Keep Off The Tools

Hobobob, are you a bad man?

No, but bad things have happened to me. I've never hurt anyone that didn't deserve it. I never lied to anyone that deserved the truth, although I have lied to those who should be minding their own fucking business. I've never stole from anyone unless they stole whatever it was from me first. I've never killed anyone, but I have taken the lives of millions of people in my stories. I've never committed Grand Theft Auto, but I've played the game numerous times on my Playstation 2. I've never committed a felony, but I have been at large. I've never leeched off anyone, but I've mooched off close friends.

But I feel like a bad man now. A very bad man. Why? Oh, so good that you care so much to ask. Well, I came across this news report on the Internet from The Arizona Republic.

When Dave Talley, a Tempe homeless man, found a backpack this month at the light-rail station near Rural Road and University Drive, his first thought was to look through the bag for the owner's identification or contact information. Instead, he found an envelope containing about $3,300 in cash.

The temptation to keep the money was almost overwhelming, he said. Then, his conscience kicked in. "The reality set in that it wasn't my money and it needed to be turned over," he said.

Being homeless in Tempe Arizona must be a fucking cake-walk. I mean, really. $3,300 in cash? In a backpack? With no obvious ID? C'mon people. I'll let you know now. DON'T do that shit to Hobobob. I'm serious. Does that make me a bad man? I don't know. Maybe. But I'll tell you one fucking thing. I'd view such a find as a gift from God. The article continues...amazingly.

There are countless things a man like Talley could have done with the money. A recovering drug addict, Talley lives in a system of shelters run by the Tempe Community Action Agency. He's trying to get back on his feet, juggling volunteering at the agency with part-time work. That weekend, his bicycle - his only mode of transportation - needed to be fixed, a major expense. "I could've done a lot of things with the money," he said, "but none of them would've been right."

Now, you can actually believe that homeless people ARE mentally ill or just downright dysfunc-tional. There are countless things that Mr Tally could have done with the money...are you kidding me? I have an answer to that. There are JUST A FEW things Hobobob DID do with the money. First off, I would take a third of that shit and open an account at a reputable whore house. Like the one that Governor Eliot Spitzer went to. Get those hot assed motherfuckers that cost a lot. Yep, get one of those fucking revolving accounts. Then probably two or three times a week I would stroll in, get a...you guessed it...a blow-job and say, "Put THAT SHIT on my tab."

Then I would go to my favorite bar, to my favorite manager and give him $1,100 to open a revolving account. Then, probably two or three times a week I would stroll in have a dozen boilermakers and say, "Put THAT SHIT on my tab." And what would I do with the last third? As Pink Floyd would say, "...take that cash with both hands and make a stash." Yeah, you HAVE TO HAVE a stash. How can anyone live without a stash? I don't have a stash, but then again I'm not living. Take my word for it though. I would have a stash! Now I would like to just finish my coverage of this nonsensical article for you.
Talley called TCAA employee Sam Sumner, who told him to bring it to the agency's offices - they'd get in contact with the police and look through the bag for clues about its owner. The bag contained no wallet or ID, but later that week, Sumner found a small flash drive containing theresume of ASU student Bryan Belanger, the bag's owner.

"Oh, Hobobob, you ARE a bad man. This homeless guy has a big heart, he's a good Samaritan. He proves that people can be good." Yeah...good and stupid. That TCAA employee should have taken that cash himself. I bet he was afraid that he could have been reported by Talley if he did. If it was me, I would have split it in half and given it to the homeless guy and kept the rest. Shit, come on people! Look at the fucking facts for a minute. Let me ask you...you have $3,300 in cash. When was the last time in you life that you ever carried that much money on you? When? I never did. I never did! It's not that I never had it, I just never did. I mean, I was given three grand in cash once...but I was homeless. I had no checking account, no credit cards, not even a home to stash it under the mattress. I HAD to carry it on me. Other than that...never.

This is 2010 for Crissakes! There are a million ways to carry that kind of money without employing a sack with a dollar sign on it! Let me ask you though. If you HAD that money on you...do you think you'd leave it behind you at a rail station? OR would your ENTIRE MIND be focused on that cash until you got it where it was supposed to go? If home, HOME. If school, SCHOOL. No, you'll sit it down next to you at a rail station and then get up and walk off like it was lunch that your mother packed for you. No gang, I don't fucking think so. Well, Hobobob, what in the world do you think happened?

