2005-01-23 - 9:38 a.m.

class wars with Cocker

"you'll never live like common people
you'll never do whatever common people do
you'll never dance and drink and screw
and watch your life slide out of view
just because there's nothing else to do."

That would be from a song by Pulp. Jason hates Pulp. He says Jarvis Cocker (the lead singer... isn't that a horrible name to have grown up with?) is a pretentious wanker, and he's right. Those of you who don't know what I'm talking about will know soon enough because Mr. Cocker is doing the soundtrack and having a brief cameo in the next Harry Potter movie.

Anyway, back to the common people. That's one of my favorite songs. It's very, very true- it's about a wealthy young woman slumming it with him, a poor boy. He tries to intergrate he into the working-man's scene, but at the end his conclusion is that she will never master the art of being poor. She can try and try, but then when she's there, "watching roaches climb the walls," she knows that she "can call her dad and he could end it all."

Slumming it is a very funny practice. Like Joe, who comes from a very well off family and yet works as a janitor. He doesn't even need to work, but he picked something gritty to do- I believe for the sole purpose of wealthy-white-boy-street-cred.

Of course, I am inccapable of both slumming it and putting on airs. Both of these require coming from a single social class, but I fear i am a member of every class, in an odd way. Think about it- my parents are blue-collar laborers. They make less than 20 thou a year. This assigns me securely to the lower class. That class that when the bell rings can only "dance and drink and sccrew, because there's nothing else to do." Hopefully, I will never be engaged in that kind of soul-sapping misery/fun ever again. I can do this because, of course, I come from a family that is as over-educated as the uppermost classes. My parents both have unused bachelor's degrees, but my mom's parents both have PhDs, and my Dad's dad has a masters. He was a professor, just like his Phd holding daughter, my aunt. Then, on my mom's side I have another uncle with a PhD and an aunt with a MA. My grandparents on both sides also own a good deal of valuable real-estate, a practice which also indicates membership to the upper class.

With this in mind, where am I? Am I a rich girl slumming it or a poor one putting on airs? I'm both and neither, and that's exactly how I like it. I am willing to be anything but comfortably in the middle.

The last thing I wrote before this thing. The next thing I wrote after this.