Like a Rolling Rok
by Rok Finger 

Good people, if you see me on the street anytime soon, looking haggard and weary, please don’t throw your hard-earned change my way. For one, it hurts when you get hit right in the teeth with a fat new state quarter and, for two, I’m not destitute, I’m merely homeless.

That’s the fact, jack. Given my recent falling out with Camembert and Lee’s eternally-disappeared status as of late, I decided it’s better to have my pride than a roof over my head. And if I can have neither, what with the extreme damage I did to the roof with my New Year’s Eve fireworks show and my complete shame at being me, I’ll at least not live under the roof with a card-carrying communist like Camembert. Actually, the card said Brown County Public Library, but if the free loaning of books to disabled people isn’t an early sign of communism, I don’t know what is.

“But Rok,” you ignorantly begin, “if you’re so anti-communist, why do you work for a place called the commune (lowercase intentional)?”

Christ, I never thought about it before. You confound me, wise imaginary talking-aloud reader. Oh, that’s right, I have thought about it before. The rationale I came to was that I am the voice of dissent for this politically peculiar powwow of pundits. Any fool can see, as I easily do, that the commune is not strictly communist, though that Bludney Plud always seems to be going through everybody’s desk like he believes in state ownership, him being the state. In practice the commune is merely a source of left-wing propaganda and seldom-reported news and fun conspiracy theories. What role does a mook like me have in a place like this? Simple. I provide the voice of the counter-culture, which is to say the Establishment, which is counter to this counter-culture, which makes me counter-culture here.

What happened? Oh, yes, I was discussing being homeless. I certainly know what those without homes are complaining about now. It is quite a scary experience for a guy like me, short, unattractive, but unquestioningly sexually alluring, to be out amongst the dregs of society without any walls separating them from me. Not to mention the experience of being pelted by water when it rains—or worse, when it doesn’t.

Things are more difficult than in the past, the other times I’ve been unceremoniously thrown out of wherever I was living. Acting-Asshole Ramrod Hurley has instituted a ridiculous new policy of locking the doors when everyone leaves at night, so now I can’t sleep in my desk anymore. I’m really, honest-to-God out on the streets again. For the first time.

Now, I’m a huge fan of Dickens like every other ancient person. But like railroad work, homelessness is only fun for spectators, not for participants. The sooner I can get into a place for living, a what do you call it, house or apartment, the better. Much like prison, I’m too delicate to survive on the streets. I would never consider something drastic like, say, prostitution, but I have been considering it lately. Still, I don’t think it will come to that. No one in the world is mentally ill enough to pay me for sex.

I have asked Ramrod Hurley for an advance on my next paycheck, which is to say I’ve told him I need to be paid with money instead of Raleigh cigarette coupons from now on. When I have enough in the bank, the bank being my ragged slacks pockets, I will find an apartment and begin living there. It will be nice to be out on my own, inside again. No one but the desperately poor should be forced to live like this.

Lord of The Lord of the Rings
That’s right, books. Before seeing the movie I believed books were only delivery systems for cult manifestos or dangerous statistics. Turns out there are whole other worlds in some books, and some of those worlds are worth reading about.

Camembert is No Good
“I think you’re wrong, Rok,” Camembert said to me. Do you believe the brass balls on that handi-capable prick? At first I thought it might be some kind of outright ploy for leadership of the apartment, then I realized his ilk probably doesn’t believe in leadership. They just set up a council and everybody’s on it and nobody ever gets told what to do.

I Support the War, but Not the Troops
As the old saying goes, war brings out the best in a man. Guts, brains, plenty of blood and various organs—but you already know how landmines work.

Can’t Trust the Russians
I’m not afraid to step on politically correct toes, even mash them until the nails flake off and become bloody and swollen and bruised. I’ll come right out and say it: The Russians are weird.