ihavebeenfloated

Just don’t feel much like posting anything lately. Maybe I’m finally burned out? I don’t know.

I’d say that my “life” has gotten to the point where it is trying so hard to beat me down that I just don’t care anymore, and that is half true. The other half truth is that I’m actually fairly decently happy lately, or at least I’m trying really hard to be and it’s kind of working.

Thanks to Chapman University hiring the greatest instructor in all of eternity, (William Sokoloff), he was unable to teach the summer semester political science class I enrolled myself in even though I didn’t need the class, I just wanted to take it because he was so awesome. So, I have the “time off” I wish I had taken for the first session of the semester, as well. This is a blessing and curse. A blessing because good lord Cerritos does not offer any sort of break at all. Ever. You get a week for spring break, aside from that each semester starts the weekend after the end of the semester before it. Six weeks off is nice.

A curse because I am feeling that nagging need/urge to get a job even worse. I need to wake up some day and get on that. Having money would be nice. Getting it all taken away by the government wont be. That’s one of those, “What the hell is the point?” moments where you end up thinking, “Well, I’ll probably be working part time, for minimum wage… After taxes, and after the child support people take out what they want from me… I’ll be bringing home approx. $200 a month. That rules!”

That brings me to a short rant on child support: It’s great how the system decides that if one person decides to ruin their life and piss away their opportunities, the other must do so as well. It occured to me yesterday that if I wasn’t lucky enough to live with my parents and have them pay for me to go to college, well, I wouldn’t be able to afford it.

You take a dumb ass kid like me who knocked up a girl, not as lucky as me, and you have that girl be entirely unwilling to do something smart, like, say… abort, or adopt out the child (for all you pro-lifers!) and the boy is like, “OMG, fuck that shit, are you stupid? We’re, like, 18, and, uh, barely or didn’t graduate high school, and you want to have a kid?!”

And the girl is like, “WELL OF COURSE! HELLO! LIKE RELIGION DICTATES IT TO BE EVIL TO GIVE YOUR CHILD TO SOMEONE ELSE RRR SOMETHING!”

And the boy is like, “Well, fuck that noise, I, you know, want to do stuff, like maybe be smart some day or, shit, have a good time. You want to make this decision, well, fine, make this decision, LEGALLY I have no say in the matter, even though ‘it takes two to make a baby’ etc etc etc I still have no say in what sort of enviroment my child is raised in unless I bow down and marry a woman I will probably eventually end up hating and divorcing and fucking up the kid further so whatever the shit.”

And the boy goes on his merry way trying not to commit suicide.

But the girl, apparently hearing nothing of independence and feminism (IMHO the entire concept of child support goes against feminism for the most part), decides: “Hey, you know what, I made this decision all on my own, there were numerous opportunities for me to do the ‘right thing’ and adopt out my child to a loving couple that was able to support it financial and raise it functionally, but I couldn’t do that. Unfortunately I am completely unable to support this child on my own. Luckily the law mandates that ‘it takes two to make a baby’ even though it only takes me to make decisions about the baby, so I can totally sick the law on that sucker who knocked me up and get some money! YAY! LETS DO IT!”

And then the boy wakes up some day to find an order for child support in his mailbox. And the boy says, “Well, that’s great. All that money I was saving to go to college? Hm, well that’s gone due to back-support. And that money I was going to save to go to college? Yeah, now that’s gone too. Oh, hey, money I was saving to buy a car so I can commute to that job I was going to get when I get out of college? Yeah, gone. Unfortunately since I only have a high school degree (if that), it’s not like I will be able to find a job that will pay me enough money and give me enough free time to be able to afford child support payments as well as save money for college and a future. So, hmm, looks like I’ll be slaving away the rest of my life at shit jobs just so I can make ends-meat while still paying child support. I LOVE MY LIFE, IT IS SO AWESOME!”

I just have to wonder how many guys out there are like that. Not just scumbags who run like fucking hell (and probably live awesome lives) but people who are literally screwed out of their prospective future lives because of child support laws. I just don’t see how it’s fair to punish another for someone’s conscious decision.

Fucking without a condom is a mutual decision. Unfortunately, having and keeping a baby isn’t a mutual decision, it is the mothers. Why is it, then, that the financial burden of such a decision is supposed to be mutual between the father and the mother?

So, yeah, that is what has been bothering me lately. It just amazes me that such an obviously corrupt and flawed system can get so much support. I mean, I guess it shouldn’t, it’s a free ride for a lot of people. But, it makes me think, if we can legally take money from fathers, why can’t we just legally make a mother who is unable to raise her child properly without outside assistance have to adopt out their child or make due?

Seriously, it’s just ridiculous that there are couples out there who are financially stable and well-adjusted who want to adopt children, and mothers out there who cannot care of their children on their own, and nothing is bridging the gap between them.

Instead, the mother is God in the eyes of the law, and nothing can be done to break that bond or say enough is enough.

I blame you, religion. Yeah, I’m looking right at you.

Oh, and another thing: Child support requires that the father supply health insurance. There is no “split cost” here except on bills (maybe, if it is declared by the law that the father isn’t required to pay all of the medical bills and not just a percentage), it is down to the father and only the father to supply health insurance. Explain to me how that is “mutual”. At my last job, if I added a child onto my healthcare, it would have sucked something like $150+ out of every paycheck (IIRC it was every paycheck, and I got two paychecks a month)... and that would have been on top of the $254 a month they were requesting at the time. That would have been approx. half of my pay every month. I wouldn’t have been able to afford to live at that point, and I was living extremely cheaply as far as San Diego standards go. My take home pay would have been $500-600 every month. $350 would have gone to my rent (find someone living in san diego who pays only $350 in rent). That would have given me $150-$250 a month to live off of and potentially “save”. Keep in mind that the $250/mo child support payment is assuming that I have 50% custody, meaning that two weeks out of the month Avery would have been in my care. I don’t even want to know what it would have been had it been marked as 0% custody.

Just chew on that, people. Try to tell me that is not fucked up.