Well, dear readers, you’ve seen the pretty flowers and the cute kitties and the views of sand and surf that make up the image of Hawai’i, the Island Paradise. Now, in rebuttal …
* * *
“So here we are on O’ahu. Are we having fun yet, dude?”
“Uuuuuuuhhhnnnngggg.”
“I take it that’s a ‘no’?”
“Dude, I bought a surfboard. Not a kicking machine. I can’t even get on the flippin’ thing without it dumping me in the ocean and whacking me over the head.”
“Rookie malihini. At least it’s hitting you where it will do the least damage. I hate to think of what it would cost around here if you actually broke something.”
“I’d bleed to death before we got to where we’d have to pay any money. How long we been waitin’ for this bus anyway?”
“I stopped looking. What’s the point?”
“The point is that the goddam thing was supposed to be here more than half an hour ago! I’m getting hungry. And I hafta go to the …”
“Hold it right there, dude. Maybe next time you’ll remember the law of liquid gravity before you guzzle that 32-ouncer.”
“Law of liquid gravity …”
“What goes in, must come out.”
“This is not a good time to piss me off, dude. Where the hell’s that damned bus?”
“Stuck in traffic on the Interstate, I guess …”
“‘Stuck in traffic on … the … Inter …’ Dude! We’re on a flippin’ island! Smack in the middle of the biggest ocean in the world! They won’t even let you catch a ferry to Maui, and somebody wants to build a bridge to California?!? What in the …”
“Your Federal tax dollars at work, dude.”
“Dude?”
“What?”
“If we’re going to have traffic jams like New York …”
“Yeah?”
“And we’re going to pay four figures a month to live on a postage stamp like in New York …”
“Yeah?”
“Why aren’t we in New York?!?”
“So you can go surfing?”
“That’s [ow?] not very nice, dude.”
“And New York would be?”
“At least in New York you can get people to tell you how to do stuff. I asked somebody in Honolulu where to get a bus pass and she said ‘Go here’. I went ‘here’, they didn’t know what I was talking about. So I went back to the first place, and somebody else told me ‘Go there’. So I went ‘there’, they didn’t know you could get a bus pass. So back I went to where I started and …”
“So how do you get a bus pass?”
“I dunno!!! And it’s like that over and over. Nobody knows what anyone else is talking about, no one has the straight dope on anything!!”
“Well, that’s an easy fix, dude.”
“How?”
“They could have you.”
“I’m not for sale, dude!”
“Payperblaug.com kicked you off their site again?”
“Dude?”
“Now what?”
“Ever hear of El Kabong?”
“Watch it, dude, you’re really dating yourself.”
“At least then I’d get a date, unlike some dudes of my acquaintance. Who’d better watch themselves, ’cause I swear, if I hear any more of this meshugginah Hawai’ian elevator music, I’m gonna snatch their ukuleles right out of their hands and somebody’s going to get an El Kabong right on …”
“… their surfboard bruises?”
“Dude, if I were a man, I’d leave you to stew in your own abuse and go swimming. But all those fleabitten-looking tents on the beach bother me. What are they, anyway?”
“Uh, that’s where the homeless people of Hawai’i hang out. Not everybody can afford to spend four figures a month to live on a postage stamp, y’know.”
“Shit, dude, that’s terrible. Who are they, the crackheads?”
“No. The teachers.”
– O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2007 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.
Hawaii now has more miles of interstate than Delaware!?!?!? Holy Cow!
At first I was tempted to laugh at “Homeless in Hawai’i” because I think I wouldn’t mind living on a beach there. But after I read the article that you linked, I realized that it’s not good to be homeless anywhere. BUT, it’s better there than here.
On the teachers: I’m amazed that their salaries are so low! Unless I misread the figures, the highest mean monthly salary is under $50,000. Much less than right here, and yet the islands are so expensive to live on! Could the mean be skewed for some reason by including some exceptionally low salaries? Maybe they’re including some part-timers?
TLP — with the cost of living index, Hawaii teachers are the worst paid teachers in the nation.
Quilly, you’re not living in a tent, are you?
Duuuuuuude…. you didn’t check this out before MOVING there? Sure hope OC brings home the bacon by the SLAB!
Nessa — OC wouldn’t let me live in a tent if I wanted to.
Melli — I knew I wouldn’t be self-supporting here. I didn’t know it would be so dang difficult to get people to talk to me!
My view is limited because everytime I was there it was at a hotel. Once I did stay at a friend’s house, or shack if you prefer, because that is what it was.
I loved it there every time I went although once we did get some very rude treatment at a beach which the locals like to keep for themselves.
I think you will eventually love it.
At the very least when the blizzards are taking over here, and the streets are full of ice you might
chuckle.
Yes they do, TLP – though I’ll bet Delaware’s are better designed. And used less. It’s gridlock here. The problem with the teachers is actually pretty much throughout the public service. People claim, anyway, that they have trouble getting folks to take government jobs because the pay is so far below what can be made in the public sector for the same amount of work. But of course, as PC Dude found out trying to get a bus pass, you pretty much have to have been born on the island before anyone will tell you the correct time of day. Never mind the correct story about jobs etc.
As a scientist, nessa, I don’t use the words “never” or “always”. But I ain’t into tents.
Melli, they invited me here. They’d better …
Quilly, I was afