Read All About It

Posted by John

If you live in a city of any sort of size, large or small, you’re likely familiar with the street publication known as the Homeless Paper. If you’re not, it’s a pretty simple concept – an organization, likely a non-profit, publishes a newspaper, probably once a month, containing articles that are either written by or about homeless people. Homeless people then become vendors and sell the paper for $1 on the street. I don’t know how the distribution works out but I imagine the homeless vendor keeps the majority of the money while the organization gets a percentage to cover operating costs. All in all it’s a really good concept that helps a whole bunch of people, especially those individuals who are highly motivated and not resigned to being homeless for the rest of their lives.

Having said all of that let me state this as plainly and sensitively as I can: I fucking hate the homeless paper.

Now just hold on a minute before you completely crucify me for such a blatantly dickish statement, I can explain. There are several reasons why I really don’t care for the homeless paper:

Number 1: Guilt

On any given day I will pass anywhere from 3 to 6 homeless paper vendors on my way to and from lunch and I’d love to give them all a dollar in exchange for a paper but truthfully I just can’t go spending $6 a day on homeless papers plus I don’t ever have any cash on me… Sort of. You see, one vendor in particular who I pass almost every single day stands right outside my goddamn bank. And believe me, he’s the nicest guy in the world and he truly, truly got a shitty draw in life. He was a fire fighter whose last call was 9/11 at the World Trade Center where a 10-ton slab of granite fell on him and now he’s disabled, homeless, and selling papers. So every day I pass this guy and he wishes me a nice day and I thank him and give him this look like, “Sorry dude, no cash today,” but fuck me - he can see my goddamn bank and my goddamn ATM right there! But what am I supposed to do? The other day I was pseudo approaching the guy to buy a paper when I overheard him say to a young woman, “I haven’t seen a $20 bill since December.”

“Well, shit!” I thought, “That’s just depressing as hell, plus there goes my plan to get him to break this 20 for me.” But shit, I really needed a bunch of ones. So I went on by without buying a paper.

So I feel guilty as hell when I pass the guy if I don’t buy a paper but then I feel even guiltier when I do buy a paper and he tells me how sick he is or how he wishes he could just go back to fighting fires if not for the crutches or how he only pulled down $8 the day before… And all of this while I’ve just walked out of my bank and on my way to get some dim sum at the Chinese takeout place. I mean, my god! I know he’s homeless and hungry and all that but he is guilting the shit out of me every time I see him and honestly that shit keeps me up some nights just thinking about the poor guy.

I know what you’re thinking though, and you should feel ashamed for thinking this – how do I know he’s not lying and putting on a big act just to guilt people into buying some papers? Well, I’ll tell you how. I buy a paper from the guy every few weeks, especially when the new issues come out, and the guy tells me the same story every time. He doesn’t remember me for a second and he always tells me the same story about 9/11 each and every time, so he’s consistent as hell. Of course, I’m a little fucking pissed that I buy a paper from him all the time and he doesn’t at least remember me but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here.

Number 2: Mother Nature

As much as I would love to feel good about giving several dollars every day to every homeless paper vendor I pass, I simply can’t do that. Why, you might ask? The environment, of course. I honestly can’t bring myself to buy a paper every day because as I walk away with it in my hand all I can think about is all the trees that died in order to make it. I knowIknowIknow! It’s ridiculously hypocritical to value the lives of a couple trees over a human being, starving, without shelter, living on the street. But come on – it’s a hell of a lot of trees. And for what? A paper I’m never going to read? Okayokayokay! Just wait while I explain again…

Number 3: Zoloft

You see, that’s the other hypocrisy of the whole deal – I can’t bring myself to actually read the paper; it’s too fucking depressing. I’m serious, have you ever read anything in the homeless paper? Oh god, it’s horrible.

One day I bought a paper and I was waiting forever for my Chinese takeout so I thought, “Well, I’ll just pass the time leafing through this homeless paper… oh what’s this? It’s a poem written by a homeless man. Oh, this should be pleasant…” Holy. Shit. It was the worst thing I’d ever read. It was all about how this guy lives under a bridge because he went off to fight for his country in the army only to come back and find that his country didn’t care about him and how he wished he’d died in the war like his fallen buddies and now all he wants to do is get drunk to dull the pain while he looks up at the bridge that is his home and all he can think about is jumping off it to end it all.

