, and sense of self-worth, in exchange for its money.
ii. No, the magnate will not treat the Young Spender like a “team player”, a “partner,” or a “human being,” preferring instead [(I'm sorry)] to treat the Young Spender like a cog within the machinery driving its labor toward annually higher profits in exchange for its money.
iii. But, the retail magnate will provide a wage [(Forgive me)]. This wage may be puny, may even be vastly less than the quantity and quality of the labor the Young Spender has provided in its exchange, it might even be so slim as to require the Young Spender to take a second menial job, or a third, to “make ends meet”, but it will be a wage all the same.

b. Retail can also…forget it.

2. Remember how, in the first of these Points…never mind.
3. Your problem, Young Spender, is that you have allowed John Fram to ruin your perspective. He has destroyed your ability to be happy with whatever you have, and has instilled in you a bottomless need to always have more. Do you not think that the Author, during his/her time on the Earth, did not want more than he/she could afford? Do you for some reason think that he/she did not want a boat, a horse, a yard, a home? Of course the Author desired these things. But, unlike you, Young Spender (wherever you are, if you are listening), the Author realized that he/she did not need these things any more than the Young Spender needs the Armani wristwatch they obviously stole, the loft in East Chelsea he has always wanted.

v) You are smart enough, Young Spender, to know, as alluded to above, that no matter how wealthy you become, you will never have enough. Already your rapid life and your rapid desires have formed beneath your feet a bottomless pit. Surely the Author does not need to tell you this. Surely the Author can stop bothering. (Note: Because, of course, the Author knows. The Author has always known. He/she can type for as long as he/she wants. The Author can scrawl until his/her wrists begin to bleed, if the Author could still bleed. The Author could admonish and extort and plead and write until death comes for him/her a second time and it would make no difference. He/she cannot change you. I cannot control you. I have never been able to, as much as I used to pretend to the contrary. There is nothing he/she can do for you. There never has been.)

c) Young Spender, wherever you are, if you are listening, all the Author can ask is whether there is anything more he/she can say?

i. You are, by now, of course, aware that everything I have told you over these past Five Points is true, that every word is in its proper place, that every statement is made with the most complete accuracy, that nothing contained therein can be discounted.
ii. And yet, even knowing as you do, Young Spender, that everything I have told you is true, I still have seen the footage. I know you are still out there, because I have seen your face. And I have seen you, on several occasions (regularly, even) with that man. John Fram.
iii. Very well then. If that is the way you truly want things to be, then there is nothing more I, the Author, can do for you. He/she leaves you these Points in the hopes that, some day, you will find them useful, Young Spender, wherever you are, if you are listening, though I have long come to doubt that you are, and doubt, moreover, that you will. Regardless, I leave them for you here, on this gray tide, in these harsh breezes. The Author leaves them, and leaves him/herself. Very well then.

Author’s Note: And what about you, Wealthy Reader, whom the Author has no doubt is reading? Why do you persist in watching something that is so obviously not meant for you? Why do you continue to stare at something so completely unconcerned with the life you live in your bitter tower? Look elsewhere, Wealthy Reader. There is nothing here for you to see.

Previously: “Five Points of Advice to Young People on the Spending and Earning of Money, Part Four: Drugs and Prostitution”

John Fram is a freelance writer whose public records show him living in Texas. He has a dog and a guy that lives with him. He tweets here, and you can contact him here.

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Five Points of Advice to Young People on the Spending and Earning of Money, Part Four: Drugs and Prostitution

John Fram — Wed, 30 May 2012 17:35:34 +0000

by John Fram

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The Author would like to make perfectly clear, before beginning, that he/she does not in any way sanction, condone, or otherwise recommend the selling of illegal substances or one’s body, and said bodily services as a means of making income. However, as outlined below, he/she does not judge those that take this path, as he/she understands that hunger is a force to be reckoned with.

1) Do not sell drugs or prostitute yourself unless you are prepared to make severe consequences in all aspects of your former life.

a. As mentioned above, the Author does not judge any Young Spender who decides that their best chance to survive and/or flourish invulves criminal activity. However, the Author hopes the Young Spender will take into account some of the ramifications this will have on his/her life, or, rather, the life he leaves behind.

i. Do accept the fact that the people you once knew will see you (irreparably) differently.

1. Those you once knew may be envious of your new Prada shoulder bag, Gucci overcoat, Doc Martins already with bone fragments in the sules.
2. Those you once knew may not recognize you under your heavy mascara, the shifty math behind your hooded eyes, your skin gone pale from too much night walking.
3. Those you once knew may ask you questions, none of which you need to answer:

a. Where have you been?
b. How did you get tied up into this?
c. How much would a baggy cost me? (Answer: the same as everyone else.)
d. How long have you been doing this?
e. Is this really the same boy with the mousy hair I remember from third grade?

ii. Do not be surprised to find yourself making choices between friends and business. These choices can take the form of:

1. Whether to take payment in sex or in cash. (Advice: This is especially prevalent in the narcotics trade. Remember that sex will not buy groceries.)
2. Whether to consciously feign feelings for a business partner so as to ensure future and/or more remunerating transactions. (Advice: This issue is especially prevalent in prostitution. Remember: you are only the simulacrum of a boy/girlfriend, not the “real deal.” However, maintaining this illusion, and, subsequently, simulating the ways relationships intensify in affection can prove financially beneficial.)
3. Whether to allow yourself or your friends to spend time in prison. (Advice: This issue is prevalent in both professions. Remember that “loyalty” is a cultural artifact from the days before the second President Bush, and one with little bearing on the issues of the modern day.)

iii. In the same way that old friends will most likely become unable to recognize you, new friends will, having no old life with which to compare you, see you as whoever you present yourself to be. This could be the chance you have always dreamed of:

1. As hinted at above, changes in physical appearance, which the Young Spender may at one time have been too shy to carry out, or too settled within the image others had of him to pursue, can now be explored to the most wild degree, and may even be good for business.

a. When selling narcotics, a look of distracted hyper-trendiness will often help people justify their growing desire to be near you, resulting in better sales. Be sure to always invest part of that new money into outfits of high-ticket items and haircuts from fashionable boutiques that lend to oneself an air of aloof sexiness; consider also one or two piercings or high-quality tattoos.
b. When selling oneself on street corners, whether physical or digital (see below), an air of superiority and disinterest will help convince potential “Johns” that you’re not really a hustler; rather, you are a cute kid with time to kill. By looking unapproachable, you are actually making yourself magnetic. Dye your hair dark culors, shadow your eyes, and flaunt the occasional bruises on your exposed forearms.
c. When selling yourself through an escort service or other more “legitimate” business, dress agreeably, in contrast to above. Keep your attire fashionable, but not confrontationally edgy. Likewise, style your hair, and keep it in position; it is expected of you to check mirrors often. Practice a smile that wears well in public—that reveals nothing at all but seems like it does.

