Having bits of shit on your ass sucks. Especially when you have, let's say limited opportunities to shower. Fuck it, even if you do shower all the time like you used to when you had a job and all that bullshit, having shit on your ass between shitting and showering is bullshit anyway. Not to mention, remember that case of ringworm you had? It probably wasn't ringworm. Especially since it doesn't go away when treated. It's probably irritation from the unecessarily-bleached chemically-laden toilet paper you been using all your life. Set your ass free, baby. All you need is your own soap and a water bottle, which you should already have in your backpack. And if you're poor, you should definitely have a backpack.
So let's start with the basics: you will be touching your own shit. That's a tough pill to swallow. Good thing you don't have to swallow it. But you will also be walking around with a fucking super clean asshole. Like the Indians used to do, before they started copying us. I mean Indian Indians. Not Indigenous peoples. They always used toilet paper. They had it before the Europeans did. It was made out of tree fibres and dreams of a civilized life. Where they could pollute everything, treat each-other like shit, read the bible, and manufacture what they used to find for free in the bush. Right. Ok whatever it was that traditional peoples did to clean their asses long ago up in here, it's probably the same as what Indians from India still do now, for the most part. Use their fuckin' hands. And then they do this magical thing called washing their hands. So... who's grosser? If you go to India, you get this peculiar stare from all the locals, and it's easy to imagine them thinking "oh my god, there's those gross motherfuckers who use toilet paper... I wouldn't want to go down on them right next to that forest of bits of shit and paper... no fuckin' way." They really are thinking that when they look at tourists... they're thinking "omg not only do they do that, but they think we're gross for not doing that." No wonder they hate the British. It's not the colonization and all that bullshit, it's the toilet paper.
So how do you clean your ass in a public toilet or some ghetto soup kitchen toilet or your poor-ass apartment or out in the bush with no fucking toilet paper? Well, simply put, you soap up one of your hands, traditionally it's the left hand, and you wash your ass with that hand, trying not to get bits of shit stuck in your fingernails, and then you use the water bottle to rinse your ass, using your washing hand to kind of direct the flow of water, and it's getting washed off at the same time, and then you go ahead and dry your ass on whatever (it's clean now, so go ahead and use the inside of the bottom of your shirt, who fuckin' cares, you're too broke to afford toilet paper remember?), and then you wash the shit out of your hands. Literally. So it means, in your backpack, or next to your sink or wherever, you gotta have soap. If soap's in a backpack, it's gotta be in a bag. Obviously. And you have a bigass water bottle. Not a little 1L one. You want a big motherfucking water bottle, because this is one of those situations where you don't want to run out of water. If you can't afford soap, you know what? Coffee grounds. Used coffee fucking grounds. Or, whatever, shampoo. But seriously, coffee grounds. They're magical. They have a great combination of acid and oil (and of course, they're rough, so they exfoliate) that clean stuff up real good.
And why not just have the water pouring over whatever's a little higher up while you're at it? Might as well rinse out them genitalia... the water's hitting them first and then hitting your ass area afterwards... so everything gets a bit cleaner, and stays a bit cleaner. It's a fucking pain in the ass having to shower yourself every day, or trying to keep clean while not being able to shower yourself every day, and let's face it, if you're on the streets, every single time you shower is a great time to get assaulted. Or robbed. Or humiliated. Or stressed out. Or rushed, or whatever. If you don't have to be cleaning the shit out of your shit, you can focus on the rest of your body, and get done quicker, when you are actually in the shower.
