Saturday, July 5, 2008

This week is Urban Hobodry:The Wide World of Freecycle

This week has been pretty boring. I have yet to experience any urban hobodry, so I thought I'd talk about a little thing called Freecycle. Freecycle is like the urban hobo's Craigslist. But instead of buying people's useless junk, they give it away! Basically, you go onto this site, tell people what you want, they ignore you, then you have to search for days to find that couch you wanted. You then exchange a few emails with this person, pretending to care about how they got the couch and the various reasons they're giving it away. They tell you it's in great condition, and you arrange a pick-up time. At this point, you're thinking how great this site is; you just got a free couch, and it's in great condition! So you drive to this person's house, which happens to be two hours away. But no matter, you're getting a couch. So you drive around for another half hour looking for "a blue house on the left." Free couch. You call the person for directions and find that you passed the house several times without noticing it, because it is behind a large oak tree. And it's green. Free couch, you think. So you walk up to their house, and a man with a large gut comes out. You can see just how large his gut is because he's not wearing a shirt. Free couch. The shirtless wonder leads you around back, where you see an piece of furniture sitting in the lawn. It looks like it used to be the "vibrant green" described on the site, but now it's a beautiful shade of brown, with some varying shades of brown here and there in the form of what look to be soda stains. Hopefully soda. You look at this piece of furniture and hope, but you know the truth. This is your free couch.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

This week is Urban Hobodry: Getting Concrete

Well, here we are again. The other day, my father (hobo #1) dragged me down to an old construction site to get some broken concrete for a walkway. He assured me that they weren't using the concrete, but I wasn't so sure, there was something odd. Maybe it was the NO TRESPASSING sign. Well, no use whining about it, we were there, so I went along with it. I mean, it wasn't so bad, so people gave us funny looks as they passed. Maybe it was because they were jealous. Or they saw what we were loading the concrete onto. My brother's truck. My brother's lowered truck. Right about now you might be thinking that would be a bad idea. Well, my friend, push those thoughts out of your head, because they are fat capitalist thoughts. The truck was lowered, but we were going to use it anyway. It doesn't really make a difference, as long as you avoid any bump higher than an inch and a half. Good thing we weren't at an old construction site, eh?

Saturday, June 14, 2008

This week is Urban Hobodry: Shoveling Sand

This week on Saturday, we went and got sand for a new walkway in our backyard. We got the aforementioned sand from a creekbed out in the country. Yes, we shoveled sand from a dry creekbed out in the middle of no where. No sense in hitting up the 'ol Home Depot or Lowe's, let's just take it from our local river. Why pay for something that's only a twenty minute drive out of town, right? Yeah. It's totally not awkward when people drive by and stare. I'm sure those confused looks are just them wondering, "Why didn't I think of that brilliant idea? Those kids standing out in the middle of a riverbed shovelling sand are so much smarter than I am. Or perhaps it's their genius father who thinks spending money is a crime or something."

The Life of An Urban Hobo

First of all, an urban hobo is not someone who is, in fact, homeless. An urban hobo is someone who will go to extreme lengths to avoid paying money. Money is for normal people. Urban hobos frown upon money. Secondly, I would like to say I am an unwilling urban hobo, with my father being the master hobo in this little operation. Every week or whenever I feel like it, I will detail this week in urban hobodry. Or hobo-icity.