February 11, 2008
TONY
“Damn it’s cold. It was -30 C with windchill last night they were saying — and I believe ’em. Hey, did you see my new guitar guy here?”
PHILIP
“Hard to miss him, actually.”
TONY
“You know that I spent 3 hours trying to fix him last night. Just wouldn’t work, even tried new batteries a couple of times. I tore the whole toy apart to find out what was wrong. Finally, I realized that I put the batteries in backwards. I just had put them in like the batteries go into Elmo. Boy, did that turn out to be a bad assumption.”
Posted in backward, bad assumptions, batteries, big bird, Elmo, fix, gotcha, guitar, homelessness, hours, Hugh McLennan, little bird, muppets, The Watch That Ends the Night", toys, windchill, wrong | 2 Comments »
February 8, 2008
PHILIP
“I got you some stuff. Here’s a bottle of ibuprofens, and here’s one of those cans of strawberry-flavoured Ensure drink. How about that, eh [!]?”
TONY
“Great. I appreciate it. I’ll be using that ibuprofen right away, thank you — and I’ll put that can in my refrigerator for dinner.”
Posted in cold, dinner, ensure, fridge, homelessness, ibuprofen, refrigerator, snow, stuff | 1 Comment »
February 5, 2008
Posted in Bone Machine, buck, dollar, game, midway, Roncesvalles, shots, snowballs, throw, Tom Waits | Leave a Comment »
February 3, 2008
TONY
“I had a funny thing happen today with a customer.”
PHILIP
“A customer? What happened?”
TONY
“He wanted to give me some change but he didn’t have any money on him.”
PHILIP
“So what happened?”
TONY
“So he asked me if I would take a credit card.”
PHILIP
“What did you say?”
TONY
“Well I told him that I didn’t even have a debit card machine. He thought that was pretty funny.”
Posted in credit card, debit card, funny, homelessness, Mastercard, priceless | Leave a Comment »
January 30, 2008
This shot dates back to late 2006; I’ve been looking for an opportunity to post it. 😉
Philip
Posted in smile | 4 Comments »
January 21, 2008
TONY
“Do you remember the fellow I was coaching a few weeks back?
“Well, believe it or not, I turned him in. It was small stuff he was into, but he wasn’t sticking to his word to me, so I had to turn him in. I even told the cops where to find him. So he gets hauled off to jail in cuffs and they charge him and now he’s going to trial in a few weeks. So you know what he says to me when he sees me? … ‘Thanks, Tony. Now I don’t have look behind me everywhere I go.’
“Well, I never turned a friend in before but this time it was the right thing to do.”
Posted in arrest, beggar, coaching, cops, handcuffs, homelessness, invisible, jail, morality, panhandling, police, right, right thing to do, roentgen, thank, Tony Clemens, visible, x-rays | 2 Comments »
January 18, 2008
TONY
“You know that the Rogers Video store is closing, the one at up at Howard Park? Nobody’s in there most of the time anyway. ”
Folks just don’t like big-name stores on this street. Well, except for the banks and the coffee places. Everybody needs them.”
Posted in Bank of Canada, Bank of England, banks, begging, cafes, central bank, coffee, everybody, Federal Reserve Bank, homeless, Howard Park, Mick Jagger, neighbourhoods, nobody, panhandling, retail stores, Rogers Video, Rolling Stones, Ronces, Roncesvalles, you can't always get what you want | 1 Comment »
January 15, 2008
PHILIP
“Your face is distinctly green.”
TONY
“Someone else sid that and it’s true. I can’t keep anything down. I bought myself a nice sausage and it ended up all over the road. Could you buy me a can of stew or chili?”
PHILIP
“You’re kidding, aren’t you? You want chili?”
TONY
“Yup. Trust me. It’s what I need right now.”
Posted in begging, homeless, homelessness, Kerouac, panhandling, road, trust | 1 Comment »
January 14, 2008
TONY
That photo you posted on the blog yesterday, it makes it look like I’m sitting in the middle of a pile of garbage. It’s sad to see myself like that.
Posted in beggar, drawing, Escher, garbage, hands, homeless, homelessness, panhandling, recursion, sadness, self-concept, yesterday | Leave a Comment »
January 7, 2008
Right about this time of winter, Tony begins to go AWOL, occasionally disappearing for as many as five days at once. At the time, I have no idea what’s going on for him. Sometimes I later discover that he was ill, typically from something he ate. Other times he’s just evaporated and I never learn where or why. Maybe he was around but not when I came by.
Nonetheless, he’s been gone the last few days.
Philip
Posted in alien spacecraft, AWOL, black and white, Coen brothers, dreaming, eating, electric chair, evaporation, illness, James Gandolfini, man, not there, winter | 8 Comments »
January 4, 2008
TONY
“Thanks [for the coffee, Phil]. This is the first one I’ve had in 3 days.”
PHILIP
“Where were you?”
TONY
“Mostly at Mike’s place. I just pay him some rent and his girlfriend is cool with it.”
PHILIP
“What’ve you been eating … you haven’t even had a coffee in 3 days?”
TONY
“Nope. Noodles, mostly.”
PHILIP
“What do you do while you’re at Mike’s?”
TONY
“Well, other than sleeping, I do stuff that needs doing around the house and I watch TV and some other things. But my favourite is old-time radio on AM900. You can’t beat the Lone Ranger.”
Posted in AM radio, beggar, Bob Seger, coffee, food, Hamilton, homeless, homelessness, hungry, knight, Lone Ranger, noodles, old time radio, panhandling, sleeping, St. George, Tonto, TV, white horse | 1 Comment »
December 31, 2007
PHILIP
“Where did you sleep last night?”
TONY
“Do you like my trim?
PHILIP
“Very elegant. Where did you sleep last night?”
TONY
“My friend had locked up for the night so I went round to the my donut shop, which is where I trimmed my beard in the bathroom. I got myself into a bit of a confrontation with this guy who came into the bathroom after me. He was pissed that I’d left my beard hairs in the sink. So told him that if he hadn’t been knocking on the bathroom door so hard and pleading to get in, I would have cleaned up after myself like always. He didn’t like being shown up but after the waitress told him the same thing, he went and sat down and shut his mouth.
“Some people like him don’t see that they make their own problems.”
Posted in bathroom, beard, bearding, beggar, donut shop, door, homeless, homelessness, panhandling, sleep, toilet, trim, waitress, whiskers | Leave a Comment »
December 27, 2007
PHILIP
“Did you hear that Benazir Bhutto was just assassinated?”
TONY
“Yeah, someone just told me about that. I bet you President Bush caused it somehow.”
Posted in assassination, beggar, Benazir Bhutto, Bhutto, Bush, cause, death, fascism, fault, geopolitics, George Bush, GWB, homeless, homelessness, Islamabad, Musharraf, news, Pakistan, panhandling, US | Leave a Comment »
December 26, 2007
PHILIP
You got any stories that might bring a smile to your readers during Christmas time?
TONY
“It’s funny that you asked that question since I was just thinking about a funny thing that happened to me a few years ago – it wasn’t funny at the time though. This is when I learned that wooden toilet seats are better than the other plastic ones, even those thick plastic ones.
“So I was sitting on this toilet made of that thick plastic I was talking about — not one of those flimsy ones — and it just cracked under my bum. Somehow one of my cheeks got caught in the crack, and boy did that hurt. I just screamed bloody murder. Turns out it was bleeding pretty bad but I didn’t know. So I started bleeding through my pants, ’til they were totally bloody all down the back of my legs. I couldn’t sit on that cheek for almost 2 months, if you know what I mean. The wood seats just wouldn’t do that to you.”
Posted in ass, beggar, blood, bloody, bum, butt, Cervantes, cheeks, Christmas, crack, Daumier, Don Quixote, homeless, homelessness, joke, laugh, meaning, pants, plastic, Sancho Panza, smile, toilet | 1 Comment »
Homeless Man Speaks 
