PETS- Don't bother. If you didn't have one, you'd be forced to give all that love to humans, where it might actually do some good. BFers avoid animals. Pets tie you down, multiply, cost huge money to heal or board, then they die on you, break your heart just like humans but they're much more frail so they do it more often. In short, why bother? Some people say they're like eye candy. I say, adults don't need candy.
If you have pets, keep them healthy of course. No canned Pard made of offal by-products. Feed turkey burger (..69c an lb at my super, in a plastic bullet) cooked with real, fresh, chopped carrots or non-oxalic acid greens like kale or collards, .33c a bunch at barrio markets). Add a few squeezes of fresh, raw garlic, or garlic powder and a codliver oil capsule just before serving and fleas will move to the neighbors' house.
Care for the cat without expense by avoiding costly cat litter. Supermarkets are full of box ends which they use for can display. Line this tray with a sheet of foil, then a flat newspaper. Cat's claws would tear the foil if the paper weren't there. Next, tear up newspapers, shredding like spaghetti. Add crisp autumn leaves or fresh dirt for its earthy scent. You have disposable cat boxes.
I personally used to avoid any garden soil but now I use a little. I objected to garden earth in cat boxes as the cats might make foot prints of earth through the house. Well, they'll do that with germs and litter, too and frankly, I'd much rather see the prints so I can leap on it with my dangerously carcinogenic anti-bacterial soap. So now I've been known to make a fragrant mix of leaves, paper, soil as Litter costs more than 4 days of catfood!
In any case, my 6 cats are not allowed to come past the kitchen door. They can go into one wood floor hall, but no bedrooms, no living room, dining room because the little fiends will spray and think they're leaving you a valentine and doing you an immense favor as enemies won't attack the area. My monsters' little paws are allowed to track a little mud on linoleum. I can wash tile with bleach. I can't wash my carpets so they stay on the hard floors. In Winter, the cats have their little rug in the kitchen, in front of the stove and for variety, they have perches in the breakfast room windows, where rags are spread. They don't go outside in winter except on warm days. In summer, they live outdoors.
I know a lot about cats. Recently a friend introduced me to her pals as 'the lady with eighteen cats.' I shook my head. 'How she exaggerates. I only have l7' (I did at that time) which brings me to my next subject. THE POUND.
If anyone ever reports you for that chicken or those cats, or those excess goats, the pound will want to eyeball your house. Control their penchant for arriving any old time, (and ensure that you're ready for them with all animals off the property) by putting a sign on front door. 'WE WORK GRAVEYARD SHIFT, SLEEP DAYS. DO NOT RING DOORBELL BY DAY. CALL on PHONE; MAKE APPOINTMENT.'
Animal Reg may take you up on that appointment thing. If they do, on day of appointed search, cage your animals in the basement as pound doesn't make a very good search, or use a pal's shed. But the Pound has learned to be wily. They will come to your house repeatedly when you don't answer door...and sooner or later, catch you with front door wide open. They are endlessly patient and will deluge you with notices threatening mayhem. This isn't good for your health. In this case, you need to face the issue. When you see them pull up, quickly put all cats in basement, then open the door, pretend to be startled when you see the officer standing there. When he tells you that he hears you have a lot of animals, say that you have fed all the cats on both blocks regularly for years, and the wild cats now collect on front lawn at sunset which is when you put the pan out. (there should always be a greasy pie tin on your sidewalk to prove this.) Then, invite the officer in to show him there are no cats around.
The pound employee will go through your entire house. Always confess to ONE or two, even THREE cats as your litter box is a dead giveway. Tell him you just have three adult cats. (You are allowed any number of infant cats).
The officer will stroll your house, see that clean litter box and see that you're just a pathetic character feeding strays and not a genuine 'cat nut,' the kind with furry bodies on every square inch, cat-turds all over floors. He'll tell you that you have to stop feeding ferals as those strays will be considered YOURS. Feign horror, say that you had NO IDEA and that you'd be glad to stop. It was expensive. Thank him for giving you a reason to stop. This charade will get you out of this 'rep' for having cats plus make him happy that he 'transformed' your life. He'll check your whole garden for cats, of course, and then go away. Last time I did it, I was in such shock afterwards, I forgot to loose the cats which were in closets, basement. Hours later, it suddenly hit me!
NEUTERING: There are organizations which will help you. In LA, it's Actors and Others for Animals (818) 755-6045. PETS ASSISTANCE (818) 709-0900 (213) 896-8110 Amanda Foundation (310) 278-2935 are 3 groups that contribute as much as half of the 40$ fee.
Keep the Bowser or Fluffball you've got fit but don't go looking for babies or new pets. Pets prevent you from traveling which should be your main source of eye candy.
4 TIPS TO TRAVEL THE WORLD CHEAPLY. 1.) Only go to cities where friends will let you throw a sleeping bag on the floor. Now that there's INTERNET, we can make good pals all over the world. If God meant you to spend 150$ a night for a room, he'd have made money grow on trees. 2.) Fly SKY LOW not SKY HIGH. Check with airlines to see if they have reinstated the good ole Stand by Policy where you could FLY at the LAST MINUTE for PENNIES but it seems to be totally KAPUT. The 90's analogues are price wars, which travel agents follow. Internet is full of info on this. 3.) Call the Bus company, train or airline and compare the three different prices. Trains are l0% higher than bus lines but they often have hidden costs, 3 meals a day. Compute what it will cost you to eat on the train or on a long, cross country bus trip vs. a 5 hr. plane ride. 4.) Check the travel section of Sunday newspaper for latest airline offers.
FREE CRUISES: My friend the indigent Jeffrey, a total Bottom Feeder, who's slept in his car with several sheepdogs for years, heard his Uncle was coming home from a cruise to South America. Jeff the Neph met him at the pier, asked him all about the trip, especially the downside. Then Jeff wrote the company a scathing letter on his Uncle's stationery about the spitoons being dirty, toilets backed up, used my address and in return mail, got a ticket for a free cruise for two, free!
LECTURE ON ANYTHING? Cruise lines let you travel for free if you teach, read palms, teach palmistry, do massage, etc.
BECOME A COURIER: FRUGAL Sylvia, THE TEMP SECRETARY, offered her services to Midnight Express in L.A. and became a courier. She went to Europe every few months, at the drop of a hat until she could tick off the numbers on buses in Edinburgh or Minsk with equal ease. All big cities have courier companies listed in Yellow Pages. Call them. Now I see why she's a temp and won't commit to a permanent job.
DRESS TO KILL CLOTHING TIPS. The quality of the garments that society women and fops pay thousands for has declined to what anyone can make on a sewing machine hence the sewing machine is also in front of the TV permanently, a good cutting table nearby. As any Cherokee or Sioux can attest, sewing trim and beads is an incredible mind-clearing meditation device so you save on gurus, too.
THRIFT STORES? Very costly lately so remember to screw clerks to the wall. BARGAIN. Chop them on price the smart way. Get ten items, push them at clerk, say, would you take 7$ for these? She'll go through them to see what they're worth, then look at you in horror and say 'no.' Do not flinch. Humbly say, but 7$ is all I have. How much could I buy for 7$? This is known as warming the waters. Always be sweet, long suffering, respectful. If the clerk has an attitude and won't cooperate, be her guru. In a gentle word of wisdom to her eternal soul say "this is a charitable institution. When poor people shop here, you should try to give them a charitable deal and profit only from the rich. My kids and I are very poor and I need you to give me a break." If that doesn't work, very sadly leave the pile of stuff you've chosen by cash register, turn away, then as if catching your own rudeness, return. 'Should I put all these back in stock so you don't have to?' If she says yes, take them to the kitchen section and dump them in an oven, then come by at midnight and put a brick through their window. Or a week later, go back. When you see someone buy a cardigan or coat, wait five minutes, then go to the desk and say 'I just set my coat down, a gray fleece? It's gone. You didn't sell it did you? Then screw them to the wall. Make them give you a hundred dollars worth of clothing for your dear, departed, dead mother's coat and threaten to sue them for emotional damages if they don't. Cheaper than acting class but better for what ails you then psychiatry.
