1 in 10 on Food Stamps; Riots Imminent

I remember someone on food stamps saying that the 3 Ps give the most bang for the buck. Pasta, peanut butter, and popcorn.

@blogenfreude:
Dried Beans.

@blogenfreude: The first two make sense (cheap and filling, though is peanut butter a complete protein?), but popcorn?

arroz, frijoles y tortillas. Add gubmint cheez as available. Jalapeños to keep your vitamin C levels up.

@blogenfreude: That stuff is junk and all of them luxury convenience foods at that. Lentils. Nutritional miracle. Rolled oats. potent grain and relatively cheap and you can eat them even if you do not have gas or electric to warm water and/or milk. Lentils have to be cooked. Fresh eggs are still a protein bargain and you can eat them raw if you’re homeless or don’t have energy to cook. Butcher cuts of meat with the bone still fixed like shank beef are cheap because they’re considered cast-offs but you can carve off the meat, pound it to tenderize it and make stews from it (yes, with lentils) that will really stick to the ribs. (Again you have to have energy to cook.) Frozen OJ and other concentrates can really be a bargain if you’re shopping legacy brands or store brands but you have to have water to reconstitute them.

It Pays to Increase Your Hobo Word Power:
bad road – a railroad or division where trainmen are especially hard on hoboes
battleship – a high-sided steel coal car usually with a hopper or dump bottom
bedroom of stars – a city park
dingoes – hoboes who refuse to work even though they claim to be looking for a job
doughnut philosopher – a hobo who is satisfied with coffee and feed
fanner – being hit on the soles while sleeping on a park bench
flying light – a) hungry b) traveling without a bindle
gas – wood alcohol or doped cider or ether
glomming the grapevine – stealing clothes from a clothesline
gonsil – a youth not yet adopted by a jocker
His Nibs – police court judge
hunger lane – a railroad that passes through country hostile to hoboes
ice palace – a high class saloon or brothel (with many mirrors)
Irish turkey – corned beef and cabbage

@mellbell: I think the idea is that you buy a bag (not microwave) and it’ll make a ton of the stuff.

@blogenfreude: Sure, we used to buy an enormous plastic bucket of the stuff and pop it ourselves, very economical (and entertaining, even), but in terms of actually providing sustenance?

Lentils; cornmeal goes rancid, unfortunately, rice and beans keep longer. Barley is comforting.

When the starving survivors start appearing in ragged bands in Archer Daniels Midland country to try to eat the feed corn, I can only imagine they will be shot in huge numbers.

You could keep the whole kernel corn to grind into the harina for the tortillas, tortillas and beans, that would be luxury. The whole kernel corn would last much longer than cornmeal.

@mellbell: For $1, you can get many many many servings of a snack that’s pretty good for you (unless you salt it and butter it to death).

The WIC (women, infants and children nutrition program) approved diets look OK. There’s a few people at my non-hippie regular people grocery store that use an Electronic Benefits Transfer card for their WIC purchases. I had to use the old school rip ’em out of the book food stamps when we were in a rough patch when I was a kid.

@mellbell: Remember – this is a Depression we’re talking about … calories are where it’s at. A layer of fat will keep us warm on the park bench.

@blogenfreude: There’s always the Pink Panther option. Can we be far away from a return of John Dillinger as American Hero?

@Prommie: Lettuce update: Local grocery store has leaf lettuce (red and green) @ 5 for $1. Apparently Cali has it, but is dumping it on the West Coast.

@nabisco:

Have you ever been to Harry Winston? It is the only time in my life I wished I could dress as a woman, just to put that sparkly bling on me.

Sparkly bling. MMmmmm…say that out loud a few times.

Today’s unemployment numbers don’t even reflect the self-employed or people who’ve given up looking for work, right?

Mr. OA is an architect, and all architecture work abruptly ground to a halt in Seattle in October. He’ll be officially retired at age 37 by the end of the month. We’re feelin’ tha heat at Casa OA. I’ve joked with him that he can totes be my desperate house-hubby, provided that we stop buying things and, you know, eating.

@Original Andrew:

Switch to spit and you can save on lube.

@Original Andrew: U6, which includes people who have stopped looking for work, and who have settled on a part time job but really want full time, is at 12.6% right now.

@Mistress Cynica: Thanks for the report. Has anyone else noticed dwindling supplies of imported produce?

@redmanlaw:

My mother works through the WIC program. It’s one of the best programs in the country.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again:

They’ll never pry the Pjur Eros outta my hawt, slippery hands!

