Get Off My Lawn!

My Homeless Problem

/ Shane / 6 Comments

Homeless people present a problem for me.

On one hand, I feel so bad for them and I really want to help people in need. On the other hand, they see the giant “SUCKER” written on my forehead, and they take advantage of me as much as they can. Consequently, I have to preemptively ignore them and/or be rude to them, so as not to be scammed by them, which makes me feel like an absolutely horrible person.

I could tell stories about homeless people all day long, like the beggar in Italy who followed me for blocks screaming at me in Italian after I gave her some, but not all of my change (hey, they have 1€ and 2€ coins over there!), or the guy who used to accost me on my back porch whenever I was grilling because he “needed money to catch the bus home” (several times a week apparently), or the guy who holds the door open at Dunkin’ Donuts to guilt you into giving him something on the way out (yeah, I can get my own door, thanks), or the guy who gave me directions in my own neighborhood and then tried to get me to give him money for a homeless shelter where “you can get work, but only if you stay overnight and that costs money”, or the lady who tearfully asked Sara for grocery money for her kids and pulled her grocery list out of her cigarette pack (sorry kids, mama’s gotta smoke). But I don’t want to tell you any of those stories. I want to tell you this story instead:

When we were in New Orleans, a homeless guy singled me out of the crowd and started talking to me (I guess he could read that big SUCKER on my forehead).
“I bet I can tell you where you got those shoes.”
“Where I got my shoes?” I asked, trying to remember where I got my shoes.
“I bet I can tell you where you got those shoes!”
“Uh, okay?” I bought them in New York City on vacation. Is there a tag on them or something? How could he know that?
“Well, I don’t know where you bought them, but right now you’ve got them in New Orleans, Louisiana!”

And before I could react, he tossed a big sticky wad of goo on my shoes. I looked down incredulously, but he whipped out a cloth and started polishing my shoes. Continuing to be the biggest idiot on the planet, I thought, “Good, you better clean that crap off my shoe!”

When he was done, he stood up and said, “That will be $20 for the shoe shine.”
“No way, I’m not paying you.”
He raised his voice. “You owe me $20. Are you trying to cheat me?”
At this point, my face got red. I felt angry, but also embarrassed. I didn’t want to cause a scene. In other words, he had me right where he wanted me.
“I’ll give you $10.”
“No way, you owe me $20 for…”
I hardened my voice. “I’ll give you $10.” He knew I meant business.
“Okay,  fine.”

In other words, despite his rudeness and manipulations, I still ended up giving him $10. SUCKER.

Sometimes I even think “maybe I’m being a jerk, maybe a few bad eggs have spoiled begging for everybody”. But the other day, as I was driving by the guy by Evie’s school with the, “Homeless, please help, God bless” sign, I saw him pull a cell phone out of his pocket to check the time (to be fair, he may have been checking to see if he had any texts). I couldn’t help but feel a little cheated there. I’ve never given him money, but in the few minutes I spend sitting at that light twice a week, I’ve seen him get a lot of serious cash.

Lately, Evie’s been asking questions about them: how do they live without a house, where do they sleep, can they get married, etc. She hasn’t yet asked about giving them money or why we don’t help them, but it seems like the next logical question. How can I explain it to her? Am I teaching her not to be compassionate? The thing is, it really does eat me up inside to treat them as less than human, something to be ignored. I want to help people. If only I could separate the scammers from the honest people.

Honestly? I’m not sure any one of them is honest, based on my experiences.

Things that annoy me

/ Shane / 4 Comments
  1. Email signatures that say something like, “Please consider the environment before printing this email.” In general, there’s no reason to print emails. Which means that if I printed it out, I must have had a good reason. This email signature only makes sense in a world where people are rampantly printing out every email that comes into their inbox before reading it. Is there anybody on the planet who does this? Has their email client hooked directly to the printer? And even if they did, has anybody ever had a deep moment of spiritual awakening, changing their life around based on an email signature? Who is this email signature addressed to??
  2. We noticed a discrepancy from our bank. Basically, we wrote a check, but $60 more than the price of the check was removed from our bank account. You can see the check image from the webpage, so you can clearly see that the check is written for $X and then the account was charged for $X+$60. Very straight forward. HOWEVER. When explaining this to the bank over the phone, they agreed there was a mistake made by the bank, but they couldn’t fix it. No, of course, for that you have to go into the bank. So Sara goes into the bank and, of course, they also agree there is a mistake made, but they can’t fix it either. Sara will have to wait to talk to a manager, and she’s 3rd in line, so it’s going to be a long time. Well, she didn’t have time to wait, so now we have to come back yet again. Bank! It’s your problem! Fix it! Why is it on us to go through all this hassle, when you’re the one who made the mistake! Anyone who looks at it agrees there was a simple error made. If the process to fix mistakes is this arduous, fix the process!
  3. As a species, we’re worse as driver’s, right? I don’t know if it is because I live in Chicago, but someone cuts me off every single morning. Every afternoon, someone goes when it’s not their turn at a four way stop. Every evening, someone blows through an intersection or ignores a traffic sign. I used to be frustrated by some idiot driver every once in awhile, and now it’s every single day. I can only chalk it up to a combination of out of control feelings of individual entitlement and the amazing control, performance, and safety of the modern automobile.
  4. When people say, “Marriage is between ONE man and ONE woman!” I understand the point you’re trying to make, but aren’t you putting the wrong emphasis in there? Or are you constantly defending yourself from people who think marriage should be between ONE man and MANY women? (Or, god forbid, MANY men and MANY women.) Every time I walk down the street, I’m always like, “Hey polygamists, stop eroding the fabric of our society! Sheesh!” I just didn’t realize that polygamy was that big of a thing these days, that we need all these people shouting about it. I blame Big Love.

