DRESS TO KILL (but NOT kill your WALLET!) THRIFT STORES are very costly, lately, so remember to screw clerks to the wall. BARGAIN. Chop them on price the smart way. Get ten items, push them at clerk, say, would you take 15$ for these? She'll go through them to see what they're worth, then look at you in horror and say 'no.' Do not flinch. Humbly say, but 15$ is all I have. How much of this could I buy for 15$? This is known as warming the waters while you confuse the shark. Always be sweet, long suffering, respectful. If the clerk has an attitude and won't cooperate, be her guru. In a gentle word of wisdom to her eternal soul say "this is a charitable institution. When poor people shop here, you should try to give them a charitable deal and profit only from the rich. My 4 children and I are very poor and can barely eat. I need you to give me a break." Always call them children. Kids are baby goats. Don't insult your product that way.

If that sweet act doesn't work, very sadly leave the pile of stuff you've chosen by cash register, turn away, then as if catching your own rudeness, return. 'Should I put all these back in stock so you don't have to?' If she says yes, take them to the kitchen section and dump them in an oven, then come by at midnight and put a brick through their window. Or a week later, go back. When you see someone buy a cardigan or coat, wait five minutes, then go to the desk and say 'I just set my coat down, a gray fleece? It's gone. You didn't sell it did you? Then screw them to the wall. Make them give you a hundred dollars worth of clothing for your dear, departed, dead mother's coat and threaten to sue them for emotional damages if they don't. Cheaper than acting class but better for what ails you then psychiatry. (I have rec'd letters telling me I'm a psychopath for this paragraph. Hey, this was my feeble attempt at sight gags, and Erna Bombeck HUMOR. I never did any of that nor would I recommend you DO IT. 

Tell you what REALLY happened to me though. My 7 yr old son Demian accompanied me to shop for school clothes. he carelessly set down his German hand knit cardigan ski sweater with the knitted, intricate Bavarian pattern that they use, with carved Silver buttons--- a real treasure, we shopped about 20 minutes, and in that time the woman clerk friggin' sold it. I did nothing, said nothing, desired nothing. I was in pained shock. This stings me ever since. In mothballs, that would have been on my grandchild. Demian's daughters Ayanna or Viviana’s sweater, today! I AM GOOD at MOTHBALLS all warm months, and that’s the main tip in this section.

GARAGE SALE DUDS? Absolutely, but only on the super Ritzy side of town where a 2-pc Armani suit will go for 20 bucks. On the wrong side of the tracks, they want l0 bucks and it's not an Armani. (This rule is broken when you want antiques. Shop the barrio as the servants of the super rich in the barrios have all the giveaway furniture from fifty years ago, great stuff, too.

You have to use your wits. Second hand clothing shops are getting too pricey. At least you can haggle at a garage sale and by Sunday afternoon, loop back and get everything that they didn't sell for free. Do that several weeks in a row, you can furnish your house and your friends houses for pennies then have your own garage sale to boot!

USED OR ABUSED? Old blankets of genuine wool are useful, even with a few moth holes or hanging taffeta edging. Not a deal breaker. When the bed is made, did you ever see the little taffeta edged part? No. A good snag at a sale is a goose down quilt. Nobody knows it but these guys wash and dry beautifully. Fluff up good as new. As with sleeping bags, use the industrial sized washing machine, diluted anti-bacterial soap and avoid softener rinses. Just dryer fluff'em for an hour. Sends dust mites to Hades. You may have to feel around in the feather wads to re-fluff at various points in the drying session -- Not a deal breaker.

EATING- Dumpster Diving is the bottomfeeder’s main source of fruits and vegies. You can visit your fave dumpsters daily and be giving pounds of produce away. Read the FREEGAN  website which is a training manual on this art form. Great website. I saw them on 20/20 and the edibles they pulled out of the trash outside healthfood stores was primo quality. Even their healthfood store prepared salad was still crunchy, not the least bit limp. Don’t push it in summertime though, espec if MAYO is involved. I go to the dumpster behind the DOLLAR STORE. Some days a few dozen packaged tomatoes, chiles, bell peppers, cukes, eggplants. In summer melons and berries, which I plant if they’re over the hill. I plant apple seeds, apricot seeds, date seeds, chile seeds. I could go on for hours. Cut pingpong tables in quarters, added 2 legs each, put them on south side of house with plastic tarp, many flats, pots. Sell baby trees/vines or Trade for potting soil, by putting ads in Craigs list.FREE TREES/ BUSHES/ PLANTS. You trade bag of potting mix .

In some cities, you can KEEP female chickens in the yard, running loose. Always listen for that singing they do. WHEN they sing they just laid an egg and you want to mark her place in the bushes and loop back for the egg later. Don’t know why I bother cuz at the 99c store currently eggs are 99c. (UPDATE. price doubled. Six eggs cost 99c!) Believe it or not you don’t have to feed a chicken every day as THEY WORK the garden and do fine! I grow my own greens, chard, arugula, and garlic, orange trees, nectarines, guavas, grapes, figs, peaches, the pomegranates, not the avocados, they’re young yet. But that chicken, young though she be, she lays! 

FRUITS N’ NUTS - Neighbors welcome me as I clean their lawns of dropped fruit and nuts. I ask their permission as I’m sure that all people reject fruit that fell off a tree. ALL the fruit trees in THE VALLEY drop their fruit sometime, so I ask the owner, ‘say can I have the stuff that fell on the ground?” They always say yes.When these gargantuan citrus trees are bearing, they tell me to take the fruit on the TREE, also but I’m never sure it’s ripe. So I don’t. To get fresh, raw, fallen fruit, I also hit the alleys. By these methods, I can get 200 guavas every autumn, 10 grapefruit a day in summer, a dozen oranges per day, more lemons than anyone needs for lemonade. 

Just knowing where the trees are determines the streets I use for my daily run to the market daily for catfood, I can get enough real VIT C juicing fruit knowing I’ll have no stomach acidity or melted bones as this fruit was SO RIPE it fell off a tree! 

I need a daily dose of yellow corn tortillas, the kind w.no cellulose, no additives or preservatives like MEX MARKETS and delis sell. 3 dozen yellow corn for $2. I break them down into bags of a dozen,, freeze two, one is kept in fridge. 

I buy chicken on sale for 39 to 59c an lb, (Octo 2015,) buying ten lbs of quarters. Freeze in pckgs of two. I get tuna cans (cented ones, )49c on the remaindered rack. While I COULD make my own mayo, if it’s Hellman’s or a good oil, never canola, cheap at 99c store, I will buy it. Egg salad/ tuna sandwich both are very tasty. (add relish, chopped apple, onion,celery, cilantro)

Now here's a complaint. Those DAMN MAYO JARS today, little hard plastic things, tiny neck, I use half the mayo and can't get any more to come out! So don't get concussion shaking the damn thing, do what I do, add buttermilk, onions, garlic, minced cucumber, shake it amd add some of the seasoned salt that I make with whatever spices, herbs I can find. (Everyone donates their year old spices to me.) Shake it. THEN I PRETEND I have good, expensive RANCH DRESSING! Well, heck, I DO! I Can usually clean that liquid dressing of the jar down to the bottom, too. Carrot inserted or celery stick gets last dregs out. Makes a fine refrigerator door standing up snack. 

SPEND NO DOUGH ON DOUGH. Made bread for years, until I learned how bad GLUTEN in flour was for us. Now, I ONLY BUY bible bread, made of soaked grains, drained. NO FLOUR in my diet whatsoever. I buy BIBLE BREAD now, however it’s gone up to 4$ a loaf. I know it’s time to make my own. THE BIBLE BREAD RECIPE. So what’s left to buy? COFFEE BEANS,CHEESE (YOU CAN MAKE IT YOURSELF and not pay 3$ a pound, )meats which are under a buck an lb, chicken/ pork and tilapia on sale, which I freeze in 4 oz pcs. For myself or 2 lb pckgs for the cats. No longer can I buy99c sale beef chuck steak and make small steaks and freeze them. Fish? You hit the sports fishing pier when the boats come in midday, they give you anything under size or over quota. Captains have it in the bait tanks. Yachts come in at midday and they have given me their catch. Sit on pier where the sports boat comes in. Clams? In every beach at low tide. Run that manicure thru sand about 2” deep, feel that lump? That’s a clam! My kids would join me, we’d get ten lbs. Also the boys used Hawaiian slings to catch surf fish like corbina, perch. Rarely did we have the cash to rent a place on the Pricey sports boat that leaves the pier at dawn but maybe fifteen times we did! FREEZER FILLER! But then so is a NOON visit to that pier when the other fishermen come in! Sammy Davis Jr.’s Dad, Will Mastin was always on that boat, and gave away all his fish. He just went out for the poker game.

GOD MADE TREES WITH LITTLE GREEN APPLES -I know of two apple trees that litter lawns and alleys in summer. I get free citrus all over the valley when it falls on folks' lawn. I ask,” can I have the stuff that fell on ground? Only that?” They say, take what's on the tree, too. Now I don’t tell them, the stuff on the ground is third year citrus. What's on the tree could be 2nd year and it'll melt my bones. I just smile and say 'ground's ok, thanks'. You keep the tree fruit. I make lemonade with 3rd year lemons no water, only sugar, it's no more tart than orange juice. Grapefruit ade with sugar and mint leaves is cosmic. BUT what flavor. Always scrunch peels and rind in the pitcher too! Twice the flavor. As there are strokes in my grandparents I must have citrus bioflavenoids daily for life.

APPLIANCES- You need an electric citrus juicer, A Toaster ovens, a Vacuum cleaner, a Yogurt maker and portable HOT-Oil-radiator heaters, not electric exposed coil heaters. These are my fave things, so cheap at thrifts or garage sales. SO USEFUL. CRAIGS list has a FREEBIE section and a BARTER section. THE FREEYCLE WEBSITE is OUT THERE. GOOGLE IT. There are chapters in every state. When you see a goodie on craigs list, call him, nail it down and SURF THERE FAST. Always arrange for the owner to be there. SUBSCRIBE to local RECYCLER TYPE MAGAZINE Or NEWSPAPER. None in your city? START ONE!
 And when you get emails saying I WANT IT, answer fast, make appt with donor fast. Tons of PC’s couches, printers, scanners, the works. FREE. Just haul it away.

GIVING GARAGE SALES- The Recycler Newpaper we have in L.A. is free to vendors, so why not? Always say 'Estate Sale, junk from 90 years collecting by pack rat, antique clothes, furniture, art' and give date/hour/address, no phone #.SIGNS cost mega-bucks because that art cardboard has gone sky high so paint a cardboard side taken from grocery box with white house paint, then do your lettering with a marker, hang signs on all nearby cross streets on Friday night. Always tell buyers 'make me an offer.' Don't bother with price tags. After you turn down a few lowball offers, you can train shoppers to pay what stuff is worth. You can easily make a thousand in a single week-end. Collect goods rest of month.

HAVE STUFF TO TRADE- My big trade item is crocosimia bulbs. BIG, flashy orange flowers, chest high, a SOUTH AFRICAN FLOWER that is spectacular in a vase and quite lasting! IN the yard, a field of orange, chest high gladiola type ancestors. Folks send me ten dollars worth of stamps, get a box from me!I sort of trade flower seeds, All kinds, but for a very few stamps.  I now have added baby fruit trees to my reportoire.I plant every seed from citrus (has to be done while seed is new, fresh, damp, you can’t dry them out.) Baby plants are highly esteemed. I demand a trade. You get all the baby trees you need but you bring me potting soil. I put the ads on Craigs list and FREECYLE and get more takers than I can handle. I also save petfood cooking fat. I get l0 quarts in a few months. I put TALLOW on CRAIGS LIST and now have a long list of soap makers who live near me.I give seed away all year round. That’s not really traded. I give it away. BUT I beg you to send me some postage stamps if you want them. 7900 Zelzah, Reseda CA 91335

PARTIES- The important thing for BFers is high morale, not just happiness or contentment but out-and-out ecstasy. That is best achieved in a happy group of singing, laughing people, so invite pals over at the drop of a hat. Always call your astrologer and find a Venus or Jupiter night so that the vibes are over the rainbow. HOLIDAY RITUALS!  Parties can even be a BUSINESS. Or  FUNDRAISING PARTIES for a CHARITY THAT SALARIES YOU

EDUCATION: As BFers show no income, there are dozens of educational grants available to them. *CLICK ON URL BELOW. When a BFer applies for a scholarship, he gets it and ends up studying for free. Here's a prime area where working AT A REAL JOB and DEALING WITH the IRS and Uncle Sam has huge penalties. IF your kid has worked at a job, they penalize him and he does not get scholarships. No child should ever work on top of the table during or after high school. He will qualify for no education if he does. Stay under the table, work part time and become street wise.

