Puh-leeze, honey!
A. There is nothing inherently evil in working for a corporation. Blockbuster provides a service for which people are willing to pay. My beef with them is that they censor movies, not that they make a profit.
B. Taking out your piercings is a good thing. Shoving bits of metal into your face is unattractive, and, these days, is a sign of being a mindless sheep.
C. Laziness and social parasitism are not values. Food and shelter are not free, deal with it.
Call me cynical, but you seem to be the living, breathing embodiment of the market economy. You rented a relatively higher-priced beach house because you subjectively valued it higher than other alternatives. You agreed to terms with a landlord who subjectively valued your rent to be of greater value than the use of the beach house. Everybody’s happy.
It’s all about individual, subjective value.
What goboy and Zoff said. You are free to leave that job at any point if it bothers you so much; the only cost is that you can’t pay the rent on your beach cottage.
Nope, I don’t make enough to pay my six hundred dollars of rent. I make enough to pay about $250 worth of rent. The rest I pay with a mix of savings and help from people that would rather not see me walking the streets. It sucks. I don’t even make enough to feed myself. My savings are dwindeling. My debts grow larger (and I don’t even have a credit card). My dreams of traveling and actually pursueing the work that I want to do are fadeing. The most I can do is walk to the beach everyday, and look at all the people that are able to pay for their lives, and wonder if I am ever going to be able to get my self together.
Why do I pay $600.00 in rent? I go to school in this town (Santa Cruz). The rental market here is insane. A studio goes for about $800-$1,000 a month. One bedrooms go from $1,000 to $1,500 a month. While my place is sunny, livable and close to the beach, it is hardly a palace. It is small, dirty, old and falling apart. It is on a busy street that keeps me up at night and covers all my stuff with a greasy black film. Yesterday morning, I was woken up by an exterminater who wanted to make sure that the rat problem our place apparently has is under control. The rent on my place is not a bargain, but it is pretty standard for the area. I can’t live in outlaying areas (not that they are cheaper) because I can’t afford a car, insurance, or the five hundred dollars it takes to get an on campus parking permit. But the rental prices arn’t even the hard part.
The Santa Cruz rental market is very very tight. There are very few open units, and many people will not rent to students. In order to get a place to live, you have to go through “renters rights” workshops and create a lengthy application packet, complete with resumes, letters of reccomendation, and even photos. Even with all that, getting a place is often a matter of being at the right place at the right time. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time, and that time was June. I couldn’t really pass up a secured place to stay. The other option would be to take a four hour bus ride here every weekend in Auguest, sleep on peoples’ floors, and hope that I found a place to live before the school year started. Some people don’t. They end up paying out the nose to live in hotels, illegally sleeping in their cars, or hiding away in the woods. It happens a lot. Some people turn around and go back to their parents’ house, their studies thwarted by lack of houseing.
So no, I am not living the market economy lifestyle. I am trying not to be homeless, which is a very real threat.
Like I said, I am literally a commie, so I am allowed to be opposed to Blockbuster because it is a corporation that makes a profit. Beyond that, I am a commie film geek, so I am really opposed to their censorship. Blockbuster sucks, and I help them continue that.
And my piercings are three dicrete small hoop earings, all in the standard earing position. Eatch one has a sentimental meaning, and associations with different periods in my life. And without them I somehow look very different. Blockbuster, however, allows only one earing per ear.
Enough defending myself!
It’s not too bad. The work is easy and time goes by fast. Plus, I work with other UCSC film major who are stuck without real jobs (makes me worry about my future), and I am actually making connections that I can use later. Plus, if I can get scheduled more than forty hours, then I might even be able to live without dipping into savings!
I think I am going to go cry now, read Marx and drink some (red) wine made by an organic workers collective.
Well, I can vouch for how shitty it is to live in Santa Cruz (even sven, if you’ll be looking for a place to live after the summer’s over, I might know some people who are looking for a roomie in a decent place). But, for goodness’ sakes, get a better job. There are plenty of places where you can make more than at BlockBuster and still feel good about yourself. You’re obviously reasonably intelligent, which is more than can be said for many job-seekers these days. Don’t quit the job-search just because BB gave you a job-- go get a good job. Err, that would be my advice. IMHO.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by andros *
**Morrison’s L:
Brother Raven, meet Oldscratch. Sorry, bud, but I think he’s got you beat.
Oh, I know oldie and I think he’d be willing to turn me in to McCarthy 
— G. Raven
Oh, now that was just cold. 
Could you find some nice guy and move in with him. That way instead of working for the man, you could work under the man!
even sven, keep looking around for jobs. On the westside there’s lots of coffee shops and bakeries that hire college students and pay at least as well as Blockbuster, and probably better, since some folks seem to stay with them for a long time. If your heart’s set on working in a video store, you might want to apply to Westside Video on Mission St. Locally owned, eclectic in selection, and the people who work there seem pretty nice. Plus, in any of these places, you can be as pierced as you wanna be. Good luck.
This takes me aback. You must be aware of the problems Sergei Eisenstein had with censorship under Stalin, or the struggles Chinese film makers like Zhang Yi Mou and Chen Kaige have had with government censorship. Freedom of expression does not exist in communist regimes, and neither does independent film.
Commies made some of the best films I have seen. I am Cuba, Daisys, Lucia. While freedom of expression was supressed under totalitarian regimes (which is not how every form of communism has to be), they still managed to innovate while the West stayed in the rut of lowest-common-denomenator Hollywood dreck. Castro, for example, put film next only to his literacy campaigns. In Cuba there were mass screenings, a state film journal, two TV shows that taught film critism and vatious other film theory programs. In moderately socialist states, such as Sweden, state films schools brought us new directors. Additionally, these directors were allowed to create without the monetary constraints that US film makers face. Ingmar Bergen, one of the greatest film geniuses of all time, was able to create what he did because his films were state sponcered, and he could create his artistic vision, without the worry of mass appeal. Many things did not work under the totaliatarian regimes which are the only forms of communism that we have seen so far, but film was not one of them.
i too have a communist ideology and work for a large company (but not for much longer…quitting soon!)
university money is nearly fully accumulated.
just remember: “when in rome, do as the romans do.” or, as i prefer to express it, “when among wolves, learn to howl.”
What does the word Communism have to do with freedom of expression in totalitarian regimes? Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, need I go on?
— G. Raven
Bravo, Morrison’s Lament. Excellent defense, even sven.
Yay Doper Commies!!!
I never said only Communist countries are authoritarian, but all Communist countries are authoritarian (and we’re not counting Sweden–they’re not full-blown Marxist-Leninists)And anyone who misspells Ingmar BERGMAN has a long way to go to convince me of film geek credibility.
So you’re calling Casablanca, A Touch of Evil, Citizen Kane, The African Queen, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,, the complete works of Stanley Kubrick and so on dreck!?!?
I don’t deny that great directors have come from the Communist world–Sergei Eisenstein, Andrei Tarkowski, Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Milos Forman, Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, to name a few-- but you omit that their movies succeed despite, not because of, government control. You have not addressed the well-known problems all of these men have had with censorship.
Since Marx and Engels said in The Communist Manifesto
that the revolution would begin with the dictatorship of the proletariat, I will beg to differ.