Does American Politcs affect you?

[Lucifer_Carroll]

As for leaving...do not hold your breath, as I have no intentions of going anywhere any time soon. When someone dies and makes you grand holy Goddess of all that is pure and true on the message boards and bestows on you the power to burn me into a crisp with a bolt of rightious lightening I'll take it under advisement

Good idea. (see look positive reinforcement for the nice troll)

P.S. What makes you think I don't have that power and have just been keeping it in check.

P.S.S. Historical revision boy. You insulted cloudy first. I know you don't believe I can just go back in the thread and see who threw the first punch, Carcer, but well, I can. It must be those grand holy Goddess powers of mine.

P.S.S.S. Posting a thread entirely to mock someone for their devotion to a community you denigrate but still somehow want to be a part of is a major line cross and furthermore it shows a brain that really isn't all that quick on the uptick.

P.S.S.S.S. You really don't want to get me to the frothing at the mouth stage. You really don't want me there. The Italian blood in me starts ticking into overdrive when that happens.

 

[Shallkneel4u]

I said you were a bigot - not name-calling, just a statement of fact.

edited to add: I hate to disillusion you, but this is the only board I post on, occasionally the story feedback board, but just here. See....I write, I'm an author...

Me a bigot...that is your opinion, not a fact.

You, a writer...I've read your work, and at best it is very boring and mundane, lacking any real creativity and spark. You may claim you are a writer by virtue that you have tossed unprofessionally some words onto a page in the semblance of a story, but that is where the comparison ends.

In short, you are nothing more and never will be anything more than a part of the flowing grey masses of averageness when it comes to your skills with the written word, and you would probably be far better served spending your time looking for a calling that you can excel at, as writing is obvious not it.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Do you have no fucking idea what a LINE is?!?!?!?

Here is the damn billboard:

The line. You have crossed it.

Understand? Comprehend? Get it?

There are things you don't do. You don't post a series of threads for the sole purpse of attacking a person because they disagree with you! You don't attack someone's writings becuase you disagree with them! Furthermore, your actions are probably inching you really close towards necesitating the involvement of Laurel. You are trolling her. You are trolling her stories because she disagreed with you. And you are showing yourself as prime-suspect if she gets 1-bombed.

You are over-the-line and into the abyss. You are walking very firmly into pure scum territory.

 

[cloudy]

Me a bigot...that is your opinion, not a fact.

You, a writer...I've read your work, and at best it is very boring and mundane, lacking any real creativity and spark. You may claim you are a writer by virtue that you have tossed unprofessionally some words onto a page in the semblance of a story, but that is where the comparison ends.

In short, you are nothing more and never will be anything more than a part of the flowing grey masses of averageness when it comes to your skills with the written word, and you would probably be far better served spending your time looking for a calling that you can excel at, as writing is obvious not it.

And your opinion matters to me because.......?

 

[Shallkneel4u]

Good idea. (see look positive reinforcement for the nice troll)

P.S. What makes you think I don't have that power and have just been keeping it in check.

P.S.S. Historical revision boy. You insulted cloudy first. I know you don't believe I can just go back in the thread and see who threw the first punch, Carcer, but well, I can. It must be those grand holy Goddess powers of mine.

P.S.S.S. Posting a thread entirely to mock someone for their devotion to a community you denigrate but still somehow want to be a part of is a major line cross and furthermore it shows a brain that really isn't all that quick on the uptick.

P.S.S.S.S. You really don't want to get me to the frothing at the mouth stage. You really don't want me there. The Italian blood in me starts ticking into overdrive when that happens.

I see, you in your infinite stupidity seem to feel I started the whole mud slinging match....try looking at Cloudy's first post to me in the thread. Right from the get go instead of discussing my points, she comes out and calls me a bigot...shrug, I am a big boy.

Posting a thread for the pure pleasure of denigrating someone. Please give me a break...I pointed out a fact based upon my own casual review of the numbers. There is a world of difference between someone supporting a site, and being obsessed with it. You see tamato, I see tomato...shrug.