STATE PAID, FREE EDUCATION The Department of Rehabilitation exists in all states and will pay all school/book& travel costs for any kind of  training --w. proviso it be job-related. You have to qualify by needing job retraining. IOW, state that you USED to do business X as a job, but that you became ill and couldn't continue. Meaning your knees got problematic, your back went out or carpal syndrome if a typist or maybe mental illness, maybe eye strain. Some malady. They're not big on checking and you can say that you couldn't afford a doctor but had to quit that line of work. Some employers will pay for your training, job-related or not but Dept of Rehab gives you a huge long list of trades to study.

I was wondering...if anybody on my HOMESTEADERS' list cared to suggest a prioritized list of typical Vo-Tech skills-classes for the "equipped" homesteader? E.g., take metalworking first, then arc welding, then woodworking, then gas welding, then auto-mechanicing, I got an answer from a genius TIV, on my list who said "oh boy---dog in a butcher shop! Metalworking is generally understood as sheet-metal, useful but lower in priority to heavier metal fabrication which is incorporated in the welding courses. I'd start with arc-welding, both AC and DC rods, and including MIG, TIG wire-spool---they are easiest, make good welds without a lot of practice, and will handle all the welding (up to 1/2-inch plate) that you are likely to need. You might do gas-welding, though it is chiefly useful for cutting, and the newer plasma-cutters are displacing gas. I've fought enough with gas suppliers over my oxygen and acetylene bottles--if I were in a remote area and if younger, maybe where I am, I would buy a Taiwanese water-electrolysis unit and make my own oxygen and hydrogen cheaper than I can buy it from the friendly gas-conspiracy people. Next, I would do foundry, both ferrous cupola and non-ferrous. Make your own foundry , your own charcoal (hard to get coking coal any more) and other equipment from the Lindsay Gingery books---and don't forget aluminum injection-molding and thermoplastic injection-molding. Gingery has a book on the latter, and I have plans for a simple aluminum-injection machine somewhere around here. Following that I would do automotive mechanics---that will cover diesel as well as IC engines. No good mechanic need worry about where to find part-time or full-time employment, and I know a lot of them earning well above $50,000 a year. Need a heated, well-lit, well-equipped shop to work in though---the dirt is bearable, but cold, dampness and poor lighting isn't. 

"And then there's electronics. You wouldn't want to repair TV's, (briefly had a shop when black and white TV was the mainstay) though its interesting, because they are not essential to communications and business and the work doesn't pay enough. 

"Computers are another matter Anyone who can quickly (or at all) diagnose and repair a problem can name his/her ticket. The Hewlett Packard rep in this area wouldn't get out of bed if he couldn't see $150 an hour and he's good enough to get more if he wants it. It is useless and hideously expensive to take a computer in for repair to the big three computer repair operations. They are not necessarily dishonest, just uniformly incompetent. To them Plug and Play means blindly replacing all the components until the machine works again---eight or nine hundred dollars later they might get it right, or maybe it still won't work.. 

"The woodworking skills are an essential part of homesteading, building houses or building furniture---but unless incorporated in your small shop production-line as a business---making furniture for example, it may save you money, but won't make much. Still, it's something to think about if you have some good hardwoods in your woodlot, and plans to make or buy a lumbermaking bandsaw." Thank you TIV for that one!

MOVIES- There used to be some 2$ theaters with second run films. It was the Northridge Cinema. Home of the big ones. 7.2 , 6.9 (quake numbers.) There are FREE videos in Craigs List people pay you to take them away. But in truth, there's no need to see first run films. Most BFers get basic cable and catch films that are about 2 years old. While Yuppies are talking about that new Fast and Furious film, you're discussing Kubrick. I'd rather be in the latter conversation!

TV. Vs CABLE-Having no cable, I’ve learned what shows are really great. I love BURN NOTICE, CHICAGO CODE, BLUE BLOODS, In the ole days, SURFACE & JOURNEYMAN were fab, but NBC cancelled ‘em. (LIST OF GREAT CANCELLED SHOWS.) Ditto Harry’s Law. The truly great LAW AND ORDER lives on inzombie syndication and is always riveting. TED DANSON's FABULOUS COMEDY "BECKER" was best sitcom I ever saw but got cancelled. Likewise, DEAD LIKE ME was fab, both returned in syndication then disappeared.  NYPD BLUE, so good. THE GOOD WIFE IS BETTER THAN ANY of 'em.  I watched all thse reruns on digital, free ANTENNA TV. My pal wrote me. The cable corps or DISH corps promise 25$ a month but soon it’s 80$ a month. Like you, I use the digital converter box and antenna TV.I have and will always refuse to pay for television.There is nothing worth paying for on TV.Period.With my converter box, it's as clear as cable or satellite.I get tons of channels including network TV, Ion television, great old movies and the fascinating JUNK RAIDERS reality show about remodeling homes with everything found in dumpsters. I have about 9 PBS channels, MeTV, KDOC, This TV, etc.Why would anyone pay for entertainment -- ever?And if I ever want to see cable shows like South Park or Syfy channel, then I can watch them on the internet for FREE. I look at the newspaper listings and all I see on PREMIUM CABLE is old movies!

Another pal writes: 

Hear you signed up for DIRECT TV to get MHZ MYSTERIES /THRILLERS FROM EUROPE CHANNEL.  MHz Worldview can be received on free digital antenna TV again.  You have to buy the equipment and pay a technician to install the dish (or do it yourself), but after that it doesn't cost a cent (except electricity). And it's perfectly legal. MHz Worldview is on the Galaxy 19 satellite: See http://www.mhznetworks.org/about/press/mhz-worldview-moves-new-satellite-transponder

BOOKS- I find that you can order used books online and get a deal. (Use my Secret METHOD.) Salvation Army is cheaper. But cheapest is a huge, family owned thrift store near me, their mezanine is all books, l9c, 29c, 49c mostly. One used to be able to Read them, then sell them but not this year. NOBODY BUYING. MY OTHER CHEAP BUY METHOD.Is used for specific titles. Thrifts don’t give you specific titles. I’m looking for VOLUME I AND II of ARNOLD TOYNBEE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

MUSIC-THEATRE- Second Acting is an ancient technique from the original Bottom Feeders in New York back in the depression. There's not a theatre in town that's full. Find out what time the intermission hits, join the crowd returning to their seats. Only, be the last one in, so you can see the empty seats as lights go down. Read the first act of the play online, free.

EDUCATION- Community extension has classrooms that are neat, but costly. Introduction to Microsoft Word is 99$. ADULT HIGH SCHOOL has the class for 15$ a semester. Check all high schools near you, at six p.m. when the ADULT EDUCATION office opens.

SCHOLARSHIPS- If mom and Dad make more than 25k a yr, no PELL GRANTS for the kid at college nor if the CHILD HIMSELF works in a job and is clocked in with earnings, NO GRANTS, not certain about SCHOLARSHIPS. So be certain kids never show earnings.. A true Bfer can be a TEEN ENTREPRENEUR and SEEM on paper to make ZERO when he's really making 25k. People with W-2’s can’t fake poverty. That suggests the FELONY method for a kid to get educated is all that's left. SECOND METHOD: Stick some of the kid’s clothing at Grannie’s house. Her income is 700$ a month, so if he lives with her, he is not dwelling with an above limit person. He gets the grant or scholarship. Auntie works, Sis out on her own, even if it’s a l bedroom apt. they don’t come look! 

BREAD AND CIRCUSES, OTHER ENTERTAINMENT: Natural History Museum is free lst Tuesday of ea. month, (213) 744-3466. LACMA on Wilshire free second Wednesday each month (213) 857-6000. Calf Museum Science/Industry (213) 744-7400. Griffith Observatory (213) 664-1191. Network TV tickets, (ABC) 818-506-0067, Bill Maher show wherever he is now, CBS (213)852-2624; NBC (818) 840-4444. Call Paramount Studios for their many sit-coms which use live audiences.  Saturday Nite Live in NYC. Your town may have t.v. studios, radio stations.

NEWSPAPERS- Newspapers cost between 10$ and 30$ a month. Where's the logic paying for something that's out on the streets sitting cleanly in nice baskets on trash night? Invest a buck in a flashlight!

MAGAZINES-Again, cheap and easy on your street, trash night. Or on a ritzier street than yours, trash night. You will have the cream of the crop. Another way, SUBSCRIBE. You'll spot a thousand ads saying 'free subscription, free issue, if you don't like it, no charge.' Take them up on it. Get those free issues. Be certain to give them away afterwards to other BFers or homeless. Especially to homeless as it upgrades them, gets them back into society. You can't piss on City Living, Homes, Style, Fashion and Vanity when you've got your nose in it.

PHOTOS- Ralph's Markets of the KROGER chain processes a 35 m. roll for $3.99. No one else comes close to this price. No wonder they're #1. (written in 2007. who uses film today?

LET CARS DRIVE YOU CRAZY? NOT A BFer. Rich people can afford to keep a limo driver on staff, take taxis even. If they don't drive, their friends are glad to do them carpool favors. For the rich, the bus is chump change and the millieu so vetty folkorico. Poor people get grinding depression on buses and the 3 dollar round trip is usually what the whole family spends on food for a week. Les Miserables must have cars and they must be procured and run at the lowest price and yield the most cluck per buck. In spite of Big Brother, this is strangely do-able.A car is never worth more to you than when it's paid off. If you pay $1,000 [for repairs] and get another year out of the car, that's a heck of a lot less than $350 a month, so learn to change oils, check air in the tires.

BUYING USED: Forget used car lots. Those guys are sharks. The price will be double what you might get it for on the street and you're courting a stroke trying to get them to fix anything later, so why bother?GET THE RECYCLER and buy from a real person.

THE AUCTION QUESTION. If you really know cars' motors and they'll let you turn the motor over with a key, so you can hear it, you might bid on one of the mystery harem beauties of the auction. If it's a pig in a poke, stay away. This car could be totally dead, left out on the highway (by an owner without the 2 or 3 grand he knew it would cost to fix it,) to be picked up for just that reason. Much better is a car from a real, live person whom you've asked the right questions.

STREET BUYING: Always buy from a seller who has an address, a home that he actually lives in. See him inside the home to make certain. Check his driver's license to make certain it matches site and papers of car. When I first wrote this, in ‘98, a bottomfeeder could get a l983 Honda Civic that runs well for 300$-500. It would be twice or three times that in a carlot. TODAY in 2007, if I WANTED TO SELL you that 83 HONDA, which I don’t as it runs fantastic, it might be less. 

QUESTIONS TO ASK THE SELLER of a cheap car on phone, before you visit him. Here's the silky, sly question. "Tell me about the car." If he says, "oh, nothing much, it runs great." he's pulling the wool over your eyes. If he doesn't volunteer information and forces you to ask question, be suspicious. If he answers vagaries like "it RUNS STRONG" suspect that it burns gas and leaks oil. It's got a little motor vibration means it has valve clatter. Forget it. Fish around, ask every question that is in this article. If everything sounds too good to be true, ask him 'why are you selling it?' If he says to buy another car of the same model, it's probably a good car. If he answers 'Too many cars, it's the extra one," be wary. You want to hear, "we have a new BABY, we need a bigger car." Or, it's four years old, I want to get rid of it before it goes bad." Another honest answer.

