The HomeFree Experiment

A Scientific Report by K. Cheep

1. Hypothesis.

State your scientific goals clearly.

It is both possible and easy to live a money-free, job-free, house-free (and therefore rent-free) existence. Success of this lifestyle will result in increased happiness for the experimenter.

2. Experiment

2.1 Geography

The experiment is to take place in the arena of the San Francisco Bay Area, extending from Santa Cruz, California, all the way up to San Francisco, California.

2.2. Materials

One 1997 Toyota Camry with trunk-mounted bike rack

One 1978 (?) Motobeca road bike with 3 metal baskets, two foldable

A car trunk full of vital materials for any conceivable situation, including:

-backpacker’s tent with rain tarp

-sleeping bag rated to zero degrees Fahrenheit.

-1980s-era backpacker’s backpack

-Backpacker’s tent

-Dry, instantly edible bulk foods*, including nuts, raisins, trail mixes and a wide assortment of Clif Bars

-Dry inedible grains and legumes including black beans, rice and dry oats.

-Portable crucial spices (cayenne, salt, pepper) and spray-on canola oil, which doubles as bike lubricant.

-Tuberous vegetables with long shelf lives (car trunk lives in this case), including sweet potatoes, onions and garlic.

-A butane canister and a small, foldable backpacker’s stove.

-Waterproof matches

-lightweight and compact aluminum cookware (two pans and a bowl).

-utensils and knives

-Several gallons of tap water held in recycled glass bottles

-Bicycle repair tools, including spare tires, patch kit, plastic tire wrenches, spoke wrench, pliers, and other assorted tools.

-Two bicycle locks

-One bike helmet

-Large duffel full of spare clothes

-Hygiene kit including soap, toothbrush, dental floss and deodorant

-Emergency first aid kit and emergency poncho.

-small netbook running all free, open-source software.

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*all food courtesy the Federal government

2.3 Procedure

Subject will attempt to live without rent for one month, maximizing his stay in wilderness and urban environments. Subject will try to find comfortable, dry and safe sleeping locales and to cook as much of his own food as possible. Furthermore, subject has stated as his goal to write, read and live an aesthetic’s life as much as possible.

3. Results

I was unable to spend as much time sleeping outdoors as hoped. Of the 25 days of the experiment, only 4 were outdoors. 5 were spent in an industrial studio, 5 on couches and 11 in a traditional bed.

Sleeping outside failed several times. In one instance, I walked around the campus of Stanford looking for a quiet yet safe spot to lay out my rug and sleeping bag. I found a spot about 300 feet from Sand Hill Road, in an oak forest near the Stanford Stables. Though my bag was warm, sleeping uncovered was slightly frightening being outside. I kept thinking about coyotes or parasites that might bother me in the night, and the nearby din of cars kept me awake. After an hour or two I was finally able to drift off, only to be woken at about 4 by the sound of the most horrible animal of all—the human animal. There was coughing nearby emanating from a human that hadn’t been there before. It was a repeated sound and distant, but still close enough that I could hear, faintly, the sound of the same human shuffling in the night. The fact that the sounds hadn’t been there when I went to sleep, combined with the fact that I was near enough to be heard by him, combined with the fact that if I were to pick up my things and leave I would be heard by him and he would have time enough to pinpoint me, combined with the fact that we were utterly alone in the forest with no other people around, were very nerve-wracking. I lay there in total silence for about twenty minutes listening to him cough, terrified to move, planning my next course of action. Eventually I brazenly packed up my things and left, saying nothing the whole time, praying that he would not wander towards me. He did not, fortunately, and I headed back to my friend’s studio at Stanford to sleep on the couch after getting lost on the golf course and running into an early-morning construction team.

Similar results occurred at UC Santa Cruz. The next day I went down the coast to Santa Cruz, figuring sleep might come easier there than at Stanford given the greater wilderness. I parked on campus and planned to wake up early, which would be easy since I was going to sleep at 8 pm. First I went into the thick forest up by the trailer park, scouting out if this would be a good location. Almost immediately after I entered the dark thickets I heard someone else in the distance trudging around. “Hello?” I said aloud. The rustling stopped. My assumption is that they were up to something nefarious, almost undoubtedly moving pot. There are pot growers who operate in the far reaches of campus, which I knew about before I heard this intruder.

This made me wary of sleeping in the redwoods. Additionally, the redwood forest, by virtue of having thick forest floors with many layers of brush, is eerily quiet in the night. It is hard to detect interlopers until they are upon you. I started feeling the fantods come on, and also knowing of the mountain lion, bear and rabid raccoon population convinced me to go to Plan B. So, I walked over to a pre-planned building on campus I had mapped out earlier which had low roofs and was accessible via a brick wall that went right up to roof level. With my rug and sleeping bag I hopped onto the roof of the building and found a convenient spot. The roof was designed for walking—it had a layer of gravel covering it evenly, like a driveway or clearing. The rug plus the sleeping bag was actually quite cozy. The only problem with sleeping was that the area was extremely well-lit by the numerous street lamps. Furthermore, at around midnight, a student pulled up and started unloading some sort of project. Though it was irrational, I couldn’t help but feel a paranoia that he might come up to the roof and find me. The students must know how easy it is to access the roof. Probably even campus security knew about it. I started feeling paranoid that either security or a student would patrol up there and find me. I couldn’t make this feeling dissipate, and every time a campus shuttle went by or I heard someone moving about on the sidewalk below I felt the paranoia settling in. I fell asleep eventually only to wake at 3:30, which considering I attempted sleep at 8:00 PM really wasn’t so bad. It was actually rather refreshing to be able to wake up so early. I lay there for another hour and finally packed up my bag, brushed my teeth and went back to my car.