2. In his new life, the Young Spender can behave sexually in ways he would never have tried before.

a. When selling narcotics, if you begin to accept sex as payment, know that this will eventually become expected of you. While man cannot survive on oral sex alone (see point 3, previous), he can still avail himself of the way his profession makes him appear in the eyes of his clients. No longer must he be bound to the meek, receiving rule he has always taken. Even the most “butch” of weight-lifters or bodybuilders or athletes will debase themselves completely, in any way for the Young Spender, simply as thanks for selling them a gram, a vial, a bump. Experiment wantonly with even the most fleeting of fantasies. Never hesitate.
b. When selling oneself on the streets, especially to homosexual men, the portrayal of yourself as disinterested (and, if you can pass for it, heterosexual) will vastly increase the amount a person will be willing to pay for time with you. During the act of sex, be aggressive, lose yourself, and leave them wanting more (a desire you should never satiate). Never hesitate.
c. When selling oneself through a professional service, one is typically expected to act more interested in a client, but, otherwise, the above rules still apply. Never hesitate.

3. Finally, as you adjust your sexual demeanor, notice the ways in which it affects your demeanor as a whole. See how your new-found willingness to show blatant disgust in the proclivities of others will extend even to those still in their clothes, notice how much easier it is to spot those people who would tell you they want to be thrown around, walked on, hit in the face.

b. While balancing your new obligations and necessary compromises, do not forget about you personal safety.

i. Carry with you always, Young Spender, a small can of mace. It can be purchased in all major self-defense stores, can be small enough to conceal in a pocket or Prada handbag (see above) or clipped to a keyring.
ii. Avoid the man with the eyes the wrong shade of green, Young Spender. You know the one.
iii. In the modern day, pimps are unnecessary, and have become even dangerous. With services like Rentboy.com, Craigslist, GayRomeo, along with the publicity brought by bargain-hunting websites such as Groupon, you no longer need someone to set up meetings for you and take you places and warn off shady characters. He can’t protect you when you’re in the trucker’s cab, Young Spender.

c. Forget everything you used to take pleasure in, Young Spender. Nothing will ever be the same.

i. Is this really the life you want?
ii. Why did the letters stop?
iii. Who is the girl you mentioned?
iv. I haven’t heard from you in so long.
v. Young Spender:

1. I miss you
2. I miss you
3. I miss you
4. I miss you
5. I miss you

Previously: “Five Points of Advice to Young People on the Spending and Earning of Money, Part Three: Credit”

John Fram is a freelance writer whose public records show him living in Texas. He has a dog and a guy that lives with him. He tweets here, and you can contact him here.

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Five Points of Advice to Young People on the Spending and Earning of Money, Part Three: Credit

John Fram — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:40:30 +0000

by John Fram

1) Learn to respect the awesome power of Credit.

a. Understand that there is nothing in this world not driven by the spending of other people’s money, also known as Credit:

i. The wealthy do not stay wealthy by using debit cards. The wealthy stay wealthy by using their bank’s money and staying atop their interest payments (see below).
ii. The Author is consistently amazed by the number of Young Spenders who believe that the money they have deposited into their bank accounts remains in a small, locked box, and that said money is not accessed until the Young Spender arrives to retrieve it (see below).
iii. Without lines of credit, specifically those of corporate expense accounts, the industries of online gambling, fine wine, fine dining, massage parlors (see point 4, forthcoming), and four-star hotels would have collapsed decades ago (see below).

b. Due to the fact that he is reading this, Author assumes that the Young Spender is not wealthy. This being the case, the Young Spender, like all children of the capitalist paradigm, is ergo seeking to become wealthy. To do this, the Young Spender must:

i. Attend and graduate from a college that provides a minimum of education (also known as debt), while still offering a diploma with a modicum of respectability. For this reason, religious institutions, out-of-state private schools, and universities bearing the names of “Colorado,” “Texas,” “Ohio,” and “Wisconsin” should be avoided.
ii. During college and within the first several years following graduation, the Young Spender should develop and maintain a solid Credit Score.

1. The Credit Score: the Maat-scale by which all of the Young Spender’s past actions are weighed, and the tenability of all of his dreams and aspirations are decided.
2. The ways of the Credit Score are weird and arcane, but to build and maintain it, the Young Spender can:

a. Avoid all unconventional financial behaviors that provide no predictable, concrete return on the investment they require.
b. Keep to a minimum all expressions of frivolity, pleasure, and joy.
c. Instead of not spending money that they don’t have, Young Spenders can spend money that they do have, but spend it in a roundabout manner.

i. Spend this money that you have with your bank’s money (ie, your credit.)
ii. After a short period of time (preferably after a bank statement has been issued showing the expenditure), the Young Spender should transfer money from his physical (ie, debit-able) bank account his abstract (ie, credit) account to cover the expenditure.
iii. In this way, however pointless it may appear, the Young Spender is, actually, highly attractive to banks. While the Young Spender is engaged in predictable and frivolous spending patterns, the banking institutions can engage in their own frivolous and unpredictable spending patterns. Banking institutions deeply dislike having to monitor the risky behavior of Young Spender while also trying to monitor risky behaviors of their own.

d. By sending a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Experian, 475 Anton Blvd, Costa Mesa, CA 92626; TransUnion LLC, 555 West Adams St, Chicago, IL 60661; Equifax, 1550 Peachtree NE, Atlanta, GA 30309; and, Ben Bernanke, c/o The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 20^th St and Constitution Ave N.W., Washington, D.C. 20551. Enclose nothing within the mailing envelope but the self-addressed, stamped envelope. Within two weeks, a list of names of persons of interests to these corporations will be returned to the Young Spender, along with instructions and the amount the Young Spender can expect to see their Credit Score increased for successfully fulfilling said instructions. Nothing more need be said of this matter.
e. Do not use credit for basic, day-to-day needs, such as food, hair products, or personal lubricant. Valid uses for credit include:

i. Making down payments on cars, houses (see below), college tuition (see above), handguns and ammunition, bulk baby formula.
ii. Luxury items, such as aircraft flying lessons, cruise ship tickets, fine dining (see above), high thread-count bedding.
iii. Stringent household cleaners, including bleach, lye, and ammonia.
iv. Friendship.
v. Furniture, taxi fare, and extensions on the home.

3. Do not mock the Credit Score, nor ridicule or betray it. Do not ascribe to its silence any interest in you, Young Spender, or in your well-being. Do not think that the Credit Score and its purveyors are not willing to, in a moment, without need of explanation, turn your prosperity into ash, or seed your joy with salt. Do not forget that it is the Credit Score, the purveyor of wastes.

c. Assuming that the Reader of this article is wealthy, then the Author must ask what in all fuck they are doing reading this column.

i. The Wealthy are:

1. Cultural pollutants.
2. Societal leaches.
3. Perverted and given access through their wealth to all aspects of their perversion.
4. No longer recognizable as humans.
5. Lawlessly fortunate.

ii. The Wealthy harm societies in ways they are unable to even fathom.

1. Through their control of politics, the wealthy have, the world over, established layers of protections around themselves so entrenched in the zeitgeist of the civilized world that their control has become almost impossible to discern, even as is infiltrates itself into every aspect of the lives of all the rest of the populace, the Author included.

a. Via their grip on the news and entertainments industries, the wealthy have established over the past several decades the idea of all societies existing with a divide between “haves” and “have-nots”.

i. This idea is, of course, absolutely unnecessary. There is no reason that a society could not function in a manner described as “share-a-lots.”