GARAGE SALE DUDS? Absolutely, but only on the super Ritzy side of town where a 2-pc Armani suit will go for 20 bucks. On the wrong side of the tracks, they want l0 bucks but it's not an Armani. (This rule is broken when you want antiques. )
You have to use your wits. Second hand clothing shops are getting too pricey. At least you can haggle at a garage sale and by Sunday afternoon, loop back and get everything that they didn't sell for free. Do that several weeks in a row, you can furnish your house and your friends houses for pennies then have your own garage sale.
USED OR ABUSED? Old blankets of genuine wool are useful, even with a few moth holes. When the bed is made, did you ever see the little taffeta edged part? No. A good snag at a sale is a goose down quilt. Nobody knows it but these guys wash and dry beautifully. Fluff up good as new. As with sleeping bags, use the industrial sized washing machine, diluted anti-bacterial soap and avoid softner rinses. Just dryer fluff'em for an hour. Sends dustmites to Hades.
GIVING GARAGE SALES- The Recycler ad is free, so why not? Always say 'Estate Sale, junk from 90 years collecting by pack rat, antique clothes, furniture, art' and give date/hour/address, no phone #. SIGNS cost mega-bucks because that art cardboard has gone sky high so paint a cardboard side taken from grocery box with white house paint, then do your lettering with a marker, hang signs on all nearby cross streets on Friday night. Always tell buyers 'make me an offer.' Don't bother with price tags. After you turn down a few lowball offers, you can train shoppers to pay what stuff is worth. You can easily make a thousand in a single week-end. Collect goods rest of month.
PARTIES- The important thing for BFers is high morale, not just happiness or contentment but out-and-out ecstasy. That is best achieved in a happy group of singing, laughing people, so invite pals over at the drop of a hat. Always call your astrologer and find a Venus or Jupiter night so that the vibes are over the rainbow.
EDUCATION: As BFers show no income, there are dozens of educational grants available to them. When a BFer applies for a scholarship, he ends up studying for free. Here's a prime area where working for the IRS and Uncle Sam has huge penalties. No child should ever work on top of the table during or after high school. He will qualify for no education if he does. Stay under the table, part time and become street wise.
MOVIES- There are many 2$ theatres. There are 1$ videos, with coupons. There's no need to see first run films. Most BFers get basic cable and catch films that are about 2 years old. While Yuppies are talking about that new Gwenyth Paltrow film, you're discussing Kubrick. I'd rather be in the latter conversation.
MUSIC-THEATRE- Second Acting is an ancient technique from the original Bottom Feeders in New York back in the depression. There's not a theatre in town that's full. Find out what time the intermission hits, join the crowd returning to their seats. Only, be the last one in, so you can see the empty seats as lights go down.
BREAD AND CIRCUSES, OTHER ENTERTAINMENT: Natural History Museum is free lst Tuesday of ea. month, (213) 744-3466. LACMA on Wilshire free second Wednesday each month (213) 857-6000. Calf Museum Science/Industry (213) 744-7400. Griffith Observatory (213) 664-1191. Network TV tickets, (ABC) 818-506-0067, Bill Maher show 213-852-2655, CBS (213)852-2624; NBC (818)840-4444. Call Paramount Studios for their many sit-coms which use live audiences.
NEWSPAPERS- Newspapers cost between 10$ and 30$ a month. Where's the logic paying for something that's out on the streets sitting cleanly in nice baskets on trash night? Invest a buck in a flashlight!
MAGAZINES- Again, cheap and easy on your street, trash night. Or on a ritzier street than yours, trash night. You will have the cream of the crop. Another way, SUBSCRIBE. You'll spot a thousand ads saying 'free subscription, free issue, if you don't like it, no charge.' Take them up on it. Get those free issues. Be certain to give them away afterwards to other BFers or homeless. Especially to homeless as it upgrades them, gets them back into society. You can't piss on City Living, Homes, Style, Fashion and Vanity when you've got your nose in it.
PHOTOS- Ralph's Markets processes a 35 m. roll for $3.99. No one else comes close to this price. No wonder they're #1.
LET CARS DRIVE YOU CRAZY? NOT A BFer. Rich people can afford to take taxis. Their friends are glad to do them carpool favors. For the rich, the bus is chump change and the millieu so vetty folkorico. Poor people get grinding depression on buses and the 2 dollar round trip is usually what the whole family spends on food for a week. Les Miserables must have cars and they must be procured and run at the lowest price and yield the most cluck per buck. In spite of Big Brother, this is strangely do-able.
BUYING USED: Forget used carlots. Those guys are sharks. The price will be double what you might get it for on the street and you're courting a stroke trying to get them to fix anything later, so why bother?
THE AUCTION QUESTION. If you really know cars' motors and they'll let you turn the motor over with a key, so you can hear it, you might bid on one of the mystery harem beauties of the auction. If it's a pig in a poke, stay away. This car could be totally dead, left out on the highway (by an owner without the 2 or 3 grand he knew it would cost to fix it,) to be picked up for just that reason. Much better is a car from a real, live person whom you've asked the right questions.
STREET BUYING: Always buy from a seller who has an address, a home that he actually lives in. See him inside the home to make certain. Check his driver's license to make certain it matches site and papers of car. Today, in l998, a bottomfeeder can get a l983 Honda Civic that runs well for 300$-500. It would be twice or three times that in a carlot.
QUESTIONS TO ASK THE SELLER of a cheap car on phone, before you visit him. Here's the silky, sly question. "Tell me about the car." If he says, "oh, nothing much, it runs great." he's pulling the wool over your eyes. If he doesn't volunteer information and forces you to ask question, be suspicious. If he answers vagaries like "it RUNS STRONG" suspect that it burns gas and leaks oil. It's got a little motor vibration means it has valve clatter. Forget it. Fish around, ask every question that is in this article. If everything sounds too good to be true, ask him 'why are you selling it?' If he says to buy another car of the same model, it's probably a good car. If he answers 'Too many cars, it's the extra one," be wary. You want to hear, "we have a new BABY, we need a bigger car." Or, it's four years old, I want to get rid of it before it goes bad." Another honest answer.
QUESTIONS TO ASK: Mileage, tires, condition, upholstery, color, what motorwork does it need? Does the car overheat? Did you ever replace motor? Has it been in an accident? If so, what parts are new on it? How many miles on it? Does the car smoke? What color is the smoke? Black smoke, the most alarming, is actually the least problematic. White smoke means=burning oil. Blue smoke means=burining oil. These two conditions are expensive to fix. Black smoke means gasoline is running too rich and is easily resolved. Is there condensation on top of oil cap?" If so, it's blown a head gasket, very expensive to fix. Ask when he last smogged it, did it pass right away or did he have to do a major tune up? Ask when smog certificate and registration expire? Ask if it has been categorized as a AGross Polluter@ by the DMV. Better yet, call the DMV first with the License plate Number; ask THEM.
Next, ask the owner if he has proof of regular maintenance. Dream on about getting regular maintenance records for a twenty year old heap, but this guy is a straight arrow anal type he might have this paperwork. If so, consider this gem of a car seriously.
