greatkills

The fucking NYU occupation

2009-02-22T18:18:28Z

The kids at the New School protest a war criminal and get arrested. No coverage.

The kids at NYU demand a mishmash of changes, get suspended. Lots of coverage.

Look, man, I'd really like to get behind the NYU kids, because I think the outrageous cost of college in the USA is an important issue. It sets people up for a lifetime of debt, first and foremost. Time that could be spent on critical thinking and making this country a better place instead gets funneled into working off debt and trying to survive. Having huge credit card bills, a mortgage, leased car...living on borrowed money...it all seems normal and ok, because you've been doing it your entire adult life.

But the NYU kids...they didn't even ask for lower tuition. It's 50 grand a year at their school. Oh no. These radicals just asked for a tuition freeze, starting 2 years from now. I could barely afford to pay my tuition at CUNY this semester, and these radical protesters are perfectly ok with DEMANDING a freeze at 50 grand a year.

But they were also calling for transparency. Which is reasonable, because while NYU is a private school, you can bet your ass that it is receiving PUBLIC funding via FAFSA and TAP for a percentage of its students. Is that 50 grand going to the professors, the people who make NYU the school it is? Hardly. You know those guys have middle class level salaries, otherwise people would be becoming college professors for the money. And what about all that real estate the damn school owns? The Village is a highly, highly sought after neighborhood. When I think about NYU, I think about how they own the entire area around Washington Square Park, and how I feel like riff raff trespassing on their "campus", which is actually my own city. You're telling me the value of all that land still requires astronomical tuition? What, NYU's got a mortgage?

More demands. Coke machines banned? This is an arcane topic involving a long-lasting feud between students and administration, and to most outsiders it just seems silly. Coke has violently put down unionizing in South America and privatizes local water supplies; the students want Coke products off campus; fine. It is really little more than a symbolic gesture, since there are 11,274 delis around the Village where you can buy Cokes. It really just appears to be some student's pet project.

13 scholarships for Gaza? How about for the ghetto? I know the situation is shitty in Palestine, but seriously. I see it so often. You've got a half way politically conscious kid and they're more worried about saving the children half a world away than addressing the problems in their own backyard. They could work at the local soup kitchen or teach ESL or volunteer at the Salvation Army, but no. They're going to buy red from Target, hold a candlelight vigil for all the lives lost, and change their profile photo to a peace sign to somehow protest the war.

But at least those kids did something, right? Occupying the school's a lot bigger than buying a bumper sticker or whatever. They certainly brought their issues into the mainstream media. Mainly for ridicule, but at ShopRite the other day I overheard a kid talking excitedly about the protest and how he wish something like that could happen here.

Fieldale Farms

2009-01-23T16:40:19Z

This morning, I went grocery shopping because we have a serious lack of food.

I picked up a pack of chicken leg quarters for the low, low price of 59¢ a pound. The package was even marked "All Natural". I was very impressed, since the natural stuff is usually pricier, so I decided to look up the company that fed and slaughtered my chickens.

Fieldale Farms is a Georgia-based factory farming operation that helped push through legislation that allows animals fed on non-organic feed to be labeled "organic": www.ewg.org/node/15301. Now I wonder how meaningful that "All Natural" label really is.

Staten Island Gay Life Expo

2009-01-22T08:20:55Z

Staten Island is having its first Gay Life Expo this Sunday.

www.silive.com/news/advance/index.ssf

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I've worked hard to gain the community here some recognition. But I wanted things to be safer for queers on Staten Island. I certainly didn't have economics in mind. Like a lot of young queer women, I tend to be anticonsumerist, and I'm rather alienated by how commercial the scene in Manhattan is.

Go to the nation's oldest Pride march, born out of queens and butches rioting, and you're constantly assailed with advertizing and merch. In the crowd, there are tons of boojie tourists and very beautiful, cleancut men, but nobody who looks TOO out there. It's not very fun for me. I was mistaken for a boy more times in my life than ever when I went to Pride 2007, by overeager merch representatives. Lesbians or even androgynous folks were invisible, and even though I don't dress too masculinely, I didn't really see anybody else who resembled me. Staten Island Pride has always been much more of a community affair, though perhaps it was merely because we didn't have the money.