@Original Andrew: @Tommmcatt Yet Again: I have a lot of little bottles of Swiss Navy if you want some. A whole box of ’em from someone who had organized a bear run. (No, there’s not fur anywhere in the box or in the bottles.) It’s silicone, so you know it will last longer in this recession.

Good God, could we just forget the Ark and get some land to start a commune? I’ll be more than willing to do backbreaking labor if it means we all have somewhere to live and food to eat.

@rptrcub: @Original Andrew:

You know what’s weird? When I was single, I never had any lube around…I’d pick up some hot moon cookie, bring him home, and we’d have to wait for the buttsexx unless he’d brought some. I had a nearly constant stream of guys, you’d think I’d learn.

When I moved in with the Mr., we bought a huge bottle of Eros and some Boy Butter, and, after the first year or so, I found that we just didn’t use it all that often. Too tired, just wanna cuddle, like that. It’s been almost four years and we only went through the one huge bottle, and we still have the Boy Butter. Why is that? I don’t find him any less sexy, and kinda miss having sex every day like we used to…but then I get home, I’m playing video games, he’s working late….

Guess it’s just a tradeoff. Security, life-long love, less-and-less sex.

Mmmmm. Moon Cookies….

@rptrcubbie:

Getting an early start on After Dark, I’ve got something you can use that Swiss Navy on, bow chicka bow bow.

And hanz off the dudes at 1:58 and 3:03–they’re mine (unless sharing is your thing, wink wink)

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2008/12/04/lunchtime_quickie

@Original Andrew:

Eesh.

Guess it can’t always be twink city, huh?

Doesn’t all that fur get in your teeth?

@Tommmcatt Yet Again:

If it does then I just shake it out like a lion–roowwwrrr.

I dunno, I’ve found that I don’t have a specific type; if a dude yanks my crank, he yanks my crank, sabes?

I can def appreciate a skinny guy who’s surfer-smooth, but at the same time there’s just something about bending over a bearded, muscly macho dude that causes my payload to go thermonuclear. Perhaps I’m just a slut.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again:

And just wait till you and Mr. Catt hit 10 years… It can be a challenge to keep the fires burning. Our solution–and don’t let Oprah steal this particular bit of solid-gold relationship advice–no solo jacking off. You and your Mr. will be together like glue.

I like this secks conversation so much better than the hobo one. Please keep it up. I used to end up with the surfer-smooth types, and then I fell in love with a hairy one. The only thing that bugged me about my hirsute love was that he wouldn’t let me stroke his chest hair. That really annoyed me for some reason.

@JNOV:

Did his chest hair have that beautiful fan-like pattern? Digame.

@Original Andrew: No, it was kind of wild and unruly, BUT there was a guy who I swear might have clipped his chest hair had it not been for his Native American background. Just long enough and in that beautiful fan pattern. He let me stroke it. It was gorgeous.

Men are beautiful.

@JNOV:

God, yes, aren’t they? Sometimes I see a picture of one, whatever, even clothed and they are so breathtaking it hurts.

@Original Andrew:

Hmmm..no solo diddling, you say? interesting….

@Original Andrew:

Oh, and yes, most likely. No perhaps about it. I know I am.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: :-D I’ve been ultra gun shy since my last divorce two years ago, separated 3 years ago, and I might have to venture into the unknown again. There’ve been some casual hookups in the interim, but I think I’d like to be with someone I love. He must let me stroke his chest.

@Original Andrew:

I wish that going outside the relationship was an option, sometimes, though it could never be one for us- I am too insecure and he is wayyyyy too jealous. Same goes for threesomes. It would be a solution, though. Or does that render love inauthentic? Eh, all academic at this point….

@JNOV

Why not venture out? If you use common sense, what’s the worst that could happen?

Faint heart never won fair lady, that’s what I used to say….

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: I’m working toward that point. I was in an abusive relationship, so I have trust issues — mainly I don’t trust myself to keep myself safe. And I’m still struggling with teh crazee, so I’m not sure I’m good relationship material right now. But my dream is to find enough spare time to get involved in a club or activity I love, and I’ll meet him through a common interest. I’m almost ready, just not quite. Longing, though.

@rptrcub: A Bear Run? Oh my god. A Bear Run. I don’t want to know, but then I do, but then I don’t. I don’t want to know about the sex, no no no, but I am dying of curiousity of the social rituals. The Rules.

I know what a beer run is, but I suspect its different, it is, isn’t it?

