Baby Strippers

On the books in RI: anyone who's old enough to work and old enough to have a job, and old enough to consent to, you know, is old enough to strip. That means that you only have to be 16 to work in a strip club in RI. PS, in case you forgot, "indoor" prostitution is also legal in RI. Sin City my ass, welcome to RI. Right? Bill O'Reilly is doing a piece on this right now. The only law relating to this is that under-18's have to be home by 11:30 on a school night. I hate Bill O'Reilly, and like he does with everything else and his two blonde girlfriends, he's blowing this WAY out of proportion

I mean, this is a joke - the illegal prostitution thing is legit: for real, you can whore it up indoors all you want, you just can't sell it on the street - but the rest of this, about "children" working as strippers, this generally doesn't happen and it's truly the loophole in the law. These laws, in this very combination, have been on the books for AGES, and yes, the combination of them all in a given set of circumstances works out to make it technically legal for a 16 year old to work as a stripper, but no employer in her right mind would put a 16 year old girl to work as a stripper. This is one case that took years to come up. It's not as though there are scads of 16 year olds stripping all over the great state of RI. 1) We're a wicked small state, there are very few strip clubs; 2) I've been to half of them; 3) Bill O'Reilly is a D-Bag; 4) the VAST majority of girls working there are clearly much older than 20. Much older; 5) This is the exception to the rule, I promise; 6) Bill O'Reilly is a D-Bag.

I truly hope that this doesn't turn into a thing, because it's foolish that Billy O made an issue of it in the first place, and I hate that I justified him by writing this. Boo.

Fla ored martinis are not actual martinis. discuss.

Student Loans (sigh)

I just looked at one of my student loan statements. They show up here every month, but I rarely ever actually look at them. But I somewhat remember signing up for some kind of "graduated payments," that would supposedly increase as my earning potential increased. Hmmm. So every now and then I like to take a look and see if the payments have gone up. I see that the money comes out of my checking account every month too, don't get me wrong, but I just never notice exactly how much it is, and since I don't know how much it's going to "graduate" by, I sometimes get concerned.

Well, how excited was I today when I looked at that statement and realized that 2 of the 4 loans that are consolidated into that account now have balances that are actually LOWER than the ORIGINAL LOAN AMOUNT! I realize that this shouldn't be so exciting, but interest builds on these accounts at almost more than I'm actually paying every month! How sad is it that it's so exciting for me to see that the balance has actually dropped below the original loan amount? It only took 4 effing years to get there!! And even then, it's seriously only by about $60.

AND, I realized that I just turned 30. I've been alive for 30 years. Coincidentally, the term of my student loan repayment is 30 YEARS. Do you know how loooooooooong that feels right about now?! Ugh.