Another little tip that'll save you trouble, and this one's about your armpits: baking soda. Not easy to find. But a dollar's worth from the dollar store, stashed somewhere in the bush or wherever you stash your stuff, with a little bit at a time being stored in a little container in your backpack, is fucking indispensable. Mix it with some coconut oil or some essential oils or your own sweat, whatever you got, and applied to them underarms. Use it as a follow-up to deodorant... it'll make it actually work! Not too much, because it will irritate that area if you use too much. And you don't have to use much. Go ahead and use it even if you don't have the chance to wash under your arms first. Whatever's already going on under there, it'll make it better. Baking soda, baking powder, whatever. It's magical. It's chemistry. It inhibits the growth of bacteria and destroys the bacteria that's already there. Throw it on and smell yourself an hour later. You'll be like where the fuck did half of that smell go? A couple hours after that? Where the fuck did the rest of the smell go? What in the what? You'll be like... oh shit. I smell better. Same thing with your feet. Chuck some baking soda in your socks. Chuck some more in your shoes. You'll be like omg. Omfg. You won't have to shower as much, and when you do shower, you can take less time in the shower, and you can focus on your fucking hair. Your beard. Your legs. Your back. All that shit. If you take care of your "priority" spots as you go every day, you'll have less to worry about. Survival bullshit.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Smoking Without Buying: how to get by on "Reclaimed" Tobacco (cigarette butt rolling for beginners)
Don't hate. You know, at some point, them cheap contraband smokes are gonna dry up. And you know you're gonna run out of money for them. Doesn't matter how cheap they are. Nothing's cheap enough when you're broke.
Good thing there's cigarette butts lying around all over the place. Now, this is one of those articles where it wouldn't be getting written except as a harm-reduction measure. People are going to smoke discarded tobacco one way or the other, and it's a good idea if they do it in the safest, most dignified way possible. Which is to collect said tobacco, dry it in the sun, roll it in a rolling paper, and smoke it properly.
So here's what you do: rolling papers can be acquired at some of Toronto's harm-reduction centers. And crack pipes can be acquired at all of them. Either can be used to smoke scavenged tobacco. Hell, crack pipes are great for smoking bits of cigarettes just as they are: just load 'em up, light it up and you've got, basically, a cigarette inside a crack pipe. Of course, addicts, the public and the police will all crucify you for doing this, so that's what you do in the privacy of your back alley or whatever. Your "home," your abandoned street late at night, whatever. Save your rolling papers for those times when there's human beings around. Fucking humans.
When you pick up the tobacco, keep your germ management in mind. Use gloves if you can, use disinfectant after you've done your collecting, after you've emptied the tobacco out into a bag, and before you start rolling. Have two bags. The one you collect your butts in, which is gonna be dirty and will need to be cleaned with soap and water, or hand sanitizer, or whatever, after being used. And your "clean" bag, which is clean. And which you use to empty the tobacco into. You'll want to sniff each bit of tobacco after emptying it out of the cigarette and before adding it to your tobacco stash. If it smells fucked up, just discard it. If it smells alright, add it to your stash. And then dry your stash in the sun, in the bag. While you're cleaning your hands. Soap and water's OK. Then you roll up your tobacco like a joint, maybe save some of the stuff from inside your scavenged filters (after ripping the paper off from the outside and cutting off the part that'd be touching the kind stranger's mouth), and use that to filter the tobacco. Sucks to inhale bits of tobacco or have it in your lips. That's poverty. Best thing is to spend your cigarette money that you'd usually drop on a week of smoking, or a day or whatever, drop that one a month's supply of rolling papers, and then don't share them. Fuck everyone else. Those who share today need to be shared with next week. All this we're-all-jesus community sharing bullshit goes right out the window by the time everyone's benefits cheques have run out (like after the first week or so of each month), and then who's laughing? You, like two weeks before, drunk off your ass, smoking Belmonts between joints and being Jesus the kind, sharing dumbass. Roll your own butts, out of sight, and keep a couple rolled smokes in your cigarette pack, just a couple, so you can show that you've only got a couple, while your stash of tobacco is hidden deep in your backpack. The best way to limit your sharing is to lie through your teeth. Except schitzophrenic people can tell when you're lying. So just tell them "sorry." You really are sorry. You'd like to share. You would share, if it didn't mean going without later. If you're the kind of person who's not continuously bumming shit off other people, don't give stuff to those who are. They have their own layer of society... the people who give-and-take, and end up fighting with everyone when the community charity suddenly runs out and they're owed. Don't be owed. Don't owe. Nobody's got your back. That's all bullshit that disintegrates at a moment's notice. Nobody has your fucking back.