QUESTIONS TO ASK PART II: Mileage, tires, condition, upholstery, color, what motorwork does it need? Does the car overheat? Did you ever replace motor? Has it been in an accident? If so, what parts are new on it? How many miles on it? Does the car smoke? What color is the smoke? Black smoke, the most alarming, is actually the least problematic. White smoke means burning oil. Blue smoke means  burning oil. These two conditions are expensive to fix. Black smoke means gasoline is running too rich and is easily resolved. Is there condensation on top of oil cap?" If so, it's blown a head gasket, very expensive to fix. Ask when he last smogged it, did it pass right away or did he have to do a major tune up? Ask when smog certificate and registration expire? Ask if it has been categorized as a AGross Polluter by the DMV. Better yet, call the DMV first with the License plate Number; ask THEM.

Next, ask the owner if he has proof of regular maintenance. Dream on about getting regular maintenance records for a twenty year old heap, but this guy is a straight arrow anal type he might have this paperwork. If so, consider this gem of a car seriously.

Next, warn seller you're serious by saying that you're coming over to drive the car but you'd like to know now, does it overheat? Say, "If so, it could be just an easy to fix thermostat or a costly, complex cooling problem." That shows that you know motors. Threatening to come over may make him cough up the truth now. Cars overheating after ten minutes or not making hills easily is a sure sign that it's in its dotage, a geezermobile.

If he answers enough questions correctly, go see and drive the car but only after you've called DMV and run the license plate through to see if it is a G.P., (in which case do not buy it,) how much registration fees are actually owing and if there are tickets on the car. You don't have to pay the tickets, no matter what DMV tells you, but you can tell seller you know about them and get the price down wayyyy further.

Here's a good time to tell you. DMV has two laws going. What they tell you on the phone and what you can get at the window when you demand to talk to the supervisor.

When you actually get inside the car, there are three things you want to see. One, does it go uphill with ease? If so, motor's still strong. Second, are there motor sounds indicating valve knock or timing belt loose? If so, the former is expensive to fix, the latter is around $130-300 (more if belt's sealed in box under other things.) Third, does car overheat after twenty minutes? if you see the car is overheating, check the thermostat. Pull it out and see if it's regulating properly. If the thermostat is fine, the heating is symptom of impending disaster and car's a lemon.

SMART CARBUYERS go to THE SELLERS' house. Lately, there are a lot of scams involving stolen cars. During the initial phone call, get the car's license plate number. Remember, always check the car's license plate with DMV to see if registration fees are up to date, before you even go see the car and they'll tell you (maybe) if it's stolen. Later, when you're there with the car, check seller's driver's license and name on the car registration to see that they match. Cuz if they don't, it's stolen. Tags are not proof of a car's legality as these can be snipped off another car. Make certain registration fees are up to date because you'll have to pay them if they're not. Now, remember I mentioned that supervisors at DMV can forgive you stuff? You can buy cars that haven't been registered in YEARS very cheaply. When you bring plates to the DMV, and they try to collect for those YEARS, scream bloody murder and say when you bought it, the car had brand new tags. Make certain the head supervisor is called over. They will make you bring in the license plate because they want to see these tags. They are going to forgive you all fees but pretend you don't know this. Come back an hour later while employee remembers you, with the license plate. Show them the phony but real, brand new tags. Clerk again calls supervisors. They will immediately forgive all those unregistered years but oddly, they do not go looking for the crook who sold it to you. I'm sure the day will come when they do, but now they do not.

So remember, to save yourself time, before you visit the seller's house, get the key information on the phone. Get seller's name, car's license number and his address. Then, dial the DMV and on the line, they'll tell you how many years of fees are owed and confirm name and address. You can get cars on blocks, unregistered cars and cars with tickets on them incredibly cheaply often between $100 and $200.

Bottom Feeders never give seller their correct name or address. They choose to register their cars in a name that does not trace back to their driver's license. This is very very important. The reason is if you are caught driving a car with NO TAGS, no insurance, no driver's license (which together would cost you 2k you don't have as you need it for rent food,) nothin at all will happen to you. The usual penalty for all those paper syou don't have is maybe four thousand. But they wrote the ticket out to your other name. The ticket goes into a void. You do not exist under that name. But have a driver's license on you with your real name, you will have a warrent chasing you for 12 yrs. BY THE WAY, TO BEAT A TICKET, ALWAYS GO TO COURT.

AN ARTICLE ON THIS SUBJECT HERE: HOW TO BEAT A TICKTE!Here’s what I DO. First, I always carry l00 empty cans/ bottles in hatchback in plain sight. Looking like poverty INC. Cop spots my car has tags 5 years old. I tell the policeman ‘don’t write a ticket. My four kids won’t let me drive it until car is 25yrs old (Cal cuts us a deal: no SMOG tests required at that age for a car,) and then the kids want me to make it street legal and I can get a license and drive it, But it’s not 25 years old yet, it’s 23 yrs old. And sir, it was raining and I was alone at home and Chickens were 59c an lb on sale I had to get these groceries. Kids were out partying as it’s a weekend, and I was hungy and alone (There were 4 big bags of food on seat) “My kids are in college week days and won’t drive me to the market. I’m eatin’ broccoli and it was raining and I couldn’t walk it…..so I took the car.” He let me off. The patchwork explanation held together.It will for you if it’s a weekend, raining, the car is exactly 23 years old. BUT, you gotta make your own excuse. I’m seventy and it works for me. What really works is not doing a full one second pause at a stop sign.

You only go to court if the car, registration is all in your own name. But maybe you wouldn't want to bother if it was a twenty five year old car, no smog, nolicense, no insurance. In any case, when a bottom feeder buys a used car, he will MISPELL his name by several letters when he registers that  car. If they ask for paper to prove this name when you register title to a car, say with horror, my wallet was taken in the bus station when I arrived in your city. I am without driver's license. I had one in Panama (Poland, France) and I bring, I have passport, also. GONE. I can not own car?" They will relent cuz it's not mandatory. "Tell them, when you pass driver's test, you will be able to go to social security, get a card for yourself and a job." Gratuitous reassuring is realistic.

MORE ABOUT BUYING CARS - The punctilious seller of the car probably will inform DMV of the name of purchaser, his address. NOT A GOOD IDEA to give seller all this! You do not want any paper traceable to you later. We are here to confound every computer Big Brother has, at every step for no reason other than we can do it. So Fantasia Moronica Il Duce bought that 83 Honda, not YOU. He lived in IL PALAZZO de BUCCARELLI in Milano. So let the state of California chase him! I'm kidding. Give the name that is a few letters off your real name to the seller. Give him an address where you can receive mail. For all state/ job/ Soc. Security purposes, you need a box and cheapest ones are at those XEROX places. It looks like a real addie. 456 Reseda Blvd, Apt 34, Reseda ca. 92004

When the Bfer goes to DMV and registers the car, he is required to show I.D. but in a thick accent, he says, Polish passport, had a suitcase but dis burg-u-lar in de Grayhound station took. All my suitcase, clothes phttttt! Consulate look in Poland for copy. Soon send." Smile. Always good to put an aluminum tooth in front so you look Bulgarian. SMILE the aluminum smile. Then the DMV won't bother you, but  they will give you your car registration. Then, when insurance is required, the Bfer has a pal make a copy of some pal's genuine insurance on any PC, print it out on the ole ink jet. Adding of course, your vehicle # but one digit off so cops reads it sez fine, but the computer goes HUH? READ UP ON THE METHOD HERE: SAMS INSURANCE

AFTER PAYING FOR A CAR, the final, last ditch, Cosa Nostra carefully worded secret threat to make sure it's not a lemon is: "this heap fails me, I'm back with my uncle Matteo and a crowbar." But no Bottom Feeder would do that. If the car fails, YOU failed to do your homework. You deserve a lemon.

I want to say this about the State of Fuckifornia and its fuck-you over car laws. Insurance is a thousand to $1400 a year if you have a good record. It is mandatory. Licensing a wreck that cost you 300$ is 72$. Each year. Car transfer fees another 75$ when you buy it and call it yours. NOTE: The state of Calif just let them triple our registration fees to 200$ a year for a junker car! Smog testing is 60$ or a month's food.....but to fix the car so it passes can be another thousand for a head job, tune up, valve work, etc. No bottom feeder has that 5k in his pocket. NONE! If we had it, we'd be paying rent, taking time off to write that novel about poverty that would rival LITTLE WOMEN, anything DICKENS ever wrote and probably save the world! 

THE ANSWER? Tune it ALL out. Todd Gitlin famous 60's activist sez that do what Rosa Parks did. When a law is horrid and unjust like blacks can't sit in front of bus, IGNORE IT! Vote with your butt! If everyone who was poor did this, the world would be a better place!  Drive the streets with a big bow matching your car color hanging over the tag. Or a fake Azalea bush hanging down like a rabbit tail. That 2 yr old tag you acquired from prev owner is invisible. Drive invisibly too. Meaning every stop sign, come to a full stop so that your hood ornament bobs. Any California rolls, any sushi driving you will be stopped, ticketed, the state has the option to seize car, hold it for 30 days. That means at 70 bucks a day, 4k for the state to have so you can get it back.

At that point, they will auction it off for 200$ but can you be there, that day? Idea is, drive disposable old cars. They don't arrest when you have no license, no tags, no job, no food, and classified ads circled and proof from doctor you're crippled but say "hey, I'm still looking for work. PC work, whole industry went under, cop will let you go but he will cite you, meaning when you go to court, 4k penalties. So you do not want a ticket/ warrent in your name. That is why no driver's license at all, just the registration with the name one letter off.... And carry nothing in the car because if they seize it, you cannot get it back. Those glasses, those boxes. Take your groceries, get out and leave. THEY do not want to see you drive off in an unreg car. You have to park it as if you were going to go get it towed, walk away and come back 30 min later and drive away like Wily Coyote.

FIXING THE CAR ONCE YOU'VE GOT IT:

Tips on CAR MECHANICS: The main trick is that once you've got an estimate on work to be done, find a HOME based mechanic. Paying no shop rent makes a Mechanic a reasonable human being. Kids in the nabe who do this work abound. As I drive my nabe, I spot guys working on cars here and there and park and talk to them immediately. Write down their phone, name, addie rather than trying to memorize the place. Then, car dies, go to real mechanic, ask "how much would it be to fix 'off the books,' cash?" You may get a sizeably reduced quote. If it's still too much, ask him to tell you how to fix it yourself. These guys are always proud to point to gismos and explain them. Then, phone the KID. Say “I need the timing belt replaced, apparently that means you have to pull the radiator. Can you do it? What would you charge?” He tell syou probably half what the other guy wanted. If that’s too much, get a book at the library and take off your own radiator. You do WELD, don’t you? If it’s just a tune-up that means taking spark plugs out, cleaning them with thinner or acetone and a stiff brush, re-gapping them and sticking them back in place. New spark plugs, you say? Whaddayou, Onassis? In all third world countries they use plugs a hundred times.

Changing oil and air filter---how hard is that? Opening wheels up? Checking brake pads? A ten year old could do it.I can’t but I have a neighbor, guy on crutches, drags his back feet, but the cars change daily in his driveway. EVERYONE knows about him. Beautiful new cars are there on lifts. I talk to him and find he really loves doing this. So I know when it’s my time for an oil change, he’s my guy. TUNE UP is 25$ he tells me.

Now, the average citizen takes that baby to a 'no pass no pay' smog guy and see if it flies. I don't as California now has an automatic Gross Polluter Report Card. Your computer read out is immediately in a 1-second simulcast, sent to Sacramento and you will never get off that data bank, ever again. The State will hound you about it and come to find you. So never go to a regular smog shop. BFers ask around until they hear about a "cooperative" one. And if you ask, you will find. CLUE: Mexican Body shops know where so chum up with Jose or Pedro or Manuel, use him regularly and give him memorable gifts on holidays.