I decided my best course of action would be to drive north to the City and stay there that night, on a friend’s couch, so I started down Highway One after picking up some (food stamp) groceries. Getting little sleep makes you very hungry. It messes with the metabolism, they say. After driving for an hour or so I pulled over at one of the cliffside beaches and pulled out my cooking stove, some pesto, eggs, tomatoes and avocado, and went over to a hidden bramble and cooked a pesto-egg breakfast. Then I fried up some sweet potatoes. It was very delicious, I still remember how gourmet my backpacker’s stove could be. After eating those, I started cruising some more; not that far from Pescadero I saw a little back road that went past a cement or timber plant. I followed the road and was led to a beautiful country valley that was almost untouched by human hands. There was a little area to pull over off of this 1.5-lane road and park by a creek at the base of this valley. Deciduous trees towered over the creek, while lining the mountain were massive redwoods. I went for a morning stroll and reveled in the life in that small valley. I saw bright red mushrooms, the color of tomatoes, springing up out of the soil. Many banana slugs—this was paradise for them. Surprisingly little bird or mammal life, though. Eventually I decided to press on and went up the coast to the city.

I stayed with a friend in Alamo Square for a couple days, then went back down to Stanford where I stayed again in my friend’s art studio. Most of the rest of the time I stayed either up in the city or at Stanford. I had some friends in town who insisted on camping, and so for a few days I was down in the mountains near Felton (Santa Cruz County) camping in the redwoods. We were almost mauled by raccoons in the night that day. It was a nice time to camp, given the lack of tourists in January.

With regards to camping, we failed several times in finding free camping. There are designated campsites in Big Basin, as with much of the other so-called “public” land down there. We considered parking on the side of the road somewhere, but were advised against this by locals. Apparently it has become much more difficult to camp without paying someone. The real problem is the automobile—if you can hide it somewhere, which you usually can’t, camping becomes much easier. Just slip into the woods unnoticed.

4. Conclusions

Camping is unfortunately very difficult as a method of sustaining a long-term existence. The reasons for this are simply that if you have any degree of things, you will need a car, and if you have a car you are limited and herded into areas where the assholes of the park service will extract money from you.

Sleeping in remote campuses can be nice provided that you are sufficiently brave. As a long-term solution, however, this requires much mobility.

I did not get a chance to attempt squatting. Indeed, I thoroughly wish to do so at some point in the near future, especially given all the foreclosed homes in this country. This is my new goal, to sustain myself while squatting, and I intend to update my blog on this subject in the future more frequently.

I hate everything about it. I hate what it does to people, I hate how much better than others those who have it are perceived as being, I hate how we deny its importance and then grovel for it, I hate how it turns us into slaves, I hate how it separates people and causes war and makes humans into robots and prevents us from being creative and has created the Corporation, the most heartless, evil, psedoorganismal entity to ever exist, a machine with a foresight of one year and an endless appetite, an unthinking monster which is responsible for the majority of the death, destruction and environmental havoc wreaked upon this planet.

I hate how I never have money, and have no idea how to get it, and I hate myself for wanting it. I hate myself for being so bad at making money, and in turn I hate money for needing it. I hate how necessary it still is. I hate how I actually possess a conscience, and prefer making things to spending money, and this makes me a failure in the eyes of society.

Why has this demonic invention taken over so much of our thought? Human potential is wasted constantly on a mass scale because of money. People kill each other on a regular basis for their things, or for each other’s money, and yet we always blame the murderer. We blame their greed on them. We never blame the money. The newspapers never connect a motive with a corrupt society that is pounding the notion of the supremacy of money down our throats with ever-increasing amplitude.

I work in an office with three or four other people on computers. Furthermore, my boss comes in the door at random times to check up on me. So I spent much of the past few months at work trying to master the art of browsing with maximum stealth, and the fact that I haven’t been caught yet, despite doing about 1 hour of work per 8 hour day, is a testament to the success of my method. (In fact, I am writing this guide at work right now.) I feel I am a good candidate to write this because I am both insanely paranoid of getting caught and insanely devoted to wasting as much company time as possible.

There used to be a great product out there called Ghostzilla–-for PC only, sadly. It doesn’t exist anymore, but from what I’ve read about it it was essentially a version of Firefox maximized for stealthy surfing–-it hid inside other programs, was very subtle in its appearance, etc. I have discovered, however, that it is possible to replicate most of the functions of Ghostzilla using Firefox, if we tweak it a little bit.

So, what I have set out to do is create a browsing environment which is stealthy in the following ways:

-The icon and name of the program running is something subtle and  non-obvious (so not “Firefox”)

-The browser stores no history, passwords or any trace that anyone has been using it.

-The browsing environment resembles an official document and is only visible from within a few feet–-meaning white backgrounds, light text colors, and the option to turn off pictures and plug-ins, thus creating a browser that is invisible to everyone except someone right in front of it.

I started by doing google searches for this topic and found that there were embarrassingly few sites that devoted themselves to full coverage of something millions do every day; thus I have taken it upon myself to create the first complete reference. This represents the culmination of my research.

How to Browse the Internet at Work Without Your Boss (or anyone else) Noticing.

1. Get an “alternative” browser like Firefox or Opera.

If you are nervous someone is going to be checking up on you at work, or possibly checking your browsing history-–you never can be too safe–-it behooves you to first get an alternative browser, something other than the default Internet Explorer or Safari. If someone is going to be randomly checking up on your history, they’re going to check to the default browser, obviously. Even though Safari and IE have “stealth mode” or “private browsing” options, you can’t take the risk that you might forget to turn these on. Many of us use browsers in our official work business, such as for email. By using an alternative browser for surfing, we can keep an official-looking history on our default work browser and not have to worry about an overseer witnessing something funny popping up in the search or address bar.

(Note: This guide details how to convert Firefox into a mega-stealthy work browser; however, some shrewd employers have all their employees use Firefox as the standard. If this is the case, I would recommend using Camino on a Mac, or Opera on a PC, as you can do all the same functions I’m about to detail.)

After you’ve installed Firefox on your work computer, you can proceed to step 2…

2. Making Firefox look stealthier.

a. Change the icon.