Next, warn seller you're serious by saying that you're coming over to drive the car but you'd like to know now, does it overheat? Say, "If so, it could be just an easy to fix thermostat or a costly, complex cooling problem." That shows that you know motors. Threatening to come over may make him cough up the truth now. Cars overheating after ten minutes or not making hills easily is a sure sign that its in its dotage, a geezermobile.
If he answers enough questions correctly, go see and drive the car but only after you've called DMV and run the license plate through to see if it is a G.P., (in which case do not buy it,) how much registration fees are actually owing and if there are tickets on the car. You don't have to pay the tickets, no matter what DMV tells you, but you can tell seller you know about them and get the price down wayyyy further.
Here's a good time to tell you. DMV has two laws going. What they tell you on the phone and what you can get at the window when you demand to talk to the supervisor.
When you actually get inside the car, there are three things you want to see. One, does it go uphill with ease? If so, motor's still strong. Second, are there motor sounds indicating valve knock or timing belt loose? If so, the former is expensive to fix, the latter is around $130-300 (more if belt's sealed in box under other things.) Third, does car overheat after twenty minutes? if you see the car is overheating, check the thermostat. Pull it out and see if it's regulating properly. If the thermostat is fine, the heating is symptom of impending disaster and car's a lemon.
SMART CARBUYERS go to THE SELLERS' house. Lately, there are a lot of scams involving stolen cars. During the initial phone call, get the car's license plate number. Remember, always check the car's license plate with DMV to see if registration fees are up to date, before you even go see the car. Later, when you're there with the car, check seller's driver's license and name on the car registration to see that they match. Tags are not proof of a car's legality as these can be snipped off another car. Make certain registration fees are up to date because you'll have to pay them if they're not. Now, remember I mentioned that supervisors at DMV can forgive you stuff? You can buy cars that haven't been registered in YEARS very cheaply. When you bring plates to the DMV, and they try to collect for those YEARS, scream bloody murder and say when you bought it, the car had brand new tags. Make certain the head supervisor is called over. They will make you bring in the license plate because they want to see these tags. They are going to forgive you all fees but pretend you don=t know this. Come back an hour later while employee remembers you, with the license plate. Show them the phony but real, brand new tags. Clerk again calls supervisors. They will immediately forgive all those unregistered years but oddly, they do not go looking for the crook who sold it to you. I=m sure the day will come when they do, but now they do not.
So remember, to save yourself time, before you visit the seller's house, get the key information on the phone. Get seller's name, car's license number and his address. Then, dial the DMV and on the line, they'll tell you how many years of fees are owed and confirm name and address. You can get cars on blocks, unregistered cars and cars with tickets on them incredibly cheaply often between $100 and $200.
Many Bottom Feeders never give seller their correct name or address. They choose to register their cars in a name that does not trace back to their driver's license. The punctilious seller informs DMV of the name of purchaser, his address. You do not want any paper traceable to you later. We are here to confound every computer Big Brother has, at every step for no reason other than we can do it. So Fantasia Moronica Il Duce bought that 83 Honda, not YOU.
When the Bfer registers the car, he is required to show I.D. but in a thick accent, he says, >Polish passport, burgular in de Grayhound station. All my suitcase, phttttt! Consulate looking in Poland for copy. Soon send.@ They don=t bother you, but give you your car registration. Then, when insurance is required, the Bfer has a pal make a copy of genuine insurance on any PC, print it out on the ole ink jet.
AFTER PAYING FOR A CAR, the final, last ditch, Cosa Nostra carefully worded secret threat to make sure it's not a lemon is: "this heap fails me, I'm back with my uncle Matteo and a crowbar." But no Bottom Feeder would do that. If the car fails, YOU failed to do your homework. You deserve a lemon.
FIXING THE CAR ONCE YOU'VE GOT IT:
ON CAR MECHANICS: The main trick is that once you've got an estimate on work to be done, find a HOME based mechanic. Paying no shop rent makes a Mechanic a reasonable human being. Ask "how much would it be to fix 'off the books,' cash?" You may get a sizeably reduced quote. If it's still too much, ask him to tell you how to fix it yourself. These guys are always proud to point to gismos and explain them. Then, get a book at the library and do it. A tune-up means taking spark plugs out, cleaning them with thinner or acetone and a stiff bursh, re-gapping them and sticking them back in place. New spark plugs, you say? Whaddayou, Onassis? In all third world countries they use plugs a hundred times.
Changing oil and air filter---how hard is that? Opening wheels up? Checking brake pads? A ten year old could do it.
Now, the average citizen takes that baby to a 'no pass no pay' smog guy and see if it flies. I don't as California now has an automatic Gross Polluter Report Card. Your computer read out is immediately in a 1-second simulcast, sent to Sacramento and you will never get off that data bank, ever again. The State will hound you about it and come to find you. So never go to a regular smog shop. BFers ask around until they hear about a "cooperative" one. And if you ask, you will find. CLUE: Mexican Body shops know where so chum up with Jose or Pedro or Manuel, use him regularly and give him memorable gifts on holidays.
WHAT? THE CAR WON'T SMOG? Not that I'd do it but some BFers have a way around all the regulations California imposes on its prisoners, its captive audience (among them the new, January 1st, l997 Screwola that the driver be insured to the hilt which costs a thousand plus a year). The BFer way around such regulations is simple. They won't pay the DMV a red cent. They buy a used car, never transfer the title, never bother visiting the DMV where they can't get car registered anyway, as they don't have insurance. Then buyer drives like a grannie, avoiding freeway entrances and Public parks where the California Highway Patrol can legally create a check-point Charley.
The BFer drives the car until it's falling apart and its tags are one year expired, then at this 'au jus' point, he sells it, signs the old owner's name on the pink and start over. A rolling stone gathers no moss!
Other scams involving not bothering with registration, insurance, smogging and tags: some bold souls have at least some ID in another name or learn to speak with a thick foreign accent and offer NO ID, just a library card maybe, so that if a policeman writes them a ticket for no tags it also evaporates into the same la-la land where the pink slip and insurance reside.
The one thing a BFer won't do when approached by a cop with ticket book in hand is to say you forget your license and offer the old owner's name off the car registration. It's cruel to claim to be the old owner who's forgotten his operator's license and to cause the ticket to be given to the name on the car registration, the old owner ---even if it's easy to do. Even if it=s easy for old owner to beat it. That might cause some hassle to the innocent previous owner, and thusly bring the BFer bad karma. But Some Bfers let the karma fall where it may. I'm just the reporter. Don't kill the messenger.
More honorable BFers buy cheap, transfer title, pay the annual registration fees that DMV wants, (in the poor person's range, about $60-80). Low, because we pay the tax on the ostensible sale price. (The BFer always makes out his own bill of Sale saying that it was purchased 'as is' and cost only $100.00 so that the tax is the least possible.)
True, the hard core BFer gets the car transferred into the name he has chosen. Most will change the first vowel in their last name so old ID works (as DMV clerks eyeball hastily) yet computers are absolutely stymied.
Bfers will do all that in good spirits but it is with great sadness that a BFer pays a grand for liability insurance and this is what California requires now. Yes, that's right, after March l997, the DMV wants Proof of costly insurance.
The way Bfers get around this is to write a check for insurance, in true name on Driver's License, but one vowel off of the name on car registration, then register the car, show the "vowel off" proof of insurance then cancel the policy the very next day or cancel the check to insurance company. No red alerts will follow this transaction thru state computers due to missing vowel, and then they use all that paperwork as proof of insurance.
Others just copy a pal=s insurance on their PC, using their own data, imaginary insurer=s name and address and phone. They inkjet print it up, stick it in an official looking metered envelope, carry it in car, to DMV, to judges, courts. It works fine. If they WERE caught they=d swear they=d met Mr. Gulagarian at a party, or read his ad in the Armenian newspaper lying in a deli, that he=d come to their house, they=d paid the 550$ to a thousand bucks in untraceable cash, and they assumed their policy was real.