So, I'm glad that the corporations and local businesses think we're important enough for an expo, but...I don't particularly like it. I don't like being thought of as a consumer first and foremost, and I don't like the effect money has had on the mainstream gay community in Manhattan.

Christmas is over, good riddance.

2008-12-26T07:27:11Z

I am not religious, and the rampant consumerism of Christmas disturbs me. Even in "these tough economic times", to quote every half-assed journalist for the past month, I witnessed many a person rushing out to buy buy buy. Which is a foolish thing to do, even when "these economic times" aren't so alarming to the news media.

Almost everyone I know is in debt, and those who aren't have taken a conscious anticonsumerist stance. You are all but forced to go into debt in this country, it is the normal thing to do nowadays...whether it's your student loan or your credit card or your car or your house, you're owing somebody.

Actually, I shouldn't say "your" car or "your" house, because if you're shelling out every month for it, it's no more yours than if you were driving your parent's car or living in their house.

I won't even get into the idiocy of running the ecosystem into the ground and abusing entire populations, just so you can show off your status with the latest product. That's a rant unto itself. I am merely pointing out the personal idiocy of spending gobs of money you don't have, "because it's Christmas".

As for the love and brotherhood aspects of Christmas, it is nothing but lip service. I was looking forward to having a nice, quiet day, but everyone I encountered seemed determined to make others miserable. I'm sorry if they were having bad days, but if they cared so damn much about Christmas, they offered only bitterness and spite instead of the much-talked-about charity. My friend was recently hired as a cabbie and he called me earlier and told me he's getting stiffed on tips. There's your spirit of Christmas: selfishness.

I have encountered far more charitable, tolerant people amongst the freaks and queers and anarchists than among the consumers and the Christians. And it's offered every day, not just during some obnoxious holiday season.

The New School Occupation

2008-12-22T07:49:56Z

news.infoshop.org/article.php

So some students in New York City fight with the cops and occupy their school. You'd think that any of the news sources around me (the networks, the local rag) would pick up the story. No. Sorry. I only heard about this through a contact on, of all things, Myspace.

More:

www.newschoolinexile.com/
gothamist.com/2008/12/18/new_school_occupation_day_2_the_rev.php
news.infoshop.org/article.php

The New York Times wrote an article about it in their Sunday edition, bless their hearts.

For fuck's sake, don't cough on me

2008-12-15T03:14:48Z

Seriously, people, cover your mouthes. I'm very susceptible to colds. Why must you cough heartily, with a wide, unimpeded mouth, in public places?

Saving money the GreatKills way

2008-12-14T03:05:50Z

I had two conversations this week that made me realize that I may be living what is called an "alternative lifestyle".

No, I'm not cohabitating with my dearly beloved goat Michelle. No, instead, I am living on 20 to 40 dollars a week. Apparently, this is very strange, even though in most countries, 20 to 40 dollars is a huge amount of money. I know, because Sally Struthers tells me that I can feed a child on less than a dollar a week. Or is that day? I don't remember. Do they even run those ads anymore?

How do I possibly survive on such meager means? It's quite simple. I have very few expenses.

I refuse to get a credit card (they're all scams)
I refuse to take out student loans (debt is slavery)
I refuse to get a cell phone (I don't need one and I don't trust that they won't fry your brain)
I refuse to get a car (they pollute, they're expensive, they're unnecessary in NYC...they have very few redeeming qualities)

I don't smoke
I rarely drink
I don't really have any bills at all

I am crashing at a friend's house, and clean and buy groceries to contribute. I never ask her for money, because I don't need to. My only expenses are food and transportation. Food I only buy when it's on sale, and I almost always cook at home, using ingredients that have undergone little processing and are, thus, cheaper by weight compared to more prepared foods. Transportation is trickier, because there are very few ways to shave a cent off a MTA fare. So I try to walk as much as possible to cut down on bus trips. 3 miles is about as far as I'm willing to go before I consider busing it, although I've done 7 miles when unimpeded by a bag and in good weather. I also always add money to my card instead of getting a new Metrocard every time the fares on the old one run out. Since the god damn fare hike, cards have an extra nickel or 50 cents placed on them every time you add money. Therefore, if you throw your card away each time, you're losing a few cents that could have counted toward a new fare.

