Late To The Party

This has been plastered all over the Internet at this point, so I feel like I'm a little late to the party on this one. Then again, being late has never stopped me before. The video below is of a guy named Ted Williams. (No, not the baseball player who had his head lopped off and frozen in some cryonics lab somewhere.) He is homeless, seemingly due to drug and alcohol problems that plagued in him the past. He claims to be two years sober and is now looking for work. What makes him different from all of the other homeless guys that accost my vehicle at the off ramps? Well, this guy actually has a marketable talent that he's hoping to let people know about so that he can find his way off of the street and back into regular life. The video is below. His talent will become obvious as soon as he opens his mouth. For some reason, folks have taken to calling him the Man With The Golden Voice. I don't know what a golden voice would sound like, but it's pretty amazing regardless.

Update on this story: The Cleveland Cavaliers have offered him a full-time job and a free house. I believe that he has accepted. Congratulations, Ted! Now get to work.

Update Part Deux: Originally, when posted on YouTube, this video had garnered over five million hits. This man's story is everywhere. Naturally, that's why the video was taken down due to a copyright claim by The Dispatch, the newspaper that broke this story (I think). What gives, Dispatch? A copyright claim? Are you serious? Wow, good thing that his story got out there before you and your copyright claims took the video down. Maybe if you had done that a little sooner, the guy would still be homeless and no one would know about him. Good idea. Thanks for nothing, Dispatch.

Dollar Menu "Discrimination"

Hey, San Francisco! How's your utopia coming along? Are you making sure that you're keeping plenty of entitled homeless people around who are disillusioned about what they feel that they should be getting? You are? Ohhh. So that's why there are folks that are sans home complaining about a particular McDonald's that has done away with their dollar menu. Whatever.

Here's the deal according to SF Gate: The McDonald's in the Haight-Ashbury area on the corner of Haight and Stanyan has eliminated the dollar menu from their tasty offerings. Instead of 99 cents, those items are now $1.49, constituting a difference of a whopping fifty cents. (Now, I should probably mention that there are a gazillion homeless in the Haight area. You can't swing a dead shopping cart without hitting one. And they're far from sedate individuals. They are some of the more aggressive panhandlers that I've ever come across. You can't walk by them without them hitting you up for a "donation".) And, of course, the homeless feel that they are being (wait for it) discriminated against. Behold! The discriminatees!

That's right. They have this price hike thing all figured out. See, they're thinking that the McDonald's just doesn't want them hanging around all of the time and sitting in their patio seating. So this is "...the restaurant management's ploy to get them to go somewhere else." A simply shocking assertion. You may also not be shocked to learn that "Management locks the bathroom door and frequently calls the cops." You don't say? Yes, I'm shocked. Stunned, as it were. Uh-huh. Can you imagine wanting to lock the bathroom door and call the cops on the folks below?

I can't imagine why that would be. Why on earth would the owner of the McDonald's not want their business cluttered up with a bunch of scroungy looking homeless people who are asking your entering and departing patrons for money? Not to mention scroungy looking homeless people who take up your seats outside all the live long day. It's a mystery all right. But the owner of the franchise, a one Natalie Gonzalez, claims that isn't the reason. Well, she sort of claims that. In a statement that was issued, she asserts, "The speculation as to why I no longer offer menu items for $1 in this location is absolutely false. This was a business decision based on a number of contributing factors. And while these items are no longer available at $1, they are still available at what I believe to be a good, everyday value."

I like how she doesn't mention the "contributing factors" specifically. I'd say that having a bunch of homeless folks hanging around all of the time and pestering anyone who walks within three feet of them for their hard earned cash a "contributing factor". But for some reason, she doesn't want to say that. And I just don't get that. Why wouldn't she just say that she doesn't like the "clientele" that having a dollar menu attracts? The homeless act like they're just like everyone else, but they fail to see the obvious and striking differences between themselves and the homed. The homed tend to not ask others for money. The homed tend to wear clean clothes. The homed tend to leave the majority of their belongings in their home when they leave it. And the homed don't spend all day taking up seats in the outdoor seating area of the McDonald's. I find it to be perfectly acceptable to change your way of doing business in order to get rid of those who stand in the way of your doing business.


The other thing that really bugs me about the homeless and their fake uproar about this? That would be that they act like it is damn near impossible for them to scrounge a dollar or two. Give me a break. Get over yourself. Or get a job. Either one of those would probably work out pretty well for you. But whatever you do, just pipe down about it. You're not entitled to a dollar menu at every fast food establishment. And is that the only freaking McDonald's in town? I highly doubt it. Why don't you go be sans home outside of a different McDonald's? Say, one with a dollar menu. It's not like you've got anything else to do.