A ton of cash spent on insurance isn't all it takes the state of California to hand over your tags. They demand blood and grief too, and their endless mobius loop of bureaucratic snafus drive all of us crazy. All car exchanges require a new smog check done by previous owner or by buyer within thirty days. After taking the registration and tax money, they demand you smog the car and come back with proof it 'smogged' to get the tags handed over to you. They say thirty days, but the truth is, you have a whole year, after tags expire, to do this because tags on car's butt are good for a year so BFers buy 300$ heaps, don't register them, just drive them with the old tags for a year.
As tags are fairly recent, cops won't spot or stop the car unless you drive poorly, of course.
But, a year later, you absolutely must fix the car, bring the car's motor up to standard, smog it and go to DMV and get your legal tags or be ticketed---unless you have brass balls, and can drive a car with wrong color tags and stay fifty feet away from cops. Entirely possible if you=re a rearview mirror checker.
However, for BFers, there is still one more option. If you can't find a job, have starving babies, and don't have the thousand it takes to fix the car's motor, you can go back to DMV and ask to pay inoperative status fees of 5$. You must do this within the year, before registration expires, before the car goes into triple time fines.
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY CAR: Now you have a car with no tags, and 'inoperative status' which means the car is supposed to be off the street, in the garage, or on blocks until you can fix it but not on any city street. But hey, the car works. A BFer is embolded by poverty into a Zen state. He figures that as long as a cop isn't behind you in traffic, what does it matter what the tags are? What is the sound of a tree falling in the forest if there's no one to hear it fall?
The BFer will then drive the car, careful not to get seen by a policeman. No freeways where CHIPS have exhaust pipe checkpoint Charlies, no City parks, streets that abut public parks or their parking lots, and no boulevards patrolled by city police units.
The BFer drives very carefully, always with a bag of GERBER=s BABY FOOD, tinned or dried non-perishable children-favorites like spaghetti, in the car. If he gets stopped by a cop he pulls the registration out of the glove compartment, and photos of the driver surrounded by infants will roll out onto carseat and BFer improvises on the photos and bag of food, saying 'The car was on blocks in yard but the kids needed food, I have too many children to walk to the market and leave them alone, no job, no daycare, please let me take the food to them then you can jail me.' No cop will. They'll give you a warning. Gratefully say "I'll go right home, officer' put the car right back on blocks. Pray the cop writes you no ticket for that lack of insurance, that he lets you go home and that you can continue to drive a car that has paid, inoperative status and a driver without insurance. Cops generally won't ticket or impound car if a family person is out for groceries in an emergency. A true bottom feeder will pull out the phony, valid insurance and say I am insured but the car won=t pass the smog test without 500$ worth of motor work and my youngest child has Amylateral Sclerosis and everything is going for the medicine...the doctors tell us not to hope, and why spend the money but.....(bite your lip at this point, but don=t cry because cops hate wimps..) He=ll let you go. He own=t impound.
There are circumstances that will bring you a car being impounded. A year after tags expire, some BFers put a phony tag on their plate. Stolen or computer generated. A cop can be behind you and not realize the tags are bogus, but he will generally impound that car if he stops you and runs the plate or looks at tag carefully. I've seen them tear it off and let the driver go, if it's an emergency. I was once caught with an expired tag Toyota pick-up truck loaded with boxes and plants. I told cop (truthfully) that my four kids and I had been evicted, and only needed the truck for a few minutes to move. He let me go. I made another 40 trips as that was truly a big eviction and move and I not only moved a thousand plants, but I moved 100 boxes of my organic soil confounding the landlady as to where my gorgeous garden that she wanted to enjoy had gone.
A BFer in a hot car usually stays off freeways, never makes left turns (as a hundred cars pass your back plates while you do); they do triple rights to make that left. If a BFer sees a unit a few cars back in the rear view, they immediately signal and turn right. A cop ahead of them in traffic means they quickly park. A cop in cross traffic means peeling an eye to see which way he plants to turn. The idea is: no cop gets to see their rear plate, at any speed.
If you're careless and are stopped, speak a pidgin Middle European language and claim to be from Zagreb. A BFer always masters one 'accent' and claims to be a tourist, ignorant of registration rules, whose >brother=just 'bought' the car and has the recently dated, hand-written or typed receipt in glove compartment and computer generated car insurance (proving this car is covered for liability) in his imaginary brother=s name, and the totally innocent look to prove it.
Cops will not arrest or impound a foreign tourist who has no driver's license. Especially if he says his backpack was taken at the Downtown Bus Station and he's waiting for a new passport to come from Yugoslavian Consulate and that his brother was kind enough to lend him the car to go get the baby food on the car seat. Cop may give a fix-it ticket. In a Slavic name, it has nothing to do with YOUR driver=s license. Sure, it will follow the Slavic Name forever. God forbid the real Grisha Gregorian ever tries to get a license in the state of California, but fix it tickets on a Bfer car, will follow that car for a long, useful life, and then to the dump.
LA cops won't impound even if they find marijuana in a car. They could but they rarely do. Of course, if you give any officer a hard time he will plant the joint, himself just so he can impound and make you lose your car AND he=ll pull your ignition wires, making you walk home to boot, plus have you pay huge fines on having grass but most policeman will not take you to jail because they are allergic to paperwork involved with arrests.
California is creating a new automized paperwork situation which will not have humans in the loop so --soon---traffic arrests will be a thing of the past. They will clip your wings through paperwork but for us who have no real papers in our pockets, for us who don't let State-generated paperwork into our universe, it's a case of paper scissors, stone wings!
ROBOTIZED BIG BROTHER: After January 1st, 1997, the new plan with Smog Check II was to put CHP checkpoints on freeway ON RAMPS (CHIPS are not legally able to function on city surface streets). These checkpoints will have robotic DYNAMOMETER smog readers. As you go up the ramp, the robot will measure your exhaust. If RtD2 gets a bad score he'll snap a picture of your car's ass and you'll get mail asking you to bring the car in to be checked. The way to foil that is when you plan to hit a freeway, carry a plastic azalea in your trunk with the bushy part hanging over the plates. BFers are all gardeners anyway!
Soon there will also be On-Ramp check station points manned by human readers with huge rectal smogmeters. The poor will simply learn not to take freeways and use surface stretes.
But it=s an ill wind that blows NO good. Due to the straights being forced to ditch perfectly fine autos, there will be a huge glut of unsmoggable cars in the marketplace, at dirt low prices, so two things will happen. Perfectly fine cars will become throwaways, Detroit's ultimate wetdream. Two, perfectly fine citizens will turn to forgery and crime in order to feed their babies who will be weaned on evading cops at every corner and become the shiftiest bunch of urban guerillas on the face of the planet. Whoppeee. And they said Armageddon wouldn't be fun!
A last word: there is no hope offering a West Coast cop cash. LA's GESTAPO is the most brutal in the country but unlike coppers on the east coast, they're not venal or corrupt. They'll gladly beat you up but they won't take your $.
Another little known fact about L.A. cops is that they are the horniest navy blue buns on the planet with more sexual harassment of female staffers than the Marines, Disney Studios and Hell itself put together and if you're a foxy babe and can mime mindless, they'll settle for a promise to meet later for margaritas.
So, imagine a future where you buy a used car, give a fake name when you buy it, drive it for a year while the smog tags are under a year old. At the end of a year, you can no longer drive it without looking in your rear view mirror. You can't park the car on public streets. Its tags are a year Plus old, which means they are totally expired. All this means is that you, like the State of California, have to cross over to TRACK II.
