Editor's Quick Tips, Vol. #5

Today's Topic: Water.

Water is a necessary component of all forms of life, and is the most abundant substance on the face of the Earth. This explains why monopolistic corporations are able to sell it to us at outrageous, pirate's prices. Some corporation will start billing you for the air you breathe as soon as it can figure out how to convince doctors to cram a valve into your trachea that will allow them to "disconnect your service" when you don't pay your Air Bill. We're closer to this scenario that you'd like to believe; most doctors threw out that silly, quaint "Hippocratic Oath" thing a few years ago when they realized that it was bad for business. There's a theme here: everything on Earth (even your greasy hobo bowel movements) is controlled by a corporation, and corporations want you to either A) pay them, or B) die.

Can't afford to pay your water bill? You don't have to! It turns out that there's this thing near your house called a "creek," and that there is a liquid substance in it which in some ways resembles water. It's full of sulfur, mercury, human fecal matter, fossil-fuel run-off, and 8,936,422 other kinds of poisons--but since you're a hobo now, you'll starve to death long before you'll get pancreatic cancer. So drink up!

You're welcome.

The Seven High Hobo Holidays

Let's begin with some clarification: Hoboism is not a religion, it's a vocation. Anyone dumb enough to think otherwise is okay by me personally (since dumbness IS a religion, I am required by current U.S. laws to both respect and like the dumb--and do like them, sincerely). But the dumb persons are not okay with facts, personally, because everybody knows that religion is inborn, and so is poverty. Therefore poverty is a religion, as is sickle-cell anemia. But everyone also knows that poverty is a choice, because some asshole named Horatio Alger told us so. We hobos stink to high heaven, and it's a genetic thing; however, we are to blame, because we chose our own genes. This is Science, people, so don't laugh. Okay, do laugh--but do it quickly, and into your handkerchief. All three of you who are reading this (zip up your pants and sit down, Cletus!) are here today because I got really drunk and wanted to tell you about the High Hobo Holy Days. Some judge commanded me not to tell you, but judges are rich, and therefore they are actual human beings--meaning that they don't know how to read, and aren't following this blog. Shut up, Cletus! if you can't follow what I'm saying, then you must be some kind of human being...and therefore you can't possibly be poor. Because poor people are not really people. The point is that there are seven High Hobo Holidays and I will tell you about them now, because I've written a sufficiently incoherent and/or satirical introductory paragraph, of sorts.

NOTA BENE: You'll notice that all of these holidays occur weekly, as opposed to the usual annual model of holiday scheduling. This is because hobos only live for a week before they freeze to death, starve to death, or are anally raped and murdered by a Republican.

1. Garbage Day. AKA Grocery Day. Once a week, the Rich People discard perfectly useful stuff like empty pork-n'-bean cans and banana peels, because of some ancient, forgotten Rich-Person birthright. Forget what's behind it--you're a hobo. Once you're a hobo, you stay a hobo. You're far more likely to encounter a unicorn than you are ever again to eat food fit for humans, so get your dirty head out of the pretty, Rich-only clouds. Dammit, Cletus, I'm warning you! Anyway, Garbage Day is the Hobo's Sabbath. Respect it and keep it holy by getting wet coffee grounds all over your sleeves while digging through Hefty bags for the rancid, moldy pinto beans you need in order to stay "alive."
   
2. Salvation Army Drop-Off Day. The Salvation Army collects random Rich-People trash and then sells it to the lower echelons of the Rich-People hierarchy, ostensibly to raise money with which to help hobos. But since no hobo has ever seen where any of that sweet Rich-People money goes, I might as well be talking about Electropootronomicals, or some other made-up horseshit. Sneak around behind the Salvation Army in the wee hours and steal the clothes the Rich People have left. This is the only way you'll ever have a shirt, ever again. Also, it's dark and secluded back there on the loading dock, so this is the most private dookie-spot you'll have for the next week. Thus, this is a holy day.
3. Get-Drunk-and-Blabber-About-How-You-Used-to-Be-a-Human-Being Day. You've hoarded twenty bottles which originally held random types of boozes, but which now only contain the spitty oral backwash of prostitutes and syphilitic meth-heads. Having amassed such an enviable liquor cabinet, it's time to cut loose. Do so. Propose a toast to your own health while trying to avoid swallowing any cockroaches who might have drowned in any of your bottles. It's a fun game which you will always lose! Stand on a corner of your choosing and tell your life-story to your imaginary friend, whose name is Cletus. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll feel like a person again. The effect lasts only for a few hours, or for as long as the "booze" holds out. That's why this holy day is only a day. You'll feel like something lower than a bird-turd again when you wake up the next morning and remember that Rich People would rather buy a Jessica Simpson "song" from Apple than buy some Ramen noodles for a suffering, starving bastard like you.
   
