green thumb twiddling.

You should grow a garden. Your neighbors will become curious and motivated to start gardens of their own. Little kids will force their parents to stop in front of your garden to check on its progress. No one will steal your tomatoes even though everyone who sees that you started a garden right next to the sidewalk tells you that people will steal your tomatoes. Which means you can have conversations like this:

Someone Else: So what have you done with all of your free time since you lost your job?

You: I restored my faith in humanity by growing awesome tomatoes that nobody stole when they walked past.

Someone Else: Wow, working life has washed away all of the faith I had in humanity. Well, working life and NYC Prep.

You: Jubilee heirloom tomatoes are crazy delicious, and they're yellow!

Or maybe you don't care about gardens because your inability to keep plants alive is notorious, and when people bring you what they claim to be unkillable plants you always kill them and this makes you feel bad about yourself. In which case you should go read this article about the positive effects of the recession from Cracked.com.

diversions for the almost-hobo.

So I started this project called Entertain Yourself Without Blowing the Grocery Money on Booze. Sometimes this involved virgins. I mean, Virgins.

Free Diversion #1: Find and Photograph all the Virgin Mary Murals in Your Town.
This really only works if you live in or near a city with a huge Latino population. If you don't, I pity you. You probably don't even have a man who pushes a cart around your neighborhood selling corn with chile and mayonnaise.

The late afternoon sun spotlights the Virgin like she's a relic in an Indiana Jones movie. She's painted on the side of a Mexican market with some angry livestock featured in another mural to her immediate left (outside the frame), which I think is there to let you know that the meat you buy from this market won't take any of your shit, so don't even try it.

Nuestra Madre protecting some midcentury automobiles on Main Street, just off from the Arts Colony downtown.

I took this picture after I figured out that my hand fits through the chainlink fence, even if it's holding a camera.

I also found her protecting some actual automobiles at a used car lot on Holt Ave.

Anyone want to make a coffee-table book?

funemployment.

I was recently laid off. I worked for a nonprofit that offers educational opportunities to underprivileged kids, so you know, it wasn’t a surprise.

Sometimes funny and unexpected things happen when you get laid off:
1. The application for unemployment insurance benefits in California asks for your ethnicity. The options in the drop-down menu are “Hispanic or Latino” and “Not Hispanic or Latino.” Apparently, there really are only two kinds of people in this world. Or at least, in California.
2. Several college friends offered me internships. This was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but seriously? I have friends who have interns? We’re getting old, guys.