To do this, you pay the 2nd year inoperative fees of only 5$. If you pay no fees at all, you couldn't SELL this car later for top dollar. Unpaid fees become fines which get so exhorbitant no one could buy the car from you. One other reason. Cops don't get so bugged at your driving an inoperative vehicle as they do with your driving a totally unregistered one. Scofflaws make them so angry they see Impound written in RED letters. Poor jerks who have to go get groceries in the middle of the night do not. Cops are very pro family.
Always remember: if you're driving a Second Year Inoperative, remember, the car's tags on butt are the wrong color. They're from a few years back. Inoperative cars do not get new tags even though their papers are up to date. However, a wily BFer will always carry a thrift store bike over the plate or hang a plastic azalea tree out of the back of his trunk, its leaves covering the plate and with a realistic little red flag waving from its branches. The hem of the flag is gummed with SUPER GLUE to the plate so that no one can see the tag. And there's no law against an azalea having sticky sap. A true BFer will drive with that azalea and that flag in place for years until every cop in the city has seen it twice, then switch to a plastic ficus.
Cautious BFers who actually can afford liability insurance, but still have a smoky car, prefer a more solid way out. They take the car to a certain mechanic in the valley who will smog a Reebok for fifty dollars, get their proof of smogging, pay the annual fees to DMV and drive street legal and hold their heads high even though they've colluded with a criminal mechanic in misrepresentation and forgery. They register and smog and give DMV its due but they are criminals too, in a way. The philosophical axiom that describes this little known Cosmic Law is: The Bigger that Brother is, the lower the Citizen must stoop.
In the old days, if you couldn=t find this wonderful smog guy, or the two grand to fix your car's motor, there used to be one other BF alternative. You called the Smog Referee and made an appointment. One used to give him 3 handwritten letters from 3 mechanics or tire dealerships saying, 'will fix valves, carburator for 1400$,' another estimate is for $1500 and a third for $3000. As their estimates are so damn high, Smog Referee used to exempt you and you could get legal tags. But now the DMV is talking about raising the amount you must spend to fix car to astronomical amounts. So after early 1997, you have to play BFer hardball.
Let me tell you about BFers who have real sang froid. They scotch tape a totally forged, counterfeit tag on car's back plate, computer-generating a tag that resembles the one currently in use, gum it on back plate, shiny Scotch tape imitating the real thing's reflective surface. Then, they never park on a public street or lot. They also drive very carefully for a year or two. No rolling through stop signs, no yellow lights, no lane changes without signalling, no driving without a seat belt, no inoperative turn lights, no driving with a headphone on. It is a kind of Driving Yoga that connects you with the timeless, patient God within. That little shiny tag looks good enough that a policeman won't run the plates even if he's right behind the car. Keeping an even pulse with a cop behind you is the world's most terrific yoga exercise.
One more possibility. If a cop stopped a Bfer with totally phony tags, the wily coyote driver could offer a Dated Bill of Sale no more than ten days old, saying they just bought the car. They claim that it's less than ten days since they bought it, because they aren't legally required to have to have title transferred yet. When cop points out that the tag is computer generated, the BFer bursts into tears and says it looked real to him. That he would never have suspected it was fraudulent. This would get him off the hook but the DMV would go to the old owner and maybe find that he had reported the sale to JOE BLOW BFer a vowel off a year before and they'd come looking for the vowel-off person. No problem. In the meantime, between time, the scam will work on the cop. Wily Coyote is laughing his way down the highway of life.
However, if a phony tagged car were parked on any public street, and a computer check were run on plates and tags turned up dinky, the car would be booted or impounded. And when it is, hope your day runner or your shitzu isn't in the front seat!
BFers have a way around impounding; they park in public or private lots, driveways, garages only, and always park tags to the back.
If a BFer is stopped with a phony tag, and doesn't have a l0 day old Bill of Sale, he had better have a cyanide tablet or a Columbian passport because this is a serious misdemeanor. Fuzz will impound the car right there, snipping the ignition wires so you can't get it off street when they leave. They will not arrest you, but they will write you up a hell of a ticket. That's where the Columbian passport comes in. Let Letty in Lima deal with it.
No account of BFer tactics and strategies vis a vis the DMV is complete without a treatment of the issue of phony IDs. With Big Brother's new emphasis on Fiching everyone in the country, and cross referencing to social security numbers, it's become hard for BFer's with too many parking violations to register cars or get PHONY driver's licenses (one reason to register your car with a thick accent, or in vowel off names or get driver's licenses in totally strange names, switching with a pal in another state).
Hardcore BFers say there's still time to get around this, as only Kentucky puts the Social Security Number on the Driver's License record. So no switch with pals in Kentucky.
California now asks the person who registers a car to give their Social Security Number, but you can forget and invert a digit or say you're from another country and don't have an American SSA # yet and the DMV staff doesn't care.
BFers tell me that if there's any place in the world where you could create a new identity with the birth certificate and social security of a pal from another state, it would be in the HOLLYWOOD OFFICE on Cole Street because the employees are all Russian and it's in their genetic DNA code to do sloppy paperwork and ignore rules and English is total Greek to them anyway.
My secret BFer source says that when he gets in line with his Maryland pal's birth certificate, when it's his turn, if it's not a Russian employee, he puts the other guy in front. He does this by pretending that he's still filling out a form. Then, when the Russian clerk is due for a client, he goes. He gives the birth certificate and social security card of a friend on the other side of the country. To confound the fingerprint machine, which has the BFer's old license on record, the BFer has put Crazy Glue on his right thumb then sanded it, then lubricated the finger with thick sludgey oil, creating a blotch not a print. If he has other licenses on file and coded into the computer, it won't ring bells. (As if they really check a new driver's fingerprints against all fingerprints at the DMV! Yeah, right.)
The danger is that California may soon start checking with other states to see if JOE BLOW is registered in two states. If they ask, the BFer says he is not registered elsewhere and waits for them to check. If they do actually check with the other state, and your pal has a license there, DMV simply asks you to drop one of your two licenses. When that happens, the BFer drops the license in California and sends all the pal's ID back to Maryland and starts over.
PARKING TICKETS. BFers tear up parking tickets for years, then they sell the car to one of their other 'legal' names (to that library card or that magazine subscription name, or even to a relative=s name, I.D. but not the relative's address, for deniabilty (CIA word) later. They use a P.O. box but write it out this way, 134 Ivy Street, #2144. Not APOSTAL BOX BIZ, Box #)
Another ploy is to use ANY name and say you're buying the car for that youngster, a nephew perhaps. All your old parking tickets disappear when title is transferred. (Actually, the data on it goes into a mini-Purgatory in some computer file attached to the name, so BFers keep a file with names cross referenced with tickets, license plate numbers, and addresses they've used so they won't make any mistakes and repeat a hot name, address.) All names return to life after 7 years. The Lazarus Factor.
In the last analysis, Parking tickets were not invented by God. Parking lots are cruel and unusual punishment, insanely costly, Big Business is inhumane to charge 7$ for twenty minutes parking but Big Brother --the government that's supposed to care for us---has been heartlessly cruel-er giving his unemployed citizens parking tickets the size of a week of food for a family of four all for forgetting to shove in a precious quarter. When tickets go to warrent, the government asks a big chunk of the rent. They confiscate our licenses when we can't pay tickets so we can't get groceries, go to school or work. Our basic rights to eat, shop, study, work, earn, love and breathe are being interfered with.
