Too late for that, i’m afraid.
This is one of the most sanctimonious threads i’ve had the displeasure of reading in quite a while.
Oh, yeah, she could probably do better than minimum wage. Even working at places like McDonald’s there’s room for advancement and pay raises, unlike her current gig. Shit, she could get a job in a vet clinic and do better than she’s doing now. She’d have to start in the kennels making minimum wage, but there’s generally the opportunity to work your way up if you’re hardworking and willing to learn, and as you climb the ladder the money gets better. It’s not great money, but it’s certainly enough to keep one healthy adult out of grinding poverty.
I think it bears pointing out here that rather than saying “being a victim,” I would say “perceiving herself as a victim” (not to pick on you, gobear - I think you’ve made excellent points in this thread).
What both even sven and I face are a balance between acceptable living conditions and personal choices. Sometimes we regret our choices, sometimes our acceptable standard of living changes. Sometimes we have doubt about whether or not we made the right call.
Right now I am still going to school. I am almost finished, so it is not practical to make some radical change right now, but rather, to wait just a little bit longer. However, this does not mean I am 100% satisfied with things. My recent pitting on life reflected my own personal frustration in feeling like I was pulled both ways- on one hand, doing the most common-sense stay-the-course attitude I have been maintaining, or the dynamic put-my-money-where-my-mouth is that some posters, such as Lezlers suggested.
I used to have a problem with even sven’s posts as well. But I wasn’t a moron about it either- what did I know about poverty when I still live with my mom? Since I really wasn’t one to criticize, I kept my mouth shut. Right now her situation is very similar to several of my friend’s roomates. Perhaps she does need a little bit of a kick in the butt to get her to be ambitious outside of dead-end jobs and become agressive in her search for a fulfilling and practical career. Another reason I held back is because I could, quite possibly, be in her situation a year from now if things do not go well for me on my own.
How so? I’m not seeing sanctimonious here.
Yeah, people don’t jump all over me when I make posts about CtAC aka Happy McPeeHands. Then again, I don’t make every fourth post a diatribe against CtAC McPeeHands.
I wonder how Sven decided to spend her $20,000.
Fuck all y’all.
We’re moving out of Santa Cruz in January. We had planned to move in fall, but Sven got offered a big motel job during January, so we pushed it back to February. Now the job has changed to December, so we’re leaving in January. We recognize that Santa Cruz is a stupid place to live, but we did all go to school here, and if we hadn’t been lagging around after we got out, we’d never have met each other. Mostly I think that it’s absurd to have a town where it is essentially impossible for a college student with an honors degree to get a job and pay rent, but I guess Santa Cruz is a pretty absurd place.
Many of you are assholes. I’d like to think you know who you are, but I’m incurably optimistic.
Everybody who said that there must be better jobs in Santa Cruz and that she’s just not trying hard enough can take a flying fuck at everybody who said that going to India proves she can’t be poor. It is kind of fascinating to see so many people living in alternate realities, though. Do any of you live in famous ones, like where the Nazis won or something? How do you get Internet access to the real world, where Santa Cruz is drastically oversupplied with worthless labor and living in India is essentially free?
It’s clear, John_Mace, that you are a fucking cock, based on your willingness to make absurd, unwarranted and inaccurate inferences about people based on your most likely flawed understanding of their Internet presence, so I won’t belabor the point. Allow me to just assure you that sven doesn’t consider working an inconvenience except inasmuch as everybody would consider working a shit-ass menial job one doesn’t enjoy for fuck-nothing wages while in possession of an actual honest-to-goodness college degree which theoretically is supposed to qualify you to get the kind of rewarding and enjoyable employment which doesn’t appear to even fucking exist an “inconvenience.” I find it hard to believe that even you would kiss the rod in that instance. You arrogant fucking cock.
Fruitbat, upon reading your suggestion that going to college to study philosophy is essentially worthless, and the immediate implication that the only worthwhile fields of academic study are those which immediately lead to big, exciting industries and that the liberal arts aren’t worth a pot to fucking piss in, I feel it is only my duty to note that you, and people like you, are exactly what is wrong with this country, and exactly what is causing the great American slide away from culture, away from values, and away from being the Land of Fucking Opportunity Where Everybody Can Do What They Want To If They Try Really Hard, and into being a barren, desolate Blade-Runnerish corporate state where we will all slave like, well, slaves, for the great military-industrial complex as it grinds our souls into the dirt. While you sneer at anybody with the slightest desire to learn something not immediately renumerative, the bubbles are bursting, and the people who learned Computer Science while I learned Theatre are selling vacuum cleaners and grading standardized tests, further putting paid to your unbelievable attitudes. Please leave at once and never come back; you are robbing America of what makes it great. I don’t like you and do not want you in my country, which is supposed to be a good place to live.
–p
p.s. Fuck you alice_in_wonderland whose post I did not see because I neglected to refresh the preview. That money is sven’s inheritance, and likely the only such inheritance she will see. She could spend it, and then she’d never have a chunk of change that large again, or she could save it and eventually spend it on making a movie, which is her fucking dream. What are you suggesting? Perhaps more to the point, what the fuck is wrong with you people?