@JNOV:

You probably already know this, but you should love teh crazee, darling…I love mine- though it isn’t nearly as well-defined as yours is.

You could at least get a little uh, tush push or whatever straight kids call it nowadays. Use it or lose it! Which brings me back to my original point, actually.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: I can appreciate a good tush push…and I love the crazee when I’m not depressed and anxious. Those are the hard times, and it’s hard on those who love me who just have to wait until they dark days pass.

@Promnight:

You should go on one, Prom, the bears I know would totally let you hang out. You wouldn’t necessarily see any sex…maybe guys kissing and holding, though.

Bear culture tends to me accepting of pretty much anybody that is cool and respectful, in my experience.

@Promnight: I think it has something to do with a Bear Market. ;-)

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: Hahahahah, you might as well be hetero. Your comment, if it could be communicated to the fundies, if they knew, that married gays, just like married hetereoeans, have less sex, they’d make gay marriage mandatory.

I will, however, say this. With long relationships, my experience is, though frequency falls, intensity and quality can experience these little burps of extreme improvement, better than single.

@Promnight:

That picture of Daryl Hannah is freaking me out, by the way. It’s like you all decided to do drag all of a sudden and I’m having trouble reconciling it with the rest of your persona.

@JNOV:

Hehe. Or maybe Bear-Sterns.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: Isn’t that the chick from Facts of Life or something?

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: I’d rather not hang with stern bears. Most bears seem to like a good time.

@JNOV: I thought it was Daryl Hannah. Maybe it is neither of them.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: Hell if I know. Some 80s chick to replace his Alice the Snorg Girl.

@Promnight — who is she?

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: My only experience of gay sexuality was this one time, in the Stone Pony, the legendary home of Springsteen and Southside Johnny, and it was 1984, and Springsteen was in the bar, hanging out, the only reason I stayed till 3 am was to see him get up on stage, it was well known he would join whatever band was playing for the last set, the rest of the time, the hometown crowd totally left him alone and pretended he wasn’t there, except everyone watched him from the corner of their eyes all night.

So I go in the mens room, and there is some horrendous sex noises coming out of the stall. This is a rock club, as hetero a place as I have ever been, yet the 15 guys in there were just acting like nothing was going on. There were sounds like things I never heard before in my life, loud groaning and thrashing and thumps and bumps against the stall walls, at first I thought maybe some people were doing some really amazing drug I had never heard of in there, and then they actually kicked out the front door of the stall.

I don’t know, I was young, 23, just not believing it was happening, the glimpse I saw makes me think there was face to face buttsex going on, with the receiver sitting on top of the toilet tank.

I guess it was a very tolerant hetero rock club, noone cared.

@Promnight: And did you say, “My Mr. Craig, you certainly have a wide stance?”

Its not Daryl Hannah, its a completely unknown starlet with one starring role to her credit, in Up the Creek. She’s the perfect vision of the unattainable perfect ideal woman that I had in the 80s. And she does look exactly like my memory of this girl I had a relationship of sorts with in 1982, for 2 and a half weeks, I have no picture, I have not seen her since, but thats my memory dammit. I’d have been better off never to have experienced that perfect dream girl, than to have done so, once, for a fleeting moment.

@SanFranLefty: I fled in confusion and fear. Sprinsgteen later took the stage, played “Quarter to Three,” and “High School Confidential” while I sat on the corner of the stage and he sweated on me.

@Promnight: Oooo! I had Toots from Toots and the Maytals sweat on me, and my kid got to dance with him on stage. Love Santa Cruz!

By the way, the Stone Pony is, or was then, the most stone cold dive bar on earth, small, smelly, dirty, crowded, loud, sticky, very sticky, torn black naugahyde chairs with stuffing falling out, Springsteen is totally sucking face with some chick at the bar for like 2 hours, I did buy him a beer and talk to him for a second. But the mens room, it was like the 6th circle of hell, you stand in line for a urinal with no water flow, the floor is wet and sucks at your shoes, I was more shocked that there was sex of any kind occurring in this wretched hellhole, than that it was homosexual sex, but I had a kind of admiration for their bravado and gusto.

I shared a joint with the lead singer of Nantucket once, I was smoking a joint and handed it up to him, he took it, made a big theatric show of toking it, and handed it back and went back to singing. Nantucket, I don’t even remember what their song was.

@Promnight: Whatever happened to Jennifer Runyon?

