My three co-workers at YO! did a ‘Broke Blogger’ vlog the other day, and I felt they had ripped a page out of the book of my life and began to read it out loud.

I’m so broke I recently began to question my own morals. How bad is selling drugs really? On a scale on to ten, how bad are hired assassins looked at in this country? What if I only killed bad people—like racists and crooked politicians? Give blood? Do porn? Illegal Chihuahua dog fights for extra money? All options but way to extreme to actually follow through on, except for the Chihuahua dog fighting thing…that could bring in some real revenue.

I’m looking for a new place to live, and saving money for things— like deposits and first months rent has proved tricky. The funny thing is it seems I had more money when I was paying rent and buying my own food.

Now that I have a free ride at my folks my cash seems to go faster than ever. Today I looked at a room in west Oakland, close to where I used to live. The Craig’s List ad seemed promising. ‘Cheap rent in great place’ it said. ‘Full recording studio in the basement to put on great shows in the back yard’ it boasted. But if you have ever looked at anything on Craig’s list they are never as good as they seem.

This was no different.

The place was as punk house as a punk house could be. It made the house on Paper Street in Fight Club look like the Taj Mahal. Rent is cheap but am I willing to sacrifice basic comforts such as running water and rugs that aren’t caked with shit? I’m broke, but today I realized I am not that broke. ‘It’s a real fixer upper, you know, this place needs some new energy,’ he says as he walked me in to a new room. ‘Is that a whole turd on the carpet?’ I asked myself, and indeed it was.

‘The last people who lived here fucked it up and didn’t pay rent, you know,’ he said. I tried to keep my eyes off of everything and on everything at the same time. Not to make him feel offended but also not to be blind-sided by whatever dogged creature that could be living in such unmanageable and filthy conditions. ‘Don’t touch anything,’ my mothers voice popped me in my head. ‘You don’t know where this place has been’. Thanks mom.

‘If I could just find some people to help me fix this place up it could be real nice,’ he tells me. My eyes drag across the kitchen like a net in a murky swamp picking up on every hole in the wall and open condom, every dish glossy with caked on grease and cereal box chewed to cardboard flakes by whatever kind of rodents called this place home.

My mom and dad’s didn’t seem so bad after that and having no money doesn’t seem that bad ether. ‘Cause no matter how broke I get I don’t have to live in that place—thank God.
—Donny Lumpkins