–p
As lovely as that rant is, and as much as I agree with it (I, who studied art), I have to point out that fruitbat did concede that pursuing your dreams (by studying film if that’s your passion) is not a bad thing. Actually, I don’t think anyone here is saying that, though it may have sounded like that at first.
First Rule of Show Biz: Never invest your own money.
Ah, I see. Get an honest-to-goodness college degree, and you’re entitled to rewarding and enjoyable employment.
Try being a little more dramatic – I think you almost made a point.
Nuh uh! You get the hell out of MY country!
MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! THEY’RE NOT LEAVING MY COUNTRY!
Got it. It’s not your fault. It’s someone/thing else’s fault. Figures. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Ahhh, the things that the poor don’t do…
[QUOTE=fruitbat]
Own Ipods
which you got (used) from your ex-boyfriend in liu of your half of the housing deposit on the apartment you could no longer afford to live in. It’s useful for storing my music since my computer died and I really enjoy music on the many long bus rides and (more often now since my bus pass ran out) walks. I would have been much happier with the money, but thats what I got.
which you saved money to do so by working sixty-five hours a week in three different jobs. Which still ended up being cheaper than the living expenses for three months in America.
Or rather, have half a subscription to Netflix (actually, Blockbuster Online, which is two bucks cheaper). I used to get free rentals work, but now I don’t and I realized that I was spending money on crap like going out to movies. That $10.00 is my entertainment budget. It gives me something to look forward to, and a chance to see my friends.
Which I’m moving out of soon as I complete this $1,000 buck a week job I’m getting in December. I should have moved during my first big bout of unemployment, but I was too depressed to do what I had to do. I regret that, but I’m glad I’ve managed to beat depression at least this time around.
Anyway, I’ll cut it out. It’s just whats on my mind all the time. Every day I need to eat and right now my cabinet is down to a bag of potatos, an onion, and two cans of tomato sauce that my boss gave me. It’s a problem that never goes away. It never steps off center stage for me, because almost everything we do in America involves money. I knew I wasn’t going to break in to film, or philsophy as some of you seem to think, right away. I had a plan to cool my heels working a bit and produce my own short, which would hopefully rocket me to fame (or at least give me the chance to produce another one). I planned to go to grad soon after I had a bit to figure out what direction I wanted to go with that (still don’t have a clue).
What I didn’t realize was that I’d get hit by a giant wave of suicidal depression, work would be hard to come by and when it did it wouldn’t pay enough for me to not lose money every month. I was thinking I’d get some crappy low-level office job at ten bucks an hour or teaching kids at summer camp or something. I had no idea the world is this hard, even when you are qualified and hard working. I did try. When I figured that waitressing would be a good gig, I sent out sixty letters to literally every restraunt in town telling them I’d train on my own time or wash dishes or whatever if they let me be a waitress. Someone did, and I waitressed for a bit and made some of the money that sent me to India. I spent long hours (and thrity bucks a pop!) on greyhound rides to San Franscisco for job interviews. I still check the want ads every day even though I’m kind of locked in to this job until the holidays when it becomes that 24 hour a day $1,000 a week hotel managment gig.
I’ve got a plan. I’ve done some great stuff. And a lot of stuff is still hard and still sucks. I’m not going to stop posting my views on economics from the bottom of the spectrum, because I think it’s something that most dopers (who are, pretty much, people who have jobs that let them surf the web at work) don’t see. But I’ll stop bringing myself into it so much.
Also, PassengerPigeon is my boyfriend, but I take no responsibility for his rantings about nazis and bladerunner. He just keeps telling me he knows more about message boards than I do 
Oh, well, if it’s her dream, then naturally any discussion about the wisdom of its use is inviolate. No one can take away someone else’s dream. To try is just plain wrong. Also, evil.
What’s the second rule?
And which was still more expensive than STAYING PUT and WORKING.
I still haven’t been to India, and I damn sight sure didn’t go when I was living paycheck to paycheck and counting pennies to buy ramen. Perhaps if I had gone it would have been cheaper than living here, but I would have been losing money by not working. I was actually poor, unlike whiny-poor, and that means that I could not afford to stop working for three months to go to India, even if the entire trip were free.
Nor did I have an inheritance of $20, much less $20,000. Ever.
Because I was really, actually, poor. As opposed to whiny-poor.
The Second Rule is NEVER INVEST YOUR OWN MONEY!
I am 26 years old. I had more than my share of post-college difficulties.
even sven and passengerpigeon should be in my generation. My peers. Instead, they make me feel fucking old.
Or she could take a portion of it and relocate to a part of the country where she could get a job…
wait for it…
MAKING MOVIES!
But please, don’t allow logic and common sense invade your lovely, well thought out rant you stunned twit. I could give a flying fuck what she does with her $$ - it’s just really, really grating to hear her bitch about how poor she is, when quite clearly, she’s not. Disenfranchised? Maybe. Poor. No, I don’t think so. Particularly not compared to 90% of the rest of the people in the world. It’s called perspective, and she should get some. Also, she should probably quit posting all her monetary woes on this board if she doesn’t want people to point out her hypocrisy.