4. Vote-For-a-Democrat Day. This holiday is purely symbolic, which is why you can observe it weekly as opposed to only on Rich People's equally symbolic "election" days. It's symbolic because Democrats will do exactly nothing for/to you. Hey, nothingness is better than the anal rape and murder you'll get from the Republicans (unless of course you take a wide stance in a bathroom at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, in which case homophobic-yet-paradoxically-homosexual Republican Senators will pay you some actual U.S. moneydollars in exchange for penile access to your male mouth).
5. Nothingness Day. Sit on a sheet of cardboard in an alley and stare at a wall all day, without thinking a single thing. This holy rite is a symbolic, hyperliteralist actualization of that which occurs within a rich person's "soul."
   
6. Crying Day. After seeing what a rich person's soul looks like, you'll need a good cry. Let it out. If you're lucky, some guilty Catholic Rich Person will walk by, take pity on you, and throw you a saltine. But you aren't lucky, because you're a hobo. OK, I admit it: I only said that stuff about the saltine so you'd cry some more. Dammit, Cletus, where's your holiday spirit?!
   
7. Humbleness Day. Today, you'll go around trying to get help from the Human Race. You will fail, because the Human Race doesn't give a rat's flea-bitten ass about you. This is also the day in which a new class of humans graduates into the hobohood, and are thus humbled. Each week, in the current economy, more and more ex-humans become hobos. Do not hold a grudge against these formerly soulless assmunchers. They're like you now, and before they've stolen their first shirt from the Salvation Army, you'll have died from exposure, starvation, or Republican anal rape. So love them while you can, even though you can no more help them than you can help yourself. Also, be sure and steal their shoes while they sleep, or at least pee on their hair or something. It's a hobo hazing kind of thing. It happened to you too, but you were too distraught and/or drunk at the time to remember it now. Just trust me.
   

I hope this list made a few (currently) Rich People laugh. I'll see you at the garbage-can buffet on Friday, unless I'm dead before then. Happy Holidays!

Editor's Quick Tips, Vol. #4

Today's Topic: The Holidays

You probably decided to quit celebrating the Rich People Holidays (we'll run through the High Hobo Holidays in a forthcoming post) when you became a hobo. This was a terrible mistake, you schmuck. First, because even though most of your family is just as hobotronic as you are, your Aunt Sue still, incredibly, has some kind of "job" or something, and likes to make dinner for all of her lint-sculpting relatives. Second, there will be lots of free booze on hand (unless you live in the South like your literally poor Editor does and have lots of tee-totaling, preachy family members). Third--and I'm basing this purely on your hobotastic personal aroma--you're the worst hobo of the bunch, and the other hobos in your family will give you shiny gifts. This year, for example, your Editor's sister gave him 24 packages of Ramen noodles; to break that down for you, because your head is thick, that's a full 12 days of Christmas ("meals").

God cursed us, every one. So get free booze and/or free food wherever you can. You're welcome.

Five Productive Activities For Today's Active Hobo

There was once a time, so the Fairy Taletellers say, when humans had dignity, and were paid money in exchange for their labor, and happy-sunshine rainbows shot out of bankers' assholes as God's proof that the Money Rain would never stop. We were all so busy, living lives and having families and eating food and having homes. But those days are over, and now we spend our days trying to invent passable simulacra of toilet paper while wearing "pants" made out of used garbage bags and whistling jaunty hobo ditties like "Jimmy Cracked Corn." What I'm trying to say is that we all have a lot more free time now that Bush's Treasury Dept. has made working both superfluous and impossible. So what is a today's-active-hobo like you supposed to do with all of the extra time? Look for work? HA HA, good one! HA HA! *Sob*. No, seriously. OK, here's a list of stuff we can do, because making silly lists is the first item on my list of things we can do.

