iPhone Phund Now Up $450. Thanks Mary

And so we're almost there. Thank you Mary for $100. Mary and I made our first television commercial together in 1984, or rather, we both worked for an advertising agency that made commercials for clients. We were not in the actual spot. Thank God. But we had this wild gay client who wanted us to spend a lot of agency money, arguably his money, on making him happy in LA. And so we did. We also did a complete survey of local convenience stores and hot tubs and spent some time riding a conveyor belt, upstairs and down  in one, searching for the toilet. Are these the kind of stories you want to hear homeless people telling - about their exploits in LA not being homeless? Of course not. But fuck you. What you would know about being homeless or fucking about in LA could fill a thimble. And that's not the point here anyway. The point here is that the face of homeless has changed. Changed drastically. And although you may believe that TV commercial making/conveyor belt riding people should, simply by their virtue of being complete twats, be homeless, then so be it. We have lives too you know. We are you. You just don't know it yet.

How much does it cost to be homeless?

"You have $400 USD coming so you can adjust your thermometer and perhaps get to work...book references that prove the thesis. I dont agree that you need an I phone to get a job and I really dont want to debate this...I really dont care what you do with the 400...none of my business..."

And so began last week, the promise of some small work, a contract to write a book, and a promised retainer that never showed up. By Wednesday, I had not heard that the money had been sent and so, sent a follow-up note. In response, I was told that the job had been cancelled and would never happen - a book the supposed author had already registered a website for and sent me an outline, contract and several detailed notes about.  "So what happened?" you ask? Well, quite simply, he reneged. Or more, quite possibly, didn't have his head screwed on properly in the first place. (Continued...)

This blog. aHBiNYC is now available as an eBook. It covers the writer's homeless experiences in New York City from September 11, 2011 through January 2013 in 245 pages and 50 chapters. To order simply use the PayPal button in the sidebar, send $10, and include your email address in the PayPal memo form. Thank you.

iPhone Phund Now Up $350. Thanks John

And as another $50 comes in for the phund, another $400 in projected real income goes out the door. As I toggled to send John's $50 from PayPal to my bank, a job I had actually signed a contract for, just went up in smoke, billed as a dual f-up between a bank and a previously dependable employer - and so that $400, which would have put the phone phund over the top, now will not materialize in the anytime foreseeable future. Which means I don't get a phone, yet. And that makes job search impossible. Is anyone tired of me just treading water and getting nowhere? I know I am. And so I sit, a fully functional, non-substance abused, not (yet) clinically depressed, university educated, extremely previously successful business person - benched for the spring season, the most probable season for me to have found employ. And the contract was not just $400, it was $800 over two months. Not a lot of money at all, but a whole lot more than zero. A whole lot more. And so back to the drawing board.

Last month I was asked to do a guest lecture at a class for Columbia University, the same class that has used this blog as a reference on contemporary homelessness. But when the subject of pay came up, there was a distinct stall. There was no pay, or to a point, the university did not pay. "So let me get this straight", I said, "the university is in the business of charging money to teach classes on public health and homelessness as a predominant social ill, but they do not pay homeless people who contribute to the content of the course?" My question was responded to immediately with the logic, if indeed this could be called logic, that "other speakers were not paid for these guest lecturing jobs either". And other speakers meant lawyers, other academics, public health officials and practitioners and essentially, people who already had a job that a CV credit from Columbia would certainly benefit - not homeless people. And indeed, I doubt there's a line of homeless people stretching around the block on campus just begging to go in and talk for free so they can burnish their CVs with that oh so valuable name. And so I turned the request down, despite the professor being a genuinely concerned and accomplished activist in the field, because his employer was doing nothing more than exacerbating the problem in my case. Shit, is this so difficult? I need paying work, not frigging public service work.

And so I refine this pitch. If anyone out there needs work done, writing work, research on homelessness work, advertising or international marketing work, please let me know. I'm a whole lot more keen to work than I am to beg. But if you can still help on the phone phund, I won't turn that down. A man simply does what he needs to do.