For entertainment, I cruise Livejournal, Craigslist, local coffeeshops, etc. for free events. I utilize my library to the hilt, taking out books and videos every week. I only buy books, clothing, and video games used, and I buy them very rarely. I tend to research things before I spend money on them, but not always. For music, I listen to the radio or Last.fm. I carry a glass bottle with me when it's hot out, and fill it at water fountains or even restroom sinks when I need to. I take newspapers out of the trash if they aren't too skanky, and pick up cool things I find on the curb for garbage (I often find books, and once, a set of nice bowls). I try to avoid doing my laundry for as long as I can get away with, and when I do wash my clothes, I dry them at home on a clothesline. Once I even washed my clothes at home, in the bathtub, but that was only a small batch.

20 to 30 dollars for the week covers food after I've already gotten the essentials handled, like rice, beans, garlic, butter, cheese, onions, and pasta. The extra food I buy after the essentials are covered tends to be sale items that I enjoy, such as frozen ravioli, or fresh ingredients that are needed for a specific meal, like peppers or meat. The other 10 dollars goes toward extra Metrocard fares, fast food, chocolate bars for my friend, or entertainment.

Riding to another state for Thanksgiving kind of broke my budget for a while, but I'm set for the rest of December and up through March even if I don't have any positive cash flow.

Lori Petty was on CSI?

2008-12-14T01:13:25Z

I'm pretty sure she was in that episode that just aired on 55, about that guy who got stabbed with a pool cue.

Man, I haven't seen her in ages.

She's hot.

Nerdyke Around Town

2008-12-11T21:38:38Z

Do you like books? Do you like homosexuality? Why not combine the two?!

There's Bluestockings, a volunteer run bookstore with an emphasis on radical feminism, gender theory, and the history of activism. It's located at the corner of Allen and Stanton, one block below Houston Street in Manhattan. They have events and lectures nearly every night. Most are free or pay what you will.

www.bluestockings.com/

Then we have the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Park Slope, with a library of academic books, pulp novels, and lesbian zines dating back to the homophile movement. They also have numerous photographs, old protest signs, and campaign lit. It's practically a museum of lesbian activism. However, they aren't consistently open, so you should check their web site before you drop by. They have an open house every fall, which might be a cool trip for a New York GSA.

www.lesbianherstoryarchives.org/

Housing Works in Soho has a bookstore in support of their AIDS and homeless outreach work. I haven't visited them yet, but it seems that they also run events pretty often.

www.housingworks.org/social-enterprise/bookstore-cafe/

Bent Pages on Staten Island is owned and operated by a professor at the local CUNY. They're located across the street from the Muddy Cup, on Van Duzer, 3 blocks up from Tappen Park. They occasionally have events, but there's usually a cover. I also haven't visited them yet. They're closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, I think.

Every Thing Goes Book Cafe is another bookstore on Staten Island. Their selection of queer lit is small, but they've run LGBT events and shows and are very friendly. All events are free.

www.etgstores.com/bookcafe/index.html

Free online college coursework

2008-12-10T21:21:40Z

We've got MIT's project: ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

Then we have OpenCourseWare, which includes dozens of colleges around the world: www.ocwconsortium.org/

These are not online schools. These are merely class materials republished for the Internet. However, they grant you access to lecture notes, readings, and assignments from some good schools, in technical and not so technical subjects. MIT's stuff includes English classes focusing on consumerism and the media, for example, as well as their many offerings in engineering.

I could imagine some young people who aren't part of the university system deciding to use one of these courses to organize a study group.

I'm currently reading through MIT's Intro to Programming myself.

The 15 Below Jacket

2008-12-09T09:59:06Z

This is a pretty clever idea: a jacket designed for distribution to Canada's homeless that has large pockets which allow you to add insulation when the weather gets...Canadian. It also folds up into a back pack when you don't need it. This would be really great for the homeless kids and squatters down here, too, obviously. Hey, I'd even want one. It seems really efficient and useful.

They're holding an auction of a 15 Below jacket signed by celebrities. They're also looking for sponsors.

www.15belowproject.org/

Yet Another Anti-Bias Meeting...

2008-12-05T18:06:37Z

Staten Island is, yet again, wringing its hands over a hate crime. Will anything come of it? Not very likely...