Well, fucking-a! If I want to be that depressed I’ll get a bottle of white zinfandel, put on some Sinead O’Connor and go through my old yearbooks and circle the pictures of all the chicks that wouldn’t go out with me. Jesus, who wants to do that? So instead I just buy the papers and they collect in a large stack at my desk without getting read until the once-monthly paper recycling pickup at which point I just look at the stack and think, “Well, that sure is a hell of a lot of trees sitting there…” I mean, you’d think they could go digital like all the other publications in the world, right? Yeah, there’s some logistics to work through with that but what else are they thinking about all day?

Number 4: Competition

The thing with the homeless paper vendor is, they’re not beholden to anyone else, not even any other vendors, so it’s actually a very competitive endeavor for these people. One guy stakes a claim on a street corner and that becomes his territory. The code of the homeless paper vendor clearly states that no other vendor can encroach on his territory any closer than one linear block. But even then, one linear block isn’t very big so you can imagine how in the heart of downtown there is literally one vendor on every single street corner. So when I walk to lunch to Subway to get my $5 footlong sub because I’m always starving by the time lunch comes around and you really can’t beat $5 for an entire foot of Subway eat fresh sub although I only ever eat like 50, maybe 60% of the sub before I put the rest if the fridge and tell myself I’ll finish it later but I never do because once you put the mayonnaise on it really only has a shelf life of 20, maybe 30 minutes before the bread gets unacceptably soggy so I always end up throwing away like $2, maybe $2.50 worth of sub so when I’m on my way to go do that at lunch every day I pass like three homeless paper vendors and if I happened to stop and buy a paper from one of them the other two can clearly see me do it because it’s only one fucking linear block so what am I really going to say as I pass those other two vendors with a paper already in my hand? “Sorry, that dude has a better corner. You should really take his corner and then I’ll buy a paper from you.” So again, it goes back to the guilt.

So at this point you must be asking yourself, in a world where a bunch of greedy assholes on Wall Street can literally devise something out of thin air like a credit default swap and sell that worthless piece of shit for millions of dollars, how can I possibly be any more insensitive about a few homeless people trying to feed themselves by selling a legitimate product for one dollar? Well, clearly you underestimate me.

The thing is, some vendors have it down and know how to sell some papers and some just don’t. The key is to look just homeless enough but not too homeless. Some homeless vendors put on their best clothes to go sell papers and honestly it just gets confusing because if they’re not clearly homeless then you have to wonder what this asshole is doing selling newspapers like the asshole parents who sell the candy bars for their kid’s marching band at work instead of making their kids actually sell them. If I’m going to buy a homeless paper or not buy a homeless paper I want to buy it or not buy it from an actual homeless person.

They also need to lay on the guilt, but not too thick. The guy I buy from has a great story – injured at the World Trade Centers. It’s consistent and it makes me feel bad for him. But one day I bought from a different dude and he was telling me about his chronic illness and was like, “Some days I don’t know if I’m going to make it, COUGH-COUGH!” Alright dude, I want a homeless paper, not a bout of the whooping cough, so this is the last time I’ll be buying from you.

And lastly, if you’re going to sell some homeless papers, keep the crazy under control. For instance, there’s a guy who yells, whistles and barks at people in order to draw attention to himself to sell some papers. Literally he’ll be like, “HEY-OH! HOMELESS PAPER HERE! BARK! BARK! GET YOUR PAPER! YUP! YUP! HEY-OH! HOMELESS PAPER! BARK! BARK!” I didn’t take any advertising classes in college but I don’t think he did either because I don’t care if he’s selling cheap beer with free porn on the side, if there’s one thing I’m going to avoid it’s a crazy ass homeless person.

So there it is; that’s why the homeless paper tortures me on a daily basis and hopefully you can empathize with my situation. If you can’t and you just think I’m a dick for all of this, well that’s fine – the new issue of the homeless paper comes out this week so you can go buy one for yourself. Just don't come crying to me when you can't get to sleep tonight. 

