Subtlety Has its Time & Place. This Isn't One of Them

 

(Editor's note: Rather than write anther one of these damned things so soon, I'd like to keep this at the top of the page for the weekend considering the first response has been so relatively anemic. If I write any new posts, they'll be right below this one.)   
     Perhaps I was being a bit too subtle in my last post in which I'd provided an editor''s note at the end. I've uploaded way too many of these fundraising posts over the years because circumstances had forced me to do so. With a disabled girlfriend and a cat to support, somehow, I've been obliged, time and again, to do things and reach levels of audaciousness that no doubt has been contributory to my readership falling off this year as it has. After all, I get begging emails and snail mails from every liberal organization out there as contrition for every small charity check I've sent off over the years. It seems for every check I've sent out, I get put on the mailing lists of ten others. So, yeah, I get it.

     Be that as it may.

     I was trying to soft pedal our incipient desperation because first and foremost, I wanted to entertain you guys as a way of repaying and justifying the money I've gotten from you over these last few months to years. Since the winter of 2009, I've been the magnet of bad luck on a par with Job and I know even the most bleeding heart liberal gets weary of hearing about one person's neverending problems. I know. I get compassion fatigue from time to time myself, especially when the funds aren't there to help others as I'd like.

     But what I've been going through these past 5+ years isn't luck I made. It can't be said I've made bad choices and that I have to lie in the bed I made. I did not deserve to lose my last job in 2009 because my boss was an embezzling, right wing scumbag nor did I create this nightmarish economy and job market where guys having to start all over again in their 50's get skeeved for even interviews let alone jobs by hiring managers and with complete impunity. It's none of my doing that US corporations get to skate away and incorporate overseas so they can dodge taxes while the IRS and the Massachusetts DOR go after guys like me for a few hundred dollars in unpaid taxes. And I did not create the publishing environment in which unknowns like me, talented though we are, have no chance of getting an agent much less a publisher unless we have an "in" in the publishing business.

     I've said it before- I live a Rodney Dangerfield routine only without the laughs. I'm just a cash cow for various utility companies, state agencies, brokerages and other entities but no one wants to give me the chance to earn the money I need to pay my debts. It's a terrible situation to live in, having to work harder and harder each morning to find excuses and reasons to stay alive when it increasingly seems that pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel will never appear. And, to make matters worse, the car insurance payments will resume when I have to reup in June and our landlord just informed us he's raising our rent this September when our lease gets renewed due to "maintenance costs." AAA will have to be renewed this August and the car still needs some serious work.

     I love you guys for your past kindnesses and readership and compassion and you have no idea how much I hate myself for having to post these time and again because the America I grew up in, that we all grew up in, will never again return, an America where a man who wants to work and stand on his own two feet will have a fair shot of getting a job.

     I know some of you are down and out or have stopped coming here on account of all the solicitations for help. I can't fault any of you if those are the cases and I know all too painfully well that no matter what I do on the internet, no one owes me a damned cent.

     But my last post netted us barely over $100 from all of two people and we desperately need help if we''re going to survive even another month. I have a girlfriend and a cat depending on me for EVERYTHING and you have to believe it's getting harder and harder to tread water considering the readership hence the money isn't there as it used to be. So whatever you guys can do would be appreciated by not just me but Mrs. JP and our cat. I'm all they have and you're all I have and every day I doubt more and more that I'm up to the task. So please help however you can even if it's just to pass the word to others through blog, email, social networking, word of mouth, whatever. Thank you in advance.