Look, for all intents and purposes, this money was DRUG money my little angels. Either the kid was stoned and trying to score some dope, at that amount it had to be cocaine, 0r he thought that the station was a 'drop off'. For all of you non-felons out there, dope dealers don't get caught with both the cash and the dope. If they do, that means they go from Possession to Dealing. A much higher sentence. No, you leave it at a drop, and then you go to the pick up. Mr. Tally must have arrived between the kid and the dealer's pick up dude. Look, it was a damn college student. You KNOW it was a drug deal gone bad.

Check out the name of the street OUTSIDE of the rail station. Rural Road? What? I got a feeling that the place doesn't resemble Beverly Hill outside. Shit, I'd bet you that it doesn't even resemble New Jersey. Yeah, it was probably a ghetto out there. And where is a ghetto, there are the very depressed and destitute. And were there are the depressed and destitute you have people using drugs to escape from such an environment. And when you have people that need such an escape, you have drug dealers. Simple math.

I'm not trying to be a cynic to be self- serving. But damn if I wouldn't have kept that fucking backpack. It's just the law of money anyway. Law Of Money? Yeah, there is a definite law of money. Money has a design. It is engineered, just like wampum among the Indians. The sole purpose of money is to pass from one hand to the other for services or products. This is called commerce. When a lot of money changes hands, you have a healthy economy. When you don't, you have a recession, followed by a depression. Money must move from hand to hand or it is without purpose. Money has a natural inclination to do so, an urge. When it doesn't, it's then unnatural.

Mr. Tally's actions therefore were unnatural. Simple. Hey, when I was homeless, my brother and I used to walk the streets and look down. It became a natural thing for us to look down as we moved from street to street. Not really searching. It wasn't as if we walked up and downtown with our heads bowed low constantly. No. We had just developed a Sixth Sense where we would or could just stop, look down, and there would miraculously be money at our feet. I shit you not. My brother had this Jedi power more than I did, he was strong in The Force. This kid almost made a living out of finding $20 dollar bills on the street. I made a part time living.

But we realized one thing that was amazing. Money FINDS YOU. Yes, that's right. Billionaires, millionaires, lotto winners...we sometimes believe that they have some amazing business acumen or luck, but it's neither. Money has a MIND of its own. It searches you out and finds you, to what amount is up to it. $3,300 decided to find Mr. Tally, and he insulted it and threw it away. That means he might never get it back again. He will probably be destitute for the rest of his life, unless he can convince money once again that he is worth it.

"Shit, Hobobob, you're a nut. How can you say this?" Okay, like I was saying earlier, my brother and I used to find money on the ground, just lying there. But you may or might believe that it was us walking on a lonely stretch of sidewalk in the night. Then a bit of paper, runs down the sidewalk, carried by a breeze flits by and we chase after it and have an instant stash. Nope. Nothing of the sort. We would be walking on a BUSY sidewalk, during rush hour, with commuters going about their business, literally stepping on the $20 bill in passing. And we would just stop, look down, and there it would be.

Hey, let me put my argument to a real test. Homeless people don't miss a trick, right? Commuters are too busy going to work or home to scan the sidewalks for a sawbuck right? Well try this on for size. My brother and I was at one of our favorite soup kitchens which was in the basement of a college. This was a massive room with scores of tables and scores of the homeless at each table. We came, we saw, we ate. There must have been close to a hundred skeksies in the room. At the end of the dinner, the skeks rise and march out in their strange walk, like fucking penguins, to the doors. A literal crowd of the homeless. And while moving with the mob, I stop and look down, and at my feet is a $20 bill. Awesome.

The fact is is that no one else can see that money. That money had no intention of going to anyone else but me. The same with Mr. Tally. I'd bet dollars to bullets that many people walked past that very same back pack and just COULD NOT SEE IT. It wasn't for them. It was for a homeless man that could have made better use of it than a dope deal. And if he did use it for a dope deal then more power to him. Better his dope than someone else. It's obvious that that's who the money was trying to reach anyway...a dope dealer. Talley fucked up the process and now that money is going to have to be reconstituted by the kid when he contacts his drug connect and re-orders his kilo of snow. So that cash is going to make its way to the dealer one way or another.

So, maybe I am a bad man. Maybe I am not a good Sam....Sam... whatever. But I'll tell you one thing.

"Put THAT SHIT on my tab."

Hobobob