So it's good to have a little tobacco reclamation kit. Some rubbing alcohol, a crack pipe, some rolling papers, a couple other bags, the dirty one being stored inside another clean one that's not used for tobacco (so, four bags including the one that contains everything), and a bunch of clean filters. If you're the kind of person who smokes weed and mixes it with tobacco, then hopefully you've got a bunch of unused filters lying around. One typical cigarette filter can be used for like two or three smaller ones. Maybe four, actually. Because you cut it in half, and then split each of those halves into two thinner filters. Oh yeah, and a small pair of scissors.
Don't leave bits of cigarette lying all over the place. Like dumpster diving, the only way to do this without getting in shit is to leave the street cleaner than you found it. In fact, pretending to clean up the street is a good way to make it look like you're not scavenging for smokes. So if you're really elite, your kit is gonna include a little hand-broom and a dustpan. And you make it look like you're putting all the debris in the closest public garbage bin, but you're actually disposing of the debris from your previous take. The old switcheroo. A bit of slight of hand. You never know what potential employer or middle-class friend might be watching. Nothing like running into the friend who's about to recommend you for a job, while you're picking up butts in front of a bar. Which is why it's good to do it late at night when nobody's around. Or in an area that you don't have anything to do with. No matter how careful and discreet you are, you're going to get gawked and leered at. People will occasionally offer you a smoke. Remember, if you take it, you're silently promising them that you'll stop picking up cigarette butts in the area, at least for the time being. So, basically, make a decision. If the area's "productive," it won't be worth it. If the pickings are slim, it's worth considering. Yeah, poverty's a bitch.
Good thing there's cigarette butts lying around all over the place. Now, this is one of those articles where it wouldn't be getting written except as a harm-reduction measure. People are going to smoke discarded tobacco one way or the other, and it's a good idea if they do it in the safest, most dignified way possible. Which is to collect said tobacco, dry it in the sun, roll it in a rolling paper, and smoke it properly.
So here's what you do: rolling papers can be acquired at some of Toronto's harm-reduction centers. And crack pipes can be acquired at all of them. Either can be used to smoke scavenged tobacco. Hell, crack pipes are great for smoking bits of cigarettes just as they are: just load 'em up, light it up and you've got, basically, a cigarette inside a crack pipe. Of course, addicts, the public and the police will all crucify you for doing this, so that's what you do in the privacy of your back alley or whatever. Your "home," your abandoned street late at night, whatever. Save your rolling papers for those times when there's human beings around. Fucking humans.
When you pick up the tobacco, keep your germ management in mind. Use gloves if you can, use disinfectant after you've done your collecting, after you've emptied the tobacco out into a bag, and before you start rolling. Have two bags. The one you collect your butts in, which is gonna be dirty and will need to be cleaned with soap and water, or hand sanitizer, or whatever, after being used. And your "clean" bag, which is clean. And which you use to empty the tobacco into. You'll want to sniff each bit of tobacco after emptying it out of the cigarette and before adding it to your tobacco stash. If it smells fucked up, just discard it. If it smells alright, add it to your stash. And then dry your stash in the sun, in the bag. While you're cleaning your hands. Soap and water's OK. Then you roll up your tobacco like a joint, maybe save some of the stuff from inside your scavenged filters (after ripping the paper off from the outside and cutting off the part that'd be touching the kind stranger's mouth), and use that to filter the tobacco. Sucks to inhale bits of tobacco or have it in your lips. That's poverty. Best thing is to spend your cigarette money that you'd usually drop on a week of smoking, or a day or whatever, drop that one a month's supply of rolling papers, and then don't share them. Fuck everyone else. Those who share today need to be shared with next week. All this we're-all-jesus community sharing bullshit goes right out the window by the time everyone's benefits cheques have run out (like after the first week or so of each month), and then who's laughing? You, like two weeks before, drunk off your ass, smoking Belmonts between joints and being Jesus the kind, sharing dumbass. Roll your own butts, out of sight, and keep a couple rolled smokes in your cigarette pack, just a couple, so you can show that you've only got a couple, while your stash of tobacco is hidden deep in your backpack. The best way to limit your sharing is to lie through your teeth. Except schitzophrenic people can tell when you're lying. So just tell them "sorry." You really are sorry. You'd like to share. You would share, if it didn't mean going without later. If you're the kind of person who's not continuously bumming shit off other people, don't give stuff to those who are. They have their own layer of society... the people who give-and-take, and end up fighting with everyone when the community charity suddenly runs out and they're owed. Don't be owed. Don't owe. Nobody's got your back. That's all bullshit that disintegrates at a moment's notice. Nobody has your fucking back.