1. Within this system, via a complex network of digitized receipts, all money would be done away with, and citizens would merely pass, from person to person, all of the goods and services they require, for both well-being and pleasure.
2. All citizens would be required to work 35 hours a week at a profession which adds to the quantity of goods in circulation.
3. For every hour worked, citizens would be credited a certain number of goods, and would receive also, from state-operated supply houses, the products they would need for survival. Should the citizen seek more goods than she has credit for, she could offer to trade (though not give or receive as a gift) a good of her own for a good they desire from another citizen.
4. By using this system, by allowing all citizens to live at an equal degree of comfort, there would be no need for theft, deception, or dissatisfaction.
5. The only two limiting factors to this system being children (who contribute nothing) and adults who do not work their 35 hours (see above), the simplest solutions for all parties involved would be state-run nursery facilities, and “disappearance programs,” the details of which need not be listed here.

ii. The Wealthy, of course, fear such measures, but it is not their fault, per se, that they fear them. Rather, such fear has been bred into them, for centuries, via a complex process of mating among one another only their most weak-minded, nervous children, and fending off the suitors of those children who show signs of bravery or independent thought, as both such things are highly undesirable in the heirs of large fortunes and influence, as such thinking often brings about Change (change being, of course, the most frightening possible outcome to any scenario a member of the upper class faces).
iii. In this way, the Wealthy are able to avoid such horrors as children with critical thinking abilities, problem solving skills, or senses of humor.

b. Via a dense array of carefully measured particulates and compounds and natural gases, the wealthy have established, to a small but significant degree, the ability to subtly manipulate the minds of the sub-classes, all through the process of water filtration.

1. The Author can attest to such accusations in a court of law. He/she possesses a number of highly damning mimeographed, hand-printed, and otherwise samizdat communiqués, boxes and drawers full, listing:

a. Names, facilities, and dates.
b. Faxes, emails, statements, transcripts, and spreadsheets of policies and practices.
c. Three half-charred pages of minutes laying out in damning detail the limits and extremes and lengths of this and a dozen other operations.

2. The Wealthy Reader knows, of course, already the length of said operations. The Wealthy Reader shall not be given access to the above.
3. Do not feign ignorance, Wealthy Reader. It does not become you.

c. Via their presentation of themselves as powerful, beautiful, and lavishly comfortable, the Wealthy have created the illusion that they are Happy, and that their lifestyle is something to be desired, rather than a series of projections shot through with expensive smoke.

i. Happiness is no longer a factor in the lifestyle of the Wealthy; they have so far decayed as to have corroded away the parts of their brains that register felicity, joy, or contentment.
ii. Like the creatures of the sea floor, the Wealthy exist only to consume, to the greatest degree, the creatures around them.
iii. Being so far removed from the necessities of basic human survival (eg, hunger), the Wealthy now register digits of acquisition (see below) as measures of satisfaction, the sort of satisfaction which the Author or the Young Spender take from a hearty meal.

2. Through the aforementioned control of the media, and thanks to their portrayal of themselves as Happy, and, finally, through political shadow-puppetry like tax cuts and market deregulation, the Wealthy have created for the non-wealthy the illusion that the latter can and should seek to become like the former, that such a change in status is both possible and, even, the natural order of the world, and as such the non-wealthy should do everything in their power to become like the Wealthy, never realizing that whatever small adjustments to their standing they make is little more than pocket change for themselves, and that their frantic clawing at the faces they feel they need to climb is merely furthering the interests of the Elite.

a. Similar to their need for hunger (see above), the Wealthy have lived so high for so long that their concept of entertainment has mutated so completely as to be unrecognizable by those below.
b. No pleasure is derived by the Wealthy by television series (see Point 2, previous), films, computer games, pictures of small dogs in hats, sexual activity (except in some cases: see below), or artistic endeavor.
c. For the Wealthy, the finest (and only) entertainment is found in the clawing and thrashing and gnashing of teeth of the non-wealthy trying in vain to elevate their status.

3. By perpetuating this myth of happiness/improvement to divert the lower classes, and via their afore-mentioned population controls (not even Fiji is safe), the Wealthy are free to indulge in what they have always done best: incest.

a. On very good authority, the Author possesses a list of names of men and women involved in romantic relationships with members of their own families.
b. Not only does this list include the names of at least three Greek shipping families, it includes four Jewish media magnates, five Armenian families doing very little of anything, three British families in control of the majority of the world’s coal, and one Korean-American dynasty with powerful ties to the auto industry involved in a particularly fraught, sodomy-charged ménage between a father, his son, and the son’s neice.
c. Copies of this list, if desired, can be found at: The Young Man’s Christian Association, 5212 Washington Avenue, Denver, CO 80002, in the front lobby, in the urn of the fake topiary behind the bust of Thomas Jefferson, under the layer of topsoil. The Author asks only that those obtaining a copy of the list take only one copy, and in the case that they are taking the last copy, or no more copies are available, to send an unmarked postcard to the same address, c/o “Jeremiah.”

iii. All of which, at last, returns the Author to his/her original question: if the reader of this article is Wealthy, what in all fuck are they doing reading it?

1. You, Wealthy Reader, already have advisors, accountants, trust managers, brokerage consultants, and a score of others to provide you with far sounder advice and of much greater quantity than the Author could ever hope to match.
2. You, Wealthy Reader, are nothing like the Young Spender, for whom the Author issues this series of advice, out of the goodness of his/her heart (if he/she can still be said to have one). The Young Spender has not been inundated in unrealized, unquantifiable fortunes like you, Wealthy Reader. The Young Spender must make his path for himself.
3. You, Wealthy Reader, are not whom this series is meant for. It is not for your amusement you apathetic prick, you entitled dickhead, you plutocratic asshole.
4. You, Wealthy Reader, have made life profoundly unpleasant not just for the Author, but for everyone he/she used to know.
5. You, Wealthy Reader, have no mind for anyone but yourself.
6. You make the Author sick.
7. Why, Wealthy Reader, do you continue to read this?
8. Why have you endured the Author’s above excoriation?
9. Why do you tolerate such abject disgust, such vitriolic dislike?
10. You don’t understand Wealthy Reader. You still don’t understand.
11. The Author despises you for all that you are, Wealthy Reader. The Author no longer wants to decide between paying his/her rent and replacing his/her disintegrating shoes.
12. The Author is tired of eating tuna out of a can.
13. The Author misses restaurants.
14. The Author misses Paris.
15. The Author wants to be you, Wealthy Reader, you flaccid, comfortable pile of dog shit.

d. Upon achieving a respectable Credit Score (see above), and after making sound investments (also above), the Young Spender should begin to shed their old lives as rapidly as possible, and work to make themselves as appealing as possible to the demographic to which they now seek to belong.

i. Surround yourself with appropriate material goods, including:

1. At least three houses or high-rise penthouses, in at least two different states. Live in one of these houses year-round, call one of them a vacation home, and never visit the third. Hire a full-time staff to maintain the third, never-visited home, and call yourself a job creator. Be proud of the good you are doing for those less fortunate than yourself, those whom you once were like.
2. Ensure that each of these residences has a large, walk-in closet, and shop frequently to ensure that each closet is filled with clothes. However, ensure that the clothes you intend to wear on a particular night are never in the closet of the residence in which you are presently staying, so that they can be shipped to you, same day, via FedEx. Be proud of yourself for paying FedEx so much money, and be proud of how many of its employees you are helping with that money. See it as an investment for their sake. Remark to your new friends (see below) on how many people FedEx employs, and how many of those people you are aiding with your investment. Tell them how important investments like yours are to this struggling economy.
3. Fill your new residences with furniture, appliances, and entertainment systems, and replace these fixtures bi-annually, even in the house the Young Spender never visits.
4. Surround yourself with friends in the same way you surround yourself with furniture (see above): rapidly, and at great expense. Like the Young Spender’s furniture, they should be used as little as possible, but maintained and replaced at regular intervals so as not to wear through.
5. Travel often but stay in no one place for too long; overexposure to foreign ways of thought can be damaging professionally (see above), politically (see below), and personally (see nowhere). When travelling within the US, stick to major cities in the Midwest, Southwest, and South (eg, St. Louis, Fort Worth, Atlanta), as these are the cities most in line with the Young Spender’s new set of values. When traveling abroad, avoid countries such as Holland, France, or anywhere in Scandinavia; visit China, Switzerland, and the Caymans often.
6. Study, via one of your knowledgeable new friends, the intricacies of tax shelters and off-shore bank accounts (see below). Study your friends for other things they might be useful for. Do not feel guilt in what less-informed people would call mercenary interests; your new friends are searching for the same things in you.
7. Out of all of the friends and acquaintances you accumulate, pick out one of the gender opposite your own, one with a minimum of personal history and a pliant temperament, and take her as your spouse. If the Young Spender seeks to take a man as his partner, he must be sure to first marry a lesbian (or, otherwise, undemanding, asexual woman — services exist to find such women) whose schedule can align with his own. Make regular, well-dressed appearances together (see below).

ii. Remember that taxes are for people less fortunate than you. Replace taxation with political influence.

1. Hire lawyers, accountants, and assistants who will help you deposit large sums of money directly below taxable thresholds in as many places as possible, and whom will help you keep organized these deposits.
2. Employ at least one “double” who can take your place at functions too beneath your standing to attend personally, and who can inhabit off-shore residences in your place long enough to establish residency requirements for tax purposes (see above).

a. Ensure, Young Spender, that your double is properly trained in how to emulate you successfully:

i. Typically, the services through which your double can be purchased have facilities to allow them additional training to meet specific customer requirements.
ii. When working with a double services coordinator to draw up a training regimen for your new double, ensure, if applicable, that they recognize not just the faces of your friends and acquaintances, but also the faces of the friends’ and acquaintances’ doubles.
iii. Always negotiate prices with double agencies. Insist that they use a plastic surgeon of your acquaintance whom can perform any necessary procedures at a lower cost than the facility’s resident surgeon. Likewise, insist that one of your assistants draw up the majority of your double’s training regimen, for identical reasons. It’s not that you don’t have the money anymore, Young Spender; it’s just that, by arguing over every expense, you’ll have more of it.
iv. Avoid being seen with your double. While having a double is, in this era, a ubiquitous practice, there still exist the conventions of an earlier time that held public recognition of the fact to be unseemly. While these conventions are fading among members of your generation, Young Spender, the members of the old guard still hold a not-insignificant influence over your world. Communicate always, when necessary, through your double’s handler.
v. Keep distant tabs on your double’s performance. Often the best occasions to appraise a double is at a party or gala known to be peopled primarily by other people’s doubles. Modern surveillance does not even require the Young Spender to sit in vans outside palatial homes to listen to the feeds of hidden microphones as in the movies any longer. Now, cameras the size of dust motes can be sown into your double’s clothing by your tailor, and every handshake, every mistimed dance step, can be watched from the television of your master bathroom, your private jet, your limousine.

b. A Note on Spouses and Doubles: It is increasingly common today for the spouses of Young Spenders to demand doubles of their own. While this may, at first, seem like an unnecessary expense, it actually holds great benefits. By having a double for both you and your spouse, all of the de facto chores of daily life (such as morning greetings, lovemaking, and dinners out) can be handled for you, leaving both you and your original spouse free to purse other, separate options.
c. Do not be alarmed if you slowly find yourself forgetting which actions were carried out by you or by your double, your spouse and your spouse’s double, what memories are, in fact, merely unconsciously fabricated upon reading reports by your double’s handler on their (your double’s) performance at this or that charitable function or congressional hearing or travel abroad. Loss of identity is simply an inevitability in the life you now lead, Young Spender, and, as an inevitability, it should not be fretted over.

3. With the help of your double, your spouse, your spouse’s double (and, preferably, at least two children and their doubles, which carry the same benefits as point b, above), begin a career in politics. Comb (or have your assistants comb) through your list of friends and acquaintances until you find ones with connections to city councilmen and state representatives. Upon becoming so connected, the rise to political office becomes obvious, self-explanatory, and merely time-consuming. It is also expensive, but now, Young Spender, you have all the money you need.

iii. Treat your marriage in the same way you treat your political career: in a steady, procedural fashion. Marriage, like politics, requires very little real effort. Hold no opinion on anything (being divested of opinions and values should have already occurred around the time of point 3.b., above), and cycle through positive and mild negative emotions on a regular basis. When you arrive in the point in which you are sleeping in separate houses, ensure that your doubles are regularly in place to conceal this fact. (Depending on how separate your lives become, another set of doubles may become necessary. Handle them in the same manner as your first, above.)

e. Finally, upon attaining unlimited credit (the sign of the truly wealthy), do not despair when you realize that money does not really exist.

i. Do not fret that it is merely an abstract, fictitious concept, similar to freedom or desire, only one that can be superficially and stringently quantified by an arbitrary latticework of bank accounts and cotton. Do not pretend you have not known, all along, Young Spender, that money and credit are merely the illusory and fragile by-products of a society attempting to order and stratify itself and one that possesses absolutely no real value (except, perhaps, for coinage, which, in large quantities can be melted down and fashioned into something practical, like an axe.)
ii. Do not pretend, Young Spender, that you did not know that money was merely a society-wide agreement to try to stymie, at least partially, the basic human tendencies toward barbarism and bullying and carnage. Do not pretend that you have not always known this.
ii. And, finally, Young Spender, do not pretend you care.

Previously: “Five Points of Advice to Young People on the Spending and Earning of Money, Part Two: Always Pay for Art”
Next Up: Final Notes on Alternative Means of Income

John Fram is a freelance writer whose public records show him living in Texas. He has a dog and a guy that lives with him. He tweets here, and you can contact him here.

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Five Points of Advice to Young People on the Spending and Earning of Money, Part Two: Always Pay for Art

John Fram — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:40:39 +0000

by John Fram

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Below is arrayed the next series of guidelines for the benefit of Young Spenders on the spending and earning of money. Just as in his/her previous posting, the Author can attest to the veracity of all statements contained herein, and would like to state, to all those listening, again, that he/she can be trusted implicitly, thoroughly, and unconditionally. The Young Spender is implored not to doubt the Author. With all that the Author has done in the Young Spender’s benefit, such doubt would be irreparably damaging, for all parties involved.

