Fwd: FW: Thanks from Dwyer Jones
Subject: Fwd: FW: Thanks from Dwyer Jones
From: Christopher Koulouris <christopher@scallywagandvagabond.com>
Date: 1/6/10, 16:19
To: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chris Koulouris <chris_koulouris@hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 4:18 PM
Subject: FW: Thanks from Dwyer Jones
To: christopher@scallywagandvagabond.com





Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 20:44:06 +0000
From: joneswrites@comcast.net
To: chris_koulouris@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Thanks from Dwyer Jones

Chris:
 
I appreciate and respect the points you make in your message, although I never consider any time I spend writing as a loss of time, because it can take so much time to finish a good piece of writing.
 
I like your fire also; your self-respect is evident, and your passion for your business obvious. And nobody should have to face potential homelessness or be without medical insurance. This is the only advanced country that hasn't (until now) really dealt with these problems. It's an idiotic situation for people of all ages, and the medical insurance situation has to be corrected or there won't just be financial trouble, they'll be violent social disruption.
 
I will check out the Web site and see what I can contribute. I have many years of editorial experience, and can help out with that voluntarily, if you'd like.
 
I'll respond (without rancor) to Barrett Brown's message separately. It's a little sarcastic, but cleverly so. Either way, I think your project deserves support because any serious person with good ideas, intentions, and goals should be supported. There are so many bullshitters, but you don't seem to be one. This could have been a fuck-you/fuck-you exchange, but maybe we've begun what could be a productive relationship.
 
Dwyer
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Koulouris" <chris_koulouris@hotmail.com>
To: joneswrites@comcast.net
Sent: Tuesday, January 5, 2010 3:10:09 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: RE: You want people to work for NO PAY?!

Dear sir,

I appreciate and share your concerns. Perhaps you ought to approach those entities that are in a position to offer a sustainable wage. I for one live on no hand outs, other salary save for the few dollars i saved up before I went to business for myself. Although I am not risking life and limb like my grandfather did fighting the Nazi's thank you I am risking homelessness and have deprived myself of many things that a salary could provide- such as health care, the opportunity to live in a better part of town, a family, and other incidentals that one can name in a heartbeat...

I am doing it the way I see makes most sense, and I as I will reiterate once again, once I make a return on the fruits of my sacrifices I am more than willing to share with others who are equally committed to the journey.

You don't have to agree with my choices but like you appreciate I am also a writer who decided to take the ball and run with it/ instead of being shafted by the industry.

Who knows - hopefully the whole thing will make a bunch of money, worst case scenario- I become homeless, lose some more weight (cause i only eat 2 meals a day) but at least have one hell of a story to tell which i do. You on the other hand will only have lost the couple of hours of your time a week writing a provocative piece.

With a 100 000 readers a month, i can't be doing so bad. Let me know if you want to contribute in any capacity. I like your fire but I also believe in my resolve as well.

good afternoon,

Christopher.




Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2010 19:50:45 +0000
From: joneswrites@comcast.net
To: chris_koulouris@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: You want people to work for NO PAY?!

Listen you young, arrogant, know-nothing, ill-raised motherfucker, you want to talk about real valor? How about the sacrifices being made by people in the military against the most nihilistic, fanatical, and mindless people this country has fought since the Nazis and the Japanese more than 60 years ago? Thousands of real heroes of all ages are coming back from combat zones missing limbs and struggling with their sanity. What they have done shows real valor, my friend; the founding of a Web site involves a business risk, not the risk of life and limb. If your business fails, you may be bankrupt, you may be in debt, but you won't be dead or disabled. How about the way my father-in-law, at age 19, along with other equally young men, less than a thousand of them, held the line during the Battle of St. Vith in Belgium 65 years ago during the Battle of the Bulge against tens of thousands of better-equipped Nazi soldiers, ruining Adolf Hitler's plan to win in western Europe? And they did so during a winter that was much harsher than we are suffering now. Is that enough valor for you, boy? Your surname is Greek; perhaps you might want to check out the sacrifices, suffering, and courage of the Greek people under Nazi occupation. Their resistance and their suffering required real courage. They didn't have helicopter parents hovering protectively like your generation does.
 