So it's good to have a little tobacco reclamation kit. Some rubbing alcohol, a crack pipe, some rolling papers, a couple other bags, the dirty one being stored inside another clean one that's not used for tobacco (so, four bags including the one that contains everything), and a bunch of clean filters. If you're the kind of person who smokes weed and mixes it with tobacco, then hopefully you've got a bunch of unused filters lying around. One typical cigarette filter can be used for like two or three smaller ones. Maybe four, actually. Because you cut it in half, and then split each of those halves into two thinner filters. Oh yeah, and a small pair of scissors.
Don't leave bits of cigarette lying all over the place. Like dumpster diving, the only way to do this without getting in shit is to leave the street cleaner than you found it. In fact, pretending to clean up the street is a good way to make it look like you're not scavenging for smokes. So if you're really elite, your kit is gonna include a little hand-broom and a dustpan. And you make it look like you're putting all the debris in the closest public garbage bin, but you're actually disposing of the debris from your previous take. The old switcheroo. A bit of slight of hand. You never know what potential employer or middle-class friend might be watching. Nothing like running into the friend who's about to recommend you for a job, while you're picking up butts in front of a bar. Which is why it's good to do it late at night when nobody's around. Or in an area that you don't have anything to do with. No matter how careful and discreet you are, you're going to get gawked and leered at. People will occasionally offer you a smoke. Remember, if you take it, you're silently promising them that you'll stop picking up cigarette butts in the area, at least for the time being. So, basically, make a decision. If the area's "productive," it won't be worth it. If the pickings are slim, it's worth considering. Yeah, poverty's a bitch.
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Why is there no search function on this site like there used to be?
The search function keeps breaking and Google hasn't fixed it yet. It's happening on a lot of other sites. A workaround hasn't yet been found.
So if you want to search this site, here's what you do: go to Google.com, and enter this text (this works for any website) "site:torontomealprograms.blogspot.com" and then after that text, in the search box, but whatever your search terms are. So if you're looking for information about the Good Shepherd, your search is "site:torontomealprograms.blogspot.com good shepherd" or whatever.
Sorry about the hassle.
So if you want to search this site, here's what you do: go to Google.com, and enter this text (this works for any website) "site:torontomealprograms.blogspot.com" and then after that text, in the search box, but whatever your search terms are. So if you're looking for information about the Good Shepherd, your search is "site:torontomealprograms.blogspot.com good shepherd" or whatever.
Sorry about the hassle.
RIP Christie Ossington Neighbourhood Centre (CONC)
It's impossible to tell when this happened, but CONC is gone. It happened sometime before October of 2014. Apparently they're just temporarily gone. Nobody has any reason to believe or disbelieve this.
