URBAN LEGENDS AND UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS

Urban legends are modern folklore. Powerful narratives of widely dispersed misinformation , containing elements of horror, caution, mystery, and sometimes, humor, and believed by their tellers to be true.

Merely that they are in circulation, exhibit variation over time, and carry some significance, or in fact, contain a grain of truth, motivates a community to preserve and propogate them.

We've all heard tons of urban legends about the alligators in the sewers (egads, sometimes even coming into your own bathroom); organ trafficking; weed in the Halloween brownies; the vanishing hitch-hiker; the baby in the microwave; the babysitter and the man upstairs; Walt Disney's body is cryogenically frozen, or Paul is dead.

You remember, Paul...the Beatle..and if you say 'who is Walt Disney' or 'what is a Beatle'...you need to stop reading right here and go back to watching "American Idol."

And there are tons of urban legends in circulation about Homeless Nation and though they, like other urban legends, have exhibited variation over time, and carry some significance, and in fact contain a grain of truth - they sometimes contain buckets of grains of uncomfortable truths - which motivates the surrounding communities to preserve and propogate them.

Some Homeless Nation urban legends are are easily dismissed. Whoever heard of a street puppy really swimming into your bathroom through the sewer system? He'd have to fall off your porch straight into a manhole to do that. And if you have manholes under your porch, you're living way too close to the street.

And weed in the Halloween brownies? Please. A whole town full of stoned out trick-or-treating eight year old street puppies dressed up as everything from ballerinas to Miss Piggy to Sponge Bob would have made national headlines.

No, we're talking about the grains of uncomfortable truth contained in homeless nation urban legends here, so let's not puppyfoot around it.

Urban legend number one. Street puppies are all drug addicts and/or alcoholics and why help them anyway, they're just going to spend the money to give to some drug dealer or liquor store.

Zing! Whew. that one hurts. There's a grain, Oh, I'll give you ten to fifteen grains of truth for that. but before you get any ideas about every day in homeless nation being St. Patrick's Day, or drug dealers on parade, we're talking about a small percentage of street puppies.

Compared to the number of puppies who got here because of of good odds instead of bad luck, I'd say the overwhelming number of street puppies arrived here because of situations way beyond their control and are going to spend every penny or service they receive to rectify the current situation and take care of the amenities before buying even one cold beer.

And if their drug of choice is well, drugs, homeless nation has plenty of help for those puppies too. And we don't judge them, we just help them, and only if they ask for it, and we give them lots of love. Unless they steal our watch or somethin' to pay their dealer. Then we get out the piano wire.

Urban Legend number two. It's just a scam. I've seen them drive away from their panhandling spots in....um, uh....an Escalade. Yeah, an escalade. And they all have 9 foot TV's with built in microwaves and showers.

Ok, I once saw a street puppy take off his panhandling vest thingy, and go straight to the Mercedes dealership right down the street and pay cash for a big ole' Mercedes. And then he changed into his Batman suit, hopped into the 'Benz' and went roaring through the streets with the top down, yelling "EEEEEE....haaaaaaaaaaaa."

Now that's some kind of urban legend there .

It's also my way of saying no grains of truth and if you believe that particular urban legend or anything like it, you've been listening to too many of those late night talk show hosts who are still trying to prove that Christopher Columbus was actually born in Latvia and was a Hindu.

Urban legend number three. They're taking all of my hard earned taxes and getting food stamps and selling them to terrorists and people like that. It's Un American!!

Ok. Twenty grains of truth for that one. But they're not selling them to terrorists. They're probably selling them to your neighbor. The one who eats all the cookie dough. And five pounds of pasta at a time. And gumbees. And he's getting all that stuff for half price which is what he's paying, fifty cents on the buck.

And the puppy is probably buying things with that fifty cents on the buck that he can't buy with food stamps like vitamins and pampers and soap and toothpaste and some hot food, because believe it or not, you can't buy vitamins or hot food with food stamps and most of us don't have the kind of money it takes to buy good vitamins, or access to a cooking stove.

And, yes. Some people who sell their food stamps use it to buy drugs and alcohol. What a surprise. We are shocked. Shocked!

But before they were selling food stamps to buy drugs and alcohol, they were probably selling other things to buy drugs and alcohol. However, the vast majority of people using food stamps, use them for food. And the next time you stick up your nose at me at the check out counter when I use my food stamps to pay for yogurt and a peach, and a bagel, I'll stick a drinking straw up it.

Ok, we've explained away three of the biggest homeless nation urban legends. At least now you know the vast majority of street puppies aren't all whacked out drug addicted, drunken, mercedes drivin' yodeling food stamp sellers with ties to terrorist cells.

Uh, oh. Look! Quick! Across the street....there goes Osama Bin Laden!