Credit card debt: $0; Associated feeling: priceless

Many of you know I racked up a shit-ton of credit card debt during my free-wheeling days in the Bay Area.

I was really in denial about it and as the years went on I was literally living paycheck-by-paycheck, paying minimums and hoping I wouldn't get laid off. The turning point for me was when I figured out that unless I got the debt under control I wouldn't be able to go to law school.

It was then that I had an opportunity to work remotely for a year and move back in with my parents. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and while I never thought I would live with them again it turned out to be an amazing opportunity. During the year I lived at home I paid off about 90% of my debt. The remaining 10% left when school started was manageable - I could pay more than the monthly minimum and then make some large payments during the summer months when I was working.

Happy for me, I got a huge tax refund this year. I'll be able to pay off the last bit of remaining credit card debt and still save a chunk for the future.

I mention all of this to say that it's possible to get debt-free. People file for bankruptcy with less debt than I was carrying - I wanted to avoid that route and I was able to, thank SBJ!

Great speech about wisdom and morality in our modern era

In the speech he mentions Ray Anderson of Interface Carpets, who was featured in the documentary The Corporation:

The International

I just learned that this film is directed by Tom Tykwer, director of Run Lola Run and The Princess and the Warrior. Yay!

Painful

Oh what a difference three years makes:

2006:


2009:

Guess who?

Click here for the answer.

Shepard Fairey

The artist for the now iconic Obama image was recently arrested for outstanding warrants related to graffiti, but here's a happier article about him, and how the Smithsonian acquired his poster:

Moby on the CEO salary cap

Moby has a blog, in case you didn't know. Posts shift between music and politics. It's very stream-of-consciousness but I thought this was amusing:

could you possibly find anyone outside of a corporate boardroom who thinks that a $500,000 salary is not a lot of money? i mean, these ceo's and executives show up, fire a bunch of employees, outsource jobs to other countries, engage in shifty and illegal corporate and accounting practices, get paid millions of dollars, run their companies into the ground, come begging for taxpayer money in order to keep their jobs, and then complain about a $500,000 salary cap?? perhaps a degree of humility and contrition might serve them better than complaining about 'only' making $500,000 a year while accepting taxpayer bailout money? i guess if they don't like making $500,000 they could look for work elsewhere. i'm sure that there are tons and tons of jobs for chief executives whose last resumee item consists of: '2005 - 2009: ran huge financial institution. while ceo i oversaw an 80% reduction in my companies market capitalization, fired 70% of my employees, lost billions of dollars of investors retirement funds, had a hand in creating the biggest financial meltdown since the great depression, and had to borrow $85 billion dollars from the taxpayers just to keep the companies doors open.' yes, i'm sure there are lots of job opportunities for someone with that sort of work experience. or perhaps if the ceo's don't like the terms of the bailout they could get a job at kinko's. no work experience required, $8.50 an hour, 1 hour lunch break, and you can probably make lots of free copies when the manager isn't looking.

What happened here?

And he claims that his transformation into a hip-hop artist is not bullshit. We'll see.