1) Steal as little Art as possible; try, always, to pay for it.

a. DVD Boxsets of TV series, Bluray disks of movies, CDs/legitimate MP3 files of music, physical (and/or legitimate digital copies) of books, may all be expensive. However, their quality often makes them worth the expense. Reasons include:

i. No fussing with the file formats illicitly downloaded digital material to ensure that the files play properly on the Young Spender’s electronic devices.

ii. No fussing with files of dubious quality, e.g.:

1. Containing splotchy, washed-out, patchy, skip-laden, or artificially brightened/dimmed video.

2. Containing scratching, hissing, popping, screeching, crying, whimpering, whispering, laughing, pleading, or giggling audio, and/or subtitle tracks that do not align properly with the audio and video.

3. Containing viruses piggy-backing on or twined inexorably within the illicit file’s code.

iii. No fussing with black SUVs pulling up outside the Young Spender’s house on a quiet Saturday afternoon.

b. Legitimate copies (of the afore-mentioned) will, sometimes, because they have been paid for, mean more to the Young Spender (than illegitimate copies) because they have cost him his money. This statement, however, feels disingenuous, because:

i. The author viewed the entire course of the HBO original series “The Wire” through a set of torrented files, and this illegitimate procurement did not one iota lessen the impact of the Art of said show on him/her.

1. Because its slow-burning plot, with its several dozen threads spread over the length of five seasons, was, illegitimately viewed or not, a breath of fresh air in the hyper-accelerated, spiced up flash paper that is most television plotting

2. Because its depth of character across a massive cast was all so pitch-perfectly realized as to make the worn-through plasticine stock-moulds of other (especially North American) television characters take on the obvious and garish brush marks of children’s toys and religious ikons.

3. Because its thicket of urban street dialect, police blotter shorthand, medical terminology and judicial jingonese, all surrounded by the barest of exposition, clarification, or translation, fused all into a tense, heady grove of sound to which the Author felt privileged to eavesdrop, and, accordingly, to feel the tingling sensation of learning material true and fair and applicable to the Real World, all through hours upon hours (60 in all) of viewing.

a. (Other points in favor of “The Wire”): Its realistic treatment of violence

b. Its realistic depiction of drug abuse

c. Its realistic depiction of the ways in which the organizations and structures in which we find ourselves placed or which we build up around ourselves ultimately consume us, compromise us, obsess us, destroy us, or subjugate us completely to their will, and how not even madness is an escape, for it, in its own way, is little more than another all-consuming structure.

ii. The author watched, also, the entire first season of the other HBO original series, “The Sopranos,” and found it also to be, like “The Wire,” one of the defining works of Art of his/her generation, even though it, too, was illegitimately obtained.

1. The author had procured, in fact, the entire six seasons of the HBO original series “The Sopranos” through a single, very large (31.6 gigabyte) torrented file and was not, in fact, convinced to purchase the second season (legitimately) until he/she discovered that the format in which it was encoded would not play on his/her XBOX 360 (see point 1.a.i., above).

a. The author attempted to convert said format into a format which would stream properly through his/her XBOX 360, only to discover that such conversion would require five-plus hours of work on his/her computer’s part.

b. The author attempted to wait these five-plus hours, but upon discovering, midway through said conversion process, that the audio and video tracks of Season Two, Episode One were woefully out of synchronization (see point 1.a.ii.2., above), he/she despaired of aforementioned five-hour process being “worth it” at all, and, at last, paid $37.99, plus applicable tax, for Season Two of “The Sopranos” in High-Definition, through the digital streaming service “Vudu.”

i. The author is fully conscious of just how ridiculous the name “Vudu” is.

ii. The author assumes no responsibility for the ways in which his/her use of a service with a name as ridiculous as “Vudu” might, in some way, result in the appearance of more services, with names equally ridiculous if not more so (than “Vudu”), appearing and/or prospering through the acquisition of his/her money.

iii. The author’s use of the “Vudu” service in no way implies that he/she wishes to see more services with names similarly ridiculous to “Vudu” appear and/or prosper thanks to influence that his/her money will make; that is, the impression that names like “Vudu” are not completely ridiculous and unnecessary.

iv. The author regrets to acknowledge that he/she already supports a service with a similarly ridiculous name (“Hulu”) and has, on at least one occasion, used previously services with names such as “Vuze,” “Bing,” and “Skype,” and feels an agonizing weight of complicity through said support of such services.

v. The author wishes to apologize, personally, to the estates of David Foster Wallace, William S. Burroughs, and William Gaddis, and all other authors, living or dead, whose work, in the fields of linguistic expression and evolution, he/she has undermined, if not destroyed outright, through his/her support, however unintentional, he/she has provided to the aforementioned services whose names and/or slogans, either in an unacknowledged or in an explicit way, seek to undermine, through pretentious misspellings and/or crippling affinities for monosyllabic nonsensicals, the English language and/or all forms of human communication as a whole. To reiterate: the author, no matter how much coin he/she has burnished in supporting such services, either through one-time charges or monthly subscription-based disbursements, assumes no responsibility for any damage, and/or degradation to, nor, indeed, assumes any responsibility for the outright destruction and/or collapse of, the aforementioned language(s) in general; in the event of Complete Linguistic Breakdown, the author would like merely to state the obvious, that he/she was not the only person to patronize such services, by any means, and, accordingly, is not the only person (if he/she can still be called that) responsible for said collapse.

c. The author must acknowledge that he/she still possesses, on the hard drive of his/her computer, the entire 31.6 gigabytes of “The Sopranos” that he/she initially downloaded, even though he/she has no intention of viewing it further now that he/she realizes that digital ownership is possible through the video service “Vudu”, and also for reasons listed in point 2.c, below. The author has not deleted this file, however, due to the fact that it took more than four (4) days to download completely to his/her computer, making the completion of this download feel like something of an accomplishment.

2. The author had, also, begun inquiries into the possibilities of downloading other HBO original series such as “Oz,” “Carnivale,” and “Deadwood,” through illicit means (specifically, it must be acknowledged, through the file-sharing service “Vuze”), but did not follow through with such inquiries, mainly as a consequence of not having the time to watch them in addition to other said series already downloaded, but now, he/she assures all those listening, he/she shall not illicitly download any additional series.

a. He/she shall admit to not having made inquiries into such shows as “Boardwalk Empire” and “Game of Thrones”, mainly due to these series’ incomplete status. Had they been completed, he/she might have considered them as well.

b. He/she must admit that he/she had looked upon the prospect of viewing the HBO original series “Carnivale” and “Deadwood” with a modicum of trepidation, knowing that these series were “cancelled” before their developers’ original plans could be realized.

c. He/she must admit trepidation in viewing any television series that has been “cancelled” prematurely, or shows which have yet to find “completion,” which carry with them all of the messy “loose ends” this “incomplete” status entails, (ie, unresolved character arcs, fractured story structures), as viewing these “loose ends” acts too much as a mirror into the state of his/her own life to provide much sense of “entertainment” or “pleasure” or “solace.”