On Election night, some asshole kids decided to beat up any black people they saw because Obama won the presidency. Along the way, they also hit a Mexican guy with their car because they were too fucking stupid to realize he wasn't black. See here: www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/11/teens_accused_in_staten_island_1.html

So the usual gang of Terry Troya, the Staten Island NAACP, etc., are going to have a meeting about this. They will grandstand and ask "What is there to do?", as if we haven't asked that question enough times before. This meeting will be different from the SICAB nonsense (Staten Island Committee Against Bigotry, now disbanded), however, in that you must reserve your spot at the meeting. They say that they are concerned that TOO MANY PEOPLE WILL SHOW UP.

That is absurd. A protest on Staten Island is lucky if a dozen people show. All the RSVP requirement does is put a hurdle to public participation. This is an outrageous, brutal crime, and if TOO MANY PEOPLE show up, I'd say it's a miracle, not a problem.

For example: it is not at all uncommon for gay people to get beaten up in this borough. A student at my college spent her freshman year of high school in the hospital after one such incident. The usual response of the "anti-bias" gang has been to ignore these incidents. They are parochially concerned about race. But it is a phony concern on their part, because it has been my experience that they tend to put a damper on the community's rightful outrage. They are afraid to rock the boat.

When a black boy at St. Luke's was bullied by white students and had a swastika drawn on his desk, back in 2006, several SICAB members wanted to hound the school until they suspended or expelled the boys who did it. Instead, the status quo was allowed to remain. Openly protesting the incident was claimed to be insensitive because it was so close to Christmas and the school was offering to cut the mom a deal.

So we're having an anti-bias meeting. So what?

I bought Yoshi's Island the other day

2008-12-04T17:52:42Z

It's the first game in a long time that I really enjoy and am psyched to play.

Lunar Legend...well...I'm glad I got it for free. I mean, it's not a bad game (bad games can be fun -- I'm talking in terms of programming, graphics, and music), but it's not my thing. I like lots of exploration and autonomy in my RPGs. That's what attracts me to the free, Nethack-style roguelikes of the Intarweb. You can do anything in them and there's a huge world to explore...it's very immersive, despite having graphics which are hardly realistic.

Lunar Legend suffers, furthermore, from a very bland translation. It's a texty game, but sometimes the plot is hard to follow because the translation is so dull. Unlike in the Final Fantasy series, where you can skip all the dialogue without a major loss to gameplay because everything's on rails, Lunar forces you to pay attention so you can figure out the objectives of the latest fetch quest. Oh, we got to find some guy who wandered off? Lemme check every house in this enormous village. Yeah. It's really hard for me to give a shit.

Yoshi's Island for the GBA has a few flaws, like the screen being slightly too small at times, but overall, it controls excellently, the levels are huge and have lots of objectives to keep you busy if you so choose, and the difficulty level is spot-on. I own another Super Mario Advance remake, SMB 3, and while I loved the original, the remake is too easy. Now, in Yoshi's Island, you can rack up dozens of extra lives, but that doesn't really matter to me. I enjoy the challenge of exploring every bit of the levels, and having extra lives handy has very little bearing on that. One wonders why they didn't give you infinite lives in the first place.

Binder & Binder

2008-12-03T21:24:40Z

Binder & Binder is a law firm. They run lots of ads on TV. They ask you if you've EVER BEEN IN AN ACCIDENT? DO YOU WANT THEM TO PAY?

Asbestos? Leg's gone gimpy? Got your head stuck in a ceiling fan? Etc.

After the booming, authoritative voice of G-D is done asking you these questions (blender took your arm?), Chuck Binder pops up in his cowboy hat and says he's here to help you out.

As if the viewer is expected to think, "I trust a lawyer in a cowboy hat!"

Hm...this developer out here also poses in a cowboy hat for his billboard ads.

Why do these people think we'll find them more trustworthy and down-home if they wear silly hats?

This is New York City. I never see anybody wearing a cowboy hat unless they're a lawyer or a real estate mogul.

The Binder & Binder website actually has a page discussing their aesthetic theory for commercials, and even directly addresses the issue of the hat: www.binderandbinder.com/binder-and-binder-commercial-break.html

Vision for Staten Island

2008-12-02T18:42:11Z

Last night was the first "Vision for Staten Island" meeting.

