"Hold the croutons. Oh, and no cheese, please. Thank you"

And pay seven bucks for some lettuce and a cucumber. Hey, it's your money.

Yes it is my money. And my time cleaning lettuce and chopping it up is worth that $7 to me, especially at lunch.

"Working to buy a bass trombone is not a life of struggle."

Yeah, he wasn't a sex slave in Haiti or something. But that doesn't mean it wasn't hard for him or somehow makes the effort he put in to get the trombone illegitimate. He was an American teenager who had a job to buy something he wanted and which was also good for him. No sane person can be against this.

I expect suburban conservatives who like to lecture others about their poverty and work ethic to stick together when it came to defending petty bourgeois lifestyles, Invictus. You'd disappoint me if you did otherwise.

You're a crazy person. How can you be against a teenager working to buy a higher-level musical instrument? It makes no sense.

Kids who work for 'spending money', especially jobs that pay $13/hr, are scabs who take jobs away from people who actually need to, you know, pay bills and feed their family.

But you want me to be in awe of Draugnar's hard knock life of working at a flea market to buy a trombone. Sorry, not going to do it.

This is all just an elaborate story to excuse Draugnar's pathological lack of empathy for the working poor, anyway. I'm not going to bite. Like everything else, he probably made it up.

So you are against the arts. Because the trombone was hardly a toy and never intended for such. Despite your shit sucking statement to the contrary, artists and athletes often have the drive at 13 or 14 or even younger. It was a career choice and my parents couldn't afford to spend $1250 on a trombone for me. My first one was bought used for $50.

No, not be in awe. Just not be foaming at the mouth opposing it. In a growing economy (remember that? pre-Obama days) there are enough jobs that, even if your claim that working teens are de facto "scabs" is true, low-skill adults and working teens can find jobs and not compete against each other.

"Kids who work for 'spending money', especially jobs that pay $13/hr, are scabs who take jobs away from people who actually need to, you know, pay bills and feed their family. "

Wow, so Bo is a scab for working. You officially just got put back on mute. The flea market job was with a neighbor. He wasn't going to pay anyone $13 an hour (or even minimum wage at the time of $3.35 per hour). I was cheap. He got 12 hours work for $20 guaranteed (3 hours packing, 7 hours at the flea market, 2 more unpacking) and I got good money if we managed to sell a lot.

The arts are for entertainment. You have to be a prodigy to do music performance as a career. Even All-State level trombone players do not succeed in music performance as careers. Considering you didn't go into music performance it wasn't a career choice. It was an expensive hobby.

Ask any elite-level music major who has tried to get into music performance and they will tell you exactly this.

Putin, if you're going to blame anyone for teenagers in the workforce, blame employers. They feel that hiring a teenager is better for their business than hiring a person with a felony theft conviction and no high school diploma. Travesty, isn't it, that your life decisions - unlucky or otherwise - actually come back to haunt you?

You can't possibly think that my employment is a bad thing. I am working to better myself because I choose to before I have to do anything. I'm choosing to take every opportunity I can to help myself in the future. In what world is that a bad thing? How have they not executed you to clean up the intellectual gene pool yet, I thought that's what capitalists did to people, right?!

"In a growing economy (remember that? pre-Obama days)"

Our growing economy? Yes, I forgot in the Republican alternative reality our no job growth economy under Bush was just wonderful. If you ever had credibility, you lost it.

A band concert is not entertaining, trust me. But it is rewarding. It's good for you. It's culture. It's time you don't spend getting in trouble as a teenager.

But what's the point talking to you? This thread has made me seriously question your mental stability.

Unemployment is higher today than it was when Obama was inaugurated even if you don't add in the people who have given up looking for work.

And anyway, the point was that, even if your scab claim is true (I say it isn't, but for argument's sake) it wouldn't apply since the economy when Draugnar would have been in his teens (80s or early 90s, I guess) were times much better than these. There simply weren't 53 year old bag boys at the supermarket then. But why let the substance of my argument get in the way of a good Bush-bashing for old time's sake?

"Travesty, isn't it, that your life decisions - unlucky or otherwise - actually come back to haunt you?"