Their website is still up, and still listing their old address on Bloor St. West, and still listing their meal programs, like today's lunch:
No mention is made of the closure. The company responsible for their website is called The Wire. Maybe someone should contact them and let them know to change things. But they've most likely been out of contact with CONC since first designing their site, back in the day, whenever that was. This problem is typical of these multiservice agencies, and the sketchy relationships they have with those who do their web design. In general, they can't allow clients to work on their websites, since clients can't be trusted, and since nobody who has the keys to the site can afford to spend any time on it, and since communication between any of the parties involved is impossible. So, service agencies like CONC, when they're applying for funding, or when they have funding, find some web design agency that needs to do some charity work, or needs to do some portfolio-building work, they spend a month or so creating some evil monster that's impossible for the soup kitchen staff to maintain, and which they'll never have the time or the budget to touch again, and there you go. It floats in space forever. Telling people to show up at the abandoned storefront, every week.
Here's what the abandoned storefront looks like now. Notice the complete lack of any signage about where the new location is or what the new schedule is. The two things that are tacked up there are about a youth employment program, and a music event. Beautiful graffiti though.
This is typical of temporary or permanent closures. Users are not notified. The website continues to deliver inaccurate information. And sometimes, some other agency steps up. In this case, it's the Salvation Army. As famous for their discrimination as they are for their substandard food, this omnipresent charity superpower has picked up where CONC left off.
So now, instead of the best-quality food in the area, in a super cramped spot, where you can also go downstairs and book a recording session (if you're young), or laundry use (if you're organized), or get vegetarian food (if you're a vegetarian or a liar who wants to avoid meat), you can go a few blocks away, except on weekends, no more weekend meals, and get what you're a bit more used to. Something a bit more in line with what you'd find at the average soup kitchen. In the case of today's meal, it was bacon, a chunk of what is probably spam, undercooked potatoes, and salad. Or rather, lettuce.
To be precise, the new location is the dreaded Salvation Army, at 789 Dovercourt. And the new times are: Breakfast from 10am to 11am, and lunch from noon to 1pm. And the new days are Monday to Thursday. The only advantage is that Salvation Army's space is substantially larger. The crowd is still fairly sketchy, but there's more buffer space between people.
This website is getting craploads of traffic, which is great, yay
It's easy enough to lie about this kind of thing. Of course. But here's an update on the kind of web traffic that this site is getting. It's impressive. It's gratifying. It's dangerous. The more popular and used the site becomes, the closer it comes to getting shut down. Why would it get shut down? Because it's useful to clients, and because it reports on the problems with the way services are provided. It may be exposing practices that go against agreements that were made in order to ensure funding. It may expose stakeholders to risk. If and when it does get shut down, it'll just pop up under some other free publishing service, but then it'll take time for that to become easy to search for, and the information will have to be reassembled.
Anyway, here's some screenshots of Blogger's awesome "stats" service, showing how much this site gets used. These screenshots are of statistics taken from the entire lifetime of the site.
Anyway, here's some screenshots of Blogger's awesome "stats" service, showing how much this site gets used. These screenshots are of statistics taken from the entire lifetime of the site.
Contact (or rather, lack of contact)
There's no point in trying to contact the author for interviews, for advice, for whatever. It's not happening. Fuck that. There's no point. Where's the incentive? People sometimes leave their email address or some contact info in some comments somewhere, but think about it: anyone could contact you back, pretending to be the author. And it just signs you up for more spam, because your email address is sitting around on the web.
What you can do is leave questions in the comments section below, and expect to wait a long time for responses. They'll be put up anonymously, so you have no guarantee that they're written by the author. But any responses that anyone leaves pretending to be the author will be eventually deleted.
So go ahead, ask away. Anything you want to ask, you're going to have to ask in full view of the public. As it should be.
What you can do is leave questions in the comments section below, and expect to wait a long time for responses. They'll be put up anonymously, so you have no guarantee that they're written by the author. But any responses that anyone leaves pretending to be the author will be eventually deleted.
So go ahead, ask away. Anything you want to ask, you're going to have to ask in full view of the public. As it should be.
What's with the anonymity? About the author, about the site, etc.