WHAT? THE CAR WON'T SMOG? Not that I'd do it but some BFers have a way around all the regulations California imposes on its prisoners, its captive audience (among them the new, January 1st, l997 Screwola that the driver be insured to the hilt which costs a thousand plus a year). The BFer way around such regulations is simple. They won't pay the DMV a red cent. They buy a used car, never transfer the title, never bother visiting the DMV where they can't get car registered anyway, as they don't have insurance. Then buyer drives like a grannie, avoiding freeway entrances and Public parks where the California Highway Patrol can legally create a check-point Charley.

The BFer drives the car until it's falling apart and its tags are one year expired, then at this 'au jus' point, he sells it, signs the old owner's name on the pink and start over. A rolling stone gathers no moss!

Other scams involving not bothering with registration, insurance, smogging and tags: some bold souls have at least some ID in another name or learn to speak with a thick foreign accent and offer NO ID, just a library card maybe, so that if a policeman writes them a ticket for no tags it also evaporates into the same la-la land where the pink slip and insurance reside.

The one thing a BFer won't do when approached by a cop with ticket book in hand is to say you forget your license and offer the old owner's name off the car registration. It's cruel to claim to be the old owner who's forgotten his operator's license and to cause the ticket to be given to the name on the car registration, the old owner ---even if it's easy to do. Even if it's easy for old owner to beat it. That might cause some hassle to the innocent previous owner, and thusly bring the BFer bad karma. But Some Bfers let the karma fall where it may. I'm just the reporter. Don't kill the messenger.

More honorable BFers buy cheap, transfer title, pay the annual registration fees that DMV wants, (in the poor person's range, about $60-80). Low, because we pay the tax on the ostensible sale price. (The BFer always makes out his own bill of Sale saying that it was purchased 'as is' and cost only $100.00 so that the tax is the least possible.)

True, the hard core BFer gets the car transferred into the name he has chosen. Most will change the first vowel in their last name so old ID works (as DMV clerks eyeball hastily) yet computers are absolutely stymied.

Bfers will do all that in good spirits but it is with great sadness that a BFer pays a grand for liability insurance and this is what California requires now. Yes, that's right, after March l997, the DMV wants Proof of costly insurance.

TRY insurance with different vendors. Start by giving a name one vowel or consonant OFF your own name. They see no tickets in that name, no warrents. You get your car insurance. If they say, hey there's no driver's license in that name, try this: I have to get one. Don't I have to go to driving school first? They say yeah and give you insurance. OR the third way Bfers get around this is to write a check for insurance, in true name on Driver's License, but one vowel off of the name on car registration, then register the car, show the "vowel off" proof of insurance as no clerk remembers the whole spelling on the line and then looks at the other document and checks the entire spelling. The cop who tickets you later or the DMV employee who gives you your registration and tags will eyeball the name, on both papers and se they look mostly the same. Petulia Francesca Cordony and Patulia Franceska Cordonny are identical, no? NO they aren't! But they look ok to el quicko scanno. Most cops and DMV employees are super dyslexic, anyway. Switched lobes got them into that line of work. If their brains weren't fried, they'd be humans.

What you do to get your money back from insurance company later, is to then cancel the policy the very next day and call the insurance company and tell them JOE BLOW insurance is cheaper. I'm switching, put that money back in my ATM account, (its a virtual transaction, right?) or say "The car is a lemon, I returned it." More costly,  cancel the check if it was done that way, to insurance company.  No red alerts will follow this transaction that was and then wasn't thru state computers. No clerk at DMV will spot anything due to missing vowel. Use all that paperwork as proof of insurance to get the tags new. And cancel insurance after tags are in your hand!

Others just copy a pal's insurance on their PC, using their own data, imaginary insurer's name and address and phone. They inkjet print it up, stick it in an official looking metered envelope, carry it in car, to DMV, to judges, courts. It works fine. If they WERE caught they'd swear they'd met Mr. Gulagarian at a party, or read his ad in the Armenian newspaper lying in a deli, that he'd come to their house, they'd paid the 550$ to a thousand bucks in untraceable cash, and they assumed their policy was real.

A ton of cash spent on insurance isn't all it takes the state of California to hand over your tags. They demand blood and grief too, and their endless mobius loop of bureaucratic snafus drive all of us crazy. All car exchanges require a new smog check done by previous owner or by buyer within thirty days. After taking the registration and tax money, they demand you smog the car and come back with proof it 'smogged' to get the tags handed over to you. They say thirty days, but the truth is, you have a whole year, after tags expire, to do this because tags on car's butt are good for a year so BFers buy 300$ heaps, don't register them, just drive them with the old tags for a year.As tags are fairly recent, cops won't spot or stop the car unless you drive poorly, of course.

But, a year later, you absolutely must fix the car, bring the car's motor up to standard, smog it and go to DMV and get your legal tags or be ticketed---unless you have brass balls, and can drive a car with wrong color tags and stay fifty feet away from cops. Entirely possible if you're a rearview mirror checker.And I am. After a ticket for sushi driving (California roll) and not going in to court (too far away,) I lost license. So I drive with no paper. They catch me I’m going to lose my 1983 Honda Civic. Maybe.Maybe not.I have about 100 cans/bottles in hatchback and cops that stop me take pity and let me go, actually. Any old gal who collects bottles and claims to have four kids (I actually do,) but they’re not in school, which I claim…doesn’t deserve a ticket. Every six months I turn in cans, get my money and start the collection all over again..

For BFers, there used to be PAY 5$ for INOPERATIVE STATUS.If you can't find a job, have starving babies, and don't have the thousand it takes to fix the car's motor, you can go back to DMV and ask to pay inoperative status fees of 5$. You must do this within the year, before registration expires, before the car goes into triple time fines. But now kindly, the DMV lets you get INOP status for free! That’s my status!

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY CAR: Now you have a car with no tags, and 'inoperative status' which means the car is supposed to be off the street, in the garage, or on blocks until you can fix it but not on any city street. But hey, the car works. A BFer is embolded by poverty into a Zen state. He figures that as long as a cop isn't behind you in traffic, what does it matter what the tags are? What is the sound of a tree falling in the forest if there's no one to hear it fall?

The BFer will then drive the car, daylight only as you have to use rear view mirror assiduously to not  get followed by a policeman. They have a gizsmo that can read your license plate and your personal NSA status in a second. No freeways where CHIPS have exhaust pipe checkpoint Charlies, no City parks, streets that abut public parks or their parking lots, and no boulevards patrolled by city police units unless you are ready to do a fast right turn if any cop is within ten car lengths behind you.

The BFer drives very carefully, always with THREE THINGS IN THE CAR! A TON OF EMPTIES TO RECYCLE in back seat, and a bag of GERBER's BABY FOOD, tinned or dried non-perishable children-favorites like spaghetti, in the car. THIRD. BABY PHOTOS! YEP, If she/ he gets stopped by a cop he pulls the registration out of the glove compartment, and photos of the driver surrounded by infants will roll out onto carseat and BFer improvises on the photos and bag of baby food, saying 'The car was on blocks in yard but the kids needed food, I have too many children (or grandchildren if you’re old) to walk to the market and leave them alone, no job, no daycare, please let me take the food to them then you can jail me.' No cop will. They'll give you a warning. Gratefully say "I'll go right home, officer' put the car right back on blocks. They won't let you. They require you tow it. So walk off with your bags of food and go sit under a shady tree for a half hour. Cops have so much coffee and do-nuts in their bloodstream they're way too restless to wait around. They call the tow yard and you grab the car and go home.

Pray the cop writes you no ticket for that lack of insurance, that he lets you go home and that you can continue to drive a car that has paid, inoperative status and a driver without insurance. Cops generally won't ticket or impound car if a family person is out for groceries in an emergency. A true bottom feeder will pull out the phony, valid insurance and say I am insured but the car won't pass the smog test without 500$ worth of motor work and my youngest child has Amylateral Sclerosis that means his nerves are melting and everything is going for the medicine...the doctors tell us not to hope, and why spend the money but.....(bite your lip at this point, but don't cry because cops hate wimps..) As MICHAEL CAINE said, don’t try to cry. TRY NOT TO CRY! Acting tip. Cop will see you straining NOT to cry and he'll let you go. He won't impound. He may not even cite you. But don't count on that last. Cited, you save ticket to remember what name it's in so you can never have another car with that name. And you don't go in, cuz penalties are 4k and in court they can grab/ jail you. (Of course if in court, you say 'I'll go to traffic school," and they let you walk out of court. ) You disappear forever.

There are circumstances that will bring you a car being impounded. A year after tags expire, some BFers put a phony tag on their plate. Stolen or computer generated. A cop can be behind you and not realize the tags are bogus, but he will generally impound that car if he stops you and runs the plate or looks at tag carefully. I've seen them tear it off and let the driver go, if it's an emergency. I was once caught with an expired tag Toyota pick-up truck loaded with boxes and plants. I told cop (truthfully) that my four kids and I had been evicted, and only needed the truck for a few minutes to move. He let me go. I made another 40 trips as that was truly a big eviction and move and I not only moved a thousand plants, but I moved 100 boxes of my organic soil confounding the landlady as to where my gorgeous garden that she wanted to use to attract a higher paying renter, and where it had gone. (READ "HOW TO MOVE YOUR LANDLORD" at http://www.masterjules.net/gindex.htm

A BFer in a hot car usually stays off freeways, never makes left turns (as a hundred cars pass your back plates while you do); they do triple rights to make that left. If a BFer sees a unit a few cars back in the rear view, they immediately signal and turn right. A cop ahead of them in traffic means they quickly pull onto private property, park, get out and walk fast. A cop in cross traffic means peeling an eye to see which way he plans to turn. The idea is: no cop gets to see their rear plate, at any speed. Or see the bow hanging over your tag.

If you're careless and are stopped, speak a pidgin Middle European language and claim to be from Zagreb. A BFer always masters one 'accent' and claims to be a tourist, ignorant of registration rules, whose brother just 'bought me' the car and has the recently dated, hand-written or typed receipt from an EMIL ZATAGOROFSYA in glove compartment and computer generated car insurance (proving this car is covered for liability) in his imaginary brother's name, and the totally innocent look to prove it. Classified ads with circled jobs is excellent. The bag of Gerbers Baby food. "I just get baby food. I just get job, I be ok. I get insurance, no problem."

Cops will not arrest or impound a foreign tourist who has no driver's license. Especially if he says his backpack was taken at the Downtown Bus Station and he's waiting for a new passport to come from Yugoslavian Consulate and that his brother was kind enough to lend him the car to go get the baby food on the car seat. Cop may give a fix-it ticket. In a Slavic name, it has nothing to do with YOUR driver's license. Sure, it will follow the Slavic Name forever. God forbid the real Grisha Gregorian ever tries to get a license in the state of California, but fix it tickets on a Bfer car, will follow that car for a long, useful life, and then to the dump.

LA cops won't impound even if they find marijuana in a car. They could but they rarely do. Of course, if you give any officer a hard time he will plant the joint, himself just so he can impound and make you lose your car AND he'll pull your ignition wires, making you walk home to boot, plus have you pay huge fines on having grass but most policeman will not take you to jail because they are allergic to paperwork involved with arrests.

California is creating a new automized paperwork situation which will not have humans in the loop so --soon---traffic arrests will be a thing of the past. They will clip your wings through paperwork but for us who have no real papers in our pockets, for us who don't let State-generated paperwork into our universe, it's a case of paper scissors, stone wings!

ROBOTIZED BIG BROTHER: After January 1st, 1997, the new plan with Smog Check II was to put CHP checkpoints on freeway ON RAMPS (CHIPS are not legally able to function on city surface streets). But frankly I never saw them there, so the info was bogus. These checkpoints supposedly would have robotic DYNAMOMETER smog readers. As you go up the ramp, the robot will measure your exhaust. If RtD2 gets a bad score he'll snap a picture of your car's ass and you'll get mail asking you to bring the car in to be checked. The way to foil that is when you plan to hit a freeway, carry a plastic azalea in your trunk with the bushy part hanging over the plates. BFers are all gardeners anyway! 