You accuse me of being cowardly. Your self-satisfied statement is ignorant and ill-informed. Since 1985, when she was totally and permanently disabled at age 28 (and I was age 30) I have been the primary caregiver for my wife and working full time to support us. I have gotten nothing but shit for doing so from "the greatest country in the world." (See the video "Caregiver's Resume" by Dwyer Jones on YouTube. I lived it and I wrote it.) We have been burglarized three times, and I was almost killed by a suicidal criminal in 1982. Every fucking day I wonder why the fuck I am still alive. The valor you speak of--building a Web site?--is laughable. I survive on raw anger. And yet I have restrained myself from attacking other people, unlike so many other Americans who act out violently or murderously after a minor frustration. I listen to selfish idiots like you every day, talking loudly on their mobile phones, their BlueTooth devices, their iPhones, broadcasting their snottiness publicly while the rest of us stifle our rage at the disturbance of our peace of mind by your chattering. Your generation would rather stick ear buds in their heads (even when no music or other audio is playing) than have a conversation with another human being. Your generation believes that using Twitter allows you to "participate" in societal discourse, when all any of you are getting is about two sentences' worth of prattling that no one really cares about. You're just getting ripped off, sonny.
 
I do think before I write. I think about dumb-ass Americans who degrade communication by using cliches like "proactive" (a nonsense word) and "whole new ball game" (which no self-respecting professional athlete would ever play for free because you need cash to buy pit bulls like Michael Vick did so he could watch them fight to the death and bet on the results). I think about an American "education" system that allows so many of its students to graduate without the ability to write, speak, and think critically, skeptically, and coherently. I think about having to work with and for people who have remained adolescent into their thirties, and who are incompetent, treacherous, mis- or uneducated, and as socially inept as four-year-olds. They can't do their jobs, but they can sure stir up trouble for other people.
 
I think about the fact that people like me, who are productive, accurate, intelligent, and caring employees, are discarded by companies more and more every day so that executives can fatten their pay and their bonuses and their stock options no matter how many lives they destroy. And I think about how foolish young people like you are when you put in lots of overtime, thinking that "hard work" will be rewarded by criminal companies.
 
You probably have me pegged as a conservative, a Republican, a fuddy-duddy old fart, none of which I am. I voted for Obama, just like so many of you younger people did, but not because I believe in "hope" (another nonsensical word like "proactive" and "luck") but because I thought (and think) that Obama is intelligent and practical. I don't give a flying fuck about his race because political correctness is one of the most damaging, phony, and pernicious inventions of social engineering ever created, right up there with "the American Dream" (a bullshit business slogan originally).
 
You do have to listen to me, boy, just as I have to listen to you. It's called democracy. And in our democracy, I will not stand for people like you declaring "a whole new ball game" when you don't understand that even under communism, people had to earn money to pay for places to live and food to eat. I have worked as a journalist, essayist, poet, dramatist, and pornographer at various times since the 1970s. I have done much good work, and have deserved payment for all of it. Work should be paid for, and part of reasonable business planning should be budgeting to pay people for their services if you want them to contribute to the growth of your business. It's also a way to attract potential future employees. And once you've built up the business and hired and provided benefits to your employees, you can string them along with encouraging promises about "growth" and "challenges," and then, having built up peoples' hopes, you can call them into a meeting and announce: "Ha! I'm selling the company, taking all the money, and you're all screwed! God Bless America!" And that's my "dribble," child.
 
Dwyer Jones
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Koulouris" <chris_koulouris@hotmail.com>
To: joneswrites@comcast.net
Sent: Tuesday, January 5, 2010 12:55:17 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: RE: You want people to work for NO PAY?!

we actually do work for free - for the last year, we have building this site. Once we make money we are willing to share. Once you find some courage to do something of equal valor - give us a call. You are not obliged to join this forum and we should trust that people don't need to listen to you spelling out how society should work when it's a whole new ball game out there.

Please think before you write.

Christopher.

p.s- that said you are entitled to your dribble. 


Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2010 17:51:13 +0000
From: joneswrites@comcast.net
To: chris_koulouris@hotmail.com
Subject: You want people to work for NO PAY?!

GO FUCK YOURSELF, YOU GODDAMNED AMERICAN TRAITOR!!!!!!! WHY THE FUCK DON'T YOU WORK FOR NOTHING?  BECAUSE YOU WANT TO SCAM OTHER AMERICANS. PEOPLE LIKE YOU AND YOUR COMPANY SHOULD BE IMPRISONED AND DEPORTED! GET THE FUCK OFF OF THE JOB PAGES UNLESS YOU HAVE REAL PAYING WORK TO OFFER!


Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.


Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. Get it now.


Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.



--
Christopher Koulouris
Editor in Chief,

www.scallywagandvagabond.com

christopher@scallywagandvagabond.com

tel; 347 721 4308.

Scallywag and Vagabond: a dissection of pop culture, a platform for the avant-garde, an offering from the arbiters of taste and probing interviews. Imagine; a fusion of editorials from the New Yorker meets the savagery of Gawker with the allure of Vanity Fair.