On Poverty

Those of you returning to SSS will notice a distinct lack of obnoxious advertisements on the right hand side of your screen. First-timers here will notice that there are no clumsy offers to make your wang bigger or meet new vampire singles drifting between this current entry and the archives. 

I say good for me – the nice folks at AdSense were just making sure that I didn’t compromise my artistic integrity by falling into that cushy suburban malaise I so dread.  Suffering is the root of all art, and as I no longer have ad dollars buying me petty distractions like food, I will suffer aplenty. 

Which brings us to the point of this post.

I don’t know who among my readership has really suffered the perils of honest to goodness poverty, but it’s a bitch.  Less so for me now than when I was a kid – I’m educated, I have a support network, and in theory my advanced degree might get me some manner of gainful employment.  In short, I have perspective. 

Perspective allows me to say things like “Ha ha ha, Mastercard, go ahead and garnish the wages I don’t have, ha ha ha amirite?!”  and not only mean it, but say exactly that to any other creditor who calls me looking for their money.  Fuck you, usurious credit card bitches – you can’t garnish wages I don’t have, and filing bankruptcy is just my way of crapping in your hat and then laughing in your face when you put on your poop hat.   Nobody can break my knees, and since I don’t own any property, what’s the worst that could happen? 

Of course, in between my spats with my creditors, I still have to deal with the day-to-day problems of not having two red cents to my name.  What follows is my advice to my fellow poverty stricken fellows, be they writers, students, or just shiftless layabouts.

1) Eat, and Eat Well – poor people migrate to ramen and mac-and-cheese because it’s something like 79 cents a box, completely ignoring the fact that for about five dollars, they could get TEN TIMES as much whole grain pasts, garlic, oil, parmesan, and diced tomatoes.  In other words, for half the cost long term, they could eat twice as well twice as often, and NOT get scurvy.  Poor people also love the dollar menu at Burger King, again ignoring that with just a little time and effort, they could eat meat that doesn’t contain feces and people and any combination thereof, in greater quantity at lower cost.  There’s that whole perspective thing.

2) Exercise Often – Your own body will provide you hours of entertainment, and not just the kind that the church sends you to hell for.  Since you’ve put down the Popeyes 2.99 chicken special in favor of two good roasters and a bag of gold medal flour, you might start to get a little soft in the middle.  Luckily, even as the anti-entitlement hate machine moves forward to crush anyone making less than CHA-CHING per year, we still have enough parks for you to waddle your fat ass around.  Stave off the diabetes – walk around the track, kick some pigeons - fun for all!

3) Fit that Kit – Another thing poor people love is either A) clothes that they can’t afford, but that look totally ridiculous, or B) clothes they can afford that look totally ridiculous.  I never miss an opportunity to pimp Russell Smith’s Style as it will make your life about ten bajillion times better just by reading it, but you don’t even need to follow all his excellent advice on buying cap-toed oxford shoes instead of the hideous sneakers that some rap guy told you to buy, or a nice sport coat instead of a full on Canadian tuxedo, but you can at the very least get your second-hand clothes tailored.  Find a place that says “alterations” and go in.  There will be either a Middle Eastern / Italian man or an Asian woman (there are no exceptions) and you will give them from 5 to 20 dollars per item of clothing, and when they are done, your ten dollar department store jeans will look like they cost 100 dollars and were custom fit to you, because they were. 

The hard part about making the most of poor circumstances is getting started.  After all, your normal food budget for the day is probably about ten dollars, and I’m suggesting that you spend, like 100 bucks on food all at once.  Well, this is how math works:  Take one hundred dollars to the store, and with one of those dollars buy some pens and some paper.  Now, as you go about your daily life, put a hash mark on that paper.  Once you get to ten hash marks, see if you need to buy food again.  Oh, you don’t?  The cost was exactly the same, and you had more variety in your diet and you don’t have the gout?  EPIC WIN!

The same thing goes for your clothes – embrace style, not fashion, and see if you can’t make your hundred-dollar tailored outfit last twice as long as your hood-fabulous fifty dollar made-in-a-sweatshop, XXXL baggy Nike ensemble.  Exercise, and notice how you feel better and think more clearly.  Miraculous!

This does mean that you’ll probably have to give up on that 50” LCD flat screen TV you’ve got on lay-away at Kmart, and the same goes for the X-Box 360 at Rent-a-Center.  You might want to go ahead and cancel your cable TV while you’re at it, and consider putting in a land line and answering machine instead of toting around a brand new iPhone with internet, TV, and unlimited texting. 

These are hard sacrifices to make, and I know it’s a lot easier to work on your excuses than to, you know, work, but I have faith in the ability of all individuals, even poor destitute mouth breathers like you.