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In This Issue

• The New Spec Editorial Page
• A Sojourn to M’Ville
• Fear and Loathing with Jim Henson
• I Can Be Homeless Too, Mommy
• Letters to the Feditor
• She Says, “To-MAH-to,” He Says, “Bll-RR-gh.”
• The Hobo Lottery
• Fractal Tetris
• News on the Party Front(al Nudity)
• Everything is Love and Theft
• Loving the Mailer-Daemon
• Community Time
• “They” Continue to Keep Natural Cures From You
• Fed Bash - NOT! LOLOLomg
• Plagiarismo in Two Lines with Things Like That
• Senator Kennedy Surprises Attendants of "Ted Bash"
• A Letter from Our Sudoku Editor
• Hinden-Fed
• South-by-Southwest Tour Diary
• THEY Watch
• Staff of 21.7

Dear Diary: I had the weirdest experience today! It all started with this assignment my teacher gave us, where we have to pretend to switch lives with someone else. Well, as you know, my life already totally sucks. Last year, my dad’s company got downsized. We had to sell our boat and our plasma TV, and our house in the Hamptons is now a time-share. I can’t relate to any of my friends anymore. They are way too immature. Sara-Lynn actually thinks you’re supposed to put tampons in your butt, and Kaitlin stuffs her training bra with rolled-up socks. Duh! You’re supposed to use balled-up Kleenex! Sigh.

    Anyway, the only people whose lives suck as much as mine are homeless people. There’s this one guy who lives across the street from my building named Charlie. (The doormen try to chase him away but he always comes back.) This one day, I was really upset. Mom was totally pissed off because she sprang a leak in one of her boob implants and Daddy won’t pay to fix them, and at school Jennie and Lauren were making fun of me because they said I still played with Barbies. Which I totally don’t! Bratz dolls are completely different and way more awesome. Plus I’m like the first girl in my class to get pubes and what if Bobby Drake finds out and calls me a total slut? Well, I was so upset that I started confiding in the homeless guy, Charlie. And guess what? He totally got it! He said his family sucks, too, and that they had him put away for schizo-…something. While he was talking, a guy walked by and took some coins out of his cup of change and then ran off. Charlie exposed his genitals and started shrieking random obscenities. Finally, someone else who totally gets how much life sucks!

    So I decided that for my assignment, I would report on what it’s like to be homeless. I mean, how much worse can my life get already? Before I left, I needed to accessorize. Since being homeless seems to involve sitting on the ground a lot, I decided to take my knock off Kate Spade bag that my step-mom got me as a joke last year. And since most of the homeless that I had seen had paper cups for people to put change in, I brought along my Lion King thermos. (I guess homeless people like shiny things.)

    When I got outside, I decided to hit all the top homeless people spots, which I had Googled the night before. First, the subways. I learned a lot there. For one thing, homeless people are musical. A dirty looking guy with a scraggly beard and no shoes was playing the guitar on the subway platform. I decided to try. I mean, I’m totally in orchestra this year (not band—Kaitlin told me playing a woodwind instrument makes you technically not a virgin), so I wanted to join in. I set out my thermos, took out my instrument—the triangle.

    After five minutes of hitting it, I was starting to get bored. But it was working. Men with briefcases were stopping and dropping stuff into my Lion King thermos, muttering stuff about our city’s failing music program. I started to get really happy. But then, I felt someone towering over me. (Homeless people look way bigger up close!) He looked really pissed. I ended up having to give him everything I earned. Way uncool. Even worse than the time Kimberly, Rory, and Melyssa all pretended they got their period before me and made me think I was the only sixth grader not doing it.

    Since music hadn’t really worked, I decided to try sitting out on the street instead. Maybe I could even make a sign! Camping outside of the Hello Kitty store in Time Square, I set to work. I was finishing up dotting my i’s with glitter filled hearts on my sign (“Will totally work for Hello Kitty or Keroppi Frog pencil box!”) when suddenly Kara Ann and Allison (my best friends in 8th grade) walked up.

    “Um, hi, aren’t you that girl who doesn’t menstruate, or something?”

    “Oh, hi!” I started to say.

When they saw the blanket and my sign, they started giggling. “I heard her dad lost his job. I bet she already lost her trust fund.”

I tried to explain. “No, it’s—

            But they already left, giggling about how Hello Kitty was so stupid, and how my cute faux Burberry skirt was something a financial aid student would wear. As I went home crying, I knew I’d learned something. I’d set out thinking my life was as hard as a homeless person, but I realized something—it’s way, way worse. As I reflected, and stuff, my life is way, way harder than most people’s.