Series: Benefits Of Being A Hobo

You don't have to feed fatty.

Not to be too crass, but let's be realistic, being a hobo means never having to buy your child three Double Quarter Pounder Extra Value Meals. And, of course, you'll never have to carry him upstairs to bed when he falls asleep in his bowl of gravy. Being a hobo inherently brings plenty of problems along with it, but at least back problems aren't one of them. (That is, back problems that come from carrying a large child upstairs, because, for a hobo, "there is no upstairs, there." People say that you'll never see a fat hobo, but that's not true. Some fat people become hobos, but hobos rarely ever become fat. Nobody overindulges on dumplings or biscuit-halves. Well, nobody except Biscuit Thompson, who was said to be the "biscuit-eatingest s.o.b. to ever set foot between the rails". Although, a cursory Google search of "Biscuit Thompson" only turns up a "Thompson Biscuit Company"...wait a second...you don't think...?

Poll Results Reveal Stabbing Okay To A Point

The poll results this past week were shocking to me. The question to America was: If a hobo stabbed you for your socks, what would you lament the most?

The breakdown went like this:

9% of America said they would lament "Being stabbed for my socks."

27% of America said they would lament "My suddenly cold feet and my loss of stomach blood."

27% of America also said they would lament the fact that "That's eight dollars that I'll never get back."

36% of America lamented that "If I die, I won't have a cool story to tell."

I must say, this breakdown is chilling to me. I will admit that I was one of the 9% of Americans that felt the worst part about being stabbed for my socks, would be the fact that I just got stabbed for my socks. Of all the things to be stabbed for, you chose to stab me for my socks? That, to me, is much worse than not having a story to tell.

I also thought that more people would be upset about their loss of stomach blood. You do know that you need stomach blood to live, right? Of course, that may be partially my fault, because I could change the poll to allow multiple selections, but I think that makes a poll lazy, and I don't want a lazy poll.

The two most disturbing findings of my science were the fact that 27% of America would lament losing the eight dollars that they paid for their socks. Are you crazy? Being stabbed for your socks is much worse than losing the money you paid for them. Wouldn't you give somebody eight dollars to not stab you? If the choice is being stabbed, or handing over eight bucks to avoid a stabbing, I'm giving them a ten and asking for change! You people value money more than life! I am sad for you.

And then there is the 36% of Americans who would lament not having a story to tell if they die. Are you kidding me? Is this how far we've come as a society that you wouldn't mind being stabbed, as long as you lived to tell the story? Are you going to talk to schools about being stabbed by a hobo for your socks, because your buddies aren't going to want to hear it more than twice. And it's not like it's an unusual story. Research shows that 13% of Americans have been stabbed by hobos. I think maybe those 36% of Americans are desperate for attention and their own stories just aren't interesting enough. Nobody wants to hear about the time you had a flat tire and you called AAA and they fixed it and then you went home.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this poll. I'll have another up and running soon.

Hobospiration

(Note: "Hobospiration" is a combination of the words "Hobo" and "Inspiration", not "Hobo" and "Perspiration".)

I admire Woody Guthrie. I don't know too much about him, but I know hobos like him. And I think he probably got a lot of inspiration from hanging around the common hobo. (One day, I'll talk about how David Lee Roth got inspiration from hanging around the super hobo.)

If I were to one day decide that I wanted to become a great musician and singer, I would probably take a few weeks off of work and ride the rails with the common hobo and get plenty of hobospiration. I imagine I could probably gain enough life experience in those few weeks to be able to write at least one album, if not two.

I would probably also release an EP of stabbing songs (aka "hobo spirituals").

I Could Be An Editor

I've been mulling over an idea to edit and compile a hobo cookbook. However, the problems are many. Chief among them, Chief, is the fact that I don't know any hobos. Second, I don't have any spare cash to print anything up at Kinkos. Thirdly, cookbooks need recipes and I have exactly one recipe, and it's not even a recipe really, it's just grilled bologna at this point.

But, I'm not going to give up on the idea just yet.

Aside from the three biggest obstacles mentioned above, there is also the concern about hobo compensation. How much would I pay the hobos. Would they want money? Smokes? Ham? I have no idea. Also, my other main concern would be legitimacy of recipes. I don't want Big Leg Little Leg giving me a recipe for lemon carp if there's never been such a thing. I'm looking for recipes that have stood the test of time, not stuff that hobos think up on the fly for a pack of Reds.

Time will tell if this thing has legs. It wouldn't be the first cookbook I've started that fell by the wayside.