My son happens to be such an interfered with person. He's never had an accident, drove well, made a living driving in fact. A single ticket for doing a California Roll at a stop sign went to warrent, he had no cash that week, nor did I. A month later he had no license, no driving job, no way to get to work or school. He had to move back home. He began to feel bad about himself, drank coffee all day, booze all night, never slept and had a nervous breakdown, got suicidally depressed. For a year he brooded. The tags on his pick-up expired. He began to drive this illegal truck, getting parking tickets and speeding tickets all over 4 states. He was uninsurable. Fines on his unpaid tickets got bigger and bigger. Many were for not having insurance. ($1500 is the fine the judge can give you for no insurance although mostly they'll give you a few months to go get the insurance and not fine you at all. So it's a fixable offense.) But he never went to court. So there were warrents on top of warrents on him. Then, cops confiscated the truck. He began walking around the state like Forrest Gump. The tickets for sleeping in public parks are worse than anything in a car. When he didn=t show up for court, they went to warrent and the bail last time they found him, picking cans out of a trash can, (illegal) was $75,000. He began doing longer and longer jail time when they caught him, and as his self-image and grooming went to Hell, and his need to be out in the fresh air walking, participating in life, and occasionally eating out of trash cans, cops and jail time were frequent.
Now he has a long police record. He attempted suicide once. Mostly, he hides in his room 24 hours a day weaving baskets. His life is over before it started. The DMV has told him that in seven years he can come out of the room and start over. I know of no other way to fight this than paying huge cash fines or waiting it out. But meanwhile, anyone want to buy a lovely, hand-made basket?
My son=s story is a common one in any big city today, and is one reason I was moved to investigate the Bottom Feeder lifestyle, if not for my own use, for yours. My revenge on a world that drove that sensitive boy nuts.
So, now you've heard the whys and wherefores, the ins and outs of being a BFer. Do you still want to do it? If you've read this far and your pulse is under eighty, you've got what it takes. Brass balls. Read on.
GETTING STARTED AS A BOTTOM FEEDER. First, join or create a support group. It helps to start a kind of BOTTOM FEEDER PHILOSOPHY CLASS, Support Group and BONDING circle. As times get tougher in America, you almost surely will need to do this. You need strong emotional support to analyze and understand the morality of computer generated tags and under-the-table earnings. You will want to study Post-Marxist theories of Government Immorality vs. Hindu theories of Personal Karma. Fascism vs. anarchy. And more pragmatically, you will want to learn how to launder cash income without it going through your bank account. Through your support group, you will learn how to ignore the IRS, work under the table, not report your earnings and buy property with mattress money. These things are all legal, now. As a BFer you have to know what is legal and how far you can stretch the laws to have roof and food, vehicle, heat and education, children and pets.
I know it sounds harsh but tough times make for tough people. When times are tough, tough people chose to ride the horse the way it's going because they'll get where they're going faster. Don't fight the tide. Give yourself up to it. Surf the wave the way it's going.
Study what you love, even if it's not a high profit profession. Be prepared to surrender to marginality to do it. If you persist in your macro-goal, micro goals disappear. Use the system. Miserable though it is, there are occasional bounties and their tide actually will carry you where you are going.
Whatever art form you do will eventually make you employed, known and comfortable. The trick is to just stay free of drone work so you can do that art daily and learn to do it well.
DIVEST YOURSELF OF BANALITY. If you aspire to be a BFer but just have too much money invested in the system, own too much property, stocks, have too huge of a time consuming go-nowhere job you must be selective in cutting off dead wood. It's like being in a go-nowhere, loveless marriage when there are a lot of kids. To counter-effect this much ballast, you need a creative, BOHEMIAN, ARTISTIC, UNDER THE TABLE CAREER that is your passion, i.e. a secret MISTRESS.
A miserable status quo will drive people into revolution. Ask King George II. Our lives are often hampster treadmills. Our jobs Kafkaesque purgatories. From such an overdose of VOCATION, you need an AVOCATION. Look at the list below. True, some of these schemes are just banal activities that produce cash but some are predicated on a love for art and creativity.
Here are THIRTY THREE ways (one for each year Jesus lived) that BOTTOM FEEDERS CREATE INSTANT CASH and INCOME. THIRTY THREE SMOKING, Wild $-making scams that don't take equipment or inventory, just FLYERS, audaciousness and talent.
NEW AGE ENTREPRENUERIAL IDEAS FOR BUSINESES
1. LOVE PARTIES? With home-made flyers, street posters, and BULLETIN boards at colleges, advertise a Singles Party Hotline. Hold parties at any cafe and serve a snack. Charge l0$ at the door. You'll make 1-5K per nite. Cafe goes for it because they get the bar tab. Call it Personalized Introduction Parties, walk around saying, hello, who do you want to meet, what do you want in a mate?" Do personalized matchmaking and charge $200 for 5 arranged dates. Could be done at a church, for the congregation. Pastor loves it because it invariably increases his parish.
2.) LOVE LOVE? Create a weekly Loveaholics Anonymous "Success in Love" therapy group. Build it around a psychologist who doesn't get in on the take as she gets the clientele. Try out different shrinks each week. Produce best shrink's tapes, radio show. Get her a book. Put her on talk shows. It worked for Pat Allen.
3. WORK WITH CONCRETE? Start pouring special tile or form rocks with one side roughed up to look like real rock, sell them out of your driveway (at your new, rented home). These bring in big money. Once builders learn you do special rocks you can teach your retardo cousin to do it, just rake in bucks with NO work. Next, go to the bottom of nearest mountain, collect beautiful boulders. Learn to do walls, fireplaces, flues. Do poured cement tiles that looks like Spanish floor tiles. Set broken crockery in them, these are all the rage for patios. Make oriental garden lanterns, pagodas that look like carved stone.
4. A BILL GATES WANNABE? Take a Windows computer class at adult High then teach others. Buy used 386's(150$) cheap as hackers dump older models for chump change. Soup up hard drive. With three machines in your living room, give group classes at 25$ an hour. With four desks booked, 8 hours a day, you're making 16k a month. Get all your students to buy Net ready 386's from you.
5. LOVE KIDS? Turn the big, rented house into licensed Daycare. Start a weekend Class for tots. Painting, Artisanry, ACTING: Do Scenes/improvs. Get a photog to do individual headshots of the group, act as their agent. Get management contracts with them. Become a Foster Parent. State pays well.
6. FEEL LIKE MOTHER TERESA? Read up on herbs, shiatsu massage, iridology, power foods, specific-healing diets, be an holistic healer, massage therapist. Charge 40$ a half hour, $75 for the whole hour. More if you sell them herbs. Holistic really cures! For instance, if you look in their eye and see that cloud of white which means ALLERGIES: Tell them the foods to avoid: wheat, dairy, nuts, meat. Sell them POWER ADDITIVES that you know are good for allergies: Bee pollen. (Nature's Sunshine of Spanish Fork Utah will let you retail their stuff. Fone 'em for their free training package.) Rx specific allergy TEAS: Chamomile. Find a lab that will TEST for specific food allergies and give client a print-out. Usually, peanuts, soy, meats, eggs are the dietary offenders. RX JUICES: alfalfa, celery, parsley, pumpkin. Voila, they're cured, they feel l8 again so they think you're God, bring you all their friends and you make $800K a year when really you just stored this info on a disc, didn't even memorize it. A few months of reading, typing and you're in the bigtime. Totally legal if you don't diagnose. How? by telling them 'your liver is congested.' You can't even WHISPER a medical word like cirhossis.'But no problem, your HEALING without medical terms works l00 times better than a real doctor who can use the terms but doesn't know squat about healing! The lady I know who did this never went to high school, makes 800K a year but she has to pay the herb companies part of that.
