Television In Bed

The other day I signed up for food stamps online because they,re cool and I,m cool and I thought we would work well (alliteration) together. I wanted to do it a long time ago but I was in school and they don,t give people in school free food because they want you to learn how to steal hummus from Safeway. It would have been nice though. I was only making four hundred dollars a month for a long time. That was fun. I was spending a lot of time with the great folks at the Food Bank back then. Eventually I saw them as part of my family. I miss them.

Luckily, the people at the food stamp office were of the same stock. They are a diverse, filthy group of creatures. There is the ubiquitous white woman with smoke-stained blonde hair that moves her head rapidly and continuously because she is either permanently, or currently blasted out of her mind on meth or pills or a mix. Next to her is the mid-twenties black guy with headphones playing ghetto fight music and rapping along loudly and proudly with accompanying hand motions, dirty looks, and verbal threats if you accidentally make eye contact. There is also the ,,reformed,, Hispanic gang member with reading glasses and infected tattoos eating pistachios and throwing the shells all over the place while balancing a wet cigarette on his knee that he plans on smoking later. And my personal favorite, the young woman of ambiguous racial makeup that has replaced her once full eyebrows with with a neat bendy design wearing faded flare jeans with no back pockets and the bottom eight inches are soaked because they are too long and drag on the ground when it,s raining. She is probably wearing either two different colored Converse shoes or a pair of Guggs (off-brand Ugg boots). Her hair is always wet and wavy and her skin is either covered in sores and pockmarks or a ghastly, sick color like a glass of milk that somebody put two tablespoons of coffee in.
Ryuichi Sakamoto - 1996
I had to get up bright and early yesterday morning in order to meet with somebody there for them to tell me I make too much money to receive any benefits. That,s the end of the story so you don,t have to read anymore if you don,t want. I got there a little after seven and was met with a nice long line of smokers waiting to get in. After waiting a bit we were herded in like cattle to the bolt gun. I was greeted by three sheriffs who were there to ensure that weaklings like me don,t get raped to death by somebody trying to take their spot in line.

I was probably the one hundredth person there but luckily I was only the third or fourth person called back to talk to a tiny Russian man about why I can,t have any free food. I even lied and told them I don,t have a car but it didn,t matter. The system beat me. I guess I,m not as punk as I thought I was.

In a strange M. Night Shallyman twist, I ran into my scrawny friend while I was there. He will soon start collecting more unemployment money than I have ever made in my life. He was also approved for the maximum allowance of food stamps. It makes sense though because he is a pretty punk guy. He puts cereal in or on almost everything he eats and he was just hanging out with some Commies in Cuba the other day. He also skateboards and brings snacks to band practice.