Richter, are you ready for The Finals™?

[Luna]

Damn.

[Doktor Howl]

Bump for ever-increasing relevance.

[Richter]

It will be OK now.  Really.

It's not just the normal sneering apathy I grew up knowing.  It's the slow slide down from that.  It's the slow degeneration of my own content as I realize I'm THAT GUY (Not That One Guy, to be clear) who just posts a few catchy snippets at ever increasing weekly intervals. 

It will be OK, Dok.  We have The Cause now.  Everyone of our generation who doesn't feel like being on one side of this mess can partake of The Cause.  They will get to Occupy.  Damned if any of them know WHY they are Occupying, they jsut are.  There's a tent city on Roger Williams green infected taint now, and drum circles at 9pm on a Sunday night.  Why they did this in front of City Hall instead of the Capital is beyond me.

But it's easy for me to sneer and deride.  The Cause goes on.  The Cause is panhandling for money for hot coffees and tents to stay out in.  The Cause can accept PayPal donations if you ask.

I could join The Cause, Doktor.  I could make a Kickstarter page; "GET ME OFF MY ASS."  Just a few more donations, that's all it will take. 

I should love The Cause.  I should like that everyone's out to do something about what they feel is wrong.  I should like the fact that my generation is railing against zeitgeist notions of oppression and corporate greed.  I remember wrangling college students at the first protest I ever went to, and wincing every time they gave a stammering "because it's BAD" explaination of the cause we had then.  Now I see that everywhere...  And no one has tied bagels to their head yet. 

(Then a bum vomits explosively outside, and Donni is mocking him in dirty Pakistani I wish I could follow. ) 

Two year, huh?  It never got weird enough for me, and it's not final enough yet either.

[navkat]

You people are so fucking precious to me right now. I'm holed up in my "safe house" reading this shit. This feels like love letters in a hospital bed.

I can't wait to meet you people in person and rub things on you.

[Doktor Howl]

It will be OK now.  Really.

It's not just the normal sneering apathy I grew up knowing.  It's the slow slide down from that.  It's the slow degeneration of my own content as I realize I'm THAT GUY (Not That One Guy, to be clear) who just posts a few catchy snippets at ever increasing weekly intervals. 

It will be OK, Dok.  We have The Cause now.  Everyone of our generation who doesn't feel like being on one side of this mess can partake of The Cause.  They will get to Occupy.  Damned if any of them know WHY they are Occupying, they jsut are.  There's a tent city on Roger Williams green infected taint now, and drum circles at 9pm on a Sunday night.  Why they did this in front of City Hall instead of the Capital is beyond me.

But it's easy for me to sneer and deride.  The Cause goes on.  The Cause is panhandling for money for hot coffees and tents to stay out in.  The Cause can accept PayPal donations if you ask.

I could join The Cause, Doktor.  I could make a Kickstarter page; "GET ME OFF MY ASS."  Just a few more donations, that's all it will take. 

I should love The Cause.  I should like that everyone's out to do something about what they feel is wrong.  I should like the fact that my generation is railing against zeitgeist notions of oppression and corporate greed.  I remember wrangling college students at the first protest I ever went to, and wincing every time they gave a stammering "because it's BAD" explaination of the cause we had then.  Now I see that everywhere...  And no one has tied bagels to their head yet. 

(Then a bum vomits explosively outside, and Donni is mocking him in dirty Pakistani I wish I could follow. ) 

Two year, huh?  It never got weird enough for me, and it's not final enough yet either.

The interesting thing about the OWS movement is, as nebulous as their demands are, the demands of the Egyptians were even weirder/more unrealistic.

But they won anyway.

Then they put the army in charge, because they didn't know what to do - because they had no plan for the post-victory - and now they're just as fucked as they were before, or close to it.

I've looked at the list of demands...Not bad, if that's the opening barrage of negotiable issues.  If they're hardcore about them, though, there's going to be hell to pay.

I'm in, either way, because I don't know what else to do.

[Richter]

It's like a fucked up round of surfing, isn't it?  You jump on something, not knowing if it's going to be that wave you shoot down and ride like you're king of drugs, or the one that will fuck you ass over heels and fling you into the breakwater rocks.  Then again I can't see yet if this is a good beach or a bunch of people in Minessota sitting on cheap foam boogie boards in a public park saying "gnarly".

The good news is that being IN could be as non committal as showing up for the sake of "CHEESE ON TRISCUITS OR DEATH".

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It will be OK now.  Really.

It's not just the normal sneering apathy I grew up knowing.  It's the slow slide down from that.  It's the slow degeneration of my own content as I realize I'm THAT GUY (Not That One Guy, to be clear) who just posts a few catchy snippets at ever increasing weekly intervals. 