People were having visionary ideas for Staten Island, like a railway for the densely populated North Shore, or maybe a hospital to care for the hundreds of thousands of people who live here.

The meeting had about 106 present. They were asked to rank their top 5 visions in order of importance.

Mostly it seems like this thing was just an attempt by the EDC to make it look like they're doing something.

Sex sex sex

2008-12-01T16:51:19Z

Our culture is obsessed with sex.

Well, yeah.

Everybody knows it, nobody denies it, and it's so taken for granted that no one ever debates it...you just accept it and decide for yourself whether it's good or bad in a given situation. Some of us decide it's generally bad. These people get especially wound up over gays, as if that nerdy boy in the pink t-shirt at their old high school was the Grand Wizard of Sexuality. On the other hand, we have hippies who think fucking in the streets would solve all the world's problems, and the porn directors who'd want to film it.

This obsession with sex, and the official, PC gay rights stance that "you're born with it" and that bisexuality is a puzzling waystation between the two political constituencies of gay and straight, leaves very little room for affectionate relationships between two people which AREN'T about sex.

As a matter of fact, I was wrong when I said our culture is obsessed with sex. In fact, it is obsessed with lust. Advertizing is constantly trying to elicit lust, whether it be for a porn site in need of hits or for weak-ass beer being guzzled by a hot babe. Movies and TV are both huge cockteases, shoving cleavage in your face but not half so frequently showing you fucking. Girls and guys alike show off the goods in every day life, but there's no hippie dream of fucking in the streets yet. Granted, AIDS and censorship put a huge damper on such things, but even if they didn't exist, I doubt America would be one big happy orgy. Why? Because we're all very, very concerned about who you covet and who covets you, and the dire consequences of this coveting, as if voyeurism and fantasies amounted to the same thing as sex. Why else the stupid reaction to having Janet Jackson's boob broadcast on live TV?

Now, I happen to like girls...a lot. I see homoeroticism in everything, mostly out of wishful thinking. But I am at a loss to attribute my feelings for other women to merely a messy biological urge to rut; an instinct I have no control over and which I was programmed to follow from birth. Yeah, that makes all the "just ignore your sinful desires and marry like a straight" people much easier to handle, but it has no basis in my reality. I wonder if it does in anybody else's. Even straight people don't live like that...at least the normal ones. Love and lust are deeply related, but our culture focuses much more on the lust side of the equation. It's all about homoSEXuality, girls fingering each other, and buttfucking, or else it's these weirdly sexless couples on the nightly news trying to get married, as if the idea that they actually DO each other would soil their desire for a marriage license.

The situation is polarized. You are not allowed to love a person of the same anatomical sex as you without it being labeled gay, and thus a sort of lust, case closed. Bert and Ernie are screwing each other, as the old joke goes. The defenders of our Muppets' purity insist they're really just good friends, but that hardly seems adequate either. You like your friends, but deep affection is usually reserved for Relationships with a capital R.

We simply have no room for "friendships" that are more than mere frienships. We don't even have a name for it. When they're openly acknowledged nowadays, they're usually described in passionless ways, far removed from Ruth's speech to Naomi, or even your average Victorian boarding school novel. The closest thing we have to it is the histrionic romance of "Brokeback Mountain". Maybe our gay cowboys wouldn't have been so tortured if they were allowed to love each other without being forced to side with one pole or the other.

God forbid your love for somebody get mistaken for a sinful, filthy desire to fuck. That's what it amounts to. In America today, either your attraction to somebody is a sinful, filthy etc. etc., or it is not acknowledged at all. It does not exist. The problem is not with gays existing, or with sex, but with this truly homophobic concern over propriety. In other cultures, two men can hold hands in public and it is not taken as a sign that they are rebellious sodomites trying to get a rise out of straight society.

This obsession causes a lot of pain for teenagers dealing with their sexuality. They feel forced to side with one pole or the other, or else they deny their feelings and maybe, if they're really daring, call themselves "questioning"...as if the love that got them wondering was ever questionable. Even the kids that come out have to grapple with the shame and fear. Just because you're open, doesn't mean you don't have issues. And if you don't, then maybe your lover does, or maybe it's the bully who wants to beat the shit out of you.

