the Story of the bum in the daytime

This story begins on an abnormally sunny weekend day in San Francisco. In an insanely strange turn of the tables, the protagonist, the hero, the nomme de french word, of this story is a bum; well, sort of. A man-child named Tom the Body and a child-man named Red Rocket sat silently sipping forty ounces of freedom that could only be procured through illicit dealings with the pakistani man who happened to own the liquor store across the street from their 18th Century dilapidated Victorian abode located in the heart of a gang battle zone in the Mission. As they slowly drank their disgusting Steel Reserves, Red Rocket and Tom the Body began to converse about what the day could possibly hold in store. After all, the clock had just barely struck 4:15. Finally, near the end of the forty, an obviously inebriated vagrant sauntered along throught the middle of the street past our two jerky boys pushing the contents of his life in front of him in a shopping cart. As he was in the middle of the street, Tom the Body, fearing for the man's life, in a neighborhood where people routinely drove past the Vicotrian house at 45 MPH with shocks bouncing, yelled to the man, "Yo, get out of the street you asshole."

The vagrant looked at Tom, disgust caking his eyes (or was it semen?), and said, "I bet this is your car."
Tom said it wasn't, but the bum saw through his ruse, and slammed his shopping cart directly into the car. Tom immediately became enraged and threathened to beat the shit out of the bum if he didn't, "get the fuck out of here right now." The bum calmly looked at Tom, with a broken beer bottle in his hand and told him, "You don't mess with me, I'll shit on your porch," and with that the man, a sage really, walked on with shopping cart in tow.

Tom and Red Rocket forgot about that altercation, and went out to get smashed; maybe even hamboned. They woke up late the next day. As with most days, bums lined the bottom of their stoop. Tom woke up first and went outside to stretch and take in the day. Suddenly, Red Rocket heard a blood curdling scream which forced him out of his hung over daze as Tom rushed up the stairs, exclaiming, "Nick, Red Rocket, you have to come outside....O my god!"

And we id go outside, and we saw what he saw. Next to a different bum's face lay one single deuce. It wasn't large or small, and it looked to be the product of a malnourished individual, but there it lay; the symbol of man's hatred self, of people with cars, victorian houses and Steel Reserve.

Simply Pirate

Pirate, the world-class vagrant,
once gifted me something suitably fragrant.
The guttural oaf, on my lawn pinched a loaf,
that shit was so foul, it was flagrant.

--Lindsor

The Legend of Cherokee Bum and it is a true story

It was a dark night in downtown santa barbara. a crescent moon peeked through the wispy, billowing clouds. woozle, austin, and I had just parted ways with a group of older cohorts playing pub golf. they were on the 15th hole and had been reduced to a wandering pack of fighting, vomiting buffoons. we liked what we saw, so we decided we should get equally as ridiculous. we went to the ol' liquor store by Cooney's (RIP) where it had become customary to purchase and immediately consume a foety of steel reserve during that limbo between the time when bars close and when liquor stores close. before venturing into the liquor store to purchase aforementioned swill, i decided to urinate on the shrubbery, which coincidentally, had also become a late night tradition. In mid-micturition, i thought i heard an eagle cry in the distance mountains. I paused, briefly, but thought nothing of it. i finished up, zipped up, and turned around.

shrouded in a cloud of mist was a bum with a garbage bag. but this was not your average bum. he had an air of dignity about him, that shone through his obvious inebriation. he had high cheekbones and through his red-bloated face, you could see he had some native-american blood running through his veins. he looked at me for a good 30 seconds before he cocked his head back and spoke to me, in a slurred snarl:

hey brother, can you buy me foety in there. the asshole clerk wont sell me anything because he says im to drunk. and cuz i pooped in the parking lot.

he then proceeded to hold out his fingerless-bum gloved hand filled with an assortment of change and waited.

i figured, hey, this could be me some day if keep on this same trajectory so why not help this poor, honorable native american.

no worries, man, i replied.

i walked through the parking lot into the liquor store, narrowly avoiding a pile of human feces (which oddly smelled of frankincense), and met up with austin and wooz and told them what had transpired. they urged me to make the transaction and so i did. the bum had provided more than the required $2 to buy the foety, so i returned to the Cherokee Bum with a foety, about 78 cents in change, and my two curious chums.

i handed him the foety immediately followed by the change.

upon feeling the change in his hand, the bum looked at me wide-eyed and dumbstruck as he clenched it tight in his bum-glove. he popped open the foety and downed half of it immediately.

you...you...gave me change back? said the Cherokee bum as he wiped foety-water from his beard.

i cracked my foety as well, took a swig, and said: of course, man. you need it more than i do.

While all this transpired, Woozle and Austin were horsing around in the periphery. I think one had his pants down.

Cherokee Bum made a transformation at this point. He went from drunk to very acute and clear-minded. He said to me, in a serious tone: My name is Chippewa. I have come from the far North of California, on a grey hound, over hills and valleys and rivers, to deliver this garbage bag to my blood brother. do you know him?

I replied, I don't think i do, man. what's his...

before i could finish my sentence, Cherokee Bum had shoot an evil glare to austin. austin stopped what he was doing.

Who is this man? he asked me without letting his gaze leave austin. Before I could answer he said, I want to fight this man to the death.

Austin pulled up his pants and slowly walked towards us. Drums were pounding somewhere in the distance. For those of you who don't know, austin is a quarter Cherokee. I can only deduce at this moment that there was some bad blood between the two ancient tribes. Before things escalated, i quickly reminded the Cherokee Bum of his mission of finding his blood brother and delivering the mystery sack.

I asked what it was in the garbage bag that he wanted to deliver to his blood brother, assuming it was scalps or Buffalo pelts.