This here, is the issue. You geniuses think you're so much better than the working poor and use waiting on tables to spend money on your stupid hobbies as proof that you're more deserving than the working poor, and work harder and blah, blah, blah.

Just shut up. Nobody wants to hear your suburban libertarian bs. Yay for you you wait on tables to spend money on video games. Round of fucking applause for you, you working stiff. Now that somehow entitles you to piss all over poor people and be a sociopathic douchebag.

" But why let the substance of my argument get in the way of a good Bush-bashing for old time's sake?"

You're the one who brought you up the crap about Obama, tool. I love you repeatedly whine about shit that you just did.

"(I say it isn't, but for argument's sake) it wouldn't apply since the economy when Draugnar would have been in his teens (80s or early 90s, I guess) were times much better than these."

I forgot you're a fucking toddler who doesn't remember the 11% unemployment of Reagan or the shitty economy of Bush the elder. You just read Fox News history books where Obama is responsible for the Civil War and the Great Depression.

And I forget you are as unhinged from reality as you are.

"This thread has made me seriously question your mental stability."

You say this in every thread. Anybody who doesn't recite your vapid bullshit as the gospel truth is mentally unstable.

Anyone who thinks there's something wrong with a teenager getting a job to pay for a musical instrument strikes me as mentally unstable. It's wholly unreasonable to be against something like that.

"Just shut up. Nobody wants to hear your suburban libertarian bs."

And no one wants to hear yours, but you are still talking. Funny how a year back I believed just about everything you said. Amazing what a little time ticking away can do.

My apologies for living in a wealthy suburb. Maybe next time my family will collectively throw all their money into a bank and live in a tenement house in Englewood while they wait for you and your big-government operating behind-closed-doors type to bail out the banks again instead of forcing them to reform. It's my generation that'll pay for your stupidity too, not yours, that's what makes it so abhorrent.

I don't know why I'm still responding to your troll though.

"I forgot you're a fucking toddler who doesn't remember the 11% unemployment of Reagan or the shitty economy of Bush the elder. You just read Fox News history books where Obama is responsible for the Civil War and the Great Depression. "

Hey Putin... How old are you? @0 something maybe 30 at most. *You* don't remember the 80s. I guarantee it. I graduated HS in 1984. so don't be such a fucking ass and pretend you were there and remember the 80s, cause it's simply fucking bullshit for a shit sucking fucktard.

"Ask any elite-level music major who has tried to get into music performance and they will tell you exactly this. "

Had I not fucked up my feet, I'd probably still be in the Marine Corps Band, the elite of all the military bands and the only band that plays for the President. so it *was* a career choice. You are just too fucking stubborn to admit it.

Are you guys still arguing about trombones and the price of croutons?

Fuck...

http://conmoto.jp/diarypro/data/upfile/495-1.jpg

That's the horn I bought in 1980. Beautiful rich, deep sound. I don't believe Conn makes them anymore (King was sold and eventually was folded into Conn).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Tromboneparts.JPG
That's what my original horn looked like, at least when it was brand new. Mine was in great shape but was used, so not exactly perfect.

Putin believes that only the absolute elite can suceed in their job.....this is because he is an admitted failure in his job. Rather than admitting that he's just a worthless human being, that his self-confessed hatred for his students, and his admission that he cheats when he hands out grades, and therefore is a personal failure for personal reasons, he instead blames everyone else....he says only the top of the top of the top can succeed, and therefore it isn't his fault he is a failure.

"It's my generation that'll pay for your stupidity too, not yours, that's what makes it so abhorrent."

Your generation is going to pay for nothing. Get real. My generation has had to suffer through the early 2000s recession, the Bush jobless "recovery" and the worst economic collapse since the great depression. By the time you're 22 this will all be over and since you people have the memory of goldfish (since that's the only way anybody can be a libertarian), forgotten.

"Putin believes that only the absolute elite can suceed in their job."

What on earth counts for "success" at the worthless paper-pushing desk jockey occupation you call your "job"? I know what counts for success at my job. What the hell do you contribute?

I really think it's something deeper than that. A normal person just doesn't feel that kind of hatred about something as innocent as a teenager getting a job to pay for a band instrument. He's just crazy.