below is an e-mail i just sent to my dad, who is very cool. but i'm pretty sure he's going to kill me. i will let you know. he reads killoggs, sometimes. hi dad!
From: Meredith
To: Dad
Subject: conception celebration!
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 11:03:28
dear daddy-o,
as you most surely know, my birthday is approaching. no, this is not my wish list or a request for another advance from my trust fund. it's something entirely different.
you see, i got to thinking about all this birthday stuff. i'm going to be 25 years old, but i'm actually *older* than that - by nine months! that's right, standard rhetoric aside, i was already sort of alive for those nine months i was cooped up in mom's uterus, kicking and farting all day long.
i got to thinking that people should celebrate not just birthdays, but also "conception days"; i.e. the day i became just a little more than a gleam in my father's eye. [yours!]
i've done some calculating and i've determined that my conception day is sometime in july. here's where you come in! obviously, i can't determine *exactly* when i was conceived, so i need your help. oh, and mom's too. can you guys think back, real hard [i know you're getting up there in years yourself!] to july 1976, and let me know the exact day i was conceived on?
please let me know soon, july isn't too far away and i really want to begin all the preparations for my big conception celebration.
love,
meredith
p.s. we lost last night, 3-2.
p.p.s. can i actually have another advance from my trust fund? please?
p.p.p.s. what time are you getting into dc on saturday? please don't kill me when you do.
oh yeah, and today is my mom's birthday. happy birthday mom!
Daniel said at 12:48 PM 03-13-2002: i can't even remember what i did last week, how can daddy remember what he did 25 years ago? be careful, you may open a can of worms.
xmx said at 1:58 PM 03-13-2002: i just called my dad to ask him to bring my old security blanket, which is still somewhere in my parents' attack, to dc with him this weekend. he was at home, not work. he's going to "skip" work the rest of the week. so it will be awhile yet until he sees this. the sob has something like two years of sick time accrued. i want to be sick. then again, he is actually sort of sick. i'm rambling.
I want to start a band called Disaffected White Youth with Trust Funds.
Wait, that's not right.
I want to kick disaffected white youth with trust funds. In the face, so hard we both scream!
milky [email] said at 3:17 PM 03-13-2002: dammit, i totally misread the post and sent xmx a birthday card.
Well, enjoy it...even if it is months late...
xmeredithx [email] said at 3:35 PM 03-13-2002: fuck off, what's the big deal with the trust fund? i can't help it if my father's father started a coal-mining company in the black mountains of pennsylvania. it was lucrative, and it trickles down to me. i'm grateful for it.
unfortunately, the rules about the funds are pretty tight. it's a pain in the ass. i started getting money when i was 18, but i've been going through the allowances a little more quickly than usual lately. call it a long-distance relationship with a latin geek in chicago, call it a rolling rock fetish, whatever. that trust fund put me through college, purchased my car, pays my rent. i mean, disaffected who? i still work a job to pay my bills, i'm no spoiled brat. i was just lucky enough to be born a rich yankee, what can i say?
NuckleheadEd [ url ] said at 6:21 PM 03-13-2002: i was just lucky enough to be born a rich yankee, what can i say?
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Seriously, though - don't let it get to ya, xmx. Anyone who has anything to say about how you get your money is: 1) meddling in affairs that are none of their concern; and B) most likely jealous.
I wish I'd had a trust fund to put me through school, and all. I didn't; tough break for me. But why would I begrudge you your money? Your grampa made it, not mine. More power to ya.
agitprop said at 7:04 PM 03-13-2002: Was a generalized statement, not a focused or pointed critique of character. As I don't know whether you are: 1) young; 2) white; or 3) disaffected, I'm in no position to judge your character.
There is a certain class of privileged person that concentrates more on taking than on giving - what you referred to as a "spoiled brat." I'm certainly not lumping you into that class, xmx; just saying that those folks deserve karmic adjustments. Plus, I like talking about kicking.
Nothing wrong with funds, methinks, so long as one uses their superpowers for good and not for evil.
nathan [email] said at 6:38 PM 03-14-2002: Here's what you could say about it, nothing, becuase nobody cares that your family is rich and it's obnoxious to flaunt it.
mary [email] said at 7:07 PM 03-13-2002: On the subject of trust funds: Isn't it funny that the people who are most adament about the corrupting effects of welfare have no problem with inherited money? In fact, they tend to want to abolish estate taxes all together.
(and no, xmx, I am not referring to you and your relative level of corruption in anyway)
anotherben [email] said at 8:01 PM 03-13-2002: the problem with the estate tax is that the people you would like it to be a burden to barely notice it. the uber-wealthy heirs of the uber-wealthy dead find it only a slight annoyance that the family accountant deals with. the people that suffer are the family run business owners/ranches/etc... mom and/or pop die...leaving the business to their children who have worked their all their lives... but! enter the estate tax.. and more often than not the business has to be sold to cover the estate tax owed for that "transfer" of wealth. who buys the business? big business...thus adding another chink in the armor of corporate domination.
josh [email] said at 9:01 PM 03-13-2002: Well, I'd like to point out that when the whole estate tax thing was in the news, politicians were asked to point out ONE ranch or farm that went under because of estate taxes. They could not.
Now, I think maybe you should have a floor for estate taxes, but see no problem with people who have, say, over $20 million dollars getting taxed.
Larry Ellison, George Soros and Bill Gates all supported estate taxes.
xmx said at 9:16 PM 03-13-2002: it's all about the estate planner, peeps. my family's lawyer/financial advisor has been the same local family for years. mike greek, he's awesome. he knows how to break that shit up, stow it away, avoid all those taxes. hence the trust fund, which is probably good because i'd have spent one lump sum already anyway.
anotherben said at 9:26 PM 03-13-2002: im not against the estate tax at all.. i just think it needs to be refocused/recalibrated for a world of multi-millionaires and billionaires.
brandon [email] said at 9:58 PM 03-13-2002: Shit, I thought everyone had one of those things. If you trace back some of the funds in our family they mingle with some early plantation cash from the southeast day. The balances mingling with interest like the blood of the martyrs in "Demon Night." Hell, it bought me a computer it least once. I think that the estate tax is pretty easy break into. The thing is that most small businesses are smart enough to keep themselves out of the owner- business trap, and establish themselves in different levels or partnership or incorporation which effectively shields them from blunt generational hazards which opponents of the estate tax summoned up to scare people.
xmx said at 10:48 AM 03-18-2002: From: dad
To: meredith
Subject: RE: conception celebration!
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002
July, 1976 - heck, there's only two "special" occasions during that
month - the 4th and my birthday, so it's one of those two days! And I
honestly don't remember any fireworks that year!
brandon [email] said at 3:54 PM 06-04-2003: Ah! Was it only so long ago. Tsk. How time slips away from us all, like a garden hose that you're stoooping to pick up, but your asshole friend keeps yanking the length of it out of your reach, but christ, the azaleas are thirsty.
