It's all fake.

[Doktor Howl]

Looking at Baguette Guy makes me hate the human race a little less.

He's genuinely one of my heroes.

[Cain]

I'll say this much:  I still think it's all fake and crap and bullshit.

But on the other hand, I'm rich, and frequently spend 9-12 hours a day doing nothing but reading - and get paid for it.  With your skills Kai, getting in on the private education racket would not be very hard.  The hours are good, the pace is slower, the pay is better and the holidays...oh wow, the holidays.

And the best part is, you're saving so much that, even if you don't like it, or you're lukewarm about it at best, you can move on after a while with a significantly healthier bank balance in order to do things you would actually like.  For instance, obtaining a PhD.

I'd also look beyond America.  The Republic aint a healthy environment anymore.  On the other hand, Canada, Australia, Europe...hell, pretty much everywhere in the world has bugs that eat crops, and there are more mouths to feed and less crops every year.  I'm sure you could, with minimal bluffing, talk your way into a research project.  Of course, you could probably weaponize bugs for the big Five-Sided Building, if you really wanted to, but I suspect that is of less interest.

If you want to get in on education, I can PM you some useful advice and info, if you'd like.

[Disco Pickle]

I've found that if you do what you want and do it well, you'll find a way to make it pay for the essentials. And if you keep in mind that it's about doing what you want and NOT paying the bills, you may very well find yourself in a position to do both pretty effectively.

It was a full 14 years from the moment I realized what I wanted to get paid to do every day, to the age when I actually started being paid to do it.  In the between time, I did what I had to do and kept practicing and learning new things.

Now, I look forward to every day I get up and go do what I always wanted to do, and it conveniently pays the bills.

[Salty]

It sure is fake out there, you can feel it and taste it, even when you're puking it back up you can taste it.

But as cheesy and trite as it may sound, YOU are not fake. You are a pulsing, beating, sweating meat machine that responds to this stimuli and can see it for what it is. You have tue ability to reject all that plastic before it coats your insides and leave everything that IS real a cold, freeze-dried husk of what once was. You are not fake and that that is the only focal point you can count on to keep yourself free from all that fake shit. No matter what you have to do to feed yourself and keep yourself happy YOU can respond to it the way you want to. You can twist it and mold it into something useful, if a brittle copy of something that truly lives.

Personally, I take great satisfaction from twisting people's plastic dreams into a mockery that they eat up with no sense of irony. But regardless of how I handle it I'm still the most genuine force in my life and for that, no matter what, they cannot touch me. Not the REAL me.

OR (please) KILL ME.