And it's all because we place such a huge focus on sex. It's sex or bloodless "friendships". That's it. No in between.

Oh yeah, and the paper actually published my Letter to the Editor

2008-11-30T06:58:47Z

So that's something.

Even if it's a completely stupid something.

A Tiresome, Angry Pose

2008-11-30T06:36:02Z

Who am I kidding? I spent Friday afternoon cuddling on the couch and watching SpongeBob.

Why do I want to keep an online journal full of ranting that nobody will ever read? Is it some half-hearted pretension at being a writer? Do I really believe that some day, somebody will care about my poorly structured, dashed-off entries, out of the millions if not billions of similar crappy blogs available to read both now and in the doubtless YEARS intervening between November 30 2008 and my dubious fame?

Why does this arrogance of mine even bother me? Isn't it a little insane to even question this, as if I were an outside observer looking in on myself? Do I think this introspection will somehow purify me of the foolishness I'm displaying?

It is 1:30 on a Sunday morning. I spent most of Saturday eating black raspberry ice cream and playing Scrabble. Perhaps my angry ranting is a reaction, an overcompensation, to my fears of being infantilized and hopelessly lost to the depths of the wine-dark oceanic Mother of my psyche...oh jeez, I really know how to beat a sentence to death.

Why the self pity now?

Maybe I just need some place to rave like a lunatic.

Like now.

Do I really care if anybody reads this? Yes. Of course. I would love it. But I'd also be embarrassed.

Because I don't like myself. I'm never good enough for myself.

Hence the anger, hence the self pity, hence the arrogance, hence the introspection.

But I am just shouting in an echo chamber. I'm afraid of other people. Would I really want readers? Only if they liked me. That's why I have trouble dealing with adult life. I'm incredibly insecure. Maybe drowning in Mother for a while will help me feel more secure and confident. Maybe it'll just be hedonism. Why do I characterize it as drowning anyway? What am I afraid of?

Being an old asshole with no accomplishments, no life...of course. Of course. But why should I worry about 20 years from now when I'm barely functioning in the present? Cuddling up to someone bigger than me makes me feel good and it keeps me from what has seemed like an ever-impending trip to the bug house. So maybe it's a good thing. Maybe I shouldn't be so angry or frightened. It's really the one thing keeping me mentally steady. Drugs, therapy, work, books, art...nothing. Snuggling up like a terrified child...something. A very painful something, but I suppose it's taken me a lot of spine even to own up to needing it. So I don't have to stress over all this "infantilizing" making me weak and spineless. Because the action does not come out of being weak. It comes out of being mature enough to take action, to soothe myself...in another's arms...wait. Well, I guess. All that movie bullshit about fear of intimacy, you know.

It's really fucking scary to trust someone after you've been spit in the face so many times.

I have a 2 for 1 coupon for a genuine McDonald's Big Mac

2008-11-25T20:39:04Z

Oh, what riches I now have access to, thanks to this here coupon for a purportedly delicious sandwich made of 2 perhaps-not all beef patties and a special sauce and a weird bread slice in the middle. With the money I shall save, I will buy Chrono Trigger for 40 dollars.

"MTA" is "ATM" spelt backwards

2008-11-23T20:41:52Z

I can't believe those thieves are calling for another fare hike. Are they insane, stupid, or do they somehow WANT their retarded proposal to crash and burn, because how could they possibly think this will stand? They've been found guilty of corruption and their workers had to strike for more pay, and now they're telling us they need ever-more money after already jacking up the fare twice. The city has been in a recession all year and every raise in the fare is like a tax hike on the working poor. I've had to drastically cut back on taking the bus this year because the 2 dollar fare is already unaffordable for me. Borough President Molinaro says we all need to do our part, as if that bastard rides the bus. I don't see Molinaro doing his part for Staten Island by asking that the MTA back down. How many Islanders work in Manhattan and need to take mass transit every day?

I traded in Kirby for Lunar Legend

2008-11-22T23:09:09Z

Keepin' the faith alive, oh fellow gamers.

Granted, it's a GBA cart, and both games are half a decade old...but hey, I never got to play Lunar on the Sega CD, damn it! And that Kirby game was fucking boring.