A Charity Case: Random Thoughts on the Elephant in the Room

On The General Malaise

Nobody wants to be a charity case. I certainly didn't. As opposed to having lost my job in America, I was returning from a prolonged economic crisis overseas to see if I could restart a career stalled by America's bumbling with the Axis of Evil, an ill-conceived foreign policy concept that essentially created three new reasons for three new wars but did nothing except kill business for American companies overseas after 9-11, mine included. I had a company in South Korea, not an Axis country, but all the same, saw business grind to a halt with simply the name Korea being tainted for the then foreseeable future. And so I worked tirelessly to rebound from that over the next ten years. But it didn't work. So I came home. And that hasn't worked either. Yet.

USA: #1 in poverty

But I could never have seen the disaster that would be America on my return. The omnipresence of a repressive police state, the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York spreading country, and indeed worldwide, within weeks of my return. The general depression of the place - Obama all but sold out to the banksters and poverty rapidly rising all across the country with nary a word about it in the national debate - THAT elephant in the room. That 99%. In the graph here, America is #1. #1 in relative poverty worldwide (and Japan or Korea don't even make the list - or anywhere is Asia for that matter) pointing to income disparity being our problem and the difference between collectivist, socialist, and individualistic, capitalist, societies.)

And this week's political distraction being Rush Limbaugh calling a college student a 'slut' as the G8 conference  is quietly moved from Chicago to Camp David under the threat that Chicago could gain it's 1968 notoriety back again with mass protests against both the G8 and NATO summits being held in the city at the same time. Too bad. I hope people hit the streets anyway. It's needed. More needed than ever.

On Being an Educational Tool

I continue to have mixed feelings over this blog being used as a reference for homeless studies (see sidebar above) as I come to see what has become described by some as The Homeless Industrial Complex: "those organizations (who) rely on the continuation of the homeless problem for their own survival; if the homeless problem goes away, so do the donations and grants. The homeless problem will remain intractable until the homeless-industrial complex which sustains it is broken." 

As this blog is used by one arm of Columbia University for research, another, the Columbia Center for the Prevention of Homelessness Studies (CHPS) sites no less than fifty (yes, 50) Ph.D.s proffering to address the homeless issue as well. Now one has to ask themselves, didn't the boss ever come in one morning and give the entire staff a gigantic ass chewing over the dismal state of the numbers? "Look goddamit, we're spending ooddles of grant monies and our work has proved to be completely and totally ineffective! You're all fired!" No. Of course not - because if the boss did that, they might be out on the street as well. And so the system keeps feeding itself. 

For the record, I've contacted CHPS and offered my services as a researcher but have yet to receive any response. Why is it that I imagine a room full of academics pecking away at computers and looking up and saying (in unison), "A real homeless guy, working here? Nah, that wouldn't work".

On The Phone Thing

There is some light at the end of the tunnel here. With a few more expected donations by the end of the week, I should have a phone by the following week. If you can help, please do. I still need to pay the service fee each month of at least $50.

On Work

By the end of this month I will have made nearly $550 honest, writing website copy, beginning a soon to be announced book with a friend and participating in a homeless research study for NYU. But that's a far cry away from being called a living wage, let alone paying rent. Hopefully the phone will take away yet one more invisible wall and get me back on the track to some real work. But to do that means extracting some miniscule percentage from that well entrenched 1%. Better wish me some luck on that. I hear they're holed up at Camp David these days...

iPhone Phund Now Up $300. Thank You Kim

And it looks like we're more than 50% there, and we would have been, without the mugging. Yes, muggings cost money. In this case, $100. And it's my fault. My fault only. Even victims blame the victim when it's justified. I shouldn't have been where I was, when I was, with that much money in my pocket.

But I need to register this very important contribution, keep transparent and get on with things. And yes. It sucks. As you can see from the thermometer on this post, the hundred bucks looked damn good on a $500 goal, but as you can see on the thermometer in the left sidebar, I added the lost hundred to the total goal, so well, it's like treading water some days. Point is not to drown. I've had some offers of work as of late, and hopefully, even some small jobs will come through - writing and web design and such. Thanks to all of who who have stuck with me, supported this effort and kept me pretty damn bright throughout even bruisers and bus stations. It does all work in the end. That's the experiment, right?