1. Write a blog. Make silly lists about things we can do. Your blog is your platform, and from it you can issue the kinds of drunken non-sequiturs that paleohobos used to blurt out on the street, between sips of sweet, sweet Mad Dog. With any luck, your tireless daily efforts will net you as many as seven readers in as little as fourteen years. Based on projections from the Hobo Demographics And Advertising Institute, or HDAAI (which I just made up, allowed as I am to do so under The Hoboblogger's Code), by the end of that fourteen years, you'll actually be close to getting paid for your Google ads. $100 for only fourteen years of work? Can you say "cash cow"? You don't have to, because you drool when you speak...and anyway, I just said it for you. You're welcome.
2. Get your Kitty-Cat-Lint-Sculpture business going. I hinted at this one yesterday, but you were so drunk that you've forgotten about it, so I get to recycle it. Yes, make kitty-cat-lint-sculptures for fun and profit. Or, actually, make some other kind of lint sculptures, because I can do without the competition. It's not as if you'll actually sell any of them, because A) people don't want them, B) you have B.O. (remember soap? from years ago?), and C) Hank Paulson has outlawed money. But what else are you going to do, sit around and get drunk?
3. Sit around and get drunk. Studies show a marked increase in blogging and kitty-cat-lint-sculpture production when malt liquor is on hand. Booze is also the only thing that will make you happy, ever again, until you starve to death next Thursday and are eaten by feral dogs. Sure, booze-happiness is fleeting and artificial, but Hank Paulson has outlawed true happiness, too.
4. Find new uses for previously useless things. Have a credit card? Use it as a spoon the next time you have a bowl of unseasoned dough to eat (not that you ever will, again). Have a bowl with no dough in it? Wear it as a hat, and criss-cross the country planting apple trees. Have an apple tree? Of course you don't, or you'd have apples to eat. Sorry, I flubbed that one. The point is, the world is yours now that nobody owns anything and we're all sleeping inside sewage pipes. Turn that sewage into stewage. Anything is now exactly what you say it is. This is all bullshit of course, and you're eating sewage, and you know it, and it makes you cry.
5. Cry. It won't make you feel any better, but it will make Hank Paulson laugh.

OK, hobos, let's get busy. As you can see, there's no time to loaf about. We've got lots of dehumanizing nothingness to get done.

Editor's Quick Tips, Vol. #3

Today's Topic: Checks

Even the lowliest hobos sometimes get checks. Unfortunately, people like you and I do not. Not anymore, anyway. Oh, we used to get checks all right--big fat ones, sometimes with more than one zero on them. And we'd cash them, and pay the bills, and purchase food, and laugh the days away astride magical winged centaurs, and everything was fanciful. Now all we hope--nay, all we dare--to do is to try to get our kitty-cat-lint-sculpture business going. But I digress, because that's what malt liquor does to a man.

The point here is checks: just pretend like you have one, for a second, and that you'd like to cash it. I know, I know, but just play along. Suppose you wanted to cash that check? Well, you couldn't cash it even if you had it. It's drafted on an account in some bank that doesn't have a branch near you (and of course you don't have your own account--HA HA!). Or it is made out to a misspelling of your name, and the bank's employees will refuse to cash it out of spite (and then, at their fancy boozy bank parties, they'll replay the security footage of your hilarious visit and laugh, and laugh, and laugh at you, the poor, dirty, starving cretin).

So just forget about it. That fictional check has just become your fictional toilet paper. You don't have any real checks or toilet papers, however, so you'll just have to use yesterday's glossy, nonabsorbent junk mail. Happy pooping.

You're welcome.

