Homeless Men of America's 'Great Depression Redux Charm Initiative' Still Going Smoothly

Dispatch from The Michigan Front:

PONTIAC, Mich. — A homeless man in southeast Michigan says a woman accidentally gave him a gold ring laced with diamonds when she handed him a handful of change.
Michael Secaur tells The Oakland Press that he was panhandling at an intersection in Pontiac on Monday when a woman pulled up in a vehicle and handed him some money. He says the ring was among some coins, and that he thinks she "did an oops."
Secaur says he would recognize the woman if he saw her again.
He says he quickly dismissed a plan to pawn the ring. The owner of a shelter where Secaur often stays has locked it in a safety deposit box.
Secaur says he has lived on the streets of Pontiac for nearly two years.

(courtesy HuffPo)

Could you imagine a rich person doing that? Hard enough to squeeze some spare change out of them. You gotta get creative, get your finger poopy, and make quaint signs that say things like "Homeless Veteran Father of Three Mongoloid Preemies Who Can't Catch a Break. God Bless." just to get your hands on some Diet-Coke-greased pennies from the polished-walnut-lined cupholder between the cabretta leather-skinned bucket seats of some old bag's Bentley that could fetch enough bank at auction to feed an entire town for a year.

The kind of old bag that doesn't realize for weeks she lost an extraordinarily expensive ring during one of her 5000 daily moments of carelessness--if she ever noticed at all.

And this guy's who's been living in the street for a year is begging to give it back to her. Shades of that Homeless Radio Announceritis outbreak not that long ago.

Thank you, Homeless Men of America, for keeping it classy.

Seriously, though--how bad do they need to make us feel about ourselves before this increasingly derivative hubbub is over and the homeless men are once again a phantom population everybody pretends is already dead, thinks of as naught but a swarm of charming and smelly holographic reminder of the desperate lives people lead when they don't work hard enough or get born to rich parents.

I'm getting too worked up about this. I might just have to forget about it, erase it from my brain by going to Disneyland til it blows over--tickets are only $100 per day for Southern California residents and they apparently have "carts that sell big turkey legs (fried, I think) for $7 each."

See ya there!

_

Okay, Mmm, Hold On, Back This Circus Train Up Just a Minute...

The 'Homeless Guy with a Golden Voice' video that has been tearing up the webwaves this week features a homeless guy who doesn't sing?

Turns out everybody's favorite hero, Ted Williams (no relation to the now less-famous asshole baseball player), was not just some tragic homeless guy who found his resolve in teaching himself to sing the paint off a barn, but rather a homeless former radio announcer who had fallen on hard times due to drug and alcohol abuse, arrogance, the changing face of media, etc. Huh. No way around that being a disappointment when I hear the phrase "golden voice."

She hates when people use teleprompters
(exceptions include John McCain, Sarah Palin, and herself)

If there is one successful type of person in this world who deserves to be homeless, it is "actors who read anything you tell them to say on camera and tell you they are journalists."

If there are two, I would add "radio and television announcers/hosts" to the list. How many of the oft-ridiculed "Pig & Mike in the Morning!" ass-hats--and the vain, less-talented hacks who were paid to "announce them"--were out there in this country before the radio bubble burst and 90% of radio talent got the axe? [This is a wild, unsubstantiated estimate. -Ed]

Estimated Market Price of a Rental Baby in Johannesburg

Is three dollars per day, according to the Harper's Index in the Jan.2011 issue.

Who rents these babies, you ask? Why, panhandlers, of course! Who else would you rent your defenseless baby to? It makes perfect sense--the panhandlers rent these babies to increase their daily wages by preying on sympathetic strangers and I guess the cost outweighs the benefit or there wouldn't be a market for it.

I also guess that for the most part these babies are returned unharmed or there wouldn't be a steady supply of babies, although that is just a guess. For all I know, the odds are 50/50 and the parents' desire to have the child/burden back is 50/50.

 
What sort of person rents out their baby to a panhandler in Johannesburg for the day? Is this person so desperate that they don't have any other choice and have thrown caution to the wind in the hopes of mere survival? Is it easier to let your baby do the work while you chill at home eating a $3 package of protein-enriched (hopefully) bonbons?

Or is this proof of yet another impending global movement backward--engineered by a bitter father named Karl Rove, most likely--where the babysitter pays the parent/s and the baby gets exactly the kind of crash-course in life he will need to survive, the Right gets an unregulated, cheap supply of labor/altar-boys, and everybody's too tired and malnourished to mount an effective rebellion?

Or is this baby rental thing all about the economy and I'm an idiot? Is this bonus baby-rental money allowing the impoverished parent/s of these children the luxury of purchasing a carton of "so cool" American cigarettes every week and it's so good for the American economy that all the rich people and their duped grassroots puppets will shoot you in the face with their concealed weapons if you try to be all communist and poke a hole in what is a mostly sorta-fine scheme they have going on? Well, if you discount the visceral discomfort experienced every waking moment by every single baby involved, that is--especially by those poor souls that never make it back to the rental house.

You know what? I should probably stop talking about it right now, lest I be branded un-American by the uneducated. I can't:

Will these poor children grow up at a record clip? What sort of indignities will they witness while lying on the sidewalk, teething on dirty broken beer bottles and used condoms, covering themselves in their own filth, occasionally getting yelled at by their smelly drunken homeless master, on whom his/her survival depends? What manner of squalor will they one day consider luxurious by comparison to their daily existence?

Missed Connection

Last night, somewhere in the Marigny, New Orleans - m4w - 41

Me: Man, nevernude shorts, Daffy Duck applique t-shirt w/bird-shit stain, snoring in the gutter as I dreamed about slaying dragons with my mind

You: Legs, girl, laughed when a horse peed a river that roused me from my slumber and ruined my favorite outfit

Fancy letting me perform oral sex on you for a few hours in your air-conditioned house on the whiter side of town? I promise I won't try anything else--I'm just looking to cool off for awhile and I don't have any money and you seem like a nice girl who could use a little attention, keeps herself clean.

If interested, I'll be riding on the shoulders of Jean Baptiste La Moyne in the French Quarter, warbling my favorite Christmas carols all night long as I work my way through three bottles of Mad Dog I stole from CVS this morning while the cashier tied her shoe. Swing by to pick me up and we can go from there, lovergirl.

_

Coolest Homeless Couple Ever?

This photo almost makes me want to be homeless, to feel the unbridled freedom of the open road, from possessions and responsibilities that weigh me down. How liberating would it be to wake up to the singing of birds in a verdant park after a long night's sleep, your doting girlfriend cuddled up on your chest, not one obligation weighing you down, the entire day--nay, the rest of your life--naught more than an empty to-do list full of whimsical possibility and the kindness of strangers?