That little icon in the corner too often gives one away. You can minimize, but you can’t hide the colorful blue-and-orange fox logo that peeks from the corner, alerting your boss and coworkers to your real interests.

ON MACS:

1. Go to the application folder.

2. Get info for the icon. You can do this either by selecting the icon and hitting Apple-I, or  right-clicking (control-click for a one-button mouse) the Firefox icon, and clicking on “Get Info.”

3. Mouse over the image of the icon in the upper-left corner of the “Get Info” box. This should look like a blue and orange fox as the default.

Click on it. A blue halo should appear around it, indicating it is selected.

Now, we need to choose another icon to replace it with, something subtler. I chose the icon for a program called iSync that came with my computer. I don’t know what it is, but it looks pretty system-y and boring, and definitely doesn’t look like a browser; furthermore, it is something I would never be inclined to click on, nor would any of my co-workers I think.

4. “Get info” on iSync (or whatever program has a desirable, subtle icon). Now mouse over the icon and click on it. The blue halo should appear around it, indicating it is selected.

The get info box for iSync (mac)

Click copy. Now click back on the infobox for Firefox, mouse over the icon so it is a blue halo, and click paste. This should replace the icon so now Firefox appears in your dock as a subtle, silvery circle.

b. Change the name.

In the application folder, change the name of the application from “Firefox” to something more benign. I chose “iSync Updater” for synchronicity. Just a random name I came up with.

The appearance of Firefox in the dock, aka "iSync Updater." Yes, I am so brazen that I leave it in the dock on my communal work computer, right between Preview and iChat.

Now for the harder parts. We’re going to change the settings in Firefox so that it looks more like a word document and less like a web browser. Furthermore, we’re going to edit it so that it never saves any history and leaves no trace of anything we’ve done on it. Finally, we’re going to add the option for proxy-browsing. For beginners, this is essentially a method of rerouting your internet traffic so that your boss cannot see where you’ve been, nor can they block you from the web (some employers block Facebook, Twitter, gmail, things like that).

3. Download the following Firefox add-ons.

You can get all these add-ons from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/. Simply type in the name into the search bar and click on “add to Firefox.”

1. Stealther. This is a wonderful little add-on that deletes any trace of your browsing history, saved forms, cookies (I think?), etc. as soon as the session closes. You can edit these settings in Stealther’s preferences, which can be accessed by going to Tools–>Add-ons then clicking on Stealther, then on preferences.

2. Ad-block Plus. Not only will this save loading time by reducing the amount of data downloaded, but it will also prevent many pop-ups from jumping out and surprising you while you and the supervisor are looking at an Excel spreadsheet.

3. Whitehart. This is a theme that makes your browser look very white and plain. I like it because it is very understated and doesn’t draw attention to itself. There may be other browser themes that are even better, but if so I haven’t found any yet.

4. (optional) a proxy-jumper. FoxyProxy is one such add-on, though there are many. I have an incompetent employer who is both naive about employee browsing as well as computer-illiterate, so I don’t know much about proxy-hacking, but a quick google search could reveal all to you.

4. Change the default page colors and text colors.

Browsers can force webpages to adhere to their own standards if you make them. Our goal is to prevent a bright flashing red fanpage with size 99 text from alerting the whole office to our activities. How to do it:

1. Go to Firefox preferences (Apple-, [that's a comma] on a mac and control-comma on a PC). Click on the “content” tab. Click on “Colors.”  Change the text color to something more subtle, either black or gray. I chose a light gray that is just readable enough for my eyes. (The lighter it is, the harder to see from afar). Now, click on background, and change the background to white. Change the link colors to something light–-powder blue and light gray, say. Finally, UNCHECK the box that says “Allow pages to choose their own colors.” You don’t want them to do this anymore. Click OK.

2. (optional) Back in the content tab, change the default font to something nice, like Times at 14pt. Click on the “Advanced” icon. This changes your browser fonts to something standardized. If for some reason you are on sites with large text, such as headlines, you may want to tweak these functions, but with colors turned down I haven’t found them necessary.

5. Get rid of the annoying icons that appear next to pages in tabs, sometimes called “favicons.”

These little icons, though small, can theoretically ruin you. We want to eliminate anything that looks even slightly suspicious.

Fortunately this is a very simple process. Simply enter this into your address bar: “about:config”. This lets you get at the guts of firefox, so there should be a warning that appears telling you that you are screwing with something vital. Click through it.

In about:config, in the filter bar, type in “favicon.” One hit should appear: browser.chrome.favicons. Double-clicking this should set the value to “false” which is what you want it to be.

6. Prevent Firefox from loading images.

Go to firefox preferences again. In the content section, un-check “load images automatically”.

Voila! Your work browsing experience is now completely stealthified. Here’s a screenshot of the New York Times on my work browser, as it appears in Safari and in Firefox:

Safari Screenshot. Non-stealthy, full of images, exceedingly obvious.

The same page in firefox, aka "iSync Updater." Not pictured: The icon in the dock, which looks identical to iSync (see above screenshots)

7. Acquaint yourself with the “Hide” command.

Okay, programmers must have had procrastinating office workers in mind when they designed this command. It doesn’t simply minimize the program-–it hides every trace of it except for the tiny dot in the dock indicating it’s open. Normal minimize puts a small image of what’s open in the corner, but hide doesn’t even do that. To hide a page: when it is open, hit “Apple+H”.

I was told by a friend that in Windows, the command is Control+D, but I can’t corroborate this with anyone.

I can’t count how many times this has saved me, particularly when I have images turned on. If you have fast reflexes, by all means, you can get away with resorting to “Hide” to hide your pages.

—-

There are other browser elements you may want to tweak depending on what kinds of sites you visit and your own preferences: Turning javascript on and off, or Flash elements, for instance. With current settings, Youtube videos will play in Firefox, though you may want to remove videos entirely.