Nothing Compares to Safety

Posted by John:

And we’re back. It was a glorious month-long World Cup hiatus and it really couldn’t have been better. Actually it could have been better if England and the US hadn’t shit the bed in the Round of 16 but I’m not upset that Spain won and I’m not upset that I watched 50 or so of the 64 matches. It was wonderful. Now I feel like a convict that has been paroled after 30 years behind bars - I’m not quite sure how to reintegrate myself into society. The other night I came home from work and instead of watching three soccer matches in a row I had to actually find something else to do. I briefly thought about having a conversation with the wife but then I thought I would just read instead. After several seconds spent trying to focus on the words on the page I gave up and opted  instead to just stare at the wall and remember all the fantastic moments from the World Cup. 

One of my big concerns prior to the World Cup was work travel interfering with my match watching agenda. In fact, I had several trips planned during some very crucial stages of the tournament that would have prevented me from actually seeing many of the games. That is, right up until I lied to my superiors to get out of the travel. At first I felt this little pang of guilt for my deception but that quickly turned to anger for living in a part of the world where it is not socially acceptable to skip work for soccer let alone watch it at all. I actually had one redneck tell me that he tried to watch 5 minutes of a match before he got too bored and changed the channel. “They’d just kick ‘er down to one end then kick ‘er back to the other end then kick ‘er back to the first end and I was like, ‘I’ve already done seen this before!’ So I switched ‘er over to the NASCAR race instead.” The NASCAR race??? Are you fucking kidding me! You opted for NASCAR because soccer was too boring!?! I can’t even look at you right now! Anyway, after I lied the first time to get out of work travel it actually got increasingly easier to lie each successive time. In the end I was able to watch every single match that I wanted.

The benefit to living in the South during something like the World Cup is that I could easily record the games during the day on DVR and not have to worry about anyone ruining the results for me before I could get home to watch them. In fact, only one of the results was ruined for me when my buddy sent me a text message before I had a chance to see the game. Shame on me for checking my text messages on the day of a game but the reality is that I blame him exclusively for ruining it for me. In fact, not only did I not respond to his text but I haven’t talked to him since then. Maybe in 30 years he’ll realize his mistake and apologize at which point I’ll consider reconciling with him, but until then he’s as good as dead. Seriously.

I actually did have one business trip during the Cup that I had to take. In the end it worked out fine because it was just a 2-hour drive down to Alabama for some safety training and I was able to get back home in plenty of time to watch the games that night. In fact, the only place better than Tennessee for avoiding the results of a soccer game is Alabama. If you’re in Alabama and you ask someone if they know the score of the soccer game you’re just as likely to get a comprehensive dissertation on the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement on Central American agricultural labor as you are the actual score of said soccer game. So I didn’t hesitate to take my ass deeper into the south on that occasion.

Actually that’s not true; I did hesitate only because the purpose of the trip was to sit through 5 hours of safety training which I had already completed just barely a year prior. If you recall, I wrote about it here. Back then there was only one other person in the safety training - a Good Ol’ Southern Boy that I affectionately nicknamed Bubba. The safety training class I took a few weeks ago was actually full of about 20 Good Ol’ Southern Boys that I affectionately nicknamed all sorts of names from Cletus to Hal to Forrest to Jeb to Roscoe to Cooter to Robert E to… I could go on. But let me digress for a moment and bring up something that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately – when did the phrase “Good Ol’ Southern Boy” became a a term of endearment synonymous with “racist and homophobic”? Why do we need to sugar coat that shit and pretend like hating minorities and homosexuals makes you a good ol’ anything? You don’t see anyone going around and being like, “Oh, you know Abdullah, right? He’s just a good ol’ jihadist…” When did we allow it to become acceptable to take something that’s clearly morally and ethically reprehensible and make it whimsically endearing? “Roger is a great friend of mine. He’s just a good ol’ cannibal. What are you gonna do? He just loves that human flesh…”