7. SIGMUND FREUD? Did you want to be a shrink? Learn Tarot or palmistry and hang your shingle to guide the needy, addicted or demented right out of your living room. Get a crystal ball, astro-software and a magnifier to read palms. Entertain at parties. Get Eden Gray book on Tarot at local metaphysical bookstore, Ryder Waite deck, get job at psychic hot line and pick up a huge, national clientele, giving sound advice. Write astro columns, or get a hotline of your own. I know a lady who did emotional release work massage (rolfing) while sad music played, and client screamed, called it Tantrum Yoga!
8. IS YOUR HOUSE A CHATZKE PALACE? Did you want to be a decorator? Learn to find cheap collectibles, American 20's pottery at garage sales or thrift stores, turn your home into an antique shop. Sell privately to collectors, dealers and the public via free ads in local papers.
9.INTO ORIENTAL DECOR? Adjust decor of homes according to principles of Feng shui. Become a highly paid consultant.
10. VEGIE? Are you into healthfood? Do you know a community of people? Start a COMMUNAL FOOD CO-OP, sell wholesale groceries. With flyers, announce that you deliver a weekly vegie/fruit/grain basket to the Yuppie subscriber's door.
11. VAN GOGH YOUR IDOL? Ever want to be an amateur artist? Find 50 other artists to share rent on an Artisanry Shop/gallery. Cost each $50. Find a big old house zoned for biz district. There will be 3 or 4 artists' work displayed in a 'booth' in each room. l00 artists would fill the entire building. This could be a big TOURIST ATTRACTION week-ends so hire mariachis and put a cafe in the middle of it, or in the patio, garden in summer. In Mexico DF, the BAZAAR SABADO is the protoype. It's been there fifty years and it's a LULU of a place.
12. INTO FOOD? Open a lucrative fast food shop. Twice the bucks of a posh cafe. Sell breakfast foods in A.M., vegiburgers, raw juices. Lunch would be Mexican and chinese entree. But do it as a fast food corner shop as (little known fact) they actually make more $ than restaurants. If in storefront, do NEW AGE FOOD, invite in gallery, decor, duds, books, psychic readings, massage and imports from Mexico and get ten rents from the ten invited tycoons.
13. HEARD OF BRIDEY MURPHEY? Learn hypnosis from a library book; do past life regressions. Hypnotize people into will power for dieting, substance abuse. You really don't need a trance for people to see past lifetimes. Just a hand six inches over their head.
14. DREAM OF THE SEA? Are you a mermaid who loves seashells, lapidary, geologics, crystals? Buy a 5$ used drill, make jewelry, mount specimens on wooden blocks. Wholesale to boutiques.
15. WANDERLUST? Read a book on How to Be a Travel agent. Get discounted travel for all your pals. Do 'Singles' trips, special interest trips. Travel the world and learn to import/export, too. 16. VRAIMENT GOURMET? Do you cook New Age, exotic or Macrobiotic food well? Hire out to celebrities or the super rich with a flyer cum menu. Teach private cooking classes, cater parties, supply bakeries and trendy yuppie cafes.
17. TEACHEY-PREACHY? Create a Living Room University or "LEARNING ANNEX" with many different venues in people's homes, offices or at schools, churches or office buildings. Offer the public 35$ Seminars, lectures, psych, career, cooking, computers, how-to. Find teachers on bulletin boards at Universities. But not in LA which is saturated with the New Age Transformational Annex.
18. KNOW THE PRINT TRADE? Create a RECYCLER newspaper, free classified ads sell paper for l$. You offer PAID ads to local merchants. Make a Million$ lst yr but not in LA or Arizona.
19. DRAMATIC? With Help of College English Dept, create summer RENAISSANCE FAIRE: artisans, theatres, food, actors, games, beverage booths.
20. GOT GOOD LEGS? Cater for parties on week-ends. Week-days, do the Portable Feast. Make tofu/tempeh/ vegie meatloaf Healthfood sandwiches for healthfood stores. Hire beautiful, young girls to carry to skyscraper offices in a basket at lunchtime.
21. DOODLE ADDICT? Learn to OIL-Paint easy NAIVE painting like Rousseau or easy impressionism. You can sell canvases for 200$ & up outside super markets. Galleries will buy frankly fake Impressionists for $300. Hem the canvas, make it a carpet, varnish then wax it. Back it with felt.
22. INTO CARS? Create A USED CAR Lot in your driveway. Buy l940-50 cars and trucks from farmers, junk yard autos as long as frame, axels and motor are good. Do "Cherry Vintage Autos" Tune motors, lacquer them, sell in big cities for big bucks.
23. LOVE MAGAZINES? Write articles. Submit to mags. 500$-5k each. Writer's Digest tells you how. Research them at library. Use a computer to file query letters so you can multiple submit.
24. ADORE MARTHA STEWART? FURNITURE GUYS? Buy old furniture at garage sales, fix and sell from your house or swap meet.
25. STRONG PERSONALITY? Rent local schoolyard Sundays, announce creation of swap meet w. flyers, attract artisans, collectors, jewelers, food booths, fortunetellers. Put posters around town "Swap Meet forming call #" Charge exhibitors 20$ each booth. Public pays $1.00, kids 50 cents to come in. 82 booths give you 6k per weekend. Double$ if you open drink booth yourself.
26. ALL BUFFED UP? Be a trainer. Share your secrets in a living room gym. 4 people pay 20$ for an hour. Can you do it 8 hours a day? 8k a month says yes!
27. STRONG BACK? LOVE THAT NEW CAR SMELL? Be Dr.Detail. Detail cars if you have all your spine discs in original condition. Get teflon not paste wax, polishing compound, a hose, vacuum cleaner, brushes, print flyers to detail cars, boats, aluminum sided houses, planes, trucks while Harley's get a Hog-wash.
28. MR MACHO? Weld metal sculpture, insert pipe, build STONEWORK fountain, line with tile, or set broken crockery in cement. Set sculpture on top. Rig up water and poof, you get sprayed with $1000 dollar bills a weekend.
29. SUPER SECRETARIAL? Even if you're a legal secretary earning 20$ an hour, don't work fulltime. Become a temp and float. There's this terrific advantage: as you move through hundreds of offices a year, you will meet hundreds of hiring agents at all these offices. Give them your ROLLODEX card, tell them to call YOU whenever they need temps and undercut the current fees. Now, get all your typist girlfriends, teach them everything about legal forms, (use a textbook) and YOU WILL GET another fee (cash) from them for each class and for each job you get them. Keep them hopping from office to office. These offices are used to paying hundreds of dollars to personnel agencies for a temp worker and will flock to you, especially if you deliver girls who can spell 'affadavit' and 'sub-rasa'.
30. POMPEII PAINTERS: Paint walls with faux finishes, waxing and buffing enamel walls until they shine like porcelain or doing scrubby textures all of which you'll find in Jocasta Innes books at fine bookshops. Expand to Cache Pots that look like they were STOLEN From The Vatican, gilded, verdegris, etc.
31. EXTRA WORK: Those employment agencies that get you extra work jobs in films are utterly honest and for real. You can sit around all day eating, laughing, attracting clients for your other businesses and make 40-15-$ a day depending on 'bumps,' (extra duties). You often get double cash overtime. It's social and fun, the work is very regular. Go SAG or AFTRA & salary doubles.
32. MESSENGERING: Takes two. One to man the phones, with a pager if he leaves the house, the second in the car making deliveries, also with a pager.
33. CLAY PALACE- Buy a used kiln, put it in your yard. Rent store front, create kitchen. Tons of tables, coffee, pastries, pizza salads and the yuppies feast and paint their own dishes. Kids do birthday parties there. Hottest new biz idea in NYC/LA. One more idea came to me through Jeffrey with the two dogs.