Note that the icon-swap method can work with other programs too. I currently have a Torrent downloader installed at my work computer, disguised by the Address Book icon. I keep it running and hidden all day at work so I can download torrents while I’m “working.”

Greedpeace approaches

I was approached on the streets of downtown Palo Alto yesterday by a young man from Greenpeace. He was about my age, a bit more masculine-looking, with cactus-like stubble on his face, a squarish, move-star jaw and penetrating green eyes. Given his styled short hair and J.Crew style, I mistook him at first for a yuppie-in-training (which he could have been). Still, he was quite passionate about the cause that he was promoting.

He caught me as I was parking my bike at the corner outside the Peet’s Coffee. After I’d locked up–he waited for me, graciously–he started talking to me about Greenpeace and their initiatives. Of particular concern were whales. In fact, I believe this was the primary cause at the moment for the organization.

Interestingly, his pitch was an attempt to hook me to donate to Greenpeace. When he had finished his spiel and handed me a clipboard, I looked at it and said, “well, I can’t really donate right now because I’m not doing too well financially.”

He was not nonplussed. “It would be pretty messed up if we didn’t let people become members for financial reasons,” he said. I would agree. “So, we let you donate as little as 15 dollars a month.”

This seemed to contradict what he had just said. Fifteen dollars is a tremendous sum–about 1.2% of my monthly salary or two hours of work. After rent and transit (about 70% of my income) I have had weeks where I finished with as little $28 in my bank account, and I really didn’t need another $15 docked. I told the man my little parable about having $28 at the end of last month.

“That means you can still donate $15 and have money left over!” he said.

—-

The point I’d hoped to get across to this brainwashed fool was that money shouldn’t really be necessary to support a social cause. Words, actions and volunteer time are, in a true social revolution, more important than money.

When all our causes become so singularly money-focused, they devolve, in a sense, into being inherently classist. Furthermore, they become stuck on the same greedy modes of thinking that we associate with capitalists. A rich man can donate a thousand times what I can without batting an eye–thus, he is the more ideal target for the money-focused organization.

This skews heavily the target demographic for any fundraising nonprofit. Furthermore, this makes the nature of cause-building undemocratic. It places an organization like Greenpeace or PETA in the same capitalistic confines that a public company like Google is in.

What do I mean by that? Google would probably like to adhere to its company motto, “Don’t Be Evil,” but that isn’t really its focus. Its focus is to make money, like every corporation, like Blackwater and Coca Cola and Goldman Sachs; there is no functional difference. Make money. Make more money this quarter than last. That’s it. And if doing non-evil is included in the process, it’s just an added benefit for Google.

In the same sense, Greenpeace has devolved into a pseudo-corporation, a metaphysical money-eating monster with a tiny mouth and unending appetite (to borrow Derrick Jensen’s physical allegory for corporations being the manifestation of “hungry ghosts”). Despite any morals that Greenpeace may purportedly have, it follows nearly the same cyclical model as a corporation–money must flow in. Always more. The only difference is that what flows out is marginally less awful.

I intend to tell the next canvasser who approaches me for donations my feelings about classism and fundraising. I don’t believe in the tyranny of money as a model and I don’t think it is necessary, as I’ve made abundantly clear in previous posts.

The next revolution will be built with hands, not dollars.

Diogenes in his barrel, where he slept and lived

The mascot of Home-free Living is Diogenes of Synope, a Greek philosopher and “Cynic” (he is actually the originator of the word cynic, more on that later) and a perpetual vagabond and wanderer.

Diogenes may have been the world’s first official freegan-–he was the first espouser of freegan philosophy, at least. He is reputed to have slept in a barrel and eaten for free off of others’ plates. Diogenes was famously skeptical of capitalists, finding it incredulous

“…that misers blamed money but were preposterously fond of it.” [...] He often condemned those who praise the just for being superior to money, but who at the same time are eager themselves for great riches. (227)

He (like me) didn’t seem to believe in private property: he was admonished by none other than Plato for eating off his plate:

“At another time [Diogenes] was eating dried figs when Plato met him, and he said to him, “You may have a share of these;” and as he took some and ate them, he said “I said that you might have a share of them, not that you might eat them all!” (this is from Diogenes Laertius’ [a different Diogenes, this one 3rd c. AD] The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, p. 226)

Diogenes was quite fond of pointing out what he viewed as Plato’s hypocrisies. Diogenes’ impression of Plato seems to be that he was a spoiled yuppie contrarian; in another instance, Diogenes makes fun of Plato for eating expensive imported olives that he could’ve bought locally:

On one occasion when he noticed Plato at a very costly entertainment tasting some olives, he said “O you wise man! why, after having sailed to Sicily for the sake of such a feast, do you not now enjoy what you have before you?” And Plato replied “By the Gods, Diogenes, while I was there I ate olives and all such things a great deal.” Diogenes rejoined, “What then did you want to sail to Syracuse for? Did not Attica at that time produce any olives?” (225-6)

Another sample of his commentary on poverty:

A man once asked [Diogenes] what was the proper time for supper, and he made answer, “If you are a rich man, whenever you please; and if you are a poor man, whenever you can.” (231)

I take inspiration from Diogenes in that he managed to be a very happy, contented and respected man who was homeless for philosophical reasons.

Diogenes communes in his barrel

Diogenes and I are both also dog-lovers:

Many anecdotes of Diogenes refer to his dog-like behavior, and his praise of a dog’s virtues. It is not known whether Diogenes was insulted with the epithet “doggish” and made a virtue of it, or whether he first took up the dog theme himself. The modern terms cynic and cynical derive from the Greek word kynikos, the adjective form of kyon, meaning dog.^[39] Diogenes believed human beings live artificially and hypocritically and would do well to study the dog. Besides performing natural bodily functions in public without unease, a dog will eat anything, and make no fuss about where to sleep. Dogs live in the present without anxiety, and have no use for the pretensions of abstract philosophy. In addition to these virtues, dogs are thought to know instinctively who is friend and who is foe. Unlike human beings who either dupe others or are duped, dogs will give an honest bark at the truth. (from Wikipedia, which I don’t like to quote, thought I will when pressed).

