lowtax.txt

Oh Jesus I'm so fucking broke that I literally have a negative balance on my checking account... thank you, outrageous medical bills and bastard pharmaceutical companies. I'm like $60,000 in debt because of all the shit I've been through the last two years. Had two vertebrae in my neck just completely break apart, causing the entire nervous system on the left side of my body to eventually seize up into so much pain that I collapsed because I couldn't control the entire left side of my body (after four months of me three different telling doctors I'm suffering from nerve pain, and them insisting it was actually muscle pain, and would give me muscle relaxers that didn't do jack shit) and had to get taken to the ER. They got my insurance and after six hours of waiting, they brought me in and did a bunch of tests and next day said "yeah, it's nerve pain, C5 and C7 in your neck collapsed, and pieces of your broken discs are actually being pushed out of your spine, and if you don't get immediate surgery to fix it, you'll probably suffer a stroke and die." So that was cool. Then I find a neurologist and I give him the CD they give you of all your test results, and he asked, "why did they do all these tests on you? Most of these were completely unnecessary," and I said I have no fucking idea. He removed the discs, put metal or plastic or some shit into my neck, and fused them together. They gave me fentanyl and I was like "dear christ, life is good, I'm not injured at all, I want to dance." Then it turns out that I actually have to be basically in bed for a fucking year or some such shit, which is pretty much where I've been the last fucking year or some shit.


Okay so after the surgery, about a month after I visited the ER, the ER calls me and says "we don't take your insurance." I asked what, and they said "yeah we don't take it, sorry." Then came a fucking bill for over $60,000. THAT'S why they ran all the stupid ass tests, to spike the bill." So my wife is from Canada, and she made the mistake of sending them some money to get them off our backs. It didn't work, and they sent it to a collection agency. So now my credit is fucked and I'm in the hole for sixty grand.

And here's another cool part. About six months ago, I noticed my left hand would get paralyzed when I was doing random shit (not jerking off). I ignored it because I'm trying to never see a fucking doctor again. However, the paralysis has gotten more and more frequent. So I sucked it up and went back to the neurologist. He took an MRI and said "oh, when I did your fusion, I noticed some degradation in C3, but at the time it wasn't bad enough for me to operate on." You absolutely fucking know where this is going. The only drug I can take to prevent my arm from locking up is Lyrica, and a one month supply is $546. And you know where THIS is absolutely fucking going.

So I've got -$91 in my business checking account because honestly, never in my life, would I expect to just suddenly have my goddamn vertebrae collapse because of reasons (apparently some lucky people just get it and their discs break apart. Has nothing to do with physical activity, so no, Uwe Boll didn't beat the discs out of my neck, it's just a thing random people have. And I'm going to have to go through this AGAIN. And my fucking deductible is $7,000. For office visits, my pharmacy deductible is $7,000 as well. Both different. Thanks insurance industry.

Yeah words, but that's what's been up with me, and I'm going to have to do a fundraiser thing because bandwidth costs are somehow rising here (??? we're dead and gay), and between that and child support and my massive fucking never goddamn ending debt, I'm fucked nine weeks from Sunday. I don't know what that means, but it's bad. And not good. Things are bad with me, and not good.



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Okay here comes some honest and serious shit that could be TOO LONG, DID NOT READ for some folks, but I'm throwing it out here anyway.

I've been seriously depressed for a couple years because my injuries and situation has severely limited the things I can do, and it's made me feel absolutely useless and incapable of doing the things I want and need to do. I wasn't able to sit with like a laptop (which I would've had to buy, since I do not own one) and post on the forums about this shit, and even if I could, my depression would not let me. I felt guilty as shit for doing a "poor me" thread here and talking about my situation. I was raised Catholic (no I was not molested), so I have weird guilt things that affect me still. I felt guilty about coming here and talking about this stuff because we've had a fundraiser before (I think either last year or the one before), and whenever I make forums decisions, I do them with the mindset of "if I was an average forum user, how would I personally react to this decision?" My answer was "Jesus this asshole won't stop begging for money, just because he's dumb as shit with finances." I do not know if the average user here feels that way, but in my mind, it felt guilty as hell and not beneficial to the forums.

I've tapped out my 401K, which was $40,000, to cover expenses last year. As a fun fact, my ex-wife got $140,000 of that 401K in the divorce, as she lied about certain things regarding taxes and her lawyer was able to convince the judge that our agreement was not legally binding. That's my fault for not 100% distrusting her, and having her sign an agreement that wasn't like signed by a notary clerk or whatever, because at that time she was giving me the "I just want this divorce to be free of drama, fair for both of us, and not affect the kids." So I blew it because I am a gullible person (my therapist even said that, in his exact words) and repeatedly trust people who have proven to be absolutely untrustworthy, such as a certain individual on the administrative side of things here, but I will not get into that, so please do not ask.