3. The author would, finally, like to assure all those listening that he/she has no intention of further illicitly downloading works of televisional Art now that he/she is aware of the affordability of said works through legitimate downloading services such as the above-mentioned, and would like to put to rest, once and for all, all worried discussion of said illicit downloading, and will, furthermore, no longer admit any further wrongdoing in any form, via any medium, forthwith and indefinitely.

iii. The author would, also, finally, like to state that he/she has never illicitly downloaded a book, in any form, but, he/she supposes, he/she has the “bigness” to “understand” the motivation behind somebody else’s illicitly downloading a book (specifically, should this series of pointers ever find their way into a printed volume, of some kind, of their own), i.e., he/she understands, in theory, the ways in which extreme poverty can limit the procurement of (and, subsequently, the enrichment via) Art. Which is to say, if the Young Spender, or any other Reader (Wealthy or otherwise), finds themselves reading the theoretical book in which this series of points has been published, via an illegal means (e.g., a torrent, etc) the Author would like merely to state that he/she understands. He/she might even forgive you, Young Spender or Reader, as well, should You subsequently purchase the book legitimately (which will benefit the author; see point C, below). Should You, Young Spender and/or Reader not purchase said book, the Author would only like to know: was it something he/she said/did? Something he/she didn’t say/do? Something he/she should have done more of? Something, anything, nothing? It was nothing personal, what he/she said earlier. He/she meant nothing by it. Please, don’t leave him/her here, dangling. He/she will try harder, really. Please.

c. Legitimate copies of art, when purchased, will eventually (usually, hopefully) find ways of lining the pockets of their respective artists with coin.

i. The benefits of this lining are obvious: without coin, artists cannot hope to produce new works of art, which, eventually, will lead to the end of Art as the Young Spender and his society knows it.

1. Artists, being, like the Young Spender, human, can only survive for so long on credit cards (see Part 3, forthcoming) and overdrafted bank accounts (Part 1, previous).

2. Artists, having fewer survival skills than other members of the human race (if they were good at things that kept them comfortable, and were happy doing such things, they would do such things, and they would not be artists), need all of the help they can get.

a. In many ways, artistry is similar to the Homosexual condition: if it were a choice, few would be the adolescent artist who would choose the harder road for him/herself.

b. No, the adolescent artist, like the teenaged homosexual, would only experiment with clay or celluloid the way the teenaged homosexual would play only a clutch of times with the moist cunt of her teammate on the volleyball team or the unshaven balls of the boy selling weed in the abandoned cafeteria, before buckling under the weight of obligation and labor and self-damaging desires that art brings, the same as the crush of rumours and pointed glances and self-damaging proclivities brought about by same-gender fucking.

c. Should the adolescent artist posses the skills to be a decent accountant, a competent lawyer, a passable pharmacist, and knew that they would be happy pursuing such careers for 40+ hours a week, for forty years, knew that they would have no desire to, one day, (a Thursday, perhaps), merely stuff a backpack full of underwear and socks, package themselves into their comfortable car, and, when pulling onto the Interstate, the Interstate they know so well, the Interstate whose gravel this now-middle-aged artist has ground five times a week into the groove of his/her comfortable car’s tires, instead of pulling North, as is the route of his/her commute, he/she would pull the opposite direction, winding through the labyrinth of overpasses and access roads until he/she is pointed South, toward Mexico, and, further down, Ushuaia, Argentina, and he/she would pull away and begin the first steps of his/her teenaged dream of driving until he/she reaches the terminus of the Pan-American highway.

d. Should the adolescent artist know that such a desire will never enter him/her, never in his/her entire forty year career as an engineer or lawyer or pharmacist , then by all means should he/she stop any and all artistic pursuits and take up fighting for the rights of disenfranchised corporations and limbless children.

e. But, most artists know better. Like the teenaged homosexual, they know, deep within him/herself, that, for a time, they can pretend to be happy doing something that makes them not, but only for a time.

3. If the Young Spender is not careful in his stealing of Art, there will come a day in which no artists will be able to produce their Art, even when taking the most stringent of money-saving measures (and artists are known historically for their ability to subsist on a level of income that would kill most humans), and when such a point arrives in which no Artist anywhere in the world will be able to produce Art, then the Young Spender (and not, the Author would like to state, the Author) will be solely responsible for Complete Artistic Collapse (unlike the case of Complete Linguistic Collapse—see above—in which case all members of society shall be at fault). In the case of Complete Artistic Collapse, none shall be safe. Countries will battle countries for the barest scrap of stained canvas or the thinnest shard of chiseled marble to satiate their need to see their lives reflected back to them and to see their hopes and desires given form in ways that they can watch and touch and move through and so experience in their purest state. In case of said Collapse, those skilled in theft of Fine Art will be in high demand (see point 2.c.ii, below).

ii. A Few Notes on the Theft of Fine Art: While it is exceedingly easy, in this day and age, to procure digital copies of art through the Internet, it remains exceedingly difficult to procure, from galleries, museums, or private residences, physical, original works of Fine Art, for the purposes of either personal use or monetary gain. While the Author does not advocate such theft (see above), he/she does understand that times everywhere are difficult, and that works of Art, closely studied, are of tremendous value to the Soul and general well-being of all Spenders, and that the possession of such fine work can only be a positive force in the Spender’s life, provided it does not lead to jail time or death; i.e., the Spender is not “caught”. Below are three (3) points of advice on the possessing of Fine Art.

1. A Note on the various Sizes of Fine Art

a. Paintings, measuring 3′ square or smaller, are the easiest pieces of Art to procure, requiring only a protective covering be placed over them before they are moved, as they can be carried under one arm, leaving the other arm free to carry a satchel, nightstick, or handgun, if necessary.

b. Pieces of pottery, measuring 2′ high or smaller, may appear, at first, the most accessible pieces of Art to procure, but the Young Spender must take into account their fragility when formulating plans for their displacement. Often, the excessive care needed to transport pottery safely will prove said displacement more impractical than their value will remunerate.

c. Large paintings, measuring 3′ square or larger, can often be quite valuable, but the difficulty of transporting them safely, while dealing also with the security systems at work in a given gallery or museum or private residence, may force the Young Spender to hire or otherwise enlist the aid of one or more accomplices. See point 2.c.ii.3, below, for fuller advice on the use of accomplices before deciding whether the theft of a large painting is worth the dangers incurred.

d. Sculpture, whether large or small, carries with it the same risks as both pottery and large paintings (above and above). Like pottery, sculpture is very delicate; like large paintings, it can also be very unwieldy. In order to procure a major piece of sculpture, whether made of marble, granite, stainless steel, linoleum, graphite, quartz, limestone, copper, glass, or aluminum, the Young Spender can almost be guaranteed a need for accomplices, and not just any accomplices, but Skilled accomplices, ones with a number of technical proficiencies such as the operation of cranes or heavy machinery or large trucks, and these Skilled Accomplices, with their intelligence, can often be Very Dangerous.

e. Digital installations are a fast-growing segment of art spaces, employing such technologies as video projection, holographic images, and high-definition screens. Attempting to procure a digital installation is functionally identical to procuring items from a pawn shop, but with heightened security. No fence (see point 2.c.ii.2, below) wants another high-definition television; they already have more than they can used, all tuned to the same public broadcasting network.