All the original source quotes are from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, by 3rd century Greek philosopher Diogenes Laertius. The version I cited is the translation by C.G. Yonge, which you can read online for free here. The section on Diogenes of Sinope starts on page 224.

The first step in the process is actually going down to the Social Services Administration and applying. I could have done this months ago, when I was unemployed, but I had no idea then what the process was like, or even that I was eligible. However, I discovered shortly after attaining my job that as an Americorps volunteer I qualified for the program automatically.

I waited until September 14 to apply, since I have Mondays off. (I have no idea how you apply if you can’t go sometime during the work week.) I went down to the Mountain View Social Services office, which is the closest one to my house in Palo Alto. There are only three offices in all of Santa Clara County, a county of 1.6 million.

After waiting for a while in the lobby, I was called up to the counter. I had brought with me a variety of documents pertaining to my status as an American taxpayer. They didn’t need many of them, though. After being there for an hour, they informed me that I would have an appointment with a social worker in the office, and then that he or she would work with me to see if I qualified. Furthermore, I would be notified of when this date would occur in the mail. I asked if I could just meet someone now, or if they could tell me my appointment time now; they said no.

Obviously this was alarmingly stupid and Kafkaesque from a bureaucratic standpoint but I accepted it because I had no choice. About ten days later, just as planned, I got a letter in the mail from the County of Santa Clara informing me that my appointment date would be October 31. Yes, that’s a full month and a half after applying.

What if I had been starving at the time of the appointment? I actually asked the bureaucrat at the office this question on September 14. He told me that there was an “emergency” process that took only three days, max. Did I qualify for that? Probably not, he told me.

So think about that, first. There’s a pretty big gap between three days and 45 days. I was unable to avoid making comparisons to the state of public health in this country–-it’s near impossible, for us subaltern at least, to make an appointment with a doctor within a few weeks, but if it’s an “emergency” you can go to one of our country’s overcrowded, underfunded ERs. There is no inbetween–-something that is pretty unsettling. ERs are also absurdly expensive, as we know. So what state am I in? I’m either fine or in a crisis. Two poles. That’s what our health/assistance culture has evolved into. No empathy from bureaucrats otherwise, either honor an appointment or wait till you’re on the verge of death/starvation.

So, on October 31, early in the morning (I had an 8:30 appointment) I delayed work and went down to the office. My case worker was a very empathetic though necessarily rule-oriented bureaucrat named Maria.

I brought a slew of documents with me-–my California state ID (which was still registered in SF, posing a small problem), my sublet tenant agreement (which didn’t actually say the address, another problem), my bank statement, and about 5 pay stubs. I also brought my passport.

But I was almost immediately rebuffed because I didn’t have my Social Security Card. For non-American readers, this is a flimsy piece of paper that is issued to you, usually shortly after birth, that has your Social Security number on it and your name. It doesn’t have the holder’s picture. It is probably the most easily reproducible document ever made–-I could fake one with a scanner, an ink color printer and a pirated copy of Photoshop. (You could probably do it in MSPaint, really.) It’s also something no one carries around in their wallet because it’s a really bad idea to carry around your social security number, for obvious reasons. Most people when asked for their Social Security number just write it down from memory. I have never been asked for this document before. I haven’t seen my Social Security card in maybe five years. It might be at my parents house, though I called them and they don’t know where it is either.

This was a very big problem, Maria let me know immediately. Even though I’d brought my passport, something that is difficult to acquire and near-impossible to forge, I couldn’t get food stamps (she said) without my flimsy Social Security card.

Maria gave me a map to the Social Security office a few miles away (it’s different from the county Social Services office, where I was–-Soc. Sec is a federal thing). She continued with the eligibility procedure anyway. This involved her typing on the computer a bunch of numerical values related to my income, rent and assets. After crunching the numbers she had some bad news: evidently I did NOT qualify for food stamps.

I was stunned, only because I knew this wasn’t true. I explained to her what little bureaucratese I understood about my situation. I told her that many of my co-workers were on food stamps, that there was no doubt in my mind that they, getting paid the same amount of money as me, qualified so I must qualify. I knew it had something to do with the federal Americorps program. I argued with her about this for some time. I didn’t try to speak in bureaucratese because I didn’t really understand the nitty-gritty details of why I was eligible, but I knew from work that there was some federal rule or statute or something that allowed me to get on food stamps.

I want to take a break here to explain the oddity of this situation. I make minimum wage. I work full-time. In America, in northern California, if you make minimum-wage and work full-time, you do NOT qualify for food stamps. Even more stupidly, when considering income in order to see if one is eligible for food stamps, the income considered is pre-tax. $55 of each of my paychecks goes to taxes. But because I make $625 (every 2 weeks) pre-tax, which averages to $1354 per month (which is actually $1235 after taxes) I did not qualify for food stamps. If I had made $1300 per month I would have qualified by their standards.

So, to clarify: you have to make either LESS than minimum wage (supposedly impossible) or be working less than full-time at minimum wage. (So really, you either have to be working part-time at minimum wage or unemployed) Furthermore, in order to qualify for food stamps, you have to have less than $2000 in assets.

I want to repeat this for effect. If you make less than $15600 a year, even in northern California, AND have $2000 or less in assets (including cars) you qualify for food stamps. This is a tiny amount of money. Try living on $1300 a month and paying for gas and car maintenance (a necessity in San Jose, where public transit is shit), as well as covering food, rent and utilities. $2000 in assets is NOTHING. Most people retire with tens of thousands, more often hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets, in addition to a pension and any property or cars they’ve acquired throughout their life. If you are over 40 and on food stamps, chances are you will never retire. You have to be in dire, dire straits to qualify, or be too young to have any property, or homeless and unemployed.