There will also be On-Ramp check station points manned by human readers with huge rectal smogmeters. The poor will simply learn not to take freeways and use surface streets. AND THERE ARE DELIBERATE CHECKPOINTS where city wants to catch you so you forfeit your auto and they auction it off. 

But it's an ill wind that blows NO good. Due to the straights being forced to ditch perfectly fine autos, there will be a huge glut of unsmoggable cars in the marketplace, at dirt low prices, so two things will happen. Perfectly fine cars will become throwaways, Detroit's ultimate wetdream. (NOT).

2.) Perfectly fine citizens will turn to forgery and crime in order to feed their babies who will be weaned on evading cops at every corner and become the shiftiest bunch of urban guerillas on the face of the planet. Whoppeee. And they said Armageddon wouldn't be fun!

A last word: there is no hope offering a West Coast cop cash. LA's GESTAPO is the most brutal in the country but unlike coppers on the east coast, they're not venal or corrupt. They'll gladly beat you up but they won't take your $. I am not joking. My gal pal Judy got beaten up by one. Jewish red head with a bit of a sassy funny mouth on her. Fanny Brice's actual niece.  My other pal the vegan who looks like an ALIEN also got beat up when he refused to let cops search his car. TODAY of course, we'd SUE; then we didn't know about that. 

Another little known fact about L.A. cops is that they are the horniest navy blue buns on the planet with more sexual harassment of female staffers than the Marines, Disney Studios and Hell itself put together and if you're a foxy babe and can mime mindless, they'll settle for a promise to meet later for margaritas. 

So, imagine a future where you buy a used car, give a fake name when you buy it, drive it for a year while the smog tags are under a year old. At the end of a year, you can no longer drive it without looking in your rear view mirror. You can't park the car on public streets. Its tags are a year Plus old, which means they are totally expired. All this means is that you, like the State of California, have to cross over to TRACK II.

To do this, you pay the 2nd year inoperative fees of only 5$. If you pay no fees at all, you couldn't SELL this car later for top dollar. Unpaid fees become fines which get so exhorbitant no one could buy the car from you. One other reason. Cops don't get so bugged at your driving an inoperative vehicle as they do with your driving a totally unregistered one. Scofflaws make them so angry they see Impound written in RED letters. Poor jerks who have to go get groceries in the middle of the night do not. Cops are very pro family.

Always remember: if you're driving a Second Year Inoperative, remember, the car's tags on butt are the wrong color. They're from a few years back. Inoperative cars do not get new tags even though their papers are up to date. However, a wily BFer will always carry a thrift store bike over the plate or hang a plastic azalea tree out of the back of his trunk, its leaves covering the plate and with a realistic little red flag waving from its branches. The hem of the flag is gummed with SUPER GLUE to the plate so that no one can see the tag. And there's no law against an azalea having sticky sap. A true BFer will drive with that azalea and that flag in place for years until every cop in the city has seen it twice, then switch to a plastic ficus.

Cautious BFers who actually can afford liability insurance, but still have a smoky car, prefer a more solid way out. They take the car to a certain mechanic in the valley who will smog a Reebok for fifty dollars, get their proof of smogging, pay the annual fees to DMV and drive street legal and hold their heads high even though they've colluded with a criminal mechanic in misrepresentation and forgery. They register and smog and give DMV its due but they are criminals too, in a way. The philosophical axiom that describes this little known Cosmic Law is: The Bigger that Brother is, the lower the Citizen must stoop.

In the old days, if you couldn't find this wonderful smog guy, or the two grand to fix your car's motor, there used to be one other BF alternative. You called the Smog Referee and made an appointment. One used to give him 3 handwritten letters from 3 mechanics or tire dealerships saying, 'will fix valves, carburator for 1400$,' another estimate is for $1500 and a third for $3000. As their estimates are so damn high, Smog Referee used to exempt you and you could get legal tags. But now the DMV is talking about raising the amount you must spend to fix car to astronomical amounts. So after early 1997, when I wrote most of this file, you have to play BFer hardball. NOTE: Today there are less crooked smog mechanics as machine carries message to Sacramento. However some of the guys with Computers that link to Sacramento, wheel a new car into the stall, it passes. They give you the 'certificate' for a bill. And the referee thing is gone.

Let me tell you about BFers who have real sang froid. They scotch tape a totally forged, counterfeit tag on car's back plate, computer-generating a tag that resembles the one currently in use, gum it on back plate, shiny Scotch tape imitating the real thing's reflective surface, although at night, it doesn’t reflect the same way. This might work for an occasional trip across town during the day. But these are cold blooded people. What they do is, they park that car in driveway with the tag backed up so it doesn’t show to street. Then, they never park on a public street or public parking lot. They park backwards even in a supermarket parking lot as cops sometimes run thru there, automatically scan licenses and run checks inside there. They also drive very carefully for a year or two. No rolling through stop signs, no yellow lights, no lane changes without signaling, no driving without a seat belt, no inoperative turn lights, no driving with a headphone or cellphone in sight. It is a kind of Benign Driving Yoga that connects you with the timeless, patient God within. That little shiny tag looks good enough that a policeman won't run the plates even if he's right behind the car. Keeping an even pulse with a cop behind you is the world's most terrific yoga exercise.

One more possibility. If a cop stopped a Bfer with totally phony tags, the wily coyote driver could offer a Dated Bill of Sale no more than ten days old, saying they just bought the car. They claim that it's less than ten days since they bought it, because they aren't legally required to have to have title transferred yet. When cop points out that the tag is computer generated, the BFer bursts into tears and says it looked real to him. That he would never have suspected it was fraudulent. This would get him off the hook but the DMV would go to the old owner and maybe find that he had reported the sale to JOE BLOW BFer a vowel off a year before and they'd come looking for the vowel-off person. No problem. In the meantime, between time, the scam will work on the cop. By the time SPEEDY RABBIT goes huh, Wily Coyote is laughing his way down the highway of life.

However, if a phony tagged car were parked on any public street, and a computer check were run on plates and tags turned up dinky, the car would be booted or impounded. And when it is, hope your day runner or your shitzu isn't in the front seat! Bet park in small lots, ass backwards! BFers have a way around those snoopy cops going around impounding; they park in public or private lots, driveways, garages only, and always park tags to the back.

If a BFer is stopped with a phony tag, and doesn't have a l0 day old Bill of Sale, he had better have a cyanide tablet or a Columbian passport because this is a serious misdemeanor. Fuzz will impound the car right there, snipping the ignition wires so you can't get it off street when they leave. They will not arrest you, but they will write you up a hell of a ticket. That's where the Columbian passport comes in. Let Letty in Lima deal with it.

No account of BFer tactics and strategies vis a vis the DMV is complete without a treatment of the issue of phony IDs. With Big Brother's new emphasis on Fiching everyone in the country, and cross referencing to social security numbers, it's become hard for BFer's with too many parking violations to register cars or get PHONY driver's licenses (one reason to register your car with a thick accent, or in vowel off names or get driver's licenses in totally strange names, switching with a pal in another state). Because what pal is so true he'll let you use his soc secur. # One might, as it is in another state.

Hardcore BFers say there's still time to get around this, as only Kentucky puts the Social Security Number on the Driver's License record. So no switch with pals in Kentucky.

California now asks the person who registers a car to give their Social Security Number, but you can forget and invert a digit or say you're from another country and don't have an American SSA # yet and the DMV staff doesn't care. Or say your suitcase was taken at bus station down town.

BFers tell me that if there's any place in the world where you could create a new identity with the birth certificate and social security of a pal from another state, it would be in the HOLLYWOOD DMV OFFICE on Cole Street because the employees are all Russian and it's in their genetic DNA code to do sloppy paperwork and ignore rules and English is total Greek to them anyway.

My secret BFer source says that when he gets in line with his Maryland pal's birth certificate, when it's his turn, if it's not a Russian employee, he puts the other guy in front. He does this by pretending that he's still filling out a form. Then, when the Russian clerk is due for a client, he goes. He gives the birth certificate and social security card of a friend on the other side of the country. To confound the fingerprint machine, which has the BFer's old license on record, the BFer has put Crazy Glue on his right thumb then sanded it, then lubricated the finger with thick sludgey oil, creating a blotch not a print. If he has other licenses on file and coded into the computer, it won't ring bells. (As if they really check a new driver's fingerprints against all fingerprints at the DMV! Yeah, right.)

The danger is that California may soon start checking with other states to see if JOE BLOW is registered in two states. If they ask, the BFer says he is not registered elsewhere and waits for them to check. If they do actually check with the other state, and your pal has a license there, DMV simply asks you to drop one of your two licenses. When that happens, the BFer drops the license in California and sends all the pal's ID back to Maryland and starts over.

TRAFFIC TICKETS, HOW NOT TO GET ONE. And EIGHT WAYS TO DEFLECT A COP BENT ON TICKETING YOU!

There's something about being pulled over for a traffic ticket that brings out the delinquent kid caught red-handed in some of us. Maybe we're 45 now, but hit those flashing red-and-blue lights, and we'restammering out excuses like it's seventh grade and we've just been busted for skipping class. STAMMER those excuses the right way and you don't get the ticket! I INCLUDED AN URL about A PAGE UP FROM HERE, THE BEAT IT ARTICLE, but Here, some more tips from the PRO's.

#1THE BOTTLE CAN EXCUSE. Carry a hold full of bottles and cans. My backseat and hatch back area have maybe 20$ worth of cans at all times. Say: `”I know my CAR does not have tags BUT IF I GET ENOUGH of these cans and BOTTLES RECYCLED, I CAN EAT a meal, rent a shower, get a job, THEN PAY INSURANCE, THEN BUY THE NEW MOTOR, THEN MAKE this 24 year old CAR STREET LEGAL”. You’d better have 400 bottles, cans in back seat like I do when you say that sentence. Two years ago a cop let me go on this one! The tale of needing to drive to get fruit in alleys as I had the four kids in school may have helped. Yesterday dinner hour, coming from market in rain, I again got off. I checked in 4 directions before I got onto the street to make that left turn but suddenly, he was right behind me. Needed the Groceries and kids weren’t home, couldn’t walk, heavy rain, nighttime, four kids in college, no money for tags, car is about to be 25 yrs old, then no SMOG, meanwhile I’d really need a new motor, have a Mex hubby in another country who can’t spell alimony, it all worked again. Maybe because it’s the truth!

#2 PEEING IN TRAFFIC IS SO HARD TO DO!" Oh officer, I really have to go--I mean, I really have to go!" Though an oldie, this one is still pretty effective, especially if the driver is young and cute, and the officer is a single guy; it's hard to deny a damsel in distress. Just don't overplay your hand--or overact your part. You might say, 'can you give me the ticket at the bathroom at that gas station just ahead? Outside it, after I come out?" I won't try to escape. I won't crawl through the window. I just wanna go so bad! A performance worthy of Meryl Streep is not in your best interests. And keep the material G-rated. You  want to avoid having to go out on a "date" with love struck Officer Friendly.

#3 The Desperate Situation. If you can act convincingly harried--but not psychotic--with just a touch of the pathetic, regaling the officer with a story about your critical job interview and how you've been looking for a job for two years without luck, and then how one interviewer today kept you a little long and the next one will kill you if you're late. Better have a stack of classifieds with circles on them and a whole lot of resumes right there on the passenger seat! This is a real good reason to keep that stack full time in the car! Or maybe you always travel with your dog anyway? Say you have a vet appointment for the sick puppy (be inventive, worms were coming out of his nose orifices, it freaked you out!). The cop may be a dog lover,  may relent and let you slide. So reason to travel with a dog in the car!

#4 The NON COMPUS MENTUS Sad Sack. Be flustered; make a show of fishing around for your license and registration--as though you've never had to find them before. Drop them between the seats, and make a show of desperately trying to dig them out. All the while, mutter about how sorry you are, that this day "just couldn't get much worse"--and so on. A little quavering of the voice and shaking of the hands as you offer him your papers sometimes helps, too. It's dog-world psychology: You're acting like the submissive beta dog in the pack, deferring to the alpha dog's status. Cops like this, and it's often enough to get them to let you split with just a warning

#5 Ice cream in the trunk! Perishables in the car works great. Add the flustered act to them. And a sad sack story about how yesterday, in all this heat, you lost all the frozen food you had, and the two dollar peaches turned to inedible mush and here you had to buy it all twice. Just be sure you do, in fact, have some plausible-looking grocery bags in the trunk, and real peaches and ice cream in case the officer wants a look-see. And be sure it's damn hot out!

