Occupyin' Gringotts
Oct. 8th, 2011 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodygranuaileToday I spent most of the day at the office, doing software training. Free learnings! My job may pay pittance, but they are great on providing us with free or reduced-cost learnings. I like free learnings almost as much as I like getting paid, anyway, which is a highly necessary personality trait if you're in publishing, 'cos publishing is just that sort of industry. Also, if I accrue enough additional learnings, I may one day have the sort of job where I can afford to just have one job (I have one and a half right now). More urgently, I only have two years to find a job with health benefits, so I must get crackin' on learning every software application ever used by a corporation since software was invented now.
Of course, it is mildly annoying that I need to spend all my weekends doing extra learnings if I ever want either of those jobs, because a post-secondary degree from a fairly prestigious private research university just doesn't count for as much as it once did (even with extra-curriculars! And student leadership positions! And unpaid internships!), even though it now costs half a million dollars or something ridiculous. (Okay, maybe not half a million dollars.) It is also mildly annoying that my monthly student loan payments are three times what they were the first four or five times I did "financial aid counseling" and read and signed pages of paperwork and set up my automatic billing (Do you want my money? Yes? THEN DO NOT MAKE ME SET UP BILLING FIVE TIMES, JUST FUCKING TAKE IT OUT OF MY ACCOUNT LIKE I SAID YOU COULD) and all that stuff, so that I cannot now afford to park my car. Like, I thought I knew what I was getting into when I took out the ridiculous student loans, I was willing to do it, I read all the papers and accepted that this is what it takes. Then they TRIPLED it on me, out of nowhere.
But! I am not a lazy spoiled bum like the MSM says all of us disgruntled younguns must be. I would do all this extra learnings and unpaid work and training and training and more training and paying out the nose for ridiculously expensive educations at randomly fluctuating rates, and I would do it cheerfully and without complaint, if I really believed that that job (the one with health benefits where I can afford to only have one job) would really happen at the end of it, preferably before I'm fifty.
I am not sure I believe that. Our economy is run by people so amazingly bad with money that they can't figure out how to live off of $1million or $2million a year if they have to OMG PAY TAXES on it, and the government is not doing the thing it should be doing, which is saying "HOLY SHIT, you are SO BAD WITH MONEY, you should NEVER BE ALLOWED TO MANAGE MONEY AGAIN. I am passing a law saying that you, [person who works at some extreme money corporation on Wall Street that doesn't produce anything], personally, are never allowed to touch anybody else's money again. You should probably hire someone who's been working class for a while to be your personal finance manager. I will offer tax breaks to any poor person masochistic enough to take on employment as a personal finance manager for insufferable MBA assholes." So my faith that that good job that I agreed to go $20K into debt for (and that my parents agreed to invest like $100K or something ridiculous in me someday getting) will still be there when I can graduate from being a struggling young boho into an Established Adult? It has taken a beating, lately.
Which is, uh, part of why, when I was done with my tutorials, I went down to Dewey Square Parks (which took me a while to find because my Boston geography is shaky; I knew it was part of the Rose Kennedy Greenway but I initially went to the complete wrong end of the greenway! Which is almost a mile down the road!) to check out OccupyBoston and see if I could lend a hand anywhere. The other part of why I went was that Harry and the Potters were playing. I haven't seen HatP play since they played the Goddard Library basement my freshman year. They urged us to take our money out of "Gringotts" (ie, the big banks), and explained that Ollivander's staying in business despite taking a three-galleon hit per wand was obviously a GOOD case of government subsidies--making school supplies affordable for children--which is what we should be doing instead of subsidizing big oil. Someone brought a sign that said "Reducto Big Business" and this became a recurring call-and-response joke throughout the set (they repeatedly call for "checks" for call-and-response elements in some of their songs, so Joe or Paul would say "Cat check?" and the audience meows and makes pawing motions, "Home Alone scream check?" and the audience puts their hands to their cheeks and screams, and they added "Big Business check?" or "CEO salary check?" and everyone made wand-pointing gestures and shouted "Reducto!").
Apart from singing the wizard anthems as loud as I could (which is not very because I have terrible lungs even when they're not imploding) and adding another physical presence to the congregation, I am afraid I did not do all that much that was helpful while I was there. I helped some people set up a tent and help unload some stuff people were donating from their cars, but other than that I mostly just walked around and read all the signs and flyers.