@JNOV: Isn’t she cute? Now I am obsessed with that long ago short romance again, dammit.

The high point of that little episode from my past is one of my fondest experiences, one of my favorite memories. I was seeing her for about a week, we worked together, she a waittress, I was a cook, we went out after work to the Deer Park, but after a few days, as I was driving her home, she started to tell me she could not see me anymore, she had a boyfriend, this just as I was pulling into her parents driveway. Yay, another dumping brought on by my insecure desperation, I was good at getting dumped. But just as she was telling me this, a fist comes through my open car window and kinda grazes my face. It was the boyfriend, he had been hiding in the bushes waiting for her to get home.

Wow, that was interesting.

Now, I was and am a total coward, right up until someone hits me, then I would enter some blind rage zone and surprise myself. I threw the door open and hit him with it, jumped out, jumped on him, took him down, and I had the presence of mind to remember something my Dad told me, this is why I love my dad. He told me, if someone forces you to fight him, there is no fair, fight dirty, cheat, but he very forcefully told me, don’t cheat a little, Fight very very dirty, bring extreme dirtiness to play immediately, else you will just have excalating retaliatory half measures, and he specifically told me, that when possible, never punch or kick at the balls, grab them and hold on like its life itself. So I reached down and grabbed his balls and squeezed with all I had, and he was my bitch, I climbed on his chest, and pinned his arms with my legs, and then commenced to pummel his face, ineffectively, but it was satisfying, with my left fist while I held his balls with my right hand.

And the motherfucker actually said to me “you better stop, you don’t who I am, you don’t know who my family is.” And then I knew I had done the right thing.

I held him down until he calmed down and told him I would let him up if he’d just go away, and I let him up, and the motherfucker sucker-punched me and put my teeth right through the middle of my cheek. I forgot the other thing dad told me, never let anyone up while they can still get up.

Its the only real fight I ever was in in my life, and I still claim victory, because I got the girl, for another 2 weeks, anyway.

A couple of days later I was actually eating dinner with her and her parents in the house, and they were so rich and waspy, it was like Thurston Howell and Lovie, and her dad says to me “so, that was some fisticuffs on our lawn the other night,” and did that upper class chuckling thing. I was so proud.

@Promnight:

I thought that the penis prerogative meant that men didn’t have to actually use the bathroom at dive bars – they’d go outside, light a cigarette, and take a leak outside the bar. Or was that just all the guys I went to bars with?

Klassy lady that I was, or drunken feminist I was/am, I’d follow them out and drop trou, squat and piss against the wall. Why should I waste 30 minutes standing in line for the one toilet in the women’s room behind 15 other women when I could piss and get it over with in 2 minutes and be back to the bar to get another drink that more quickly?

Like I said, Klassy with a K.

@Promnight: I’ve never been in a fight, and at one point I thought I should at least give my kid some sort of guidance about what to do if he ended up in one. So I turned to my barely five-foot-tall spitfire TX BFF for advice, and she told me you hit them somewhere soft like the nuts or stomach so they bend over, grab their hair and knee them in the face. Jr has never been in a fight either, but now we both know what to do if necessary.

Teeth through your cheek? Ouch!

I’m still processing “moon cookie”….

@Promnight: I drank tequila with Timothy Leary. He was on his “tour” with G. Gordon Liddy, and I tracked him down to one of the two small town bars to try and score an interview for my school’s progressive alternative rag. He was an asshole.

@SanFranLefty: You’re cool, is what you are. I never pee in parking lots or on sidewalks. My dad would, though, anywhere. A rest stop when we were driving meant he pulled the car over and you peed on the side away from the road. Or else, if you were one of the boys and needed to pee on a trip, he’d hand you an empty jar and you peed in that, in the back seat.

@JNOV: Gouge the eyes and cup your hand and slam them in the ear. You’ll pop their ear and blood will run out. Then stomp on the top of their foot.

My mom taught me all that when I was starting 6th grade/middle school. I beat up one boy and was left alone through high school graduation.

@nabisco: And Mr. SFL’s best friend watched Trey Anastasio’s new dog for him during a Phish show in the ’90s. Who was the “him” who was the asshole? Leary or Liddy?

@Promnight: I thought I was bad-ass until I lived in Spain for a while and witnessed men in business suits whip out their (uncut) dicks in the middle of the day and piss into the gutter. I knew it was time to come home to the US of A the day I walked out of my office and encountered a woman holding her big-enough-to-know-better (i.e. 5+ year old) son over the gutter as he took a shit. I found my line, and it was drawn in downtown Madrid. I came back to the U.S. ten days later after some wacky encounters with the police, U.S. Marines at the U.S. Embassy, and my friend’s landlady. (More details may be spilled at the Stinque Inaugural Party).