At any rate, it was evident from the get-go that all the other participants in the class were contractors or laborers including the instructor who was a retired laborer. I pretty much knew going into it that not only would I be the only non-blue collar worker in the training, I was going to be the only engineer. Which, if you recall from any of my previous posts, the only thing worse than being an engineer in a room full of Good Ol’ Southern Contractors is being a black homosexual engineer. If for some reason I had forgotten about that for any reason I was given a reminded as soon as I sat down in the class. Immediately after the instructor introduced himself he asked if there were any engineers in the room. Now, I’m no idiot and despite the fact that I was the only one not wearing a shirt with a grease stain on it, you better believe I did not raise my hand to identify myself. Granted, the instructor’s purpose for asking the question was just to make a joke about engineers as an ice breaker, but it was really no different than telling a good ol’ joke about an African American, Latino and Muslim in a bar – even if it’s the funniest joke in the world the fact that it’s funny doesn’t excuse you or hide the fact that you’re an ignorant racist; or that you hate engineers, as the case were. Part of surviving is knowing your surroundings and in that case I knew if I wanted to survive in that surrounding I was not going to raise my hand as the only engineer. In fact, there were a number of similar questions the instructor could have asked that I would not raise my hand to answer under any circumstance in a room full of Good Ol’ Southern Boys:

“Did anyone here catch the episode of Project Runway last night?”

“Who knows how to get to the nearest Whole Foods?”

“Did anyone vote for Obama?”

“Anyone know the score of the Germany v Ghana match today?”

“Who can spell the word ‘Pelosi’?”

So I kept my mouth shut and sat through 5-hours of safety training intermixed with horrible first-person stories about accidents that people had either witnessed or been through personally. The thing was though, for all my self-awareness and self-preservation during the training it was almost all for not because of a stupid lapse of judgment on my part earlier in the day.  

I had to be on the road at 5:30 that morning for the two-hour drive to Alabama. At that hour I have one priority – staying awake at the wheel. Luckily I have several playlists on my iPod with just such a purpose in mind. One such playlist is titled “Badass Music”, which is a compilation of songs taken largely from my childhood in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Think lots of GNR intermixed with Poison next to some Nirvana along with some Rage Against the Machine. The utility of the playlist is pretty obvious – the nostalgia of the songs from my youth will keep me pumped up and rocking the whole way down the road. Now admittedly not every song from my childhood was a badass, face-melting, ear-drum splitting example of alt-rock/grunge/metal. Admittedly some tracks are a bit on the softer side but that doesn’t mean they’re not still great nostalgic songs from when I was a kid.

It’s under that pretense now that I admit my single biggest faux-pas of the day was pulling into the parking lot of the training center amid more than a dozen big ass pick up trucks, the redneck owners of which were all filing into the building, with my windows down completely ignorant to the fact that I was blasting Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares to You” for all the world to hear.

Now let me digress for a moment and say this – I don’t care what you think, “Nothing Compares to You” is a seriously badass fucking song. Period. I mean, you can’t submit any evidence to the contrary. We’re talking about 5-minutes of the most gut-wrenching, tear-jerking audio bliss ever produced for human ears.

It’s been so lonely without you here,

Like a bird without a song.

Nothing can stop these lonely tears from falling.

Tell me baby, where did I go wrong?

Oh my god, I just want to rip my heart right out of my chest, it hurts so bad.

I can assure you I’m not making this up – my love for the song nor the fact that I was playing it as I pulled into the parking lot. Rolling up to a safety training session with a bunch of Good Ol’ Southern Racists and Homophobes blasting Sinead O’Connor out the windows of your Mini Cooper is like a death wish. I might as well have been carrying a giant banner that said, “Osama Bin Laden 4 President!” or “Healthcare Reform is for Winners!” or “Crimson Tide? More like Crimson Gay Pride!!!”

Needless to say, I killed the radio as soon as I realized what was happening and thanked my lucky stars I didn’t end up in a bloody pulp. After that I didn’t say a single word the entire rest of the day – especially about engineering, politics, social injustices, Sinead O’Connor or anything else.

I’ve listened to that song several dozen times since then, as I do every week, but now I’m careful to do so within the privacy of my own headphones, just for safety’s sake.

I went to the doctor and guess what he told me, guess what he told me?

He said, “Girl you better try to have some fun no matter what you do,”

But he’s a fool.

Because nothing compares, nothing compares to you…

Ah, my soul is sobbing like a goddamn baby right now.