$6 LOOTERS AND HOOTERS- "Officer, I was fleeing for my life. Did you see that maniac who was following me?" In other words, you were driving fast in order to get away from a tailgating, road-raging loon or masher. Or maybe a car jacker. Again, solid acting is key here. Think Naomi Watts in the RING! The devil is in the details. You've got to have your facts at hand: Be ready and able to offer up a plausible description of the other vehicle and what it did to threaten you. How he pulled along side and said 'show me your hooters, baby." And then, 'nice car. Can I see it from the inside?" You freaked, you sped off. He will not ticket you if you can produce tears of terror (and some cleavage). Didn’t work for my son Demian who had been carjacked at gunpoint, then as Dem was irritated, he shoved the cop who was mauling him while he accused DEMIAN of carjacking the woman he’d asked for a ride, then the cop fell on his head and got knocked out. Two other cops beat my kid to a pulp!

#7 The Honest Approach. Sometimes, the best excuse is no excuse at all. This is especially effective if you're driving a flashy new sports car--provided you were just going a little fast, but not drivingdangerously. The cop--well, most of them--is human and understands temptation. Given the chance to drive the same car, it's not likely he'd be able to resist seeing what she'd do. So tell him you didn't mean to get carried away, but the car just sort of overtook you. It's a 50-50 bet he'll at least cut you a little slack--again, provided you were just going a little fast. But not if you were driving 80 mph in a school zone.

#8 SICK PASSENGER- If your passenger has brass balls and can keep a straight face, try this. "She has internal bleeding. I have to get to the emergency hospital." This worked for me. I had a police escort to the hospital, too. We two parked hastily, I helped my passenger from the car, while cop watched, and we went inside the ER and lost ourselves inside the busy complex, hid in a washroom til the cop had left. Or here’s an idea. Carry a book on heart disease with a bookmark and passages underlined and say ‘I’m having those symptoms right now, so I was going to a hospital/ doctor.” I also have very convincing counterfeit car insurance, done on a laser printer, to the same name on my car’s registration, a few vowels off my own name’s spelling. But misspelled. I have no driver’s license. If I carried it, they’d see the correctly spelled name and haul me off to jail for one ticket for making a sushi infraction, the famed California roll slide stop. I Won’t have a legal license for 7 full years. One single unpaid sushi ticket due to having 30 mouths to feed, and I lost my license and got huge penalties. Same thirty mouthes to feed today, so I only shoot thru small streets to market and back, no can go to L.A. 20 miles away. But if a cop were on a small street,

#9 JUST GOT OFF THE BOAT- This one works if you have no ID on you. Car must be registered to your name but with enough misspellings that key vowels are exchanged so no computer could ever trace it to you, must less find you. It is not hard to register your cars with DMV with copious misspellings as no DMV clerk ever really checks letters. They have DMV DYSLEXIA. YOU FILLED out the form, your I.D. looks  vaguely similar to your own name. So become that new version of your name. Master a superb Greek, Hungarian, Spanish accent, depending on what surname you have. IRISH if you are O GILLICUCDDY. Just make sure your cop doesn't speak Gaelic, Hungarian, etc. SAY with gentleness, respect but not panic, (they're sick of panic). "Sir. I am going to the DMV for my book on American driving rules. I must get drivers' license for your country. I had Greek, (Hungarian Spanish, Mexican Peruvian) one, but at bus station as I am arriving to your city, all luggage phtttt! Taken. This friendly fellow say, I load luggage, take you to taxi, and while he helping me, we are calling taxi, someone take the entire luggage cart. I later think luggage man was in on it. My greek passport, in it my Greek driving license, all my clothing gone....and my brother Gianni had bought me this car already. So I now must get to CONSULATE to get new passport. I must get to DMV to arrange papers. I am very good driver in my country. We all drive this way in Budapest, Athens, etc, Mexico City, it never a problem.  What did I do that you Americans do not like? I am tourist. Not resident yet. Will this prevent me getting my citizenship?" Plaintive look. Be pathetic, Be foreign. Do NOT DROP your accent. It works great. Done it myself. Worked l00%. But I used to do multiple foreign accents on tv. shows in the sixties and I was real sure of myself. Worst comes to worst, they write you a ticket as the misspelled name on the registration and address is not a problem, they don't do home pickups for traffic warrants. Ticket goes to TICKET HELL. The misspelled name of course has a warrant out for him for next 7 years. So make sure you give the officer a name that has no owner, Gianni Gomez. There isn't one of those around.

PARKING TICKETS. One BFER will go to court with great excuses and photos and hope cop doesn’t show up. He wins. Most BFers are looser than that. They tear up parking tickets for years, then they sell the car to one of their other 'legal' names (to that library card or that magazine subscription name, or even to a relative's name, I.D. but not the relative's address, for deniabilty (CIA word) later. They use a P.O. box that is at one of those KINKOS TYPE shops that rents boxes, but they write it out this way, 134 Ivy Street, #2144. (sounds like the penthouse, doesn’t it?) Not an obvious POSTAL BOX BIZ, Box #)

Another ploy is to use ANY name and say you're buying the car for that youngster, a nephew perhaps. All your old parking tickets disappear when title is transferred. (Actually, the data on it goes into a mini-Purgatory in some computer file attached to the name, so BFers keep a file with names cross referenced with tickets, license plate numbers, and addresses they've used so they won't make any mistakes and repeat a hot name, address.) All names return to life after 7 years. The Lazarus Factor.

In the last analysis, Parking tickets were invented by MAN not God. Parking lots are cruel and unusual punishment, insanely costly, devised by the devil, by KAL, lord of the dark domain that Earth is, and saints can get around them. Big Business is inhumane to charge 7$ for twenty minutes parking but Big Brother --the government that's supposed to care for us---has been heartlessly cruel-er sending our boys to die in foreign wars to steal oil, sending all tax money to the IMF, giving unemployed citizens licensing fees more than a year of rent, insurance fees more than a year of food, parking tickets the size of a week of food for a family of four all for forgetting to shove in a precious quarter, or the quarter running out.

When tickets go to warrant, the government asks a big chunk of the a decade's income. They confiscate our licenses when we can't pay tickets so we can't get groceries, go to school or work, carry our kids to school or to a 2$ movie. Our basic rights to eat, shop, study, work, earn, love and breathe are being interfered with.

My son happens to be such an interfered-with person. He's never had an accident, drove well, made a living driving in fact. A single ticket for doing a California Roll at a stop sign went to warrant, he had no cash that week, nor did I. A month later he had no license, no driving job, he messengered for ad agencies and photo labs, a ten hr day; he had no way to get to work or school. He began to feel bad about himself, drank coffee all day, booze all night, never slept and had a nervous breakdown, got suicidally depressed. For a year he brooded. The tags on his pick-up expired. He began to drive this illegal truck, sleeping in parks, getting sleeping tickets, parking tickets and speeding tickets all over 4 states. He was uninsurable. Fines on his unpaid tickets got bigger and bigger. Many were for not having insurance. ($1500 is the fine the judge can give you for no insurance although mostly they'll give you a few months to go get the insurance and not fine you at all. So it's a fixable offense.) But he never went to court. So there were warrents on top of warrents on him. Then, cops confiscated the truck. He began walking around the state like Forrest Gump. He liked a girl in mexico so one week, he walked to Mexico. From L.A. to deep in the BAJA CALIFORNIA state! WALKED! The tickets for sleeping in public parks are worse than anything in a car. When he didn't show up for court, they went to warrant and the bail last time they found him, picking cans out of a trash can, (illegal) was $75,000. He began doing longer and longer jail time when they caught him, and as his self-image and grooming went to Hell, and his need to be out in the fresh air walking, participating in life, and occasionally eating out of trash cans, cops and jail time were frequent.Finally he sank into outright schizophrenia, by then he had a long police record for eating out of trash cans on his journeys, which I could not prevent. He’d walk out of the house while I slept, walk 500 miles. He attempted suicide once. Mostly, he hides in his room 24 hours a day weaving baskets. His life is over before it started. The DMV has told him that in seven years he can come out of the room and start over. (This was written in 97. Finally the state threw him in a mental hospital. he's been locked up four years. All this started with the FUCKING DMV!)SO I HAVE A VENGEANCE against the state the size of TEXAS!

I know of no other way to fight the state than write these articles, live the Bfer lifestyle. THEY TOOK my son. I will take their future if I can. This toll gate to heaven has to stop. We deserve heaven here and now. Scholarships, educations, free parking for students. Until that comes, I am a GUERILLA CAPITALLIST and Marx, Lenin and Mr. Trotsky are my only pals. Bakunin. Michelet. Get one book at http://www.abebooks.com that is EDMUND WILSON’s FINLAND STATION. A buck. But it’s your ticket to knowing the men who run HEAVEN.

My son's story is a common one in any big city today, and is one reason I was moved to investigate the Bottom Feeder lifestyle, if not for my own use, for yours. My revenge on a world that drove that sensitive boy nuts.

So, now you've heard the whys and wherefores, the ins and outs of being a BFer. Do you still want to do it? If you've read this far and your pulse is under eighty, you've got what it takes. Brass balls. So if you want to do it, read on. Remembering that great 60s activist Todd Gitlin says if laws are bad, do what Rosa Parks did. Sit in the front of the bus anyway. If we all did, what could they do to us? We'd be a mass popular movement.

GETTING STARTED AS A BOTTOM FEEDER. First, join or create a support group. It helps to start a kind of BOTTOM FEEDER PHILOSOPHY CLASS, Support Group and BONDING circle. Merchandise it on craigs list. SEE http://www.luckinlove.com/merchandiseindex.htm Just sending URLS on the bottom feeder articles to your jobless friends would be a start at such synergy. Capture the URL at top of your pc screen, do EDIT, copy then paste into an EMAIL.

As times get tougher in America, you almost surely will need to be a bottomfeeder and support if not train others like you. You need strong emotional support to analyze and understand the morality of computer generated tags and under-the-table earnings. You will want to study Post-Marxist theories of Government Immorality vs. Hindu theories of Personal Karma. Fascism vs. anarchy. And more pragmatically, you will want to learn how to launder cash income without it going through your bank account. Through your support group, you will learn how to ignore the IRS, work under the table, not report your earnings and buy property with mattress money. These things are all legal, now. As a BFer you have to know what is legal and how far you can stretch the laws to have roof and food, vehicle, heat and education, children and pets.

I know it sounds harsh but tough times make for tough people. When times are tough, tough people chose to ride the horse the way it's going because they'll get where they're going faster. Don't fight the tide. Give yourself up to it. Surf the wave the way it's going.

Study what you love, even if it's not a high profit profession. Be prepared to surrender to marginality to do it. If you persist in your macro-goal, micro goals disappear. Use the system. Miserable though it is, there are occasional bounties and their tide actually will carry you where you are going.

Whatever art form you do will eventually make you employed, known and comfortable. The trick is to just stay free of drone work so you can do that art daily and learn to do it well.

DIVEST YOURSELF OF BANALITY. If you aspire to be a BFer but just have too much money invested in the system, own too much property, stocks, have too huge of a time consuming go-nowhere job you must be selective in cutting off dead wood. It's like being in a go-nowhere, loveless marriage when there are a lot of kids. To counter-effect this much ballast, you need a creative, BOHEMIAN, ARTISTIC, UNDER THE TABLE CAREER that is your passion, i.e. a secret MISTRESS.