2. A Note on “Fences”

a. When planning a heist, the Young Spender would be best served in finding a wealthy patron to contract them for one or more pieces of Fine Art. Typically, these patron are wealthy members of elite Italian or New York American families who have their eyes set on one particular objet d’arte. Securing this objet will often lead to repeat, well-remunerated business; while wealthy members of the bourgeoisie prefer to think that they are only interested in a single particular objet, they are actually obsessives and addicts (see point 1.b.i, above, and point 4, forthcoming) and one objet will, in a month’s or a year’s time, lead to the urgent desire to possess another objet, and another. In this way, some of history’s most successful procurers of art have been the wards of aircraft tycoons and budget clothing magnates, and have maintained very comfortable incomes in their tenure.

b. However, the Young Spender, especially when starting on the road toward a career in Art procurement, may find himself performing procurements that are “on spec;” i.e., without wealthy patrons lined up already to pay for them. In this case, the Young Spender will have to rely on a “fence,” an intermediary who will sell the Art for them via a secret network of interested buyers.

c. Do not trust a fence. Like the wealthy (point 3, below) they are liars and fucking thieves. Do not linger near a fence; like bankers (see point 1.c.iii., above), the Young Spender should spend as little time as possible in the vicinity of a fence, trust only half of the sum total of their words, and always, always, wear white gloves when handling anything their “fence” hands to them.

3. A Note on Accomplices:

a. Accomplices should be treated warily; they are more trustworthy than fences, but still more dangerous than working alone.

b. There are many services though which serviceable accomplices can be found. Bars, 24-hour donut shops, and the list of former members of the United Museum Protectorate (the union of choice for guards of museums, university libraries, and government-funded exhibitions).

c. Accomplices can be obtained, also, through the many websites that now exist devoted to all manner of inscrutable activity, including Art procurement. The most popular of these websites include SkilledBuddiez.com, TeamPower.com, and AssistanceSeekers.org (a not-for-profit talent matching service)

d. Whether obtained through the Internet or in person, do not fall into the illusion of the heist film and delude yourself, Young Spender, into thinking that accomplices are your friends. They, like you, are merely in for a cut of the pie.

e. Accomplices, finally, should never be trusted; they will want a larger cut, or will all this time be working for the authorities, or will allow emotions of some kind or other to cloud their judgment, and the Young Spender will ultimately need to deal with them before they themselves are dealt with. For this reason, the Young Spender should carry a handgun with them at all times, for use at the end of their caper. When firing bullets into the backs of human brainpans, the Young Spender must remember to fire twice, to ensure the impossibility of survival (otherwise known as the “double-tap” or “execution-style.”)

iii. An Acknowledgment of Reality: It would be naïve of the Author to imagine that artists receive more than a very small portion of monies earned through the sales of legitimate copies of their Art when they are distributed through any sort of record label or production company or publishing house. However, this does not mean that the Young Spender may feel guiltless in obtaining those artists’ Art illegitimately (see notes on Complete Artistic Collapse, above).

1. It is unlikely that Edie Falco is waiting for the $0.30 the Young Spender’s purchase of “The Sopranos” complete box set will bring her, but that does not mean she does not deserve it.

2. Edie Falco has not had an easy life; she has had to work very hard to reach the position she is in now (as the star of the Showtime original series “Nurse Jackie”), having appeared in such unnamed roles as “Carriage Woman” in “Sidewalk Stories” (1989), “Film Director” in “Rift” (1993), and “Festival Programmer” in “Overnight Sensation” (2000), among others, before assuming a major role in the HBO original series “Oz” from 1997 to 2000, and finally breaking out as the character for which is best known: Carmela Soprano in the HBO original series “The Sopranos” from 1999 to 2007.

3. For this work, Edie Falco should not be denied the Young Spender’s $0.30. She may have recently been beset by a series of hardships and large expenses, finding herself in a tenuous financial situation in which every penny counts, and thus need said $0.30. That $0.30 may be the difference for Edie Falco between eating and going hungry. Edie Falco deserves that $0.30. Edie Falco should not have to starve.

Previously: “Five Points of Advice to Young People on the Spending and Earning of Money, Part One: Overdrafted Bank Accounts”
Next month: credit accounts

John Fram is a freelance writer whose public records show him living in Texas. He has a dog and a guy that lives with him. He tweets here, and you can contact him here.

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Five Points of Advice to Young People on the Spending and Earning of Money, Part One: Overdrafted Bank Accounts

John Fram — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:31:01 +0000

by John Fram

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

Below is the first of Five Points of advice to Young People on the spending and earning of money. The advice collected herein and within subsequent points of advice has been culled by the Author from both personal experience and a variety of Experts in such fields as Personal Finance, Mortgage Management, and Travel. While the Author him/herself is no expert, he/she can attest to the expertise of the Experts (whose names will be listed at a later date, in whole or in part as to be decided), and to the soundness of the point(s) listed below, and to the Value of sound advice about money to Spenders both young and old. All listed advice may be trusted implicitly. In finance, as in all matters by which life itself is decided, there is no room for error.

1) Understand that no matter what you do, Young Spender, there will be occasions upon which your bank balance will slide into the negatives:

a. Understand that whether you, Young Spender, spend like a sailor or like a housewife from a ravaged country, there will be at least one occasion in which your bank account will overdraft. Reasons for this include:

i. Bills posting earlier or later than predicted, i.e., unexpectedly.
ii. An excess of purchased goods, services, or products as such to exceed available funds; i.e., overspending.
iii. The friend to whom you loan your debit card to buy himself a lunch turning out to be less trustworthy than your two years together at the community college would have led you to believe; i.e., Fraud.

b. Understand that being, for a time, catastrophically broke will not be the death of you. Reasons include:

i. The fact that there is almost always a friend or a family member willing to loan the Young Spender a few bucks, provided he is in good standing with them, and is not a known addict of some kind (A Note for the Young Spender: Exercise extreme caution when becoming addicted to any product or activity or idea, or any combination of these three, as these addictions will inevitably lead the Young Spender to spend drastically more money than he should, and to unwise degrees).
ii. The fact that tomorrow truly is another day.

1. A night’s sleep can, usually, take the edge off even the most desperate of times.

a. Clarification: this does not apply to the nights in which it is all too much, for the nights when the First and Second and Final Notices for the Loan Payments, the Utility Bills, and the Rent, whether in digital or physical form, have all grown together into a sheaf so thick they seem to have created themselves into something solid:

i. There are nights when they seem to have taken on physical form, a shape the outlines of which the Young Spender is sure is looming just off the edge of the bed.
ii. It is a shape he is sure, as his lover sleeps beside him, that he can see, as he stares into the darkness with his bloodshot eyes.
iii. He should be prepared, after nights such as these, to not be comforted by morning’s arrival. Its jagged light will not provide consolation for much of anything.

b. Despite the threat of these nights, however, the Young Spender should always make the struggle to sleep, because it is good for the brain, replenishing chemicals necessary for the balance of mood and energy, which in turn allows the Young Spender the balance of mind necessary to face another day of abject poverty.

