I Ain't Afraid of No Daleks

So, my pay cheque this week was $139. That's a hundred and thrirty-eight dollars more than my net wealth when I woke up this morning morning was, ha-ha.

I paid the other half of the National Grid bill, bought cat food and litter, spent $15 dollars on medical stuff, bought myself a hot dog with the works and a small glass of Pepsi from New Way Lunch, went shopping at the discount food store--had three great coupons...10 tins of Chef Boyardee pasta (bit like Heinz's for those of you in the UK) for $5, a package of Stouffer's frozen Macaroni and cheese for 89 cents, and large white eggs for 99 cents.

Got a feeling I'll be sick of ravioli by next month, ha-ha. I still have half a package of frozen 3 cheese ravioli pasta in the freezer along with half a jar of vodka sauce, that was left over from earlier this month. Well...can't complain, surely? That would be darned churlish of me. At least I won't be going hungry. Beats living on peanut butter and tinned peaches, or cold cereal for part of the week, like I've done before.

I decided to get a package of mini-cupcakes too, for my birthday treat, they were on sale for $1.49.

But, after the cab fare of $5--bags were much too heavy to lug home on the bus, my net worth is now (drum roll please)...$3 and whatever misc. change I might have lying about...until Friday rolls around again, that is.

It's fine, really. I've gone 7 days with only a few cents in my pockets. I'm used to it, really. No worries..well, as long as I don't have to go to hospital or something, then I'm screwed.

So, you see why these creeps that whinge and crank and say mean things about folks on the dole, you see WHY I get upset with these ignorant slobs?

Sure, there loads of people on the dole that are lazy bums...but then there just as many---more even, that are just like me, who NEED the dole just to survive. I'd like to see these whingers try to live 6 days on just $3! Then they'd REALLY have something to whinge about.

Have to work half-past six to half-past eight tonight, to make up some hours, cos my cough/lung was getting in the way of me being able to do my job this week. Then, it's try to slog through 5 hours of talking, tomorrow, then I have off until 5pm Monday--and my poor voice/lungs could do with the rest, let me tell you.

As I predicted, there will be no Dr Who skits for the Children in Need special this year. The lead actor, David Tennant, is current playing in two productions of the Royal Shakespeare company--both matinee and evening performances, playing the lead in Hamlet and Browne in Love's Labour's Lost at Strafford and later this year, London.

But pray, do not despair Whovians and DT fan-girls.

On 14th November at 19.00 (7pm) there will be a special preview of the Dr Who 2008 Christmas day programme.

Gosh, my apartment is making some odd noises today.

This morning something in my bedroom wall--the side where there's only open hallway on the other side, thumped. An hour ago, the kitchen floor groaned--while I was sitting on my bed and with all three cats, and just now, at nearly half-past noon, something in the living room wall near the balcony, just went "thunk."

The building is settling something fierce today. I've a notion that if we ever have a big earthquake, this whole building will just collapse like it was made of sand.

You know, nothing pisses me off more than hearing well-off people whinging and putting down people on benefits. It really makes me do a slow burn..makes me want to kick the naysayers--usually men, I've noticed, in the nuts.

Sure, there's people on benefits who don't want to work--hell, I've known, and currently know, a few. But, more than half the people on benefits DON'T WANT to be on benefits!

Many of those on benefits have only the other alternative of literally starving or freezing to death.

How can any person call themselves "human" and begrudge someone food and shelter? Bottom line: you can't.

I mean, there's lots of young yobs out there, beating people up, robbing, even murdering people...would you say ALL young people are yobs? No. So then, why do these sub-human neanderhals keep insisting that EVERYONE on benefits is a freeloader?

Perhaps it's the media...they don't show the reality of life on benefits-or without benefits. They only show the abusers and users...then never show the TRUTH, only a skewed portion of it.

So, like people who believe all Muslims are terrorists, or all American Christians are crazy fundamentalists, so many are lead to believe that everyone on benefits is on benefits 'cos they are lazy and shiftless.

I get so MAD when people insinuate that I don't want to work for a living..especially in light that I've done some very physical and very dirty jobs in my time...in light that I've worked, in my time, 9 or 10 hour days, frequently worked 6 or 7 days a week, etc.

Yeah, I'm only working 20 hours a week and collecting benefits. Because I nearly killed myself, working 39+ hours a week, split shifts (day-night both) while I was dreadfully ill and sometimes in awful pain!

Sorry, I'm on a bit of a huff. Some guy put me down yesterday made a cutting remark about me yesterday, when he found out I was working and on benefits. He looked down at me, and used the look and tone of voice that said he considered me a human cockroach. I am still angry enough to chew nails. I bet that arsehole wouldn't be caught dead cleaning loos for a lving, or, folding towels for 8 hours without a break, shoveling manure, cleaning out kennels, or washing dishes for 10 hours at a stretch. I bet that jackarse wouldn't do that, and that's what makes me angry.

Oh, I've worked in offices too, but I do what I have to do, work-wise, whether I like it or not, no matter how low the pay.

I had to deal with that when I was going to college full-time and taking care of mum and the mobile home. One of mum's nurses would also give me that snide, sarcastic voice and the cockroach look, and every time she saw me she'd ask, "have you found a JOB yet?" Grrrr. Good thing I'm not violent, because those people are really asking for a five-fingered answer from me...right on their snoots.

The most salary I've earned in my lifetime, was in 1989-1990, when I was working for a Fortune 500 company in information varification for a copy department. I was earning just over $16,000 a year.