A miserable status quo and too much over the table income being taxed will drive people into revolution. Ask the Maccabes. Ask Thom Paine about ole crazy King George II. Our lives are often hamster treadmills to pay inflated rents and taxes, licenses, fees. Our jobs are Kafkaesque purgatories. From such an overdose of VOCATION, you need an AVOCATION. Look at the list below. True, some of these schemes are just banal activities that produce cash but some are predicated on a love for art and creativity and give bliss

Here are THIRTY THREE ways (one for each year Jesus lived) that BOTTOM FEEDERS CREATE INSTANT CASH and INCOME. THIRTY THREE SMOKING, Wild $-making scams that don't take equipment or inventory, just FLYERS, Craigs List, a 5$ a month WEBSITE, some audaciousness and talent.

NEW AGE ENTREPRENUERIAL IDEAS FOR BUSINESES

1. LOVE PARTIES? (LIVE LINK!) With home-made flyers, street posters, and BULLETIN boards at colleges, advertise a Singles Party Hotline. Hold parties at any cafe and serve a snack. Charge l0$ at the door. You'll make 1-5K per nite. Cafe goes for it because they get the bar tab. Call it Personalized Introduction Parties, walk around saying, hello, who do you want to meet, what do you want in a mate?" Do personalized matchmaking and charge $200 for 5 arranged dates. Could be done at a church, for the congregation. Pastor loves it because it invariably increases his parish. And you can give Singles parties at that church. 

2.) LOVE LOVE? Create a weekly Loveaholics Anonymous "Success in Love" therapy group. Build it around a psychologist who doesn't get in on the take as she gets the clientele. Try out different shrinks each week. Produce best shrink's tapes, radio show. Get her a book. Put her on talk shows. It worked for Pat Allen. Another thought, create a Matchmaking group. Put photos of single girls on your website, (a free one, which servers give) and give MEN who pay l00$ for three dates, the URL. Tell every gal you meet 'hey I am a matchmaker, I find husbands, so let me digital shoot you, we write up your bio. The guy has to talk to you a few times on phone before you meet him.' My girlfriend became a millionaire doing that.

3. WORK WITH CONCRETE? Start pouring special tile or form rocks with one side roughed up to look like real rock, sell them out of your driveway (at your new, rented home). These bring in big money. Once builders learn you do special rocks you can teach your retardo cousin to do it, just rake in bucks with NO work. Next, go to the bottom of nearest mountain, collect beautiful boulders. Learn to do walls, fireplaces, flues. Do poured cement tiles that looks like Spanish floor tiles. Set broken crockery in them, these are all the rage for patios. Make oriental garden lanterns, pagodas that look like carved stone.

4. A BILL GATES WANNABE? Take a Windows computer class at adult High then teach others.  When you repair, you get gifted w. machines. ALL the time. My fixer guy Bombay Bhanu has a dozen used machines he's souped up. Given him as all PC users dump older models for chump change. Soup up hard drive. With three machines in your living room, give group classes at 25$ an hour. With four desks booked, 8 hours a day, you're making 16k a month. Under the mousepad, too. Get all your students to buytheir used machines from you.Do repairs, upgrades. I know a hooker who did a stint in trade school, can take a pc apart, pull the gold, melt it, fix the pc, upgrade it, sell it and still get a manicure & make an appt with a john in full drag.

5. LOVE KIDS? Turn the big, rented house into licensed Daycare. Start a weekend Class for tots. Painting, Artisanry, ACTING: Do Scenes/improvs. Get a photog to do individual headshots of the group, act as their agent. Get management contracts with them. Become a Foster Parent. State pays well. Kiddie ACTING classes are lucrative. Be sure to get a city license, working with kids and all. GOOGLE "OCCUPATIONAL LICENSES." Fairly mandatory in many professions.

6. FEEL LIKE MOTHER TERESA? BECOME A HOLISTIC HEALER, no SCHOOLING REQUIRED. Here is a FREE SEMINAR …multiple classrooms. Take it you’re ready to go. Read up on herbs, shiatsu massage, iridology, power foods, specific-healing diets, be an holistic healer, massage therapist. Charge 40$ a half hour, $75 for the whole hour. More if you sell them herbs. Holistic really cures! For instance, if you look in their eye and see that cloud of white which means ALLERGIES: Tell them the foods to avoid: wheat, dairy, nuts, meat. Sell them POWER ADDITIVES that you know are good for allergies: Bee pollen. (Nature's Sunshine of Spanish Fork Utah will let you retail their stuff. Fone 'em for their free training package.) Rx specific allergy TEAS: Chamomile. Find a lab that will TEST for specific food allergies and give client a print-out. Usually, peanuts, soy, meats, eggs are the dietary offenders. RX JUICES: alfalfa, celery, parsley, pumpkin. Voila, they're cured, they feel l8 again so they think you're God, bring you all their friends and you make $800K a year when really you just stored this info on a disc, didn't even memorize it. A few months of reading, typing and you're in the bigtime. Totally legal if you don't diagnose. How? by telling them 'your liver is congested.' You can't even WHISPER a medical word like cirrhosis.' But no problem, your HEALING without medical terms works l00 times better than a real doctor who can use the terms but doesn't know squat about healing! The lady I know who did this never went to high school, makes 800K a year but she has to pay the herb companies part of that.

7. SIGMUND FREUD? Did you want to be a shrink? Learn Tarot or palmistry and hang your shingle to guide the needy, addicted or demented right out of your living room. Get a crystal ball, astro-software and a magnifier to read palms. Entertain at parties. Get Eden Gray book on Tarot at local metaphysical bookstore, Ryder Waite deck, get job at psychic hot line and pick up a huge, national clientele, giving sound advice. Write astro columns, or get a hotline of your own. I know a lady who did emotional release work massage (rolfing) while sad music played, and client screamed, called it Tantrum Yoga! I have files on Primal Emotional Release work, one career, and MENTORING, another, which are like a 101 course so ask me for them. astrology@earthlink.net

8. IS YOUR HOUSE A CHATZKE PALACE? Did you want to be a decorator? Learn to find cheap collectibles, American 20's pottery at garage sales or thrift stores, turn your home into an antique shop. Sell privately to collectors, dealers and the public via free ads in local papers.

9. INTO ORIENTAL DECOR? Adjust decor of homes according to principles of Feng shui. Become a highly paid consultant. LANDSCAPING License is free at city hall if you say you are just starting, have no clients yet. That gets you half price on plants.

10. VEGIE? Are you into healthfood? Do you know a community of people? Start a COMMUNAL FOOD CO-OP, sell wholesale groceries. With flyers, announce that you deliver a weekly vegie/fruit/grain basket to the Yuppie subscriber's door.

11. VAN GOGH YOUR IDOL? Ever want to be an amateur artist? Find 50 other artists to share rent on an Artisanry Shop/gallery. Cost each $50. Find a big old house zoned for biz district. There will be 3 or 4 artists' work displayed in a 'booth' in each room. l00 artists would fill the entire building. This could be a big TOURIST ATTRACTION week-ends so hire mariachis and put a cafe in the middle of it, or in the patio, garden in summer. In Mexico DF, the BAZAAR SABADO is the protoype. It's been there fifty years and it's a LULU of a place.

12. INTO FOOD? Open a lucrative fast food shop. Twice the bucks of a posh cafe. Sell breakfast foods in A.M., vegiburgers, raw juices. Lunch would be Mexican and chinese entree. But do it as a fast food corner shop as (little known fact) they actually make more $ than restaurants. If in storefront, do NEW AGE FOOD, invite in gallery, decor, duds, books, psychic readings, massage and imports from Mexico and get ten rents from the ten invited tycoons.

13. HEARD OF BRIDEY MURPHEY? Learn hypnosis from a library book; MOREY BERNSTEIN wrote Search for Bridey Murphy, it’s at abebooks.com for a buck. Learn his method; do past life regressions. Hypnotize people into will power for dieting, substance abuse. You really don't need a trance for people to see past lifetimes. Just a hand six inches over their head.Click on article telling you how.”I SAW THEM”

14. DREAM OF THE SEA? Are you a mermaid who loves seashells, lapidary, geologics, crystals? Buy a 5$ used drill, make jewelry, mount specimens on wooden blocks. Wholesale to boutiques.TIE DIE PILLOWS, SELL THEM, TOO!

15. WANDERLUST? Read a book on How to Be a Travel agent. Get discounted travel for all your pals. Be a courier so you can travel for near free, carrying pckgs to Europe. Do 'Singles' trips, special interest trips. Travel the world and learn to import/export, too. 16. VRAIMENT GOURMET? Do you cook New Age, exotic or Macrobiotic food well? Hire out to celebrities or the super rich with a flyer cum menu. Teach private cooking classes, cater parties, supply bakeries and trendy yuppie cafes.

17. TEACHEY-PREACHY? Create a Living Room University or "LEARNING ANNEX" with many different venues in people's homes, offices or at schools, churches or office buildings. Offer the public 35$ Seminars, lectures, psych, career, cooking, computers, how-to. Find teachers on bulletin boards at Universities. But not in LA which is saturated with the New Age Transformational Annex.

18. KNOW THE PRINT TRADE? Create a RECYCLER newspaper, free classified ads sell paper for l$. You offer PAID ads to local merchants. Make a Million$ lst yr but not in LA or Arizona.

19. DRAMATIC? With Help of College English Dept, create summer RENAISSANCE FAIRE: artisans, theaters, food, actors, games, beverage booths. Teach Saturday afternoon acting classes to kids. OR night classes to adults.

20. GOT GOOD LEGS? Cater for parties on week-ends. Week-days, do the Portable Feast. Make tofu/tempeh/ vegie meatloaf Healthfood sandwiches for healthfood stores. Hire beautiful, young girls to carry to skyscraper offices in a basket at lunchtime.

21. DOODLE ADDICT? Learn to OIL-Paint easy NAIVE painting like Rousseau or easy impressionism. You can sell canvases for 200$ & up outside super markets. Galleries will buy frankly fake Impressionists for $300. Hem the canvas, make it a carpet, varnish then wax it. Back it with felt.

22. INTO CARS? Create A USED CAR Lot in your driveway. Buy l940-50 cars and trucks from farmers, junk yard autos as long as frame, axels and motor are good. Do "Cherry Vintage Autos" Tune motors, lacquer them, sell in big cities for big bucks.

23. LOVE MAGAZINES? Write articles. Submit to mags. 100$-5k each. Writer's Digest tells you how. Research them at library. Use a computer to file query letters so you can multiple submit.

24. ADORE MARTHA STEWART? FURNITURE GUYS? Buy old furniture at garage sales, fix and sell from your house or swap meet.

25. STRONG PERSONALITY? Rent local schoolyard Sundays, announce creation of swap meet w. flyers, attract artisans, collectors, jewelers, food booths, fortunetellers. Put posters around town "Swap Meet forming call #" Charge exhibitors 20$ each booth. Public pays $1.00, kids 50 cents to come in. 82 booths give you 6k per weekend. Double$ if you open drink booth yourself.

26. ALL BUFFED UP? Be a trainer. Share your secrets in a living room gym. 4 people pay 20$ for an hour. Can you do it 8 hours a day? 8k a month says yes!

27. STRONG BACK? LOVE THAT NEW CAR SMELL? Be Dr.Detail. Detail cars if you have all your spine discs in original condition. Get teflon not paste wax, polishing compound, a hose, vacuum cleaner, brushes, print flyers to detail cars, boats, aluminum sided houses, planes, trucks while Harley's get a Hog-wash.HAWG-WASH!

28. MR MACHO? Weld metal sculpture, insert pipe, build STONEWORK fountain, line with tile, or set broken crockery in cement. Set sculpture on top. Rig up water and poof, you get sprayed with $1000 dollar bills a weekend.

29. SUPER SECRETARIAL? Even if you're a legal secretary earning 20$ an hour, don't work fulltime. Become a temp and float. There's this terrific advantage: as you move through hundreds of offices a year, you will meet hundreds of hiring agents at all these offices. Give them your ROLLODEX card, tell them to call YOU whenever they need temps and undercut the current fees. Now, get all your typist girlfriends, teach them everything about legal forms, (use a textbook) and YOU WILL GET another fee (cash) from the BIG LAW OFFICES for handing them a temp. Also ask the gals for 20$ for each class and a  "TIP" for each job you get them. Keep them hopping from office to office. These offices are used to paying hundreds of dollars to personnel agencies for a temp worker and will flock to you, especially if you deliver girls who can spell 'affadavit' and 'sub-rasa'.And who have FRONT OFFICE APPEARANCE. (FOA)which you ALSO teach.

