"Cooking Attracts Roaches"

[RandySF]

Convenience food is just that. And we are not allowed many conveniences. Especially since the Patriot Act passed, it's hard to get a bank account. But without one, you spend a lot of time figuring out where to cash a check and get money orders to pay bills. Most motels now have a no-credit-card-no-room policy. I wandered around SF for five hours in the rain once with nearly a thousand dollars on me and could not rent a room even if I gave them a $500 cash deposit and surrendered my cell phone to the desk to hold as surety.

Nobody gives enough thought to depression. You have to understand that we know that we will never not feel tired. We will never feel hopeful. We will never get a vacation. Ever. We know that the very act of being poor guarantees that we will never not be poor. It doesn't give us much reason to improve ourselves. We don't apply for jobs because we know we can't afford to look nice enough to hold them. I would make a super legal secretary, but I've been turned down more than once because I "don't fit the image of the firm," which is a nice way of saying "gtfo, pov." I am good enough to cook the food, hidden away in the kitchen, but my boss won't make me a server because I don't "fit the corporate image." I am not beautiful. I have missing teeth and skin that looks like it will when you live on B12 and coffee and nicotine and no sleep. Beauty is a thing you get when you can afford it, and that's how you get the job that you need in order to be beautiful. There isn't much point trying.

Cooking attracts roaches. Nobody realizes that. I've spent a lot of hours impaling roach bodies and leaving them out on toothpick pikes to discourage others from entering. It doesn't work, but is amusing.

"Free" only exists for rich people. It's great that there's a bowl of condoms at my school, but most poor people will never set foot on a college campus. We don't belong there. There's a clinic? Great! There's still a copay. We're not going. Besides, all they'll tell you at the clinic is that you need to see a specialist, which seriously? Might as well be located on Mars for how accessible it is. "Low-cost" and "sliding scale" sounds like "money you have to spend" to me, and they can't actually help you anyway.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-tirado/why-poor-peoples-bad-decisions-make-perfect-sense_b_4326233.html

[gollygee]

1. K&R

[Fumesucker]

2. Bootstraps steeped overnight in poverty juice make an amazingly nutritious and tasty broth n/t

[LadyHawkAZ]

3. K&R

[Omar4Dems]

4. Oy. Not this again.

Tug at those heart strings while singing the blues.

[tkmorris]

6. If you have an issue with this article

Perhaps you'd like to spell it out a bit better. Emoticons do not convey your message very well by themselves.

[Omar4Dems]

7. With pleasure.

I have a big problem with highly educated huffpost writers trying to convince us in a tear-jerking article, that she's soooo desperately poor. To bilk people out of their hard-earned money.

But hey, if you think she's genuinely in dire straights then go ahead and mail her your life savings. As Barnum said, there's one born every minute...

[Jackpine Radical]

8. Your compassion overwhelms me.

I have been down & out, living in a dead car, alone with a bottle and my memories and PTSD symptoms from Vietnam, and educated. Very educated. It was many years ago now, but I won't forget.

I don't know the backstory here, and I don't need to in order to know this pain. And even is she is somehow faking it, for every such faker there are a dozen or a hundred who are not.

[marble falls]

9. And you know this how?

[tkmorris]

10. I honestly have no idea if she's truly in such "dire straights"

And I have no intention of mailing her my life savings. It does seem a tad crass though to so derisively dismiss the article when you don't know any better than I do whether she is being honest.

I will say however that it does not read like a "highly educated huffpost writer" trying to sound less so. It reads more like what you'd expect from a less educated and poverty bound person.

Your posts, on the other hand, read like the writings of someone who is cynical, unsympathetic, and whose hands tend to tighten until their knuckles turn white whenever they think someone is after their "hard-earned money". Some folks sound a lot like this whenever they discuss the issue of taxes, for example.

How do you feel about food stamps Omar? Disability benefits? The free lunch program at schools? Does your cynicism extend that far?