Also, interestingly, there’s not much of a grey area in there when it comes to income limits. I was supposedly $54 above the monthly limit–-yet food stamps provides $200 a month in benefits to unmarried, childless persons.  That means someone who makes 1300 a month actually makes 1500 including food assistance, and someone who makes 1301 a month makes just that. That math seems a bit odd, doesn’t it? Again, the thin line between “crisis” and relaxed is exemplified in this model. Apparently making $1300 a month constitutes an emergency but $1301 does not.

So, back to my story. I argued with Maria as calmly as I could, but I was definitely a bit upset. She was the bureaucrat, not me, and she was supposed to sort these things out, because clearly I make no claims on understanding the Byzantine system of organization that governs these things. There were many points during our conversation where I could’ve walked out and said, okay, well, thanks anyway, and I just wouldn’t have had food stamps. I think at one point I said, “What am I supposed to do now? Just leave?” Maria shrugged and said I didn’t qualify. I said I would go to the San Jose Social Services center and try again, because they’d given my co-workers stamps. She laughed and said it wouldn’t work because I didn’t qualify.

Maria’s boss was out of the office so she couldn’t consult with her. She went to a co-worker to ask about my case, and her co-worker said the same thing. She fiddled with the computer (which was really the all-knowing portal in the room, it seems) for a while and then confirmed that I didn’t qualify. Finally, she went and asked one more co-worker, because I was adamant. This co-worker had dealt with a case like mine once before (no one else in the office knew what Americorps was–-Maria pronounced it “Ameri-Corpse.”) I couldn’t see what they were doing on the computer screen, but I inferred from their conversation that they changed some option box from “non-exempt” to “exempt,” regarding my income. Changing this meant that I qualified.

So, to clarify again: I was only able to get on food stamps because I was knowledgeable and forward enough to sort out the bureaucratic mess. I am lucky to have this privilege. Many are not afforded this, because of language barriers or education level or access to information or otherwise. But because I had an inkling of the inane regulatory arcana regarding my case, I was able to eventually affirm that I qualified for food stamps. I can only shudder to think how many Americans are denied benefits simply because they aren’t privileged enough to communicate some banal detail about their income or situation.

Things got a lot easier all of a sudden. My social security card was no longer a necessity, as she found me in the database and affirmed my social security number was indeed what I reported it as. She gave me the EBT card (Electronic Benefits Transfer) and I picked out a pin number, as if it were a debit card. She said the card would be activated the next day.

One of the cool things about the EBT card is that it was loaded with all the money I would have received back to the date I applied, September 14. So I started with $350 on the card, and since the benefits renew monthly, I had $550 on November 1.

However, this turns out not to be as convenient as one might think. The reason is that food stamp money can only be applied to quote-unquote food-–no alcohol, no prepared deli foods, but just about everything else in the grocery store. I didn’t really need that kind of money on my card, though. I would have much rather been reimbursed for all the food I’d bought over the past month and a half. It didn’t really make sense to load up on food for the future, since I get more money each month and I can’t eat only non-perishables. So this wasn’t quite as ideal as it seemed.

Yet EBT is admittedly a very cool thing. Americans being obsessed with the illusory freedom of consumer choice, there is almost no limit to what food I can buy with my card. I could spend it all at pricey Whole Foods or at Safeway. (Not all grocers take it, but most large supermarkets, some farmer’s markets and some convenience stores do.) I could buy 100 avocadoes or a hundred Kit-Kat bars or blow it all on soda. And the taxpayers would cover it. Of course, alcohol and certain energy drinks are prohibited, being deemed non-nutritive. But even things like exotic spices, tea and coffee beans are paid for, which are similarly calorie-free, so I wonder at their logic.

This is very different than the food welfare system in other countries, many of which offer their people staples–Brazil, for instance, gives out five staple foods and grains to the impoverished, including dry rice and beans. But the SNAP food stamp program is very prototypically American–-it reflects our inane obsession with the illusion of personal choice and individualism. If you want to spend the taxpayer’s money on soda and Twizzlers, hey, that’s your choice, buddy. Because this is America, and we have “freedom.” Of course, if you don’t have a social security number, or you’re not able to comprehend how to deal with all the red tape, or you lack certain documentation regarding your life, or you’re an immigrant (legal or illegal) and you’re hungry, well, you’re just kind of fucked, huh? You can thank the “compassionate conservatives” for that one.

I had to sign all kinds of alarming documents in order to get food stamps. They fingerprinted me, which was kind of ominous, and doesn’t really give the impression that the government regards the poor with any sort of dignity. I also had to affirm that I wasn’t lying about anything and that if my financial or career situation changed I would affirm within ten days or else risk losing my benefits. Also if I was convicted of a crime I’d have to tell them. Finally, if I was indeed lying, I was alerted that I would be required to pay back the government as well as prosecuted formally.

So now, all I have to do to keep the food stamps is submit a report every three months. The county sends me an envelope and I have to put all my pay stubs from that month in the envelope and send it back (postage paid, conveniently). This is how they check up on me and know to continue giving me the $200/month benefits.

It’s pretty easy to lapse on this program. The homeless Palo Altan to whom I spoke with in an earlier entry said that she was once on food stamps, and had simply been unable to deal with all the paperwork required to keep them after she got out of the hospital and went homeless and no longer had a permanent address. This is alarmingly common. We’ve made the food stamp system so difficult to get on–-trying to ward off so-called fraud–-that America is actually preventing some of the poorest of the poor from receiving SNAP benefits. This woman begged on the streets for money every day so she could buy some nutritious produce, rather than eat the free church food which she called “very bad” (which I don’t fault her for).

I can’t even articulate how monumentally fucked-up this is. I wish that poor homeless persons, like this Palo Alto woman, could somehow join league with other subaltern foot soldiers and go punch every member of the Senate in the face. They could call it the Senatorial much-Needed Ass-kicking Program (SNAP). I bet there’d be alot less paperwork.

