# Old Stories - #22



## The Cack (Dec 21, 2011)

*Travelogue #24*​*Plastic-Sealed Rectangles*​ 
Does anybody else do this: Okay, suppose you're walking in a strange town. Perhaps you've just disembarked from mass transit. Not only are you poor, you're broke. Not even enough money to make a phone call to relatives. Maybe you do have enough. We'll make this a logic proof: Let q = "Tom has enough money."

You've forgotten the phone numbers by now--"was it three-seven-eight, or eight-seven-three", getting some sort of hunger-spawned temporary dyslexia... and then you start to weigh the idea that a roll at the supermarket costs $.59, and $.75 plus $.48 on food stamps, well those two combined--cash and EBT--could surely buy two rolls? 

Does the math check out? You weigh the figures like a moron--"fifty-nine times two is what... dollar-something... and this is Florida... and do they tax food? I don't know, this is Florida, after all... but seventy-five cents plus forty-eight's like a dollar-something... that's cutting it close, and then you've got tax, which could be what?... this is Florida, man... Jew York... and its probably like ten percent, so hypothetically, to get two poppy seed rolls, I'm gonna need like ten more cents... and then, what happens if I drop the change? Maybe they'll just give me the rolls..."

Let p = "Tom is losing his mind."

Hunger brings on idiot math... and before you know it, you're in a Publix supermarket, grabbing two rolls in an unnecessary plastic bag, deciding NOT to shoplift them because you couldn't run because you're 1) dyslexic, 2) stupid at math, 3) exhausted, and 4) where would you run, anyhow? With your luck, you'd probably run right to the police station! But, you're on line, the cashier looks like a pretty girl, but not too pretty--ugly enough for retail!! And before you know it, you're making small-talk, hoping she makes a cashier-error in your favor, try to be sly about using food stamps.

"So, I'm gonna pay two ways: one in cash, and the rest on ebbit," you'd say. Which is perfectly normal--everyone pays this way, and "ebbit" is codeword for EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer)... but goddamnit, the pretty cashier pushes "debit" because she thinks that I can't pronounce "debit". 

"Manager OVERRIDE!" she practically yells over the intercom, and then you realize that hunger is making you really sensitive to sound and vision--and when you say "my bad, I meant food stamps, you know, E-B-T, ebbit ebbit," but by now, its too late... The cashier doesn't care the ebbit ebbit sounds like a frog... You're too stupid to feed yourself, you can't do math, and worse you're not even funny. Or clever... or going to be housed by the cashier, and you won't be able to find out the nutritional value of vaginal secretions because YOU SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN AN OFFICE JOB, YOU MORON, and now, even successful, with the manager doing the "oh, its alright, routine"--clearly stripped away from her more intense duties that hold higher precedent than rectifying the young moron's two-roll purchase amidst the beeps and boops and have-a-nice-day-you-too's, everything works out, the people in line behind you are boring holes into your skull with indignation-daggers and feign-staring at _Us Weekly, _you now have two rolls! 

Two fucking rolls, and guess what? Don't claim victory. You don't even have any water, so swallowing two dry rolls is going to be a task of the century. And, where will you sit? Of course, the only option to a bus shelter, and lo and behold, just as you sit, the bus pulls up, the driver looks at your face chewing on rolls, opens the door, no one exits the bus, and you've just fucked up mass transportation AGAIN delaying the bus, and Florida hates you. Alot.

Again, you say? Yeah, because you know damn well you didn't pay for the train/bus/whatever that brought you here in the first place, and you're basically a leech stowaway eating two flour rolls in fucking Jupiter, Florida while other men, younger than you, climb into oversized SUV's on their way to eat a healthy dinner and find out the exact nutritional value of the almost-pretty cashier's vaginal secretions, which she will then find out the exact protein value of his sweet semen exchange, and you get a mental vision that when you ejaculate by masturbating (because you haven't been laid for months) into a condom that a homeless shelter gave you because god-help-us-all if Idiot You had the opportunity to reproduce another illegitimate child, that only dust would come out, and that that dust probably has the same nutritional value of two rolls bought from a Publix supermarket...

So, don't judge ME when you find a discarded plastic baggy lined with a white powder, because, goddamnit, I'm hungry, and even if an amateur drug dealer gave some high school kids some confectionary sugar to snort, well, that has a caloric content, and that'll lead to something... but now, the coke or crack or crushed aspirin or bitter confectionary sugar is swirling in your bloodstream, and yes, drugs and poverty are the scourge of the earth... but now you don't mind that piece of roll lodged in your throat, that the world is beautiful, your gums are numb, and tomorrow is another day...


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## finn (Dec 21, 2011)

Wow, unapologetically unromantic street stories, maybe we should have the teenagers read this...


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## bryanpaul (Dec 21, 2011)

..........and one day you snap!............"I AINT GOT ENOUGH FUCKIN MONEYS"..."WHERE'S YOUR FUCKIN MANAGER?"....."I'LL TAKE A FUCKIN PIPEWRENCH TO YOUR GODDAMN TRASH COMPACTOR AND SHOW YOU HOW MUCH A FUCKIN PACK OF RAMEN COSTS"........no shame in the game dog.........git moneys.....eat food....drink dranks............. dont stress dude....(even tho i completely identify with all of this).... fuck 'em.....as of right now...you need not sacrifice your dignity for a couple of "rolls"......... 'specially when you can play the fuck out of your guitar and yer buddy kills it on the saw...........if you go to sleep hungry with 1.37 to your name...in the end, the joke is on the fuckhead who wouldnt cut you a deal on a "roll".......fuck 'em


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## The Cack (Dec 22, 2011)

bryanpaul said:


> ..........and one day you snap!............"I AINT GOT ENOUGH FUCKIN MONEYS"..."WHERE'S YOUR FUCKIN MANAGER?"....."I'LL TAKE A FUCKIN PIPEWRENCH TO YOUR GODDAMN TRASH COMPACTOR AND SHOW YOU HOW MUCH A FUCKIN PACK OF RAMEN COSTS"........no shame in the game dog.........git moneys.....eat food....drink dranks............. dont stress dude....(even tho i completely identify with all of this).... fuck 'em.....as of right now...you need not sacrifice your dignity for a couple of "rolls"......... 'specially when you can play the fuck out of your guitar and yer buddy kills it on the saw...........if you go to sleep hungry with 1.37 to your name...in the end, the joke is on the fuckhead who wouldnt cut you a deal on a "roll".......fuck 'em


 
Damn right. 
(anywho, these stories are from a few years ago. I've since upgraded to 'bagel' status ;-D)


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