the laid off persons guide to better living (AKA so your on food stamps?)
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Good morning class good to see your depressed desperate faces here this morning.
I am professor poor, I have a years experience of no income, five years experience of foodstamp/welfare income, and six years of punk rock life skills. So I am clearly an expert at living well under the poverty line.
First thing you gotta kill is your pride and sense of self importance. on the street this kind of thing will get you nowhere. You gotta suck it up and realize your position. second you gotta dress for success. that dosn't mean suit and tie. it means dress like someone who makes what your making. get some wal mart cloths or some thrift store stuff. if you got a mcJob thats cool save that paycheck for bills and booze, a mcJob is a foodscource all in it's self. now it may be against the rules to steal from your burger joint but alot of times managers will look the other way as long as your not feeding the whole crackhouse. food stamps are awesome if you got kids. if your single not so much.
Food stamps are supplementary. No man can live on foodstamps alone. first thing you do is stop going to the nice clean grocery store. shop around visit a grocery outlet, or whatever discount store you got in your hood. You can usually get some badass rich people food there for cheap. if you don't have a discount grocery in your hood head for wal mart. There's a reason it's full of poor folks, shit there is cheap!
when you run out of food stamps there are other options. the easiest is to hit up the foodbank. also somtimes churches also do a food bank kind of thing and they usually have better food so talk to other poor people and find out where the best stuff is. Another good way is to get a hookup at a pizza place or convinience store. pizza places often make misteaks and make more pizza than they were supposed to. if you got a hookup you can get free pizza at clozeing. convienience stores toss the day food at around midnight so if you stroll in at about 11:30 you can usually clean out the hotdogroller and deli for free or cheap. true the food is old crunchy and really sucks but hey, how hungry are you!?
if your a smoker you got two choices either get some rolling tobacco and roll your own or smoke gently used butts from ashtrays around town. I know it sounds gross but if you got an addiction you can't be picky. (hey might be a good time to quit)
as for booze. If you don't have a job or any cash you can't drink right? Wrong! First step pawn whatever you have that you never use anymore. go through your old tools, sterio equiptment, and movies and find everything you havn't used in the last six months. chances are you'll never miss it. Step two call your friends on a friday night. This is known as fishing your looking for the friend you hav'nt talked to in ages who is throwing the big party that night. If they are a decent friend they'll invite you over. Step three: pan handling get a bunch of really shabby clothes together and a dog who hasn't been bathed since he rolled in the mud. Next make a sign that just says need help or stranded or somthing. clever signs somtimes work but a real person in need of help dosn't have time to be clever. stand out wherever a good crossection of the city drives by and rake in the bucks. it usede to make about ten bucks an hour but in this economic duldrum it may take longer. don't get greedy after you make about 20$ quit and go buy your booze and smokes. lingering too long is a great way to get picked up by the cops.
Now there are other ways to get money and booze but this covers only the legal ones. I'm not giving a crime lecture here my only tip as far as that is watch cops every saturday night and take notes.
Class dismissed and for god's sake cheer up!
Comments (11)
that's the spirit! stay strong in tuff times, a brighter day will shine again.
J-sun -> not to sound better or above that...but thanks for bringing up a sore spot in my past -> I remember picking cigarrette butts outta public ashtrays, cutting half the filter off and smoking them down till the filters started charring ->
never did the "Intersection Collection" -> but I did open my guitar case and sit outside of the local mom-&-pop suprmarche and do improv jams, cracking wise (politely) at the uppety-uppety of our society who stopped in for their morning gossip session with other rich house-wives, made a decent living. Would buy my food and liquor (and LSD) and head back to my little lean-to in the woods, wash up in the crick, and change my clothes by the fire...that was a tough time for me, and I'm glad I'm out -> we didn't have homeless shelters out in the country, or soup kitchens, so i resorted to the woods method, I was alone, had a fire every night, which I drunk myself to sleep next to...oh, but when that snow hit brother, GOD DANGIT ANYWAY ->
you cut half the filter off?!!! Why didn't I think of that?! Yeah being homeless in the country is alot diffrent than being homeless in a medium sized town in washington. and I actually wasn't homeless My parents were paying my rent on my tiney cockroach infested studio apartment downtown. if not for that I'd have been living in a 79 chevy capriece down by the river.
Mollifire- Long time no see thanks for posting!
Who the hell are you, the inspirational speaking Chris Farley from S-N-L??
"I LIVE IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER??"
Word though, now convenience about being homeless in the country, no corner store to sit out front and beg for scraps or what not...but I did get to play at the heart of those silly christian shop owners (this is before I became a christian mind you) by telling them of my situation and sitting in his office while he read me scripture and prayed for me, and then finally gave me food for free, silly christians and their heart for the homeless!!
and not only did I cut the filters in half...when I had the patience to collect like 20 or 30 butts, I five-fingered some rolling papers from High's Dairy store (Maryland's version of Rudder's) and rolled monster stink-a-rettes, half the tobacco was charred from being put out...eeeccchhhtttcccch, nasty as hell, but at least I could enjoy a whole smoke instead of 2 or 3 drags and being done ->
Ever notice how the parasite smoker (dude that never has his own shit) takes the biggest, nastiest, wettest hits off your joint or cigarrette...aaahhh, disgusting ->
Ha! I used to do that too we'd grab every butt we could find then go home and take them all apart and roll the shit with some shake and make about fifty or so shitarettes. rodger the drunk was our adopted bum and he'd get us 40s of malt liquor to roll him a pack of "smokes" course that was only on the first of the month.
my first hit of greeners was with a toothless odd couple, a big black dude and skinny white dude, down in Highlandtown Baltimore city -> they had a good laugh, cause I thought it was weed...well it was, but with an added pschotropic kick to it, seen them two guys sitting on the same concrete wall every week, doing whatever drug that managed to shiester from the kids selling on the corner ->
"Didn't know you liked to get wet" sherm sucks!
B-more -> what happens in shittimore stays there -> not really, I went downtown to score the green once a month, sometimes twice ->
Took me 45 minutes to walk from my drivers seat to the trunk on a super greener hit, I thought I was like 7,000 feet in the air on a tight-rope or something, every step was the most intense steps of my life ->
Okay, before we got off into kind of gross discussions on sloppy wet shitarettes which is kind of nasty to read about while having a nice bagel and tea for breakfast and checking my morning mail, the original post was hilarious Jace! ;-)
Ha! Well thanks for that. once the origional post is laid down the comments dictate the direction of the discussion, so I have no controll over that.
Control is an illusion...once you accept that, you're free to navigate through your destiny -> yup, Philosophical Joe is back -> ok, not really,