I think about this often in relation to my “job.” (I use scare-quotes to denote that my job is probably only loosely a job; because it’s through Americorps, it is bureaucratically “service,” and I get paid a “stipend,” not a salary by the government’s definition. Also I don’t like thinking of it as a job because I don’t like it). I am perpetually unhappy at my job. I feel like it is taking away from my real life goals–-not only taking away, but detracting in fact, not building towards anything at all. I would be okay with a job that took up all my time if it allowed me to save money, because that would equate to eventual freedom from work. I would be okay with a job I didn’t like if I worked part-time and had more freedom with my time. I would be okay with a job I liked. This job fulfills none of those requirements.

Anyway, I wonder at how unhappy I am because so many of my co-workers seem pretty contented. I’m kind of the anomaly. Even though we’re working for a nonprofit, I don’t find the bureaucratic busywork in the least bit stimulating. But most people here seem pretty happy, pretty fulfilled. I’ve kept very secret my own feelings towards the state of pure work into which my life’s been funneled.

Admittedly I feel frustrated that others are happy when I am not. Why is this? Why can’t I be happy in something that so many others seem to not only find contenting but downright enjoyable?

On the other side, I also don’t understand why everyone else isn’t miserable like I am. How could anyone enjoy spending their days doing mindless tasks? Don’t they like creating? Don’t they enjoy being creative, drawing, writing, playing music, thinking, reading books, educating themselves, like I do? These are such virtuous things, I think–-why doesn’t everyone feel compelled to devote themselves to them?

These are very earnest and simplistic questions, but they are genuine. I can only see so far into the minds of others. I’ve come to the conclusion that it is just my nature, somehow. I don’t fully understand why I like what I like. But it makes me wonder, too, if I have a lower tolerance for unhappiness than most. I am almost nonfunctional when I’m unhappy. I can’t really control it, even–sometimes it feels like my body is on the verge of collapse after work, like I can’t even remember what makes me happy or why and life starts to feel utterly pointless. Sleep is a temporary remedy.

So what drove me to be like this? Obviously, a lot of it is this drive I feel to be creative, to make things and produce art and show it to the world. Is this a basic human urge? I thought it was. I never considered this to be my future lifestyle, though. I always thought I’d be a scientist when I grew up, and I may have been creative as a youth but not very continuously. Only when I was in high school and I started making music with friends did I discover a kind of untamed, creative person inside. I found that with writing and music I was able to express myself in ways that were more fulfilling than I’d ever imagined.

And then three years ago I started working on this novel, and now it sort of consumes me. I write about it far less than I think about it. It feels like an inevitability in my life now, something that’s been weighing on me. Like I won’t be a full person till I finish it; it’s like an unfinished part of my self. And it’s fucking hard. It’s a lot of work and I want to spend more time on it, but it’s hard to find discipline and with work now it’s near impossible to find the time. But I’m at the point where I simply MUST finish it. It’s consuming me, and I know where it needs to go next; I just need to find the time to do it. And being homeless enables me to expend this time.

But I think I always took it for granted that everyone felt like this. Doesn’t everyone want to express themselves? Doesn’t every human feel happier when they’ve made something good and fun that others appreciate, regardless of the medium? I know that alot of people, in my experience, struggle with validation issues, the “am I good enough” question. I think I stumbled into this weird artist vortex where I was lucky enough to never have that problem–-I just started making music one day, and it was funny and good and people appreciated it immediately despite the shitty recording quality, and I never questioned myself again. Quality of art is completely relative anyway.

But if that isn’t stopping people from making art, what is? Do some people really not enjoy it? Or is this another chocolate-analogy–-a child who has never tasted chocolate does not crave it. Art isn’t really valued in our society. Nor is education, the other activity I like filling my time with. If I wasn’t making art, I would probably be absorbing books as fast as I could and writing about them and critiquing them.

This job has been hard because I feel both undervalued and stifled. No one has ever paid me more than a dollar or two over minimum wage to do anything. I thought this would end after I got my BA, but evidently not. I feel worthless at my job as well; I feel like my incredibly low pay has confirmed my fears that I am of no value to our society. I have to remind myself sometimes that I have a BA in astrophysics and English. I must be valuable to somebody, somewhere. That must mean something.

Living in the Silicon Valley has been hard for the reason that so many people my age are extravagantly wealthy (by my standards–meaning there are lots of people [my age] making $40K or more, or 3 times my income). There are lots of older people with lots of money, too. In fact, the average household income in Palo Alto is $119,000. The value system of the culture I live in seems to be radically different than the one I grew up in. Status symbols are very important to these people, Mercedes, BMWs, Lexuses, expensive restaurants, designer clothes, all things that I was taught were pretty fucking empty, shallow frivolities that are meaningless in the larger scheme of things. But even though I don’t believe it, what am I to do when I am immersed in this culture? It’s hard not feeling like a failure sometimes because I don’t share this culture’s common values.

It’s also frustrating to see some of the people my age, or near my age, who are making this money. Most of them look like absolute assholes. I’m talking money-obsessed, empty, boring, shallow people whose jobs contribute nothing to the greater good of mankind (many of them Stanford grads). Yet by the dictates of our society these people are above me; I may be more educated, more compassionate, more artistic, more intelligent, more full as a human, but by their standards I am a piece of shit because I don’t make any money and I don’t wear designer clothes and I don’t drive an expensive car. I can feel their disdain for me. It leaks, subtly, from their faces and body language as they walk by me on the sidewalk, pass me in their cars, see me using food stamps, pass me on my bike, see that I have facial hair and no tie and cheap clothing. I am aware of being viewed as subaltern, and that feeling penetrates to the very core.