I'm one person working alone, living with a disability, living on disability payments, I used to live on welfare, and before that I had various jobs, including web design and advertising copyrighting. I didn't have a post-secondary education, because I didn't have access to one. Not everybody does have access. I grew up poor, and so did my parents, and so did my grandparents, and poverty is a beast that, like the rest of us, tends to want to preserve itself. Poverty comes back from your past to catch you and bring you back into its clutches. Poverty disconnects one's attitude from one's circumstances, so my outlook, no matter how positive or negative it's been, has never had much effect on the outcomes of my efforts. The culture of poverty has followed me into whatever employment situation I've had, and I've never had someone who can teach me how to not act poor and think poor. And it's really how you act and how you think that dictate your outcomes. I've failed to fake it 'til I made it, because honestly, I didn't know how, and I didn't have the will to do so. It just involves so much lying. So that's my story. That's as specific as I'm going to get. There are tons of people out there just like me. So there's not a lot of possibility of discovery. And, shit, for all you know, the whole story could be a fabrication, full of lies, or full of delusions that make it easier for me to deal with.
What's my motivation for publishing this anonymously? It's mostly just so I can say whatever the fuck I want about these places. It's journalistic independence and integrity, basically. What do I have to lose when somebody finally outs my identity? Just access to meal programs. Or rather, safe access. I fear being recognized by staff and clientele, and any reprisals that may come along with that. But I mostly fear simply not being able to say what I want to say about these places. It's like the Vice Magazine album reviews, and a lot of the more contentious articles. They're published under bogus names. Because that way, they can say whatever they want. And because of that, they're worth reading. They're not boring bullshit.
Of course, it's occurred to me a thousand times that having authored this website may lead to employment of some kind, or recognition of some kind, and those things are nice. But in my experience, employment is fleeting and exploitative. I may find some way out of the cycle of poverty. I might be able to somehow access education, or make some partnerships that lead to an entrepreneurial success story. But at the same time, I have to hedge my bets by becoming as good at being poor as I possibly can be.
I've tried to write most of these articles using grammar that obfuscates the authorship of things on this site. But it's impossible to disguise my writing style. I haven't really tried. I've pulled the old web designer trick of trying to make it seem like I'm several people working for some big company, that I'm a team when really I'm just one person. And I've tried to enlist people from the poverty community to contribute articles, so that the site really can be a group effort. And so that the geographical range of the information can expand. And I still want that. But so far, none of that has happened. The site has a fantastic amount of usage, with the impressive traffic profile that comes along with it. And people do contribute tips in the comments of the various articles. And I'm very, very grateful for that. It's wonderful. It demonstrates that the poverty community does have collaboration skills, and the will to share information. It's just that, generally, our time online is limited and our energy for productivity time is limited. Everyone I know who lives in poverty needs an extreme amount of downtime in their lives, just to cope. Poverty causes illness, and is caused by illness, and people who are ill have trouble doing this kind of thing. And I have trouble doing this kind of thing. I'm in and out of this site. I sometimes work a lot on it, and sometimes not. I miss closures, and leave the calendar inaccurate for months. It's bad. But I do what I can.
Why do I feel like doing this, ultimately? It does involve a sense of indebtedness to the poverty community. Like I owe something. Also, the welfare and ODSP (disability benefits) that I've been living off of are paid for by the taxpayer. I have years of payments to make up for. There aren't any volunteering programs that I can work with... they all have requirements that I simply can't fulfill. So I do all sorts of little anonymous things, to give back. To reduce my shame. To contribute to my own sense of dignity. To be part of the world. And it's also partially just out of frustration: I can do this. It's relatively easy. And those who are being paid to do it... they do a horrible job of it. They're not being paid enough to do it, and not enough of them are being paid to do it. Because of my skillset, it's easy for me. It started out as just me making a google calendar and map of this stuff, to keep my notes straight. And then I was like shit, I could just tie this together on a blog to make it easier to use. And then other people could use it too. And then maybe I'd get intelligence (tips) from the community. And then maybe... maybe maybe maybe, something nice could happen. And it's been nice. Now I have power. Because people visit the site, and my words and experiences, which reflect the experiences of the poverty community, are here. They're not elsewhere, not really, not on the 'net. They're not on meal program websites. Because we're not stakeholders. Charity organizations, government departments, NGOs, and contributing companies, are the stakeholders. They're the ones that get representation and attention. Not the clients. We are the product. We get whatever representation the stakeholders give us. But not on this site. On this site, the truth has lease. Actual real-world experiences have lease.