Married to an Italian, so well aware of their ability to get overly emotional.

 

[Shallkneel4u]

Do you have no fucking idea what a LINE is?!?!?!?

Here is the damn billboard:

The line. You have crossed it.

Understand? Comprehend? Get it?

There are things you don't do. You don't post a series of threads for the sole purpse of attacking a person because they disagree with you! You don't attack someone's writings becuase you disagree with them! Furthermore, your actions are probably inching you really close towards necesitating the involvement of Laurel. You are trolling her. You are trolling her stories because she disagreed with you. And you are showing yourself as prime-suspect if she gets 1-bombed.

You are over-the-line and into the abyss. You are walking very firmly into pure scum territory.

With all due respect, I stated my professional and personal opinion about writing. Like it or not, most everyone fashions themselves a writer, and most editors tend to be harsh in dispelling that myth. Her writing from my perspective is mundanely average and lacking of any real polish, poise and creative flair. As for giving her a 1...if that is what I perceive her work worth, that is what I would assign it. Like it or not, every time anyone of us posts anything up for review by peers, and or the general public, we are seeking their opinions on our work, and if you are niave enough to believe that everyone is going to love everything everyone else writes, you are sadly mistaken.

 

[cloudy]

With all due respect, I stated my professional and personal opinion about writing. Like it or not, most everyone fashions themselves a writer, and most editors tend to be harsh in dispelling that myth. Her writing from my perspective is mundanely average and lacking of any real polish, poise and creative flair. As for giving her a 1...if that is what I perceive her work worth, that is what I would assign it. Like it or not, every time anyone of us posts anything up for review by peers, and or the general public, we are seeking their opinions on our work, and if you are niave enough to believe that everyone is going to love everything everyone else writes, you are sadly mistaken.

Ahhh...so your career as a "personal home assistant to various career oriented women" makes you a "professional" at evaluating other's writing. Wow - I really need to tell my publisher that, thanks.

 

[Shallkneel4u]

Ahhh...so your career as a "personal home assistant to various career oriented women" makes you a "professional" at evaluating other's writing. Wow - I really need to tell my publisher that, thanks.

Gee, wake up and smell the roses. What I do now in a stage of semi-retirement after having sold my company, and what I have done in the scope of my entire adult life are two completely different things sweetie. Included in my portfolio of adulthood accomplishments though are numerous "honors" English and writing classes, as well as professional writing seminars at Sarah Lawrence. You having a publisher....shrug...in this day of internet publishing, anyone can claim to be published. I stick to my original statements about your writing, and would compare them to the accomplishments of a slug laying on the sidewalk on a hot summers day after having been sprinkled with salt.

 

[cloudy]

Gee, wake up and smell the roses. What I do now in a stage of semi-retirement after having sold my company, and what I have done in the scope of my entire adult life are two completely different things sweetie. Included in my portfolio of adulthood accomplishments though are numerous "honors" English and writing classes, as well as professional writing seminars at Sarah Lawrence. You having a publisher....shrug...in this day of internet publishing, anyone can claim to be published. I stick to my original statements about your writing, and would compare them to the accomplishments of a slug laying on the sidewalk on a hot summers day after having been sprinkled with salt.

I think I shall swoon of despair....

Carriage House Publishing ring a bell?

personal at home assistant=out of work loser, perhaps?

You're really making this way too easy for me...

gee....maybe I should rethink my degree in English....and Business Management, and maybe that master's in Psychology, too.....

 

[ABSTRUSE]

I stick to my original statements about your writing, and would compare them to the accomplishments of a slug laying on the sidewalk on a hot summers day after having been sprinkled with salt.

Well that sheds some light on the kind of person you are,statements as such are the reason you won't be held in the highest regards by many here.

Constructive criticism is a better approach.

 

[cloudy]

Well that sheds some light on the kind of person you are,statements as such are the reason you won't be held in the highest regards by many here.

Constructive criticism is a better approach.

Quite.