Anyway, in conclusion, I wholeheartedly admit I'm an idiot and sucker, and cannot manage money worth a shit, mostly because I despise dealing with money, and all people who I've ever known that were obsessed with making more and more money were completely unhappy assholes who seemed to never be fulfilled. I just want enough money to live, watch my children grow up, SOMEWHAT manage the things going on in SA (yeah I am guilty as shit of that, but like I said I was raised Catholic), and be happy. People try to troll me and say "DEAR RICHARD, you could've turned SA into a multimillion dollar media empire back in 2005 and YOU WERE TOO STUPID AND YOU WASTED IT." My reply is always the same; I do not want SA to be a big site. I do not want SA to be a big business. I do not want SA to start trying to appeal to the general public, because the general public on the internet fucking sucks shit and I want those braindead idiots as far away from this site as possible. Even if it means losing money, I have to keep this place true to myself, and I have to do what I think is the best thing for the members here. I don't want to fucking spend my day making business decisions. I don't want to spend my day thinking of ways to exploit the users here, and attract more users to exploit. I just fucking want to survive and be happy with what I do.

So there. All this shit is from my heart. I do not have the interest or emotional energy to lie about this shit, and I've always been like that. My honesty might have cost me a lot of money, but that is not my goal in life. Maybe that sounds fake and cliched, I don't know or care, this is all coming from me and who I am. I admit my mistakes and the fact I'm a gullible idiot when it comes to trusting people and believing they do and think what I would do in situations, but again, that's me. Thank you for loving pupkin.



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I've always said I'd absolutely NEVER do recurring charges on the forums, and I will always stand by that. If you would like to donate in a recurring charge way, my Patreon is https://www.patreon.com/GamingGarbage

And to the dude saying I need to be "humble," you're insane. I was quoting an actual attempt somebody tried to troll me, and I was using it to explain I never intended for this place to become commercialized and rake in money, because that was never my goal in any way whatsoever. I don't think I'm hot shit; I'm a fucking webmaster. I'm fucking in debt from medical expenses. I'm fucking broke because I suck at business. I've been fucking living in a bed for over a year. I sleep and work in a fucking basement. I usually go through the entire day without wearing pants. I play Xbox games in the nude. One time I accidently shit in the shower because I thought it was a fart, and I spent like 10 minutes trying to stomp that motherfucking log through the drain. I never claimed to be better than anybody else; if you'll read what I wrote, I openly claim to be much, much dumber than everybody else.

And to the people wishing me well and offering to donate (or donating), I absolutely tremendously appreciate it. I feel bad (again) because I've been away from these forums for so long, and again that comes with guilt. I don't know, this sounds stupid, but I felt leaving the forums would be for the best, because I did not want to deal with some of the drama that came with owning the joint. I don't know, it's been two decades of running this place and it's like I got burnt out or something. For like half a fucking decade. Shit really wore me down when the forums were peaking around 2005 or so, with banned people calling my school and telling the principal that I molest my kids, and paying weev to dox me, and folks calling my parents nonstop to annoy them and threaten them and all that other fun shit that naturally and obviously comes with owning a comedy website. The best way I can describe the feeling is writers block, but for the forums. Forums block. Eh.

Well anyway I might do an announcement on the forums saying I'm fucked I need cash for drugs and bills and shit, but honestly I've been using this thread to gauge what kind of reception would come from it, because, again, I feel guilty at the prospect of seeming like OH LOWTAX ONLY COMES TO HIS OWN FORUMS WHEN HE'S GOTTA BEG FOR MONEY. Which I guess has been partially true these last few years or so. I'm trying to be transparent with how my brain works here, because again, I'm just trying to communicate to everybody why I do the dumb shit I do. The Something Awful community has always been fucking awesome and incredible (I dare anybody to find another community as tight and generous as this one), and I'm always grateful to have a website that has successfully avoided all the goddamn dumb shit on social media. Trust me, I know how shit Twitter is, and I know how shit Facebook is, and coming back here and seeing people actually type fucking words and sentences actually seems somewhat amazing to me. We're living in an age where any fucking idiot can get on any fucking stupid shit social media service and instantly vomit up their dumb opinions, photos of confederate flags, emojis, and memes within seconds. I hate that shit. I hate this age. Let's go back to when people had to actually put goddamn EFFORT into getting on the internet and finding a community and were forced to type a moderate amount of words to form a coherent paragraph. Coming back to SA reminds me that good people still exist, and the rest of the internet is a fucking sea of garbage. Thank you for not being a sea of garbage.