Contrary to the official line of the media circus, the Occupy movement has pretty serious and specific goals, beginning with some perfectly easy-to-understand and easy-to-implement goals concerning very specific bits of already existing legislation, such as:
1. Repeal Citizens United
2. Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act
3. Step up actually enacting the Dodd-Frank Act
4. Campaign finance reform, campaign finance reform, campaign finance reform
I think the "totally incoherent and no plan and no demands and what do they waaaaaaaaant" whining comes from people who want the occupiers to hand them one and exactly one very easy thing they can do that will shut them all up and send them all home immediately and forever. Not going to happen.
Also, while I was very impressed with the OccupyBoston movement, compared to some of the other news I have heard, we have it real easy up here, it being Boston and all. While OccupyBoston has legal services on call in case people get arrested, while I was there the occupation seemed to be garnering only support from passersby, and while there were a few police there they were basically just hanging out. I hope it stays that way as the protests continue; the Boston movement just started this week and is certainly not as large as the New York one has gotten.
This being Boston, they are rockin' the young dirty hippies thing hardcore, because it seems like everyone in Boston is all over piercings and tattoos and hippie dresses anyway. The people in my businesslike corporate office are all over tattoos and piercings, except perhaps in the Sales department, although maybe they just keep them more hidden than in Media. One of my roommates works in a law office and has a tattoo covering her entire back. We're kind of a hippie city to start with, so I suppose it's inevitable. Personally, I thought it was great; I saw some fabulous tattoos and piercings and dye jobs. Even so, I did see quite a number of older people and military personnel and other non-stereotypical-protester types (do old "dirty hippies" count as stereotypical protester types? Apparently we still have a LOT of old hippies here), and I didn't even go at one of union-related events.
Anyway, now I'm just rambling.
I have absolutely no idea how I would go about moving my money out of BoA (saw a sign saying "BoA = Bunch of A$$holes", I laughed) since I have had only BoA accounts ever, except for my ING savings and that's because it's a savings and I don't need quick access to it. I don't know how credit unions work or how to find one, and I'd need to take a close look at the ING-compatible ATMs in Boston before I could consider switching, since one of the reasons I've stayed with BoA so long despite my knowing about their ridiculous corporate fuckery is that there are BoA's everywhere. There is one on my block; there is one on my office's block; there is one in town in Jersey; they are super convenient. I think it may be time to go do some learnings on this topic, particularly if BoA really does start charging me fees for using my debit card. I've been good at avoiding their maintenance fees so far; maybe I could just switch everything to the credit card and pay it off same-day? (I hatehatehate credit, but I hate bank fees more.)
Study hard in school, kids!
In more light-hearted news, I finally said fuck it and sprung for that cartilage piercing I've been wanting for five years. It looks awesome and I should have done it five years ago.
Of course, it is mildly annoying that I need to spend all my weekends doing extra learnings if I ever want either of those jobs, because a post-secondary degree from a fairly prestigious private research university just doesn't count for as much as it once did (even with extra-curriculars! And student leadership positions! And unpaid internships!), even though it now costs half a million dollars or something ridiculous. (Okay, maybe not half a million dollars.) It is also mildly annoying that my monthly student loan payments are three times what they were the first four or five times I did "financial aid counseling" and read and signed pages of paperwork and set up my automatic billing (Do you want my money? Yes? THEN DO NOT MAKE ME SET UP BILLING FIVE TIMES, JUST FUCKING TAKE IT OUT OF MY ACCOUNT LIKE I SAID YOU COULD) and all that stuff, so that I cannot now afford to park my car. Like, I thought I knew what I was getting into when I took out the ridiculous student loans, I was willing to do it, I read all the papers and accepted that this is what it takes. Then they TRIPLED it on me, out of nowhere.
But! I am not a lazy spoiled bum like the MSM says all of us disgruntled younguns must be. I would do all this extra learnings and unpaid work and training and training and more training and paying out the nose for ridiculously expensive educations at randomly fluctuating rates, and I would do it cheerfully and without complaint, if I really believed that that job (the one with health benefits where I can afford to only have one job) would really happen at the end of it, preferably before I'm fifty.
I am not sure I believe that. Our economy is run by people so amazingly bad with money that they can't figure out how to live off of $1million or $2million a year if they have to OMG PAY TAXES on it, and the government is not doing the thing it should be doing, which is saying "HOLY SHIT, you are SO BAD WITH MONEY, you should NEVER BE ALLOWED TO MANAGE MONEY AGAIN. I am passing a law saying that you, [person who works at some extreme money corporation on Wall Street that doesn't produce anything], personally, are never allowed to touch anybody else's money again. You should probably hire someone who's been working class for a while to be your personal finance manager. I will offer tax breaks to any poor person masochistic enough to take on employment as a personal finance manager for insufferable MBA assholes." So my faith that that good job that I agreed to go $20K into debt for (and that my parents agreed to invest like $100K or something ridiculous in me someday getting) will still be there when I can graduate from being a struggling young boho into an Established Adult? It has taken a beating, lately.
