C-Drive Refuse: Dead hobo jokes never go out of style

This is a piece I did for my university paper’s yearly funny-mag a few years ago. I came upon it accidentally while searching for an ancient set of questions I worked up for a Weird Al Yankovic interview that was supposed to happen a year ago, but never did, and I thought that it was prime blogging material. It was originally designed to spoof the style of our city’s leading newspaper (and the city’s hilariously offensive turbo-capitalist culture), so residents of Calgary may get more out of it. But, as the title of this post implies, hobo jokes are fairly universal. So here you are, internet, a five hundred word dead hobo joke. You’re welcome.

Grab your buckets and your garden hoes, because it’s time for the seventh annual Frozen Hobo Cleanup, sponsored by the Downtown Association!

“I’m glad to be doing my part!” exclaims Dominique Brown, sloshing a steaming chemical cocktail out of her HoBucket(TM) as she gallops down a white-washed fourth ave. The sleet drenching the sidewalks bursts into acrid steam as the fluid contacts it.

“[The HoBucket(TM)] is specially designed to contain the mixture,” said resident Downtown Association scientist, Dr. Fujimori, when questioned about the primary method used to unfreeze the dead homeless from sidewalks and alleyways. “[The mixture] is essentially just water and some miscible polymers to keep it [hot] without needing to be re-heated. It’s the same principle that goes into hot packs that you might put into your gloves or boots while skiboarding [sic]. The only drawback is the poisonous gas created when it’s mixed with real water, or snow, sleet, ice, or whatever have you, so we encourage all of our volunteers to wear protective masks.”

The use of the HoBucket(TM) marks the most meaningful change for the Downtown Association’s hobo cleanups since they managed to rent out firehoses to clean out the “muckier areas” (abandoned warehouses, gravel pits, etc.). Unfortunately, some constitutionally embedded human rights laws kept the DA from turning the hoses streetside.

“It isn’t like those have stopped us before,” said Downtown Association Executive Director Greta Snowfeldt. “I think by next year we should have hoses filled with the HoBucket solution. We’re in talks with the mayor.”

Plus, the poisonous gas isn’t all bad, or so said volunteer Brown.

“Sure, it doesn’t smell great,” said Brown, pulling on her gas mask and Haz-Mat hood. “I think it does some nasty stuff to their skin. But I feel like I’m doing a good thing, helping to keep Calgary beautiful!”

Unfortunately, some of the homeless people aren’t quite as hypothermic as they’d like, and being covered in searing liquid doesn’t put them in the best of moods. Such was the case with volunteer Brown, as a recently-unfrozen, psychotic vagrant lunged at her, pus leaking from the blisters on his face, his eyes white with rage and scar tissue. Dominique Brown is remembered fondly by her parents and little sister as someone who gave her life for her city’s aesthetic. The vagrant was put down by a Downtown Association “Public and Wet Works” Team later that day, as he scavenged the suburbs for food scraps and errant pets.

“Well, a positive spin-off of the poisonous gas is that it usually ki—erm, placates the refuse in question, but we’ve had some mishaps in the past,” said Fujimori. “Sometimes it gives them this weird—I don’t know—Retard strength. I cant really explain that.”

All and all, the Downtown Assoication thinks their clean up project has been fruitful over the past seven years—and well worth it.

“Yeah, I’d say I get some real fulfillment from my job,” adds Snowfeldt. “It’s a lot of brave men and women out there who sign up—at great personal risk with no promise of monetary gain—to help keep this city clean and beautiful. God bless them.”