Don't worry, Abs..."Aniyonego gago uha tla adanvtedi digitilvsdi soi"

(Those who have no ability, attack those who do - roughly translated)

 

[Shallkneel4u]

I think I shall swoon of despair....

Carriage House Publishing ring a bell?

personal at home assistant=out of work loser, perhaps?

You're really making this way too easy for me...

gee....maybe I should rethink my degree in English....and Business Management, and maybe that master's in Psychology, too.....

Like I said, with the advent of internet publishing, anyone can claim to be published and represented. Carriage House Publishing....talk about scraping the bottom of the pot in the name of self importance and social postering. Go back to being a mommy, maybe you are better at that than writing.

 

[cloudy]

Like I said, with the advent of internet publishing, anyone can claim to be published and represented. Carriage House Publishing....talk about scraping the bottom of the pot in the name of self importance and social postering. Go back to being a mommy, maybe you are better at that than writing.

So.....who publishes you?

 

[Shallkneel4u]

So.....who publishes you?

LOL....as if I would divulge even so much as a tidbit of my own life to the likes of one such as yourself....I think not.

 

[cloudy]

LOL....as if I would divulge even so much as a tidbit of my own life to the likes of one such as yourself....I think not.

Nobody - just as I thought. LMAO!!!!

 

[Shallkneel4u]

Nobody - just as I thought. LMAO!!!!

Guess again little one...you are so naive and foolish....it's almost cute.

 

[cloudy]

Guess again little one...you are so naive and foolish....it's almost cute.

Prove it!

You've gone past amusing....I think I have better things to do now, like a dance on the bar with a gorgeous woman.

Buh-bye, now....buh-bye.

 

[Shallkneel4u]

Prove it!

You've gone past amusing....I think I have better things to do now, like a dance on the bar with a gorgeous woman.

Buh-bye, now....buh-bye.

Prove it....LOL....you are just so cute, though do wonder when you will grow up. Let me know if you ever get to the big city, I'll treat you to lunch little girl.

 

[psychocatblah]

Gee, I'm almost sad I was too busy with my Clorox to post further on this thread. *snorts* Well I was going to ask that the big budget money from the next dead rat attack be invested in a digital camera so he (whoops, somehow I just couldn't picture a real man getting so squicky about a rat) could prove to us what's going on with his neighbors. Even with the average home at 200k, 700 is way above that and seriously a call to 911 would have people over here. There again, I'm in Texas and if you want to debate numbers again... we do have a bigger problem with this than you do. Maybe that's why I don't flip my shit over it but try to tackle the problem calmly and rationally.

As for illegals making $200/day... I just don't even know where to start with that. Where did you pull that number from? And don't quote me Rush Limbaugh. Pony up that statistic.

 

[Guest]

just one of many stories

Rewards of a 90-Hour Week: Poverty and Dirty Laundry - By STEVEN GREENHOUSE (NYT, May 31, 2004)

For the many New Yorkers who dread spending two hours in a noisy, often smelly laundry washing and drying their clothes, it is a godsend that most laundries will handle that unpleasant chore for them, and for as little as $5 a load.

But few customers pay attention to the thousands of ''wash and fold'' workers -- most of them women from Mexico -- who actually handle their laundry. They are among the most anonymous laborers in New York. In humid basements and backrooms around the city, they shovel clothes in and out of washers and dryers, matching socks and folding hundreds of towels and undergarments each day.

Most laundry workers earn less, often far less, than the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. Gabriela Mendez, a veteran of six Manhattan laundries, said one paid her $230, or $3.19 an hour, for a 72-hour week, while at another she earned $220, or $2.45 an hour, for a 90-hour week.

She and other workers boil over with tales of oppressive conditions or abusive bosses. Some said their employers hit them for taking a long lunch or fired them for being out sick for a day; others said they saw co-workers collapse from the heat.

''The laundry pays us less than they're able to,'' said Inriqueta G., an illegal immigrant who works at a laundry in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. She would not give her last name.

''They say they can't pay us more because we don't understand English,'' she continued, speaking through a translator. ''But we work just as well as other people.''