It will be OK, Dok.  We have The Cause now.  Everyone of our generation who doesn't feel like being on one side of this mess can partake of The Cause.  They will get to Occupy.  Damned if any of them know WHY they are Occupying, they jsut are.  There's a tent city on Roger Williams green infected taint now, and drum circles at 9pm on a Sunday night.  Why they did this in front of City Hall instead of the Capital is beyond me.

But it's easy for me to sneer and deride.  The Cause goes on.  The Cause is panhandling for money for hot coffees and tents to stay out in.  The Cause can accept PayPal donations if you ask.

I could join The Cause, Doktor.  I could make a Kickstarter page; "GET ME OFF MY ASS."  Just a few more donations, that's all it will take. 

I should love The Cause.  I should like that everyone's out to do something about what they feel is wrong.  I should like the fact that my generation is railing against zeitgeist notions of oppression and corporate greed.  I remember wrangling college students at the first protest I ever went to, and wincing every time they gave a stammering "because it's BAD" explaination of the cause we had then.  Now I see that everywhere...  And no one has tied bagels to their head yet. 

(Then a bum vomits explosively outside, and Donni is mocking him in dirty Pakistani I wish I could follow. ) 

Two year, huh?  It never got weird enough for me, and it's not final enough yet either.

The interesting thing about the OWS movement is, as nebulous as their demands are, the demands of the Egyptians were even weirder/more unrealistic.

But they won anyway.

Then they put the army in charge, because they didn't know what to do - because they had no plan for the post-victory - and now they're just as fucked as they were before, or close to it.

I've looked at the list of demands...Not bad, if that's the opening barrage of negotiable issues.  If they're hardcore about them, though, there's going to be hell to pay.

I'm in, either way, because I don't know what else to do.

It feels like it's really happening, though. For the first time in my life, it's happening.

The funny thing is, nobody knows what to do.

I sat at a table tonight with four women who are all educated, successful people, successful as hell by 1960's standards... a decorated veteran with a Master's degree, a manager of an eye bank, an operations specialist for the eye bank, and a small business owner... and all of us are at imminent risk of losing our homes. One of us makes more than twice what her father ever earned, but that isn't enough anymore. None of us know what to do, except stand in the streets screaming for something to change. I live in a house that sold for $15k 15 years ago... and at it's highest point was worth half a million. WHAT THE FUCK. I'm one of the lucky ones, because I bought it at less than a quarter of a million. People who bought homes at the peak of the housing bubble are between a rock and a hard place, because if they lose their homes, with their $2000/month mortgage payments, they'll have to rent, and rental prices are based on peak bubble prices. I am able to continue my existence right purely thanks to the fact that mortgage interest is tax-deductible, reducing my taxable income to below Federal poverty level. No; my adjusted gross income is not reflective of my earned income. That's why I can't afford to get a job; even on the off chance that I could find employment it would not pay me what I am able to earn on my own. Even though I can't afford medical care which would help ensure my continued productivity.

You know, for the last nine years I've paid unemployment taxes (euphemistically called "self-employment tax") but I'm ineligible for unemployment because I'm self-employed. Funny, that. Funny that at one time I employed three people full-time, but the financial fuckery gutted my business and leaves me barely able to employ myself. People like me aren't paying taxes because we CAN'T, even though just a few years ago I had no problem paying six to eight thousand quarterly. The very rich aren't paying taxes because they WONT, and that's a big difference, there. Between can't and won't. I helped build my now-ex-husband's business to become wildly successful, and for a time he was in tremendous demand... but the entrepreneurs who used to hire him have scaled back or gone out of business, and now he has a good (very good) but very ordinary job with a corporation. That's not the way it should be. Out-of-control corporations have been actively attacking the entrepreneurial sector for three decades, and they are a monster that won't stop until we kill it.


So I really fucking hope that we kill it.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

My point is, it doesn't matter if the protests don't have a single, clear, attainable demand. It's enough that people are in the streets screaming meaningless nothings.

[Richter]

"At least they're screaming, now." = Sentiment of the night!

[Doktor Howl]

Nickleback just made a song about it.

Everything is back to normal.  You may now resume your daily lives, secure in the knowledge that The Machine™ has handled this little irregularity.

[LMNO]

[Doktor Howl]

It was really only a matter of time.

You know this as well as I do.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Nickleback is still a band? 

[Doktor Howl]

Nickleback is still a band? 

I'd argue the term, but yes.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Nickleback just made a song about it.

Everything is back to normal.  You may now resume your daily lives, secure in the knowledge that The Machine™ has handled this little irregularity.