A question for Americans, a beta causes wank, how not to head your post (possibly)

[misscam]

How well will a post headed 'what's wrong with you people?' be recieved, I wonder?

(My brother actually met his girlfriend through World of Warcraft. They started chatting lots and eventually he went to Holland to meet her. Never really came back and they've been together two years now. I find it kinda cute.)

Meanwhile, a bit of beta drama - this sums it up (though with a particular viewpoint, FYI) with links to original posts.

Now I personally don't really ascribe to anything like 'the Cult of Nice'. Not because I encourage everyone to be as nasty as possible on the Internets (some do seem to have that goal!) but because I have trouble with the sense of stifling critisism that tends to come with it. And some bonus features. If you post fanfic, you just have to live with the fact that someone won't like what you write. (You don't have to like getting critisism, but taking it with a bit of grace is usually good.)

Still, a beta saying something to you and then slamming you in public to a friend at the same time and cheer at a sporking of a previous fic? That seems somewhat uncool to me.

A question for all you Americans - how bad does this financial crisis feel to you? Because I am just watching the news and that's often about companies and Wall Street downs and not really giving me a sense of how people in general are doing.

I can't really base it on how people in Norway are doing, since our country is a bit of an oddity.

In other stuff:

- Finished my remix and sent it to beta. Have a sneaking suspicion people will spot it as mine due to style, though. Oh well.
- How to horrify lotus79: Reveal that the man who had the idea of the creationist museum in the US was Australian. Then she got slightly back at me by revealing the dude went to the University I did and has science degrees. *facepalm* Seriously, to think the Earth is 6,000 years old evolution is the least of your scientic worries. You also have to argue with physics and chemistry (dating methods in particular), geology, astronomy, cosmology, molecular biology, genomics, linguistics, anthropology and archaeology, to name some.
- Mock bombs made of carrots create a slight scare in Sweden. Yep. Carrots.
- Norway is airing the US version of Life on Mars during primetime. This feels somehow wrong.
- Someone stole 16,128 bottles of beer (Norwegian newsreport here) thus leading to '16,128 bottles of beer on the wall' joke from a friend and now that damn song is stuck in my head.
- Summer is just lovely, but the weather until today wasn't. More of weather like this Sunday's, please.

How are things with you?

Comments

[dechant]

On how bad this recession actually is:

We are a three-person household with one income, which mostly goes towards bills and mortgage. We can afford food, but only one of us has proper insurance: my mother, who works for it. We have two cars, one of which is finally paid off. The other is new because, down the road, another used car would only create repair nightmares for us. That other car is American, and we can barely afford the payments. We cannot get by with one car because Papa is looking for work, and the other car is a stick shift (meaning she can't drive his and I can't learn on hers).

I have been patching my jeans because I do not want to walk around in crotchless outerwear. Yesterday, Mama bought me another pair of jeans on sale. I will have to cut three inches off the bottom, but they are whole and they fit. That's what matters. I own two other pairs of summer-wear jeans, in which I will not fry. I have been wearing some of my clothes since I was twelve. I am twenty-three now. I save my evening gowns from high school because, if I were to need one for a function, they would be all I can afford. Though we donate what no longer fits to Goodwill, my mother's pride forbids me from shopping there. Without public transportation, I can't get there anyway.

If I get a job, it must be somewhere that offers insurance, but I don't know if I can actually work full-time due to health issues. If I cannot find a job that offers insurance, I need to stay unemployed to save my strength, and I need to apply to DSS for New York's insurance program. Said insurance program will not cover me if I make more than $200 weekly or have more than $11,000 in the bank. I am currently well below each cutoff. My father lost his job because of PTSD; that and his inability to stand the hell down when he's confronted have left us wondering if he should apply for disability as well.

I would like to work as a hairdresser, so I need financial aid to go to beauty school. I am negotiating this with my parents, who were once firmly opposed to the idea, but if I were working full-time at something I liked and could probably manage physically, it would mean another income and/or my independence. They balk because I am freakishly intelligent by American standards, and they feel my mind (and our money) would be wasted. I see it as a pragmatic path, another step on the way to becoming a public health educator or social worker; if I cannot pay for the rest of my schooling, I will never get where I ultimately wish to go. Better to take the long way 'round.

Should any of my mental health issues relapse, I am on my own. I cannot afford to see my psychiatrist; she prescribes for me and that's all. I cannot get the bleeding sores in my navel checked, or my maybe-hemorrhoids, or the intermittent deafness in my left ear. I cannot so much as get my root canal finished, so the issue will likely worsen, the infection return, and so much for having had it redone in the first place.

I am twenty-three, female, living in a suburb of Rochester, NY, and I am one of the new faces of the lower class.