And oddly enough, I’ve never been back to Spain, although I’ve wanted to go back. It’s coming on 15 years since I left.

@SanFranLefty: Your mom is kickass!

@JNOV: What you do is run, if its at all possible. If you have never practiced trying to hit someone in the nuts, your just gonna miss and piss him or her off. My Dad told me that if someone left you no choice, you pick up something sharp or heavy and hit them with that, throw dirt in their eyes, stick your thumb in their eye and try to poke it out, bite their nose or ear off. Hit them with a chair, throw hot coffee in their face. He really told me this stuff, he was serious, he said never take it lightly, any fight could kill you, walk away whenever possible, and if not, bring anything and everything in reach into it, and grab their balls, hook a finger into their mouth and tear their cheek out, and he was dead serious about putting their eye out.

It was great advice, I took his advice to heart, and I had no qualms about doing it. I am a coward, and when pushed, cowards fight with life or death desperation, so knowing what I would do if I had to fight, I was even more likely to back off and try to just walk away.

Unless someone threw a punch at me. That fight I described was the only fight that actually lasted long enough to be called a fight, I did what my dad advised on several other occasions, but in every one of those, my berserker rage resulted in the other guy running off. I once found myself swinging a chair at a guy who had pulled a knife on me, screaming at him, “if you cut me, you better kill me, cause I will hunt you down and kill you when you least expect it,” holding him off with the chair like a lion tamer. He went away.

I should add one more thing. All these encounters of mine occurred when I was in high school and college in the South, where the rednecks have this thing about what I called “pecking order fighting.” The redneck boys were always obsessed with who couldd kick whose ass, and would start fights just to see if they could beat someone. But they had these insane ideas about fair fights and fighting clean. Someone would pick a fight with you for no reason but to see if they could beat you, it was a game to them, but they expected some kind of ritualized, “clean” fight. Thats really the reason I was able to get out of so many fights just by starting to go all out crazy, it really disturbed them, they would actually back away, like, “okay, I see, you don’t want to play.” If they fought by the same rules I did, they’d have killed me, I think.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: @Promnight: We won’t hurt you. I promise. OK, off to packing for an emergency run to S.C. — dad in hospital. will let y’all know.

@rptrcub: My best to you and your family, sweet Cubbie. A speedy recovery for your dad.

@SanFranLefty: I admire your ability to perform in public. I can barely use public toilets. Other people in the next stall make me tense.

@rptrcub: Oh fuck, baby. Sending up my good puppy and kitteh karma to St. Francis and the Community Organizer in the Sky that your daddy is okay.

Is someone coming by to feed your kitteh? Should I call someone I know in the ATL metroplex to check on RptrCat?

@JNOV: Honey, when it’s perform in public versus piss your pants standing in line squirming behind a bunch of big-haired Texas ladies primping in a mirror when you’re screaming “It ain’t gonna make you more pretty, let me in to take a leak”, you’ll be amazed how you can suddenly go outside and find the nearest shadow and squat and piss.

Again, can I get a choir to say, Klassy with a K.

@SanFranLefty: Its called “pee-shy,” fear of peeing if anyone can see-hear it. yeah, lots of guys have to stand and wait till the guiy next to them finishes before they can start to pee. Its so prevalent in Japan, I have read, that that is why japanese toilets have sound effects to hide the sound of the piss splashing,, so japanese women can relax and let it go.

Its all very primal, the animals in the jungle that want to eat you track you by the smell of your piss and shit, thats why we instinctively want to go off alone and hide where we do it

For some reason elevators and stairwells negate this fear and poor people pee in their elevators and stairwells, I don’t get it. I’ve never been in a dorm stairwell that didn’t smell of puke, too, is that some instinct, must puke in the stairwell, figuring out the genetic basis for that behavior will be a problem, I think. I seem to instinctively perfer to puke outdoors, under bushes, I will crawl under bushes where its cozy. haven’t done so since undergrad, but that was my rule, then.

@JNOV:

No she’s absolutely bat-shit fucking insane and shouldn’t be allowed within a mile of anyone under the age of 20. But kick-ass is how I rationalized it for the first 30-odd years of my life.

@SanFranLefty: Sounds like my mom!

@SanFranLefty: Leary.