And you know what? Fuck the homeless.

We pretty much couldn't go anywhere in downtown Chicago without getting hit up for change by a beggar. Now, I typically don't give out money to beggars, and not just because I'm an asshole. I usually just don't have any cash on me, and it's not like I'm going to cut him a fucking check. My guess is that most homeless don't have a merchant account, either. There were a couple of times I was going to bust out some change for the guy, but I just didn't have any on me.

One day we were arriving back at the hotel. We were unloading the car from our latest shopping attack run, and ETP gets hit up. He turns the guy away saying he doesn't have any money on him, with his hands full of a bunch of shit that we had just bought. That's... Pretty crass. More importantly, it was pretty funny.

Okay, look. We're lucky to have always had a roof over our heads and to now have decent jobs that give us the freedom to buy piles and piles of plastic crap. We know this. But I'm still at odds over that whole "with great power comes great responsibility" (two things we clearly don't have, but you catch my meaning) thing. I honestly can't say that giving handouts to the homeless is really the most noble thing to do. It does encourage laziness, and yeah, there's a decent chance they will just spend it on booze (something many of us can understand, no doubt). I also get pissed whenever I see someone looking for handouts since I'm pretty sure McDonald's is always fucking hiring. No, not the best job, but it's a job.

I also get pissed off when someone asking for spare change is really insistent of even militant. Look, I am just not yet convinced that I have some sort of obligation to give out. Yes, I am lucky in many regards, but what I have didn't just materialize out of nowhere. I actually did do something or it. And yes, it would most certainly be nice if I were more giving, it's just that I don't see that I have to. If that makes me an asshole, so be it. I'm quite clearly pretty comfortable with that. Besides, I'm still just some fucking know-it-all twenty-something who doesn't know shit about shit. Maybe that'll improve with age, maybe not.

There was one guy this one time in Vegas who I was all for ETP giving some change to, which he did. This guy simply had a sign up that said "Why lie? Need a beer." I always appreciate honesty. One thing I don't appreciate is some bullshit sign that ends with "God bless" or has some other Christian nonsense in there. We all know I'm not a huge fan of that, and that is certainly no way to get money from me.

Just to show that we're not entirely bad people, or at least that ETP isn't bad people, we were magnanimous on one occasion in Chicago. Yeah, one. After we finished up at Gino's East, we found ourselves with an extra slice of pizza. There was just nowhere to put this last slice. I was stuffed and ETP was stuffed, and that's saying a lot for the two of us, who are pretty much bottomless pits. The Bird, of course, can't help us in these situations, seeing as how a slice of pizza will LITERALLY double her weight. Don't take that as a criticism, though; I think a size negative four is pretty neat.

Anyway, it really wasn't feasible to go all the way back to the hotel just to drop off the single slice seeing as how the hotel was in the south Loop area and we were more northwards near our next destination, The 'Cock. We resigned ourselves to the fact that we were probably just going to have to dump the last slice, no matter how much it pained us to waste not only food, but truly marvelous food at that. Our hopes were that we could actually find a homeless guy when we wanted to and give it to him. Once we got to Hancock we sent ETP out on a mission, and after about five minutes he found someone who wanted it. So yeah, ETP is a good guy in the end. And me? I was there.