In recent months, the wages and working conditions of laundry workers have begun to attract outside attention. The state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, has begun cracking down on a handful of laundries, winning tens of thousands of dollars in back wages for the workers and pressuring some laundries to begin granting paid sick days and one-week vacations. Several immigrant advocacy groups have taken up the cause of laundry employees, and an effort has begun to unionize some workers.

''There's an industrywide problem about failure to pay the minimum wage, and these workers are almost never paid time and a half,'' said Patricia Smith, director of the attorney general's Labor Bureau. ''When we ask owners why they're paying so little, they say, 'That's what everybody else pays.'''

Ms. Smith added that at a majority of the laundries investigated by the office, there have been allegations of oppressive working conditions, including sexual harassment, physical and verbal abuse and poor environmental conditions, like the use of harsh chemicals.

Avenue B Cleaners, a laundry on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, agreed last month to pay $23,000 in back wages and damages after several workers complained to the attorney general that they had been paid less than $250 each for a 72-hour work week. Anyone who works a 72-hour week -- or 12 hours a day, six days a week -- should receive at least $453.20 a week if paid the minimum wage and overtime. Government officials noted that minimum wage laws also apply to workers who are in the country illegally.

Avenue B's lawyer, Samuel Ahne, acknowledged the company's failure to pay the minimum wage, but he said that should not be surprising. ''The reason people are being underpaid is there is a lot of financial stress over all on the owners,'' Mr. Ahne said, citing property tax increases, soaring rents and intense competition from immigrant entrepreneurs.

James B. Levin, a lawyer for Bright Laundry, a laundry on East 84th Street that agreed last September to pay $18,200 in a settlement with the attorney general, had a different explanation for the wage violations. ''There aren't enough jobs available for people, and they'd much rather work for less than the minimum wage than not work at all,'' he said. ''And, remember, a lot of these workers aren't legal.''

Ms. Mendez said she grew so fed up with the illegal wages she was paid at laundry after laundry that she complained to Casa Mexico, an immigrant advocacy group, and then to the attorney general. She, her husband and their 5-year-old son live with two other families in a bare-bones three-bedroom apartment in Corona, Queens. Her 12-year-old son lives with her mother back in Mexico.

''We came here because we were living in poverty,'' Ms. Mendez said. ''We didn't have enough to buy shoes. All we ate was tortilla and beans, and we didn't have enough to buy fruit. I wanted something much better for the children.''

She complained that one laundry did not give the workers gloves even though they handled sheets smeared with blood. Another, she said, prohibited them from drinking water from the tap, despite the sweltering heat. Ms. Mendez also said that one boss hit her because she took a 45-minute lunch, 15 minutes longer than usual.

Inriqueta G., the worker in Brighton Beach, took a laundry job after a Mexican friend told her about it. But the low pay has taken a toll, she said, complaining that by the end of each month she has too little money to buy juice or meat for her children.

She pays $950 a month for a crowded one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, while she receives $350 in cash for a 70-hour week. That works out to $5 an hour; if she were paid the minimum wage and overtime, she would earn nearly $400 more each month.

''I don't know how to change things,'' she said. ''Sometimes I look for other work, but it's hard because I don't speak English, and I don't have time to go to school. I just hope one day there will be better conditions at work.''

Many laundry workers hope that Mr. Spitzer and the laundry owners will negotiate a code of conduct to improve wages and conditions, like the one he negotiated in 2002 with Manhattan's greengrocers, who were often found to have violated minimum wage laws. But immigrant advocates say a code was easier to arrange with greengrocers because so many of them were Korean immigrants, making it simpler for Mr. Spitzer to deal with one group, the Korean American Association of Greater New York.

The ownership of laundries, in contrast, is far more ethnically dispersed. Korean immigrants own many, perhaps most, laundries, but there are also owners from Pakistan, India, Russia and other countries.

