"Will you marry me? Do you have any money? Answer the second question first, otherwise we'll stop this conversation right here."- Groucho Marx
(I'm putting a bunny pic up every day until Easter)
Just to give you some current events . . .
1. I kept the Internet on all night . . . no phone calls or word from any guys. Whew. I just hope that Magazine Man doesn't call me . . . I really hope he was kidding. It all seems like a strange dream now.
2. And speaking of dreams . . . 
yes, I slept last night. Got 8 hours, but I'm still tired. I was going to go to bed earlier, but I wound up helping Lisa and Elena rearrange their bedroom for part of the night- I just checked out their room and it looks much cooler than mine . . . I almost want to rearrange things now, except I know how long it took them.
So . . . I got this e-mail yesterday from Geocities:
Dear Homesteader,
Here are your most recent GeoGuide impression statistics. For every qualified visit to a page in your site with a GeoGuide on it, you earn one GeoTicket. GeoTickets are sweepstakes tickets for our monthly drawing. You will receive this report semi-monthly so you can see how many GeoTickets you have earned towards the GeoGuide Sweepstakes.
The prizes in the March sweepstakes are two flatbed scanners and three black GeoCities briefcases. Everyone with a GeoGuide on their page is eligible to win. All you need to win is the winning GeoTicket!
You can check your GeoTicket totals in the Personal Profile Editor at http://www.oocities.org/members/tools/profile_editor.html These tallies are updated twice a month. Don't be alarmed when your GeoTickets disappear at the end of the month. They are automatically put into the monthly sweepstakes -- that's what they're for!
Period covered: March 16 - 31, 1998
Membername: anti-pollyanna
Qualified Impressions for SoHo/Museum9553: 4
GeoTickets earned this period: 4
GeoTicket balance: 4
Now after reading all that, I was quite confused (and also thinking, "Man, you guys are desperate to plug this thing, aren't you?"). I don't have a GeoGuide on my page . . . so how come I have these tickets?
It also seems to be saying that four people have visited my page. Which leads to the question of, "How many of those hits were by me?" And if they weren't by me, then I am amazed that somebody actually looked on here (bet it was a short stop though).
So I don't happen to want a GeoGuide . . . so sue me. I thought about getting one, until I looked at what it offered- I'm not into guestbooks (to be honest, I don't sign them or read them- and since I've heard of bad stuff happening sometimes to guestbook signers on the Web that maybe it's better if I don't!), I can't download any plug-ins for chat (school has slooooow modems, and anyway my computer can't seem to figure out how to do it), the "Sites Like Mine section" doesn't really do sites like mine (for example, if I had the guide mine should link to other diary sites, not just a general writing list- maybe the guideholder should be able to pick those out), I've tried looking on "Take A Tour" on other sites and gotten very weird stuff to come up, and I don't want my site ranked (so I'm not too technically minded, so bite me). I don't really want anything that the guide offers . . . so sorry, folks, you'll have to give my briefcases to someone else.
Well, it happened again!
A minute before I had to leave for psych class someone knocked at the door, talking about senior votes- I had no idea what that was and blurted out, "I've gotta go!" Obviously that ended the conversation.
So about fifteen minutes after I get home the guy comes back again. He explained it as a senior thing- they have to go out and talk to a bunch of people (whatever), blah blah, and they have to get 30000 points to do whatever . . . then he hands me the magazine thing again!!!! I say I'm already broke, he wanted to know who got me, I said the guy's name, and he groaned and said something about the basketball team.
I have no idea what the hell that's all about. I asked Lisa and Elena at dinner if they'd seen these guys and they both complained about them. Elena said she'd been hit up first quarter, the guy said he was in film studies and they were raising money for a class . . . Lisa said they make up stories and that I shouldn't buy from 'em. I said "uh . . . too late."
Now I'm feeling pissy. I am so sick of people selling stuff. And according to Elena it's supposed to be illegal for people to sell in the dorms. Nice to break the law there. Geez, one of the reasons why I wanted to go to college was so that I wouldn't get hit up all the time! The last guy never even used the word "sell" or "buy" there . . . at least my guy admitted it was to win a trip.
I'm now reminded of last quarter when I opened the door- "Would you like a free newspaper?" "Sure." Then he started plugging this newspaper- which I hadn't even read before! As if I was going to buy it sight unseen??? Sheesh! (And the newspaper sucked too- so I was right)
I am very, very, very tired of our selling culture (see, here's where the rant starts). Since I was in kindergarten I have been pushed to sell things for the school. You are very pressured by teachers to sell items, no matter how "optional" they say it is. And I've heard now that they start in preschool! My God! You can't even pretend that the child is selling the items at that age! It is so obviously hitting up the parents!
I had bad experiences with fundraisers/sales/whatever, and it got worse as I got older. (You can tell I never liked selling the Girl Scout cookies . . . I'd rather eat 'em.)
In middle school they offered a HUGE amount of prizes if you sold those magazines. The smallest you could win was $1, and it went up to TV's. Everyone had to sell, or you'd be the only one without (cheap!) prizes. And you'd be cheating your school of money, plus the chance to get the principal of the school to have pies thrown at him/wear a gorilla suit and sit in a cage/live on the gym roof (Mental Hell got very creative).
The thing with selling nowadays is that you can no longer go door-to-door (NOT that I like doing so or think that everyone should!) due to killer perverts on the loose. Instead, you had to stick close to home- "Have your mom and dad take them to work! Show them to your relatives!" we heard every day. But let's face it, your relatives get tired of being hit up for money every month. And my dad refused to take them to work because then he'd be forced to buy everyone else's stuff. And my mom works with a bunch of cheap people (what do you expect from accountants?). So I got in trouble, or my parents bought waaaaay too much junk to get me out of it.
It didn't help either that I was in the orchestra (bands are even worse- LHS had at least weekly fundraisers). When I was in the seventh grade, there were some huge budget cuts, and orchestra was dropped from the budget. But a bunch of parents got together and started a foundation, some concerts . . . we had an orchestra, but you guessed it, more fundraising.
Then came high school. On the one hand, there was less fundraising in orchestra (we had one a year), but on the other, I had joined a club that had to do a lot of fundraising to go to state conventions. By the end of my senior year I was going nuts. I really just could not try to sell stuff off to my family any more. And boy, did I pay for it . . . after the teacher decided to apportion the money to the people that ran the fundraisers.
My parents are some of the people who are in favor of just paying a fee at the beginning of the year to the school to pay for all of this stuff so that there will no longer be fundraisers. I've also heard people argue that the poorer kids can't pay that, so they must fundraise. I say why not do it this way- offer an optional fee at the beginning of the year- "Pay this and you won't have to buy any more candy/magazines/useless crap for the rest of the year"- and whoever doesn't pay will still get hit up.
Satisfied?
Links to other sites on the Web
Graphic Station (all but bunny and money)
Page last updated April 7, 1998.
You can e-mail me, so long as you're not selling anything, okay? I'm broke, dammit!
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© 1997 jdrutherford@ucdavis.edu
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