Recipe: Hobo Hardtack

Ingredients:

• 4 cups flour
• water
• 96 tears

First, open up your cabinet and make sure there's some flour in there. There probably isn't any, because the last time I checked there was only rice and some green food coloring. Still, let's just say for the sake of pointless argument that you've got some flour in there. Put four cups of it into a big bowl. Add water gradually, crying into the mixture as you're wont to do, until it begins to form a thick-but-not-crumbly dough. It's a good thing you're crying, for once, because you don't have any other salt. Taste the dough. You'll find that it tastes like glue; this is completely normal, because it is--in fact--glue. Roll into a sheet, cut into squares, and perforate with a fork...you know, like crackers. Bake at 375 degrees for two hours, turning once along the way.

The result: flavorless white bricks which are slightly less hard than diamonds. You will lose as many as three teeth eating this shit, but that's OK because next week you'll nearly freeze to death in some gutter and will wake up in the hospital with an IV in your arm. You'll laugh to yourself as you realize these hospital suckers will never get paid, but mainly you'll be saying "good riddance" to your teeth, which you could never afford to take care of anyway, and which are not needed for the consumption of liquid glucose. Victory!

Bon appetit!

Editor's Quick Tips, Vol. #2

Today's Topic: Stores

Rich people just go to stores, and they buy everything they need there, and elves tickle the arches of their feet, and magic people dance all over the room. But you're reading this, so you're no princess. Let's say you need a shoe; perhaps one for each foot. Just a dream. You have your holey leather shoes, but in that it's raining and those holeys admit water and your socks are drenched and you have rotting toes, what do you do?

You certainly don't go to some froo-froo store, that's for damned sure. Wrap some duct tape around your foot, you worthless poor idiot! Some rich person gets just as rich from duct tape as some other rich person gets from shoes! Fuck your silly, poor feet!

So, really. Duct tape for your feet, and dead leaves for your belly.

Three Hobo Healthcare Solutions

So you're sick, and have the misfortune of being one of those dirty Communist poor people whom Jesus said would always exist? Tough titty. Rich people need for you to die, because you don't have any money for them. So go die. Don't want to die? Well, then, you certainly have found yourself in the midst of a delicate conundrum. Most sick people find that some sort of medical attention can be a very helpful thing, and yet even the most basic "turn your head and cough" doctor's visit will cost more than 8,000,000 times your net worth. Luckily, we poor starving bastards whom no one cares about do have a few really, really crappy and completely ineffective options, three of which I will now share with you. Fellow hobos, read the following with rapt attention. Rich people, get ready to laugh your asses off at the suffering of smelly, starving peons.

1. Go to the "Emergency" Room. This is where rich people go when they get drunk on Dom Perignon and flip their diamond-encrusted Porsches. It's also where poor people go when they catch tuberculosis from their rodent roommates. You see, we have these Commie laws that require Emergency Rooms to treat poor people even if they don't have insurance. They will of course send you a bill which you'll never be able to pay within the short remaining span of your stinky hobo life, but who cares, right? So your credit score will go down. It's already -3, and you'll never be able to buy a car or a house anyway. Live it up! The problem: the doctor will prescribe medicines which are priced at roughly three times the Gross National Product of Germany, so your ER trip will do you absolutely no good whatsoever.
   
2. Practice preventive medicine. In other words, don't get sick. It's as easy as that, folks! It is an established fact that every bad thing in the world is caused by poor people, and your own health problems are no exception. A simple change in attitude will chase your cancer away, and positive thinking will revive you after your third cardiac arrest.
3. Stay sick until you get better, or until you die, whichever comes first. These are the only two possible outcomes of your illness, and both will result in the end of your suffering. Therefore, this is your best option, because it's a win-win proposition.

Those are your options, so pick one and stop whining about your flesh-eating virus. You don't hear rich people whining, do you? I didn't think so.

You're welcome.

Editor's Quick Tips, Vol. #1

Today's topic: Utilities.

When the cut-off date for one of your utilities comes around and you inevitably can't pay the bill, call and get an extension. Phone and electric companies will gladly give you an additional 12 minutes to pull vast sums of money out of your ass, because they are caring and generous people. If you can, try to schedule this second due date for a Friday. They probably won't cut off your service until the following Monday, giving you an entire weekend to worry yourself sick about the fact that there's no money in your ass. Yay!