Which is, uh, part of why, when I was done with my tutorials, I went down to Dewey Square Parks (which took me a while to find because my Boston geography is shaky; I knew it was part of the Rose Kennedy Greenway but I initially went to the complete wrong end of the greenway! Which is almost a mile down the road!) to check out OccupyBoston and see if I could lend a hand anywhere. The other part of why I went was that Harry and the Potters were playing. I haven't seen HatP play since they played the Goddard Library basement my freshman year. They urged us to take our money out of "Gringotts" (ie, the big banks), and explained that Ollivander's staying in business despite taking a three-galleon hit per wand was obviously a GOOD case of government subsidies--making school supplies affordable for children--which is what we should be doing instead of subsidizing big oil. Someone brought a sign that said "Reducto Big Business" and this became a recurring call-and-response joke throughout the set (they repeatedly call for "checks" for call-and-response elements in some of their songs, so Joe or Paul would say "Cat check?" and the audience meows and makes pawing motions, "Home Alone scream check?" and the audience puts their hands to their cheeks and screams, and they added "Big Business check?" or "CEO salary check?" and everyone made wand-pointing gestures and shouted "Reducto!").
Apart from singing the wizard anthems as loud as I could (which is not very because I have terrible lungs even when they're not imploding) and adding another physical presence to the congregation, I am afraid I did not do all that much that was helpful while I was there. I helped some people set up a tent and help unload some stuff people were donating from their cars, but other than that I mostly just walked around and read all the signs and flyers.
Contrary to the official line of the media circus, the Occupy movement has pretty serious and specific goals, beginning with some perfectly easy-to-understand and easy-to-implement goals concerning very specific bits of already existing legislation, such as:
1. Repeal Citizens United
2. Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act
3. Step up actually enacting the Dodd-Frank Act
4. Campaign finance reform, campaign finance reform, campaign finance reform
I think the "totally incoherent and no plan and no demands and what do they waaaaaaaaant" whining comes from people who want the occupiers to hand them one and exactly one very easy thing they can do that will shut them all up and send them all home immediately and forever. Not going to happen.
Also, while I was very impressed with the OccupyBoston movement, compared to some of the other news I have heard, we have it real easy up here, it being Boston and all. While OccupyBoston has legal services on call in case people get arrested, while I was there the occupation seemed to be garnering only support from passersby, and while there were a few police there they were basically just hanging out. I hope it stays that way as the protests continue; the Boston movement just started this week and is certainly not as large as the New York one has gotten.
This being Boston, they are rockin' the young dirty hippies thing hardcore, because it seems like everyone in Boston is all over piercings and tattoos and hippie dresses anyway. The people in my businesslike corporate office are all over tattoos and piercings, except perhaps in the Sales department, although maybe they just keep them more hidden than in Media. One of my roommates works in a law office and has a tattoo covering her entire back. We're kind of a hippie city to start with, so I suppose it's inevitable. Personally, I thought it was great; I saw some fabulous tattoos and piercings and dye jobs. Even so, I did see quite a number of older people and military personnel and other non-stereotypical-protester types (do old "dirty hippies" count as stereotypical protester types? Apparently we still have a LOT of old hippies here), and I didn't even go at one of union-related events.
Anyway, now I'm just rambling.
I have absolutely no idea how I would go about moving my money out of BoA (saw a sign saying "BoA = Bunch of A$$holes", I laughed) since I have had only BoA accounts ever, except for my ING savings and that's because it's a savings and I don't need quick access to it. I don't know how credit unions work or how to find one, and I'd need to take a close look at the ING-compatible ATMs in Boston before I could consider switching, since one of the reasons I've stayed with BoA so long despite my knowing about their ridiculous corporate fuckery is that there are BoA's everywhere. There is one on my block; there is one on my office's block; there is one in town in Jersey; they are super convenient. I think it may be time to go do some learnings on this topic, particularly if BoA really does start charging me fees for using my debit card. I've been good at avoiding their maintenance fees so far; maybe I could just switch everything to the credit card and pay it off same-day? (I hatehatehate credit, but I hate bank fees more.)
Study hard in school, kids!
In more light-hearted news, I finally said fuck it and sprung for that cartilage piercing I've been wanting for five years. It looks awesome and I should have done it five years ago.