It’s unbelievable to me to think that I live one mile away from Steve Jobs. I have $28 in my bank account right now; he has $4,000,000,000. That’s 8 orders of magnitude. For some reason, I find this absolutely mind-boggling. For $8,000 a year I could pay for some tiny, shitty flat in San Francisco and write my book and be happy. Am I entitled to that money without working for it? Most would say no, at least Americans would. Does Steve Jobs deserve all $4,000,000,000 of his dollars? Did he earn every one of them? Is it fair for him to hoard such a massive sum while people in his own country suffer? While people fifteen blocks away from him have so little? How many hundreds of thousands could see their life improve incrementally with a tiny sum of that money? It seems contrary to the idea of democracy for there to be such massive wealth disparity. Many (again, particularly Americans)* will disagree with me when I say I don’t really believe anyone should be able to have more than 50 million to their name. I don’t think anyone needs that kind of money like millions of people in the country need shelter.

*(The ironic thing is that anyone who disagrees with this almost certainly has less than 50 million to their name. We’re one of the few countries with this weird peasant mentality wherein Americans defend the very rich who spurn and profit off them.)

I guess this is part of the core of my unhappiness–-this frustration at feeling like an outcast, an embarrassment, a freak for not adhering and not achieving their success. I don’t feel particularly like I’m part of any community and I don’t feel like my values are shared. In fact, I find myself starting to question if my way of life, my decision not to value the heartless quest for meaningless wealth, is the right one, simply because no one around me seems to agree with that value system.

So maybe it’s unsurprising that I’m so unhappy in other parts of my life as well. I don’t live in a nice place: the suburbs are wretchedly boring and strip malls and freeways are fucking hideous. I don’t live among nice people; boring, greenwashy yuppies and the shallow, material-obsessed ruling class. I don’t live in a culture I share-–this is hypocritical capitalism in extreme. Finally, I loathe my job. Seems like a ripe time for a change.

I would like to end with a rousing quote from Teddy Roosevelt:

“There is not in the world a more ignoble character than the mere money-getting American, insensitive to every duty, regardless of principle, bent only on amassing a fortune.”

If a Republican president agrees with me, my views can’t really be that radical, can they?

But still,  I feel so much happier on the weekends. I feel like I forget what happiness feels like during the work week. I had such an enlightening time in the city on Sunday–spent my day reading, writing, wandering about San Francisco. I bought a lunch and dinner with food stamps down at Bi-Rite in the Mission, spent $4 otherwise on coffee and tea. It was a model day for a vagabond’s life.

The discomfort with my current existence has prompted a re-evaluation of why I’m still working. I guess the reason I’m still at my job is that I’m committed to moving out at the Stanford semester break. I’m subletting from a friend right now, and though I’m under no official contract I guess I feel like it would be rude for me to leave so suddenly.

But I wonder if this is the correct course of action. I think if I don’t quit soon my mental health will be on the line. I don’t really know what to do with myself, but I’ve reached the point where I’m realizing that a whole lot of sanity is worth the slight discomfort (see previous entry) associated with a less-safe sleeping condition. Am I putting my friend and housemate’s happiness ahead of my own? I felt on Saturday night, after a bad day in wage prison, more miserable than I had in a long while. Not just miserable but like inconsolable. I wasn’t even depressed. I felt as if my character had somehow… diminished. I felt passionless–maybe passion-sapped is a better descriptor. It isn’t a good feeling.

I wonder if I will make it through the week at this job. I am trying to learn to meditate so that I can relieve some of this stress, but it’s quite hard as many know, especially when you first start out.

So, it’s because of my friend that I’m not leaving immediately. But it’s also because I have $28 to my name right now, and I could probably use just one more paycheck. Is this the right thing to do, to wait to quit? Or would it be more prudent for me to leave right now?

Well, I’ll be honest about what the hardest part for me is, mentally.

The hardest part is imagining sleeping without the usual degree of safety.

While my room is an entirely superfluous environment–I don’t much like going home, to be honest, as it feels cluttered and creatively stifling, and the access to a kitchen is nice but unnecessary–I’ve grown accustomed to sleeping in a comfortable, safe zone, where I don’t have to worry about waking up with the sun (I have blinds) or by a cop’s nightstick.

In my mind, I’ve already accepted every facet of my forthcoming lifestyle change. In many ways, I think it will be like a long vacation. I’ll have tons of freedom of choice regarding how to bide my time. But I struggle frequently with the idea of being awoken against my will. I’m not really concerned with passers-by, but I have an absolute hatred of police that stems from them never doing anything nice for me and treating me like shit (so perhaps understandable, as far as negative reinforcement goes). And I really can’t stomach the idea of an authority figure waking someone up who doesn’t have a home for sleeping in a public park. Sleep is a human need. Why are there sleeping laws in public parks? Or in cars? I don’t understand where they expect people to go.

It’s another example of how poverty is reviled in America. I guess if you treat the poor people badly enough eventually they’ll kill themselves or freeze to death somewhere and the problem solves itself.

I went down last weekend to visit and do some research on what being homeless there might be like. My first mission was to seek out parking and see if it was even possible to find permit-free overnight parking. On instinct, I immediately turned onto the industrial, north side of River Street as soon as I came off Highway One. Bingo! Almost all the streets were no parking 1AM-5AM, but I was able to find one or two small streets that allowed overnight parking without a permit.

But even better, there were also a few streets on the Westside, particularly that long strip that goes down from campus to Highway 1, Western Drive. As far as I could tell, this area had a huge strip of permit-free parking. But even better, on the way out of town, when you’re going north on One, there are a few beaches that are  littered with RVs, campers and sedans, so I guess these are established areas for camping. This was very good news for me.

However, I’m starting to believe less and less that a car will be a necessity on this journey. I think I’ve figured out how to construct locking baskets for my bike that’ll hold my sleeping bag. I might just leave my car with friends in the South Bay in this case. If I have access to a University library, I won’t really be needing my own library, and now that I have a tiny, inexpensive netbook I’m totally mobile as far as doing work.