I do have a plan for my identity being outed. For one thing, anybody could pretend to be the creator of this site. So I have plausible deniability. If somebody posts a picture of me, I can change my look. I can continue to go to these programs, with the additional fear of reprisal that's provided by being outed. I already fear going to these programs. The're not safe, after all, anyway. They are there to be there. They are harm reduction, because they reduce property crime. They are window dressing, because they provide something for the public to point at, saying, we're doing something... somebody is doing something. They're there for companies, to point at, saying, it's not a solution, but it's something. And yeah, it's not a solution. It's an opportunity. And it's a deterrent, for the masses, to leaving their jobs, to questioning their working conditions, stuff like that. It's something to point at to say do I want to be one of those people? No I sure don't, so I'll just ignore my employer's workplace standards violations, just like police threaten people with like you're gonna get raped in jail everyday, and nobody's going to question these charges, only you and I know they're lies.
I had plans to reveal my identity this year. I even wrote about it on this site. And then I removed the post about it. I can do that whenever I want with this site. I can change my plans. I can change my mind. I can present erroneous information. I can delete people's comments. And of course, Google can do whatever it wants with this site. Take it down, track me down, take it over, write bogus stuff... whatever it wants. Maybe I've broken the service agreement. Maybe I've broken the law. The agreements and laws can change at any time without notice, and the public doesn't have the means to know the law, anyway. So any of us could be investigated for any time, and jailed at any time, for any or no reason. And if there is a reason, nobody has any way to know, or any legal right to know, what the reason is. So there are risks to publishing this site. Since I don't know what those risks are, and have no way of finding out, I can't say that I've accepted the risks, but I have accepted the unknown.
Not that I can prove this in any way, but this site isn't published by the hacktivist group anonymous. I don't believe they are a legitimate collective of private citizens. I don't believe anything else about them, either. I just know I have no way of knowing what the fuck they really are, so I'm not drawing any conclusions. But I will sign this "anonymous," and I will continue to publish in anonymity, for now.
Yours in poverty,
Anonymous Journalist
What's my motivation for publishing this anonymously? It's mostly just so I can say whatever the fuck I want about these places. It's journalistic independence and integrity, basically. What do I have to lose when somebody finally outs my identity? Just access to meal programs. Or rather, safe access. I fear being recognized by staff and clientele, and any reprisals that may come along with that. But I mostly fear simply not being able to say what I want to say about these places. It's like the Vice Magazine album reviews, and a lot of the more contentious articles. They're published under bogus names. Because that way, they can say whatever they want. And because of that, they're worth reading. They're not boring bullshit.
Of course, it's occurred to me a thousand times that having authored this website may lead to employment of some kind, or recognition of some kind, and those things are nice. But in my experience, employment is fleeting and exploitative. I may find some way out of the cycle of poverty. I might be able to somehow access education, or make some partnerships that lead to an entrepreneurial success story. But at the same time, I have to hedge my bets by becoming as good at being poor as I possibly can be.
I've tried to write most of these articles using grammar that obfuscates the authorship of things on this site. But it's impossible to disguise my writing style. I haven't really tried. I've pulled the old web designer trick of trying to make it seem like I'm several people working for some big company, that I'm a team when really I'm just one person. And I've tried to enlist people from the poverty community to contribute articles, so that the site really can be a group effort. And so that the geographical range of the information can expand. And I still want that. But so far, none of that has happened. The site has a fantastic amount of usage, with the impressive traffic profile that comes along with it. And people do contribute tips in the comments of the various articles. And I'm very, very grateful for that. It's wonderful. It demonstrates that the poverty community does have collaboration skills, and the will to share information. It's just that, generally, our time online is limited and our energy for productivity time is limited. Everyone I know who lives in poverty needs an extreme amount of downtime in their lives, just to cope. Poverty causes illness, and is caused by illness, and people who are ill have trouble doing this kind of thing. And I have trouble doing this kind of thing. I'm in and out of this site. I sometimes work a lot on it, and sometimes not. I miss closures, and leave the calendar inaccurate for months. It's bad. But I do what I can.