Immigrant groups also cite a cultural obstacle to creating such a code -- the suggestions from husbands and boyfriends that women should not complain about conditions at work. ''When the laundry workers finally started coming to us, when we really wanted to begin a fight, a lot of these workers told us, 'My boyfriend says not to get involved,''' said Gerry Dominguez, a consultant to Casa Mexico and the Association of Mexican-American Workers. ''There's a macho element we have to fight here.''

Many laundries have raised wages after seeing the attorney general's enforcement actions and after immigrant groups began fighting for laundry workers. During the past year, workers say, pay has climbed at many of them by $30 to $100 a week. Many laundries that paid $250 for a 72-hour-week now pay $300 or even $350, which still violates minimum wage and overtime laws.

Asociación Tepeyac de New York, an advocacy group for Mexican immigrants, has staged demonstrations at laundries and is seeking to unionize 40 workers at Symphony Cleaners, which operates several shops on the East Side of Manhattan. ''We need a union because the managers treat us so badly,'' Maria, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who declined to give her last name or initial, said at a recent demonstration at the Symphony Cleaners on East 44th Street.

She said one manager had pressured her to have sex but she refused, adding that the manager prevailed with another worker, telling her she would be fired unless she had oral sex with him.

Myung Lee, whose son-in-law owns Symphony Cleaners and who serves as its spokesman, denied that the company violated minimum wage laws. Mr. Lee said one supervisor had been fired after facing sexual harassment charges, but he acknowledged that the supervisor had been rehired because he was such a good manager.

Piedad G., an illegal immigrant from Mexico City who also declined to give her last name, said Symphony Cleaners suddenly laid her off after she began complaining about conditions. She said she worked from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, leaving her apartment in Queens an hour before work and returning an hour after work.

''When you work 7 to 7, it's like you're only living to work,'' she said, adding that she received $300 for 66 hours' work, which translates to $4.55 an hour.

She said she received no vacation days, no paid sick days, no health insurance and only one paid holiday, Christmas. Last summer, she said, a co-worker fainted from the heat.

''When I asked for permission to miss a day because I was sick, they wouldn't let me,'' she said. ''When a person misses a day, they tell them there is no more work for them. So I went to work when I was sick.''

Back in Mexico City, Piedad G. said, she was a dental receptionist. She said she and her husband each paid $3,000 to be smuggled into the United States, expecting to earn far more here to help pay their two sons' tuition for high school and eventually college. She burst into tears when she started talking about her children, whom she said she has not seen for three years.

''Life is a lot more difficult here than I thought,'' she said. ''Sometimes I think I was crazy to come here. This is a country with a lot of opportunities, but in order to take advantage of those opportunities you have to suffer a lot.''

 

[cloudy]

TROLL ALERT!!!

Every single one of my stories was 1-bombed within the last 30 minutes.

Never fear, butthead (shallkneel4u), it's been reported to Laurel. She's very good about helping authors out when they are trolled by the likes of you!

edited to add: you didn't disappoint me - it was exactly what I figured you'd do.

 

[destinie21]

Did you actually say "our" nation oh good lord bring on the burning cross.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Excellent article Perdita. Thank you, it's an eyeopener to say the least.

 

[Shallkneel4u]

Re: just one of many stories

Back in Mexico City, Piedad G. said, she was a dental receptionist. She said she and her husband each paid $3,000 to be smuggled into the United States, expecting to earn far more here to help pay their two sons' tuition for high school and eventually college. She burst into tears when she started talking about her children, whom she said she has not seen for three years.

So, the woman freely admits that she and her husband came here ILLEGALLY, and she has not yet been deported?

 

[Shallkneel4u]

TROLL ALERT!!!

Every single one of my stories was 1-bombed within the last 30 minutes.

Never fear, butthead (shallkneel4u), it's been reported to Laurel. She's very good about helping authors out when they are trolled by the likes of you!

edited to add: you didn't disappoint me - it was exactly what I figured you'd do.

Curious....did it ever occur to you, that maybe someone graded your work on its merit, instead of you getting your close group of friends here to race in and give you artificially high scores? Is someone deliberately giving someone an undeserved ranking a five any less a troll than you stating someone giving you a one is a troll? Again little chippy, grow up.