Oh yeah, and NYPIRG too

2008-11-21T18:53:31Z

NYPIRG is another canvassing outfit that is constantly fundraising and pretty much gives young activists looking to survive nothing else to do besides sell their cause like it's a set of Ginsu knives. I know that they have college students on their board, but seriously, most people in NYPIRG are unpaid volunteers or canvassers. Spots on the board are limited. The number of college students who want to change the world is proverbially limitless. All of those canvassers could be trained into leadership roles, learning how to organize communities. But they're not. They're shilling the latest campaign like they're encyclopedia salesmen. If you're interested in politics or organizing, but you're not so good at selling enviromentalism to grumpy strangers, your career at NYPIRG will be a brief one.

In addition, unlike back in the 60s, where you had average tuition lower relative to income AND all CUNY schools being free...nowadays, college is really fucking expensive. I don't know if you've noticed, but it is. It is barely affordable for the majority of students, as proven by the ubiquity of the student loan. Excuse me, but why should everyone passing through a college have to run up debt? I am not saying that NYPIRG should be personally giving money out to students (as opposed to taking away money in the form of a fee tacked on to our tuition, you bastards...on top of all your fundraising). However, NYPIRG is a student group run by students, and maybe instead of worrying about the auto industry they should be looking at how shitty a deal the average American college student is getting.

Let's see...college is just about mandatory for any white collar job you care to name, as well as many blue collar jobs, such as police officer. So just about everybody is forced to go to college in order to make a decent amount of money. Yet college is so expensive, just about everybody goes into debt in order to attend. And the government is constantly cutting student aid, making it ever-less affordable. Oh, yeah. And once you get that degree? It's no guarantee of anything. Everybody has a degree. You'll be working retail with your degree and your student loan, kid. Your choices are to struggle along with your fancy degree and your debt, or to attend even MORE school, running up MORE debt, in an effort to get ahead of the Jones.

NYPIRG's answer is to take the idealistic New York student under its wing, work him or her long hours on the street for an issue the canvassing outfit chose FOR them, then pay them on commission. So you could be busting your ass for NYPIRG and not get paid at all. Why don't any of the board members get outraged by this shit? I know mercury in the water is important, but in a way it's completely abstract to the average CUNY kid. Tuition and debt are real. How are the board members getting by?

Thank you, HRC

2008-11-20T18:19:37Z

The Human Rights Campaign is the nation's...oh, fuck it.

I worked for these guys for a week. I wanted to support gay rights with a steady, paying gig, because if I have to make money, I figured I might as well do it for something more meaningful than the Starbucks Corporation.

So I work there, and it winds up that most of my coworkers are out of work actors and recent college grads who have little to no interest in politics. Imagine my surprise to be walking to a canvassing territory with them, and to hear them whisper about who at the office is ACTUALLY GAY.

I like pussy, but I decided not to address this with them.

My coworkers canvassed Tompkins Square Park with me. One of them could not even pronounce the name of the damn place. She didn't know about the police riots and both she and my team leader were really annoyed by all the DAMN HOMELESS PEOPLE. How dare they beg in OUR park, attracting attention away from US, the nice, clean, whitebread beggars. One of my coworkers even canvassed a street punk for money!

Finally, I had to leave, because I didn't make quota. I told the head guy that I didn't want to have to come up to Manhattan for my pay check, because it was a long haul for me. I told him to mail it to me and I even filled out an envelope for them. I was supposed to get paid in 2 weeks. So it's November 19th, and I finally get my damn check.

It's dated October 3rd.

Thanks, HRC!

It's cold.

2008-11-19T20:19:02Z

Damn it, November, I'm not ready for this shit.

Transgender Day of Remembrance

2008-11-17T23:19:24Z

Our society is still rather fucked up over people who don't fit the male-female binary. Transgender Day of Remembrance was created to remind us of all those who have died because they didn't fit in. Some of those fallen were out and proud trans people. Some of them were not trans but just so happened to be nonconformists: butch lesbians, femmey gay men, straights who simply didn't fit in. Hell, some of them were intersexed babies whose parents didn't want them.

Transgender Day of Remembrance is coming up on the 20th, and I hope anybody reading this (ha!) will stop and think about the violence and prejudice that people who don't fit the binary experience every day.