[catnhatnh]

11. Well WOW....

You've been here over 4 years and post twice a month on the average. And you used up the ENTIRE month of November to warn us that the writer seems too articulate to really be poor????
\

[JDPriestly]

13. Education does not guarantee a living wage. Very little does today.

Poverty is everywhere in the US. College grads, people with lots of degrees can be poor especially if they owe student loans. You can't absolve student loan debt in bankruptcy court any more. That in itself impoverishes many Americans who are well educated.

[Fumesucker]

18. JK Rowling is these days an extremely wealthy woman

But at one time she was subsisting on welfare while desperately plotting and writing books, looking for that break.

The break came for Rowling, as it came for Stephen King, another extremely wealthy writer who was once dead broke but it doesn't come for everyone who deserves it.

[Skidmore]

5. If you are on social media, please

distribute this article. I have and have already gotten response to it. Let's spread a little reason for empathy. Too little of that right now.

[MrModerate]

12. More than anything else, this highlights . . .

How screwed up healthcare funding is in the US.

The author is (I'm-not-a-doctor) clinically depressed. If she could get decent healthcare, like in most developed countries, her ability to cope -- to make those better decisions -- would increase a hundredfold.

Do we need any further proof of the costs we all pay for adequate healthcare not being available to everyone?

[NBachers]

14. I've been there- I know the frantic hopelessness- I know the bad choices made to anaesthatize myself

enough to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

I know about being the low-hanging fruit the cops keep going after- "This guy looks like easy pickin's- he must have something illegal about himself."

I know about getting put in jail on my birthday because my car's too outrageously illegal to drive.

The bald tire on the front goes flat, and when you jack up the car to remove it, the extra weight on the back blows out a rear tire.

The baby's crying in the background while my wife asks if I've scraped up enough money for formula yet.

While I'm out, the landlord removes all my property from my home and immediately moves someone else in. That's what I come home to.

A frantic, haunted look in my eyes every time I look in the mirror.

"The People of the United States of America vs. NBachers" - the consequences of a desperate move I made to rescue us from poverty.

And a thousand other things.

Some days I'd shudder when I closed the door to go out in the morning, because the effort it took to get to that point was harder than the effort most people put into their entire day. And I still had the whole day before me.

This woman speaks the truth. She knows; she's there. She ain't a shill, she ain't a huckster. This is what it's really like.

[Mnemosyne]

20. Been there and headed back again, I hear you.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

15. "impaling roach bodies and leaving them out on toothpick pikes to discourage others from entering."

Crosses don't work either.

[grilled onions]

16. The Streets ARe Full Of People In This Position

You can also see them in shelters or vehicles where kids have to do their homework by headlights. SO many have a fit when they read that they drink or smoke or eat fast food. One must think if they are simply bad habits or something to help them survive the helplessness of their situation. If you are sitting in a warm house with rent paid for you do not look at life quite the same way as one who is looking for a warm grate to sleep on. That booze may be the only way to get through the night. For some smoking takes the place of food. No it's not good for them but neither is dealing with rotten teeth complete with infection surging through their body. Neither is having to skip meds for they should be taking for medical conditions they may have. A fast food meal may be their last hot meal for awhile. It may remind them of better times or to feel like they are part of the human race if only while they savor that carb rich meal. It's also a time to actually eat where it is warm and when people are not always pointing at you as if you carry every disease known to mankind.
It is much easier to condemn then it is to try and help the many who may be in dire straights.
As for helping out no one says you have to drop a coin in their tin(if they have one). If you distrust people that much you can always drop a case of food at the local food pantry or write them a check.
Yes we have scammers and crooks every day--people taking when they should be giving. All we have to do is look to Washington to find a building full of them!

[Skittles]

17. I remember a rightwinger asking me why I gave food to the homeless

I answered, "Because they're hungry."

[Liberal_in_LA]

19. kick