Five Tested Ways To Earn Ramen Money

Most humans and other mindless animals find it a good idea to eat some food once in a while--preferably on a daily basis. For those of us who can't afford food, there's "Ramen Noodles." It may have less nutritional value than cardboard, but it certainly tastes a little bit better, and it allows those who eat it to pretend for a few moments that nourishment is in fact taking place. But what if you spent your last two quarters in that payphone that you had to walk two miles to find (because all of the rich people have cell phones now) so that you could call the Electric Power Board and beg them to take three more days worth of "pity" on you? Here are a few tips on how you, too, can pretend to eat.

1. Check inside your neighbors' washing machines. This only works, of course, if you live in an apartment building with a common laundry room. If this situation applies to you, however, treasure awaits. You'll often find up to a dollar's worth of nickels and dimes underneath your dorkus-hipster-neighbor's still-wet Fruit Of The Looms. You'll also find several twist-off beer bottle caps, which you can flick across the room for your and your cat's entertainment.
2. Recover discarded scratch-off lottery tickets. A lot of times, people throw these out without really examining them. I've made $3 this way in the past year alone!
3. Check for coins beside the doors of parked cars. People with cars are rich, and they shed coins like you and I shed tears. I think they sweat pennies or something. Their riches trickle out of their pockets while driving, and then fall to the Earth when they get out of their cars. Three or four hours of crouching may net you as much as 35 cents. There's no reason not to do this.
4. Check vending machine coin returns. This is an old schoolboy's trick, but it can be a quick path to MSG heaven. Look for soda machines and bill-changing machines as you do your twice-daily six-mile errand walk, and stick your finger in the slots of all of them. You'll be glad you did.
5. Tear your home apart. This one should be viewed as a last resort, because trust me, you've already found and spent every last penny that was ever in your possession. But who knows? Maybe you forgot to look behind the toilet? Or underneath the refrigerator? You'll go insane if you aren't absolutely sure that there's no more change waiting for you somewhere in your own apartment, and your obsessive search will give you something to focus on other than the gnawing emptiness in your stomach.

Follow this advice and you may well be eating pretend "food" within 24-to-48 hours! You're welcome.

X-mas Gives To Some, Takes From Others (i.e. Me)

I walked over a mile in the rain last night to spend my last $6 at the grocery store. When I arrived there, it was closed early for an "employee party," presumably some silly X-mas / Jesus thing. I therefore wasted my $6 at the convenience store, because I was hungry and out of dead ladybugs.

Jesus made me waste my money.

Recipe: Hobo Greens

Ingredients:

• Dandelion greens (or whatever other greens are in your yard).
• Water
• Salt (if you have any)
  
• Whatever random other stuff that just happens to be in your cupboard.

Go out into your yard--if you have one--with a plastic bag you saved from the days when you could afford groceries. "Those were good days," you think to yourself, and wipe a tear from your cheek. Snap out of it, you haven't eaten in three days. Pick dandelion greens (or whatever other leafy material is handy--being from the South, I find Kudzu to be a good alternative) and stick them in the bag. Get as many as you can find. Go back inside--if you have a home--and boil some water in a large pot. Shred greens with fingers and throw in pot. Add salt. Add onions, garlic, bacon, etc. if you like...but if you have that stuff you're too rich to be eating this, so bite me.

When greens are tender, eat them while weeping in a dark room. Keep leftovers in a cereal bowl inside the tied-up grocery bag you used earlier. This will keep the greens fresh, so that you can again pretend to be eating actual food tomorrow, or maybe the next day.

Bon appetit!

About BLOGverty

The description in the header says it all. This blog will consist entirely of me telling you about the awful things a poor person has to do. You might find this interesting for any one of several reasons:

1. Perhaps you pity the damned;
2. Maybe you're an asshole who laughs at the suffering of others;
3. We are probably going into a Depression, and you're looking for tips on how to survive, which you will put into practice as soon as you lose your job and become as poor as I am.

I try to make fun of my poverty, because laughter is the best snake oil. I hope this blog will be funny. Feel free to throw eggs at me if not.

Tomorrow's Crappy Sale

I need to try to sell my "car" tomorrow. It's an old rusty piece of shit, and it runs like runny shit. Any takers?

Today's Crappy Menu

Ramen for lunch, plain rice (OK, with butter) for dinner.