Why do I feel like doing this, ultimately? It does involve a sense of indebtedness to the poverty community. Like I owe something. Also, the welfare and ODSP (disability benefits) that I've been living off of are paid for by the taxpayer. I have years of payments to make up for. There aren't any volunteering programs that I can work with... they all have requirements that I simply can't fulfill. So I do all sorts of little anonymous things, to give back. To reduce my shame. To contribute to my own sense of dignity. To be part of the world. And it's also partially just out of frustration: I can do this. It's relatively easy. And those who are being paid to do it... they do a horrible job of it. They're not being paid enough to do it, and not enough of them are being paid to do it. Because of my skillset, it's easy for me. It started out as just me making a google calendar and map of this stuff, to keep my notes straight. And then I was like shit, I could just tie this together on a blog to make it easier to use. And then other people could use it too. And then maybe I'd get intelligence (tips) from the community. And then maybe... maybe maybe maybe, something nice could happen. And it's been nice. Now I have power. Because people visit the site, and my words and experiences, which reflect the experiences of the poverty community, are here. They're not elsewhere, not really, not on the 'net. They're not on meal program websites. Because we're not stakeholders. Charity organizations, government departments, NGOs, and contributing companies, are the stakeholders. They're the ones that get representation and attention. Not the clients. We are the product. We get whatever representation the stakeholders give us. But not on this site. On this site, the truth has lease. Actual real-world experiences have lease.
I do have a plan for my identity being outed. For one thing, anybody could pretend to be the creator of this site. So I have plausible deniability. If somebody posts a picture of me, I can change my look. I can continue to go to these programs, with the additional fear of reprisal that's provided by being outed. I already fear going to these programs. The're not safe, after all, anyway. They are there to be there. They are harm reduction, because they reduce property crime. They are window dressing, because they provide something for the public to point at, saying, we're doing something... somebody is doing something. They're there for companies, to point at, saying, it's not a solution, but it's something. And yeah, it's not a solution. It's an opportunity. And it's a deterrent, for the masses, to leaving their jobs, to questioning their working conditions, stuff like that. It's something to point at to say do I want to be one of those people? No I sure don't, so I'll just ignore my employer's workplace standards violations, just like police threaten people with like you're gonna get raped in jail everyday, and nobody's going to question these charges, only you and I know they're lies.
I had plans to reveal my identity this year. I even wrote about it on this site. And then I removed the post about it. I can do that whenever I want with this site. I can change my plans. I can change my mind. I can present erroneous information. I can delete people's comments. And of course, Google can do whatever it wants with this site. Take it down, track me down, take it over, write bogus stuff... whatever it wants. Maybe I've broken the service agreement. Maybe I've broken the law. The agreements and laws can change at any time without notice, and the public doesn't have the means to know the law, anyway. So any of us could be investigated for any time, and jailed at any time, for any or no reason. And if there is a reason, nobody has any way to know, or any legal right to know, what the reason is. So there are risks to publishing this site. Since I don't know what those risks are, and have no way of finding out, I can't say that I've accepted the risks, but I have accepted the unknown.
Not that I can prove this in any way, but this site isn't published by the hacktivist group anonymous. I don't believe they are a legitimate collective of private citizens. I don't believe anything else about them, either. I just know I have no way of knowing what the fuck they really are, so I'm not drawing any conclusions. But I will sign this "anonymous," and I will continue to publish in anonymity, for now.
Yours in poverty,
Anonymous Journalist
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