30. POMPEII PAINTERS: Paint walls with faux finishes, waxing and buffing enamel walls until they shine like porcelain or doing scrubby textures all of which you'll find in Jocasta Innes books at fine bookshops. Expand to Cache Pots that look like they were STOLEN From The Vatican, gilded, verdegris, etc.

31. FILM EXTRA WORK: Those employment agencies that get you extra work jobs in films are utterly honest and for real. You can sit around all day eating, laughing, attracting clients for your other businesses and make 40-15-$ a day depending on 'bumps,' (extra duties). You often get double cash overtime. It's social and fun, the work is very regular. Go SAG or AFTRA & salary doubles.

32. MESSENGERING: When my kid did it, the job took two people. One to man the phones, with a pager if he leaves the house, the second in the car making deliveries, also with a pager. Perfect for an ole granny and her grandson with a fast heap. Now with CELL PHONES, one kid could do this biz.

33. AIR REPAIR - You install hepa filters on the home's AC, you get them an electrostatic purifier. Go to trade school, (Dept of Rehab sends you for free) learn to install AC ducts. Charge l0k per house. People will pay; they are sick of coughing in summertime. Ask me for larger file on this

34 CLAY PALACE- Rent store front, Buy a used kiln, put it in your yard. Create kitchen. Tons of tables, coffee, pastries, pizza salads and the yuppies feast and paint their own dishes. Kids do birthday parties there. Hottest new biz idea in NYC/LA. One more idea came to me through Jeffrey with the two dogs.

35. DOG PENITENTIARY- Fence your yard; take in pampered pooches whose masters are vacationing & charge 20$ a day. Half of what the other guys do. Or do it with cats.These are just a few of the thousands of ideas for businesses you can do with little or no start up cash. To do any of these would cost a few hundred to a grand tops. Dog walkers make great money. DO BOTH.

36. ME THE GURU. Community Extension classes dot the landscape. Every University or Community College has one in residence. They send out catalogues to the people within ten miles. TEACH a class. Bead stringing, accent reduction for ethnics, photography, belly dancing, martial arts, how to speak and sell powerfully, feng shui, how to get organized fund raising, drama for kids, commercial work for kids, landscape painting, décor, dog obedience, etiquette, fruit carving, (orientals usually do this best,) photography, yoga. Get their catalogues, see what they offer. 

If you need more cash write A PROSPECTUS. This is a set of 3 simple documents. First, there's a DEAL MEMO or short legal contract where you promise the PERCENTAGE OF PROFITS, INTEREST, DESTINY OF PRINCIPLE (returned or not?). State the AIMS OF BUSINESS, i.e. To create a bakery/cafe. State how many shares will be sold. Securities Commission allows up to 35 'shares in a limited partnership.' Divide amt. of cash you need to start biz by 35. Say it's 35 thousand dollars. Everybody contributes or invests a grand. They each get a share in your biz for that grand. Ask a lawyer what amt. you get for running it. Maybe 3/4s. See, they don't get ALL of it. Stockholders get a % of it. State that PROFITS will be divided by 35. PROFITS for how many years? Forever? l0 years? You have to decide. Here's where you state what the money will be used for, and this is a legal, binding promise which gives them total confidence. Whatever you do, wherever you do it, 35 PEOPLE have a piece of your action. You cannot ask more than 35 people to buy in as shareholders or the FCC comes after you. Last, state that their bookkeepers have the right to look at the books any time. Leave spaces for signatures, city and state, dates, sign it. Give it to them. Keep a copy.

Next, THE PROSPECTUS has a RESUME/ BIO showing what you've done in your life that qualifies you for this business. This will glowingly describe your abilities, experience.

Third AND LAST, make an actual share of stock in this 'Limited Partnership.' How? Print a fancy graphic border on parchment paper. Around edges, use the @@@@@ key. Text on share says it's one share in the BUSINESS & reaffirms value, profits per Share. Ask for file on this, I have one. astrology@earthlink.net

A PROSPECTUS is basically an ad or commercial, a kind of written hype, a hook with bait. Fishing is a bad analogy because you're not going to slaughter these guys because they have a surfeit of money. You're going to put them on the perimeter of your interesting business and share profits with them.

These three documents will be typed up by you, and xeroxed 50 times because out of 50 submissions, you'll only get 15 takers. One out of three will say yes and you'll be on your way!

These awesome ideas that Bottom feeders have given me should inspire you. Don't just stand there enduring poverty and enslavement in some 40 hour week paying minimum fearing dismissal, hamsters on a social security treadmill that goes nowhere when it purports to be going somewhere. Bottom feeders are dynamic artists, on their way nowhere which is really somewhere. They appreciate the Zen paradoxes. We don't need to go somewhere else because we are ecstatic, NOW, totally in the here and now, blissed out of our gourds and here is fine.

Instead of financial paralysis, worrying about your security, fearful of not making it in life, look at the current slowdown in the corporative sector, & USE it to hedge your bets, and create a Track II plan.

Rethink your SUCCESS strategies. Let in new input. Get off your old prejudices, nihilistic thinking, by first imagining that it could be done, next by wondering how YOU would do it.

Create a creative cottage industry or business. If you can, fund it with a PROSPECTUS targeting partners. Find the seed money. You can ACHIEVE A FAMILY OWNED BUSINESS that you can do out of the garden or garage of a fine, big rented home with a garage workshop.

After you get into the HIGH INCOME bracket, you'll get a real factory or office. Then, you'll get INTO REAL ESTATE. You'll easily get 1ST TIME HOME OWNERSHIP with one of those 3% Fannie Mae loans, or the l0% down Community Loans based on how much high rent you used to pay. Then you'll move on to providing housing for others, with income property.

The government wants the poor to have homes so that when we go to the old age home, GOV doesn't have to pay 7k a month to your Old Age Home. They can cannibalize our house instead. So USE the government, your friends and relatives and you'll easily get a leg up into real estate. Scout down a team of able people who can help you 'fix up' and rent these apartments and buy other buildings. Soon, you can start to build affordable housing for the proletariat and then, Donald Trump will be checking in his rear view mirror and it'll be YOU he sees behind him.

It takes FIRE IN THE BELLY, to take an idea like this and make it work but get onto a LIVE FOOD California Healthfood diet of tofu and shitake mushrooms on brown rice, vegie-burger, pumpkin seeds in your Caesar salad, solar fruit between meals, raw juices, algae and you will be able to do it. And a lot more besides. Ask for California Power Diet file. Free! Read the FIRE FILE above. From the Master Jules.READ THE AMBITION INDEX based on his teachings.

In the last analysis, ARE bottom feeders LOSERS? Not if they are doing something important, meaningful, socially useful with their time. They are not losers if they're 'advancing the action.' Just to be a model of SURVIVING quietly while doing your real thing, is to lead mankind!

We should not fall prey to the trap of believing that 'Laborem per quid pro quo solo Valoreum est.' Being a good person, never abusing or using another human and finding a cooperative and aesthetic way to survive with the help of roomies and relatives, a team of like minds---is what's really important and joy-producing. Not having a Beamer. Of course, if you want a fancy car, BFers understand your pleasure in toys and are compassionate. BFers have understanding hearts. They are not anti-social looney loners or Taxi-drivers. 99% of them do not shoplift their food. They do not want to screw up their vibration. It’s not about karma, cuz stores can afford theft. It’s their nervous systems. BFers dress well, live in beautiful homes and often do have elegant social lives but they don't just socialize with other Bfers. Their careers have given them entry into the Fortune 500. Our clients are the crowned heads but while we may hobnob with kings, we always stop and talk to the homeless, and are incapable of rejecting people who are in need. We have cash to share as frequently, we are accepted as artisans, healers, therapists and gurus to the wealthiest families in America. And if there's any trickle down in America, it comes from us. BFers brake for the homeless and give cash and food to beggars and every stitch we finish with is washed, ironed and given to someone lower on the food chain than we.

Bottom Feeders have not abandoned middle class values entirely. We remember the fifties with nostalgia, celebrate Thanksgiving and actually send out Christmas cards (just not store bought ones. Ours are more often made from lino-cuts and printed at home) and mailed with a 2c or 3c stamp  a few ones so it's just a parade of stamps. (One in fifty comes back to me INSUFFICIENT POSTAGE)

What's plain to see is that Bottom Feeders have chosen not to let the intricate codebook of 'shalt not' and 'should' interfere with the responsibility to 'cover your own ass and see to your own survival.'

We BFers see to ourselves because we do not believe the state is really thinking of the underclass. True, occasionally we bend a law or two, remembering the codebook of Krishna which is this: "a totally honest man can be trusted to write his own laws." Or as Bob Dylan said, 'to live beyond the law you must be innocent."

Bottom Feeders will window shop at Saks but they won't buy or work there. Nor at Woolworths or Walmart. They will not compromise their aesthetics with alienated labor, or corrupt their pleasure in space, time and energy with limiting, banal, fiduciary arrangements. They do not look down on those who feel they must compromise, BFers simply think the rest of the world doesn't know a better way. They belief they have found a better way. BFers are involved with a life discipline as beautiful as Buddhism or Taoism. I call it Guerilla Captalism.

Hegel said that it was in the organization of the State (politics) and law that God truly descended onto Earth. When our government organizes itself to foment creative capitalism, instead of restricting it, ---when it rewards creativity and independence instead of discouraging it, puts a stop to legislation designed by transnationals for self-enrichment, fires the politicians who serve the oligarchy who put these laws in, when the planet stops waste of resources by giving intended throw-aways to the poor, Utopia will exist on earth.

As times get tougher, post Clinton's NAFTA AND GATT, and as union workers are abandoned by those CEO's from ROGER AND ME, the guys at GM who've moved the factories to Guatemala....and as businesses downsize and so many lawyers are being fired and foreclosed upon right and left, a lot of you most wonderful and clever people may soon be hurting. And when you feel the Insurance companies straining to seize your wallet and the State's hand on your wallet or Stepfather Bank's dictums limiting your inalienable right to drive on city streets, rent homes, talk on the phone, have light, roof, street parking or a free education, you may be joining us. So, tuck this article, book or columns away...for the proverbial rainy day.

             
And understand, I am not suggesting a path of frantic WEIRDNESS to have food, light, roof and car. BUT a little age old, time tested coyote wiliness and busy bee industry which you can do if confronted with the REALITY that THIS SYSTEM wants you ENSLAVED, NEEDY AND DESPERATE should do the trick!  For me, raising four fatherless children with no stipend or job or cash except 200$ welfare, a few 15$ horoscopes for LA's holistic new age community, the AFDC or welfare they gave me was super NADA ---IT BECAME NECESSARY TO BONE UP ON SURVIVAL METHODS (BELOW you will find some URLs to other pages that have tips. I researched and found dozens of WAYS TO SURVIVE THE KILLER SYSTEM. The first is to recognize that they are HERE to exploit you, keep you in slavery, make you so poor that your sons have to become soldiers and go kill innocent people and believe racist, paranoid malarky to stay sane doing it...be their war slaves.. take any job, no UNION protection anymore... Work for pigeon feed....all those indignities, just to have top ramen in their mouths. AND IT WILL GET WORSE. Even if you get HOLD of some food, Nowadays FOOD has no taste as it is AGRO-CORP- GROWN, HMO and no compost, chemical soils. NO NUTRITION and kids go nuts and shoot up schools on this diet. THEY do not care. Their kids are in private schools eating organic diets. SEE HOW THE GOV AND CORPS MAKE THE LITTLE GUY PAY, HOW WE ARE EXPLOITED. So, ONE way to survive is rent old delapidated houses in groups of 2 families or 3. Another is to grow your own food there. A third is to have a cottage industry...Tips on how below in these articles below....

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