Poverty and Filth

You Know You're Ghetto Student-Poor When...

You stop buying those fancy expensive vegetables like tomatoes or mushrooms and start buying cabbage and 10 lb. bags of carrots.

Your sheets are threadbare...LITERALLY! You can feel the squeaky weirdness of your inflatable mattress through the bare patches.

You wear those embarrassing t-shirts you bought on vacation at that "really great bar down by the beach!", which has a cartoon shark drinking cocktails with umbrellas on it, because you don't have change to do laundry.

You try and use only three squares of toilet paper per wipe (with a 50% success rate).

You spend an hour pulling the pill-y bits off your sweater because time is still cheaper than H&M.



You wear your sunglasses and stride purposefully down the street because it makes you feel important and like you have somewhere to go.

You factor in your overdraft limit when making sure that your rent check is going to clear.

You get mad when you waste a stamp.

You never talk to friends who don't have Skype.

You go crazy and splurge on a can of refried beans instead of your usual purchase: No Name beans in tomato sauce.

You look at the girls who wear make up to class in disbelief, mixed with a dash of envy.



Your wild saturday night includes a bottle of cheap local Chardonnay and watching TV on the internet.

You leave an increasingly threatening series of voicemails on your former landlord's cell demanding the damage deposit from the apartment you vacated 6 months ago.

You go weak at the knees and your vision gets blurry when you find a GST check in your mailbox.

You pore over those supermarket flyers which clutter the apartment foyer like they're a raunchy tabloid sex-scandal expose.

You realize that you really really love what you're doing; otherwise you'd never put yourself through this.

On a different note, I've always had a great nostalgia and sense of respect for the inherent patterns of our furry forest neighbours. Whether it was following deer trails as a young 'un through the thick underbrush of the verdant west coast rain forests or making sure not to put my delicate human ankle down a gopher hole while romping around the prairie; I've always accepted the fact that animals leave their mark on the world. And since homo sapiens sprawl over most of the planet's surface I think it's only fair to cut the poor disadvantaged animals some slack. However, when the goddamn raccoons decide that my back step is their personal lavatory I TAKE EXCEPTION! Cute little mask-faced assh*les can go rot in a sewage pile. Since I'm sure some of you think I'm overreacting I documented the extent and (rather impressive) volume of defecation which occurs in front of my door.



Yes, frightening isn't it.

And if there wasn't enough icing on the cake already, what with the rampant squirrel problem thanks to the poutine shop having its dumpsters next to my other door, I came home this evening to find the item below on my stoop. Crumpled and used up, like my patience.

Damn dirty humans!