FLASHFORWARD: January 2011

Yeah! I found one of those new plastic dollar coins in the gutter at the end of the alley this morning!

Who would have figured that after many failed attempts to get spoiled Americans to use a dollar coin the solution was to make it out of lightweight plastic? Turns out people didn't like the previous metal ones since they weighed down their pockets and purses and could scratch their phones. Good thing for me they're almost weightless...all the better for someone to drop one and be unaware of their loss. This is the second one I found this month!

So this buck, added to the $14 I collected earlier in the week, means I can finally buy a small 12oz box of beer. I've been jonesin' for it bad!

Don't get me wrong, the pills distributed by the Department of Citizen Safekeeping are a fair substitute but gettin' to sip an ice cold black-market Canadian brew every now and then is just so fine! Though I do miss American beers since they've all been bought up by foreign companies or banned by the Obama Politburo.

"Oh, don't get me started about Comrade Obama," I grumble to myself since no one else will listen to a fat grizzly bear of a dirty homeless man lying on a pile of cardboard in a dark alley. Except maybe for the 50 or so others in this same spot who call this "Barack Backwater" their "Home Sweet Home."

"We can't blame our fate on the Peoples' President," some old sot growls at me from his dumpster a few feet away, "at least he took care of the greedy corporations that put us in this mess in the first place!"

Yes, he did nationalize virtually all industries and left the rich high and dry in order to fund the Glorious Peoples' Fund, the vast coffers of which he was able to bring about so many new changes...free medicine, free healthcare, free food and free housing. The latter though, turned out to be short-lived as available units were immediately filled to capacity and we latecomers were left out in the cold...literally.

Well, like I said, at least I'll be gettin' some beer in my belly...maybe tomorrow there'll even be work? It's like that song from "Annie", you know, "The sun'll come out, tomorrow...bet your plastic dollar that...."

"Arrrgh," I gurgle as the old sot comes over and slits my throat with his grimy knife.