Come any closer...and I will hit you with the bat in my car....

A friend of mine phoned me a few minutes ago to tell me that a bum on the corner made her think of me. I'm flattered!! No :) Truth behind this is kinda funny though I'm sure some people might find it slightly offensive.

Bums freak me out. I mean...they totally just irk me. Whenever I'm rolling up to a stop light or sign and I see one, I lock my doors and start fiddling with the imaginary thing in my seat so I don't have to look at them. My lover thinks this it's hilarious that I get so worked up over corner bums.

Thing is, I just can't see them as homeless and needy people. I see them as dirty figures standing on the street pressuring me for money. I don't feel sorry for them, and I will not give in or give out a dime. How can I feel sorry for a person that has a world of resourcs at their disposal in order to get themself right back out of it? I'm not comparing bums to people that are on welfare, though they could be people on welfare if they went in and applied. But no, some of them prefer to stand out in all weather and make more money monthly begging and looking humble. I don't believe it one bit.



I used to live in China for a few years. I saw many things during my time there that stuck with me and changed me. The poor people there, are really truly poor. They don't have any backups. If you don't have money to eat, you're going to starve. Chinese treat their homeless alot differently than we do, completely ignoring them or stepping over them as opposed to feeling pressure to help out a little in whatever way. There are families there that are farmers that make $5 for a whole year. A WHOLE YEAR!! I've seen old people that were so starved they couldn't even move to get food offered to them, I've seen families so poor that they purposely disabeled themselves in order to look more helpless to tourists and beg, I've seen children hurt themselves to gain an audience and maybe a few yuan (at the time the exchange rate was 1$USD=7Yuan). Those people were truly poor. They had nobody to turn to, no place to go for the night to get out of the cold, no restaurants that gave handouts at the end of the night because there was too much going to be thrown out.

(off topic, the guy in the picture looks to have a condition almost exactly like juju, my youngest son. Chinese frown heavily upon some of the conditions that went with this, if he would have been born there I would have had alot of trouble to get the emergency surgery he had to have at birth to save his life, and not knowing he needed it would have been disasterous.)

I'll never forget actually seeing an old woman that had starved to death. People were just stepping over her and nobody really seemed to think anything but that she was sleeping. I however, had been in the area all day and had noticed her. So when it was discovered that she was actually dead it didn't seem like such a surprise.

I'm not stating here that all of China is like that. Remember that, while some things might seem bad they're just different and perhaps that can be hard to understand. When people ask me about what I thought of living in China I never give a direct answer, as it's too difficult for me to put something the asker can understand into a fair point of view. I always tell them "it's different" and that seems to satisfy them.

So, after having experienced this and San Francisco's Hippie Town, I started to feel only irritation and alot of disdain for the teenagers there begging for a few bucks to feed their fat dogs sitting there with them. I have no respect for hippies whatsoever. Take a shower, and wake up in the correct century. You are simply lazy and I will not support you or laugh at you while you act stupid in your drug induced stupor.

Whew~ bad vibes there. I don't like bums and if I see them, I lock my doors and if they are brave enough to approach me, you will most definitely pick me out on the street as I will be the only one yelling at him to take control of his life while all the onlookers will think I'm the meanest person in the world for throwing this poor misguided souls life in his face.

Shows you what people know.