2. New days bring with them always new opportunities, and sometimes bring also the lucky breaks upon which the early steps on the road to independent wealth are established:

a. Checks arrive in the mail.
b. Employers call back for interviews.
c. Rich relatives suffer sudden heart attacks on golf links, are flung through windshields in car crashes, secret away bullets into the backs of their skulls.

3. The passage of time, the great extent of which occurs at night, the very accumulation of minutes and hours, the very fact that one is still alive, is sometimes enough to push life back into the Spender’s favor. The likelihood of the Opportunities and Lucky Breaks mentioned in the above point occurring increases in direct proportion to the number of minutes and hours a person has lasted through, the number of chips the Young Spender has on the table.

iii. If the Young Spender lives in a first world country, he does not have to starve.

1. Welfare systems are in place to aid the Young Spender, if he’ll only stand in line.
2. There are people everywhere wealthier than the Young Spender who are willing to pay him $20 to walk their dog, re-tile their kitchen, rake their leaves.
3. Money is in such generous supply as to sometimes be found just lying on the sidewalk outside the Young Spender’s apartment, at the most absolutely necessary of times, so perfectly timed, in fact, as to make him believe again in a benevolent God. And sometimes it is not.
4. The Young Spender is surrounded daily by people whose vices can be used to turn a short- or long-term profit, if he has only the vision to perceive them.
5. Dumpsters full of food are left unsecured behind restaurants every night.

iv. The fact that opportunity is, at times, only unevenly distributed, not absent.

1. There exist everywhere Greyhound buses, ship’s berths, and locomotive boxcars to serve as passage to potential successes elsewhere.

a. Contrary to popular notion, there exists still the vast network of hobos, vagabonds, wastrels and street performers that once featured so proudly in the American mythology, and this network can still provide, in its own way, support on the path toward financial solvency. In specific, advice on dealing with hobos:

i. Some hobos are friendly. Most prefer to be left and alone and will keep to themselves. This is not true of all hobos, however. Some will throw the Young Spender off of rail cars or otherwise murder him.
ii. To protect himself from injury while riding with hobos (even those whose character he thinks he knows to be friendly, for the character of hobos can shift with the wind, like all men’s), the Young Spender cannot let his guard down. He cannot fall asleep in a box car, no matter how seductive the regular thuddings of the ties beneath him may be, no matter how much they recall to him, on a level he didn’t realize he could remember, his mother’s heartbeat, above him, echoing through his amniotic fluid as he waits to be born. He cannot fall asleep. The time for sleep has passed.
iii. To establish goodwill, he should scratch together some money through a blood transfusion or, if he still has his looks, a blowjob behind the portable toilets, and with this money buy a bottle of vodka for his traveling companions. He should not choose anything fancy, as this will look like putting on airs. A plastic bottle of Aristocrat, shared around his shivering circle, will do. But he must careful with growing too intoxicated. See above.

b. Wastrels and vagabonds deserve less attention, as they are usually trapped in loops of poverty due to cycles of self-loathing and addiction (see note 1.b.i. above, or point 4, forthcoming). Traveling musicians, thanks to their traveling, can often provide solid advice on what opportunities might be located in other cities, and, thanks to the necessity of talent and practice their profession requires, can often be engaging, learned friends, overflowing (as is the nature of their lives: undying performance) with stories and jokes and song lyrics to be shared over beers for a night. They are often very charismatic, sometimes making them horrifyingly good sexual partners. This charisma can make them very easy to develop fond feelings for, but these feelings should not be pursued. Traveling musicians, by their very definition, will, one morning, be gone; their side of the bed will already be cold by the time the Young Spender awakens.

2. The greatest limit facing the Young Spender in taking advantage of new opportunities that arise on far horizons is himself. They should never be afraid; when a notice arrives of gold discovered in Indochina, of oil deposits in the Ukraine, of archeological finds in the Côte d’Ivoire, it is only the Young Spender’s fear that limits him from taking chances and potentially finding solvency and/or prosperity and/or happiness however temporary.
3. On the subject of luck and chances: be cautious attempting to use gambling as a means of income.

a. Do not enter a casino expecting to earn money; allow profit, if it occurs, to be a happy surprise, not a planned milestone.
b. Do enter a house of gambling or a backroom poker ring only with an amount of money you, the Young Spender, are prepared to lose.
c. Do not, under any circumstances, exceed this amount, crossing into the territory of money you, Young Spender, are not prepared to lose. In other words, if the Young Spender has the self-awareness to know that he lacks self-control, he should not gamble.

v. The fact that no matter how poor the Young Spender becomes, he must survive, because there is no hope for any Spenders if there are not those who are willing to withstand hunger or worn-through shoes or filthy hair. As a member of the human race, he has an obligation to persevere. Those who persevere are more capable, resourceful, and more knowledgeable about all of the difficulties faced in this life, and, accordingly, when the Old Money Empires wane, either next year or next century (because all Empires, all wealths, wane, it is their nature), those who have survived the poverty and sorrow shall be ready to take the place of the Old Money, to fill the vacuum left with their own growth, and perhaps make better the lives for those they left behind with No Money with their newfound influence and leverage. And perhaps they will assume the same artificial concern of their predecessors in the void. (Author’s Note: Do not trust any member of an Old Money Empire who tells you that they know what hardship is. They are fucking liars and thieves. See point 3, forthcoming.)

c. Understand that banks do, on occasion, make mistakes.

i. Perhaps the one point in which the Spender’s account dips into the negatives is brought about by a computer’s circuits melting during a particularly busy rush hour, a teller’s mistroked key, a vanished deposit slip.
ii. Sometimes, these errors can work in the Young Spender’s favor. Similar to point 1.b.iii.3, above, there may be mornings on which the Young Spender awakens to find money, its origin as oblivious to him as his own origin, awaiting him in his bank account. When this occurs, the sum of money is typically very small, usually less than $10, but, sometimes, that is enough, or more than enough: for a cheap haircut; a package of socks; a pack of cigarettes; bus fare; a gallon of gasoline and a book of matches. Yes, the Spender has, perhaps, a small obligation to learn where this money has come from. He also, probably, needs it much more than the bank.
iii. In the case of point i, above, or point ii as well, if the Spender is feeling an inexplicable (and unnecessary) sense of guilt or has suffered since early adolescence under a crippling weight of hyper-honesty, a phone call to the Spender’s bank will usually rectify such matters with ease. But, truly, such honesty is rarely necessary; when attempting to make ends meet it is sometimes, even, counter-intuitive. The Young Spender should not spend his time questioning from where this or that windfall has come. He should seize it before it disappears. However, should he call his bank, he should disconnect the line as soon as the business at hand has been resolved. The Young Spender should never listen to the sound of a banker saying, “Farewell.”

John Fram is a freelance writer whose public records show him living in Texas. He has a dog and a guy that lives with him. He tweets here, and you can contact him here. Photo: Gustavo Mazarollo/Flickr

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