He slowly turned his gaze away from Austin and his expression changed. he took a pull of his foety, which was down to about 10 fluid ounces already. He looked into the distance as the wind blew through his long hair. He uttered slowly:

You have shown me great kindness stranger, so I shall reward you. Put out your hand.

I obliged, hesitantly. He pulled out a fistful of something from his garbage bag and placed it in my hand. He closed my hand around the stuff. It felt dry and light.

Woozle and Austin had gathered around me at this point. We all looked down into what the Cherokee Bum had given me.

I slowly opened my hand and found about a quarter ounce of weed. Upon closer inspection, the weed seemed to have small pieces of tinfoil and an abundance of stems and seeds. The majority of the stuff was made of leaves and branches. We all looked up, not knowing whether to thank Cherokee Bum or to be insulted.

He was glaring at Austin.

I still want to fight you to the death, he said through clenched teeth.

At that moment, a big lifted pick-up truck pulled into the parking lot. I quickly pocketed the weed and we were forced to separate with Cherokee Bum to make way for the truck. The trucks engine thundered like a herd of 10,000 buffalo as it passed. When the truck finally passed, Cherokee Bum had vanished into the exhaust smoke without a trace. The only evidence that the events even transpired was a pocketful of bammer weed and a steaming pile of bum poop.

We finished our foeties in silence and threw them against the wall. it was 230 am and we had to catch bills bus back to IV.

As soon as we got home, we placed the weed on the kitchen table and all stood around to inspect it. It was even worse then we had thought. It looked like alfalfa with shredded tinfoil mixed in. we shrugged and packed the hookah bowl with a bammer/tobacco mix. we fired up the coals and had a seat in the living room. I was the first to rip it. I took a log, deep breath as the hookah bubbled. I felt the smoke deep in my lungs.

Within seconds, the THC had worked its way through my blood and into my brain. I dropped the pipe and sank back into the couch. I watched in wonder as Austin's face was lit up by the coals as he ripped the hookah. the music that was playing sounded rhythmic and trance-inducing (it was Hulk Hogan and the Wrestling Boot Band). The deep, masculine voice of Hulk sounded other-worldly. The complex beat and bass-line seemed reduced to simple banging. I began to look around the room as if it had transformed. Everything I perceived had taken-on some antiquated and other-worldly hue, as if i had traveled into a different time period. I looked out the window, it was raining now, into our front driveway. I was able to make out a figure through the water soaked window, squatting by my roommates truck. I squinted to see a man, dressed in a headdress and buffalo robes, smoking a peacepipe, shitting in our driveway.

I woke up the next morning on the couch, with the nasty hangover that only steel reserve can provide, and with the hookah pipe tube still in my hand. austin and wooz had returned to their house and I was alone. The sun shone through the window and the rain had stopped. I immediately got up and checked the kitchen table for the bammer. It was there, right were we left it, the tinfoiil bits shining in the morning light. Next, I ran out into our driveway by my roommates truck. There, right by his front passenger side tire, was an Indian turd, that smelled like frankincense.

ok, the whole thing is true except the part about the indian turd. i made that part up. but pretty weird occurrence, huh?

Bum Blog: Where it all Began

This bum blog is put forth for a simple purpose: Everyone has a bum story. A transient has asked for change in a strange way or he's smeared shit on the Fidelity building as you walked by.

Until now, there has never been a place to come together over the virtual fire and discuss these sometimes disgusting, sometimes perturbing, but always hilarious and politically incorrect stories. Everyone can contribute to this blog...just e-mail your editor. If you think this is arbitrary, it's because it is.

Not all bum blog stories are created equal. I'm looking at you, the person who sends in "This bum had a sign that said, 'My wife was kidnapped and I'm 78 cents short on the ransom.'" I'm sorry, but that is barely a complete sentence and definitely not a story. You are the reason that television shows are, by and large, terrible. You are the reason that Charlie Sheen is the highest paid actor on television even though he's on "2 and a half men." Oh ha to the fucking ha, Charlie banged another chick. Where is the fucking joke? Is it on the chick because she's probably diseased now? Is it on the viewer? You are the reason that I worry about Mad Men getting canceled. You are the reason that Jay Leno continues to be on the air.

Here at Bum Blog, we need the back story and we need prose. Was it raining, was it snowing, was a hurricane a-blowin'? I don't know unless you tell me. So get out there. Get yourself a story and get to writing; you're audience awaits.

Bum Shatner

Oh glory be to this beautiful February day in San Francisco," I think to myself as I prepare to leave the office located slightly South of market on a 60 degree day. "What a day to be alive I think to myself," in the most cliche way possible as I approach the Montgomery BART station with a mass of hurried commuters. "They must have someplace to be," I think as I look at the person in front of me, but I'm not really looking at all. I'm staring blankly into space. My eyes just happen to be affixed on whatever is in front of me as I listen to the Strokes or the Honorary Title or the Indie Rock White Dude Band that happened to be playing in my iPod.

All of a sudden, a smell rises from the world and knocks me out of my reverie and my eyes focus on a dude, a transient, who is in the midst of taking his pants off and is simultaneously taking a shit on the Fidelity Building. At this point, I had to think to myself, "Holy shit, is this bum making a political statement right now?! Like, does he know how much the banks have fucked all of us? Maybe that's Bernie Madoff?" Of course, then I had to think to myself, "Maybe he's just a bum, and he needs a place to shit and this corner is as good as any other. I mean, he is a transient and he probably really has lost all connection to normal society" I'd love to believe the first theory, but if I were in Vegas and they gave me odds, I'd have to take the second theory. I'd lay the points though.

Tomorrow: Cracked out Mother of 8 and 10 year old smoking cloves--cloves?!-- in front of me.