34. DOG PENITENTIARY- Fence your yard; take in pampered pooches whose masters are vacationing for 20$ a day. Or do it with cats.
These are just a few of the thousands of ideas for businesses you can do with little or no start up cash. To do any of these would cost a few hundred to a grand tops.
If you need more cash write A PROSPECTUS. This is a set of 3 simple documents. First, there's a DEAL MEMO or short legal contract where you promise the PERCENTAGE OF PROFITS, INTEREST, DESTINY OF PRINCIPLE (returned or not?). State the AIMS OF BUSINESS, i.e. To create a bakery/cafe. State how many shares will be sold. Securities Commission allows up to 35 'shares in a limited partnership.' Divide amt. of cash you need to start biz by 35. Say it's 35 thousand dollars. Everybody contributes or invests a grand. They each get a share in your biz for that grand. Ask a lawyer what amt. you get for running it. Maybe 3/4s. See, they don't get ALL of it. Stockholders get a % of it. State that PROFITS will be divided by 35. PROFITS for how many years? Forever? l0 years? You have to decide. Here's where you state what the money will be used for, and this is a legal, binding promise which gives them total confidence. Whatever you do, wherever you do it, 35 PEOPLE have a piece of your action. You cannot ask more than 35 people to buy in as shareholders or the FCC comes after you. Last, state that their bookkeepers have the right to look at the books any time. Leave spaces for signatures, city and state, dates, sign it. Give it to them. Keep a copy.
Next, THE PROSPECTUS has a RESUME/BIO showing what you've done in your life that qualifies you for this business. This will glowingly describe your abilities, experience.
Third AND LAST, make an actual share of stock in this 'Limited Partnership.' How? Print a fancy graphic border on parchment paper. Around edges, use the @@@@@ key. Text on share says it's one share in the BUSINESS & reaffirms value, profits per Share.
A PROSPECTUS is basically an ad or commercial, a kind of written hype, a hook with bait. Fishing is a bad analogy because you're not going to slaughter these guys because they have a surfeit of money. You're going to put them on the perimeter of your interesting business and share profits with them.
These three documents will be typed up by you, and xeroxed 50 times because out of 50 submissions, you'll only get 15 takers. One out of three will say yes and you'll be on your way!
These awesome ideas that Bottom feeders have given me should inspire you. Don't just stand there enduring poverty and enslavement in some 40 hour week paying minimum fearing dismissal, hamsters on a social security treadmill that goes nowhere when it purports to be going somewhere. Bottom feeders are dynamic artists, on their way nowhere which is really somewhere. They appreciate the Zen paradoxes. We don't need to go somewhere else because we are ecstatic, NOW, totally in the here and now, blissed out of our gourds and here is fine.
Instead of financial paralysis, worrying about your security, fearful of not making it in life, look at the current slowdown in the corporative sector, & USE it to hedge your bets, and create a Track II plan.
Rethink your SUCCESS strategies. Let in new input. Get off your old prejudices, nihilistic thinking, by first imagining that it could be done, next by wondering how YOU would do it.
Create a creative cottage industry or business. If you can, fund it with a PROSPECTUS targeting partners. Find the seed money. You can ACHIEVE A FAMILY OWNED BUSINESS that you can do out of the garden or garage of a fine, big rented home with a garage workshop.
After you get into the HIGH INCOME bracket, you'll get a real factory or office. Then, you'll get INTO REAL ESTATE. You'll easily get 1ST TIME HOME OWNERSHIP with one of those 3% Fannie Mae loans, or the l0% down Community Loans based on how much high rent you used to pay. Then you'll move on to providing housing for others, with income property.
The government wants the poor to have homes so that when we go to the old age home, GOV doesn't have to pay 7k a month to your Old Age Home. They can cannibalize our house instead. So USE the government, your friends and relatives and you'll easily get a leg up into real estate. Scout down a team of able people who can help you 'fix up' and rent these apartments and buy other buildings. Soon, you can start to build affordable housing for the proletariat and then, Donald Trump will be checking in his rear view mirror and it'll be YOU he sees behind him.
It takes FIRE IN THE BELLY, to take an idea like this and make it work but get onto a LIVE FOOD California Healthfood diet of tofu and shitake mushrooms on brown rice, vegie-burger, pumpkin seeds in your Caesar salad, solar fruit between meals, raw juices, algae and you will be able to do it. And a lot more besides.
In the last analysis, ARE bottom feeders LOSERS? Not if they are doing something important, meaningful, socially useful with their time. Not if they're 'advancing the action.'
We should not fall prey to the trap of believing that 'Laborem per quid pro quo solo Valoreum est.' Being a good person, never abusing or using another human and finding a cooperative and aesthetic way to survive with the help of roomies and relatives, a team of like minds---is what's really important and joy-producing. Not having a Beamer. Of course, if you want a fancy car, BFers understand your pleasure in toys and are compassionate. BFers have understanding hearts. They are not anti-social looney loners or Taxi-drivers. 99% of them do not shoplift their food. BFers dress well, live in beautiful homes and often do have elegant social lives but they don't just socialize with other Bfers. Their careers have given them entry into the Fortune 500. Our clients are the crowned heads but while we may hobnob with kings, we always stop and talk to the homeless, and are incapable of rejecting people who are in need. We have cash to share as frequently, we are accepted as artisans, healers, therapists and gurus to the wealthiest families in America. And if there's any trickle down in America, it comes from us. BFers brake for the homeless and give cash and food to beggars and every stitch we finish with is washed, ironed and given to someone lower on the food chain than we.
Bottom Feeders have not abandoned middle class values entirely. We remember the fifties with nostalgia, celebrate Thanksgiving and actually send out Christmas cards (just not store bought ones. Ours are more often made from lino-cuts and printed at home) and mailed with a 2c stamp.
What's plain to see is that Bottom Feeders have chosen not to let the intricate codebook of 'shalt not' and 'should' interfere with the responsibility to 'cover your own ass and see to your own survival.'
We BFers see to ourselves because we do not believe the state is really thinking of the underclass. True, occasionally we bend a law or two, remembering the codebook of Krishna which is this: "a totally honest man can be trusted to write his own laws." Or as Bob Dylan said, 'to live beyond the law you must be innocent."
Bottom Feeders will window shop at Saks but they won't buy or work there. Nor at Woolworths or Walmart. They will not compromise their aesthetics with alienated labor, or corrupt their pleasure in space, time and energy with limiting, banal, fiduciary arrangements. They do not look down on those who feel they must compromise, BFers simply think the rest of the world doesn't know a better way. They belief they have found a better way. BFers are involved with a life discipline as beautiful as Buddhism or Taoism. I call it Guerilla Captalism.
Hegel said that it was in the organization of the State (politics) that God truly descended onto Earth. When our government organizes itself to foment creative capitalism, instead of restricting it, ---when it rewards creativity and independence instead of discouraging it, puts a stop to legislation designed by transnationals for self-enrichment, fires the politicians who serve the oligarchy who put these laws in, when the planet stops waste of resources by giving intended throw-aways to the poor, Utopia will exist on earth.
As times get tougher, as union workers are abandoned by those CEO's from ROGER AND ME, the guys at GM who've moved the factories to Guatemala....and as businesses downsize and so many lawyers are being fired and foreclosed upon right and left, a lot of you most wonderful and clever people may soon be hurting. And when you feel the Insurance companies straining to seize your wallet and the State's hand on your wallet or Stepfather Bank's dictums limiting your inalienable right to drive on city streets, rent homes, talk on the phone, have light, roof, street parking or a free education, you may be joining us. So, tuck this article, book or columns away...for the proverbial rainy day.