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New York, 12:57 PM
Wed Nov 25
57 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/22/09
11/22/09
I ride the bus, and anything "designer" I own is from the H&M designer or Target Go collections, but I sure as hell don't have $300k in debt, or an "interest-only" home mortgage. I'm getting some nasty debt from law school, but at least I'll have a law degree, and not a bat sanctuary from it. And I've yet to pawn any jewelry given to me by family members or close friends. She didn't last a week before trying to pawn jewelry her dad gave her! Unreal! I do feel bad for her, I cannot imagine having such insanely mixed-up priorities.
11/21/09
There are ways for people of means to live like a poor person for the sake of journalism. Morgan Spurlock's 30 Days did it very well. Barbara Ehrenreich did it in Nickel and Dimed. Liz Jones did not. She comes across like Marie Antoinette, pretending to live the simple life not because she really wanted to explore the reasons why poverty persists in our society, but because she was bored and just wanted to try it because she thought it would make her look virtuous and deep.
11/22/09
11/21/09
When my grandpa was coming back from the Korean War, he stopped off in Okinawa and bought my grandma a double-strand pearl necklace. About twenty years ago, the pearls at the top of the strand started to flake. Turns out half of them are fake, to my grandpa's extreme dismay. My grandma didn't care.
My grandma gave it to me right before she passed away. I don't care that half of them are fake and my grandpa was ripped off--well, I do a little, because it really bothers him. If I was running out of a burning house, the first thing I'd grab beyond pets and important papers is that necklace.
Sincerely,
la.donna.pietra
11/21/09
11/21/09
Of course she'll pawn the pearls... she won't need them next week when she's not doing her little social experiment. But that £1000 handbag... psh, it's only for a week. Let's not get crazy.
She really is repulsive.
11/22/09
#calendar
11/21/09
I question either a) the truth of this story or b) Liz Jones's morals and values (or lack thereof).
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/21/09
Also, on a purely OTHER more nitpicky note, I think it's outside of the spirit of the "challenge" she set herself of living within a set amount to get rid of things she doesn't want so that she can get more things that she does.
11/21/09
You'll never do whatever common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view
and then dance and drink and screw
because there's nothing else to do"
11/21/09
Really, I'll start flapping right now...
11/21/09
£26,000, isn't that bad, considering the amenities that came with her bat sanctuary.
11/21/09
ETA: That is a hell of a steep incline to drive up in the Batmobile. Poor design, Mr. Wayne.
11/21/09
@random_play: Amazing.
11/21/09
11/21/09
#tips
11/21/09
But why is there a giant penny in his trophy room? I'd like to know what that's the trophy for.
ETA: @sharkish: You beat me to it! Great minds...
11/21/09
11/21/09
"He escaped with thousands and thousands of pennies! Seriously, there must have been, like, at least twenty bucks there!"
11/21/09
Steep driveway=irrelivent.
11/21/09
@vulcanized: He maybe destroying the environment, but he makes a mean salad dressing.
11/21/09
She's still an asshole, though.
11/21/09
anyway Liz Jones is the typical rich bitch type. which is my least favorite kind of people. i get so anoyed by them it's ridicules. it's just that they are so dismissing for other people's life choices and circumstances. grrr.
11/21/09
11/21/09
#tips
11/21/09
Once the bats realized she was out-battying them and they'd been born to it while she'd had to work at it, they stopped paying rent on the sanctuary.
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/21/09
11/21/09
I also have the same question of many on this side of the pond as well. I mean, shaving one's legs sucks but not THAT much.
11/21/09
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11/21/09
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11/21/09
(I do admit that I am speaking from of a position of privilege here, though. I have never been in a situation where I have been unable to pay for necessities plus a little extra.)
11/21/09
Once I got a grip on the pace at which a sense of inadequacy combined with denial can outstrip logic?
The whole human race started to make much more sense.
11/21/09
11/21/09
The whole human race started to make much more sense."
If I could heart you again for this, I would.
11/21/09
I don't know that one necessarily follows from the other.
I read about a test where classical women violinists were not hired for orchestras, at a rate approaching something like 15:1 (fifteen men for every one woman), when they were physically visible to their all-male evaluating panel, at their auditions.
However, when the women performed behind a screen, rendering them invisible to the judges, the women were hired at an equal 1:1 ratio.
That, in turn, helped me understand why male senior partners at Big 8 accounting and law firms might fail so egregiously at hiring women partners -- even when (and sometimes especially when) the women were better at generating revenue than male senior associates at their level. That their plain old prejudice might be based in part in fear that women might be better at their jobs than they were.
Now a lot of these guys are millionaires, which I think even in U.S. money is still at least upper-middle class these days.
The whole belief system seems have less to do with what you have in absolute terms, and more to do with what you feel you don't presently have in comparison to someone else, or could lose to someone else in the future.
What I tend to describe as some of the toxic fallout of acute "comparisonitis" in our lovely society and its forebears.
Yow. I ramble.
11/22/09
11/22/09
11/21/09
This is spot on and that makes me very sad.
11/21/09