In this economy, we gave *ourselves* a raise

/ Shane / Leave a comment

As I have discussed several times on this blog, we have been making an effort to simplify our lives lately. This entails not only physically decluttering our house, but also just trying to cut down on the number of distractions and complications in our life.

A lot of these things are cascading: we get rid of one thing, and that makes another thing less important, so we get rid of that thing, etc. An example of this was dropping satellite t.v., which eventually led to drastically downsizing our television, which made our Netflix subscription expendable. (You could argue this was a a chicken and egg thing, because really it was the decision to watch less t.v. that made all three of these expendable, but this is sort of the order we went in.)

Anyway, just like getting rid of junk from your house makes you want to find more things to get rid of, canceling services does the same. The more things you get rid of, the more you start to question other things that you paid for. And the more things you start to cut, no matter how small, start to add up.

Between canceling cable, switching our cell phone plans, getting rid of our land line, canceling Netflix, and a few other non-essentials, we realized the other day that they all add up to roughly a 2-3% raise! It’s kind of amazing how much you spend on all of these little things, and how much you take for granted that you just have to have them.

I can verify we’re doing just fine without them. Better, even. (2-3% better, give or take)

Calling All Linguists

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Okay everyone, we need your help!

Now that we have our land, we need to come up with a name for it. We can’t just go around calling it “the land” or “the property” anymore, or even just “South Haven” (which is where it is located). We need something personal and unique to refer to it by. Something cool and original.

We’ve all been wracking our brains trying to come up with something good, but so far I’m not sure we’ve found the perfect name yet. Some of our suggestions so far are:

Shane:
The Barony
Sandy (Get it? Because it’s sandy?)

Sara:
Halbach Haven or simply “The Haven” (Obviously, also a reference to South Haven)
Peaceful Property

Evie:
Pine Place (I thought this was a pretty good suggestion for a girl her age!)
Our Sandbox

Please vote for your favorites in the comments, or better yet, give us some suggestions!

The 5 Best Toys of All Time

/ Shane / 1 Comment

When Sara sent me Wired’s list of the 5 best toys of all time, I was a little skeptical.

First off, how do you quantify “best”? Most anticipation? Best bang for the buck? Most total joy experienced by children? Second off, best is pretty subjective. How could everybody agree? Is it just one guy’s opinion? Do you take a poll? Do you install joy-o-meters in kids’ skulls and measure it electrically? What kind of sample do you use? Surely people of different races and genders would have different favorites. I was never into My Little Pony, but it certainly had a following. And this list is “of all time”. How do you account for different time periods? Does a hoop with a stick make the list?

This is Wired, so it’s probably a gadget. An iPad maybe? Surely Wired would say that’s a better toy than, say, a rocking horse (which doesn’t even have apps). But then again, most of the time these lists like to go retro. The original Nintendo? But is that better than the current Nintendo, with all of its technology? A Lite Brite? But then again, what could you really do with a Lite Brite?

Yes, I was getting a little riled up. I could only come up with one item I was absolutely sure had to be on the list: legos.

So, it was with much anticipation (and derision) that I opened up the list, ready to absolutely hate it. There is much justification over at the original article, but if you don’t want to read it, I will give you the list below:

5. Dirt
4. Cardboard Tube
3. String
2. Cardboard Box
1. Stick

TOTALLY NAILED IT.

That list is 100 times better than any list I could have composed. Without question, those are the 5 greatest toys of all time (of ALL time, with a few of them going back a lot further than my hoop-and-a-stick). I have had a heck of a lot more fun with those things than any toy anybody ever bought for me.

Which kind of makes you think, doesn’t it?

I’m not sure what would be in the total top 10, but I would vote for “a roll of tape”, and “pots and pans”. Any other additions you’d like to add?

Link via Sara.