I currently make $9.00 an hour, working about 20 hours a week, the highest hourly wage I've ever earned in my life.

Mostly though, I've a lifetime of minimum wage under my belt.

I had two motivations for going to college full-time at age 39:

1. To lift myself out of poverty and give myself a fighting chance to live a "normal" life.

2. To stay away from the trap of living a life in a totally dead-end job I am not overly fond of, such as my dad did.

Well, neither happened, and all I have to show for it, is that at least I tried to change things--and successfully did for about 5 years-- and didn't sit home collecting benefits whinging about my lot in life.

Still, here I am, worse off (financially and materially) than I was at age 38, back on partial benefits and in a dead-end job. But hey...I tried. (loser)

CURRENT FACTS ON MINIMUM WAGE:

Federal (US govt's official) minimum wage, in 2008, is $6.55 per hour. New York state minimum wage in 2008 is $7.15

Most Americans (58.5%) will spend at least one year below the poverty line at some point between ages 25 and 75

The USA ranks 12th on the HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX.

The current poverty level for a single person in the USA is $10, 400.

Today, without disability benefits, I'd honestly have the choice of either have to work until I literally get so sick I die, or, I would be living on the street or in a welfare motel.

Anyway, that's my story. Here's an article from 2006, that tells it like it is:

By WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR., Universal Press Syndicate | November 27, 2006
http://www.nysun.com/opinion/phony-world-of-minimum-wage/44145/
Nancy Pelosi, the new speaker of the House, has told us that as maybe the very first order of business she will call up increasing the minimum wage. Here are the relevant facts:

We learn that one individual American last year received compensation of $1.5 billion. This leads us indignantly to our blackboard, where we learn that the average chief executive officer earns 1,100 times what a minimum-wage worker earns. What some Americans are being paid every year is describable only as: disgusting.

My family never had much luck with cars. Dad was a bit of a...okay well, let's not sugarcoat it. My dad was a cheap bastard. If he hadn't of had a brother who owned a garage , or rather a series of different garages, over the years (Mobil, Sinclair, Esso, Mobil--in that order)--which enabled dad to get labour usually free and parts wholesale, we would of had to walk more often than not. Even then, the cars were always in the shop...dad wasn't big on maitenance, it more or less let the vehicle run into the ground, and then groused and whinged when he had to actually do something with it. His idea of car care was to put the oil in once in a while, and check the tires--okay, when I got old enough, I checked the tyres.

Me, I tried my best when I got old enough--but afraid even in 1989, when I bought my first honest-to-God-straight-from-the Ford-dealership pick up truck (all previous cars being used old clunkers I bought for a few hundred dollars), a 1985 GMC S-15 and took it for regular oil changes and other maitenance, I STILL got stuck with a lemon! No, really. I proudly took delivery on the damned thing, drove it out of the dealership and up the hill towards home...where it promptly coughed and died! Two years later--with only half the payments made, the head gasket blew to smithereens.

The second stright-from-the-Dodge- dealership car I bought--my first brand new car, a Dodge Neon, lasted all of about a year and a half, before the transmission..and almost simultaineously, the brakes...went plewwy.

I had cars and trucks I loved, and cars and trucks I detested.

But, the one car I detested the most, was mum's 1981 Ford Escort hatchback. She bought it in 1983, with money she had left over from the sale of our family home, after the divorce.

Naturally, mum adored that car. Dunno' why. Oh, it wasn't a bad car...but for some reason, I just hated that car. It was just so...naf. I hated the style, I hated the colour (pale blue), I hated the way it drove and I hated having to crawl with my 240 pound frame (at the time) into and out of the dang thing.

My car at the time was just as bad--a big American boat of a pseudo-luxury car, called a 1979 Chrysler Cordoba (not the one with the real Corintian leather, tho). It sort of was the chav version of a Lincoln Contenental or a Caddy.

I don't remember much about my car, other than I liked the colour (royal blue) and it was comfy to drive...but sh_t on snow, despite being heavy, I might add. Mum would lord it over me when the snow fell, 'cos her car had the new (at the time) front wheel drive...which is quite good on snowy roadways.

I remember getting too cocky driving that Cordoba home from choir practice one night--our Presbyterian church which I attended back in my old home town, was 15 miles from where I had moved to--and during choir practice we'd had a dusting of snow. It was just some wispy snow, blowing across the dry roads--well, I THOUGHT they were dry. I was 24 and only had my license for a bit over two years (I was a late bloomer). I didn't know about something called "black ice," which is a micro-thin coating of ice that forms on what looks like dry roadway.

I was driving along, nice as you please, when suddenly the wheel stopped responding, as I was going downhill on a four lane roadway...with a big propane gas truck coming uphill at ME.

I scrambled to get back under control, swerving from the oncoming lane, back into my lane, and right for a big yawning deep ditch on my side of the road--well, in those five seconds when I happened to notice I was sliding out of control straight for the ditch, it bloody well looked like the flippin' Grand Canyon. Nearly shat myself I did.

The car stopped--I kid you not--about 2 inches before dropping into the ditch.

After that, I tended to borrow mum's Escort more often. I still didn't like it though. Especially when mum accidently slammed the passenger door on my right knee...fracturing the kneecap slightly.

And even more especially did I hate the darn thing, on that day when I was unloading groceries from the back, and without any warning, the hatchback gave way, and came slamming down on my head, giving me one helluva' concussion.

On that day, I swore to the angels in heaven that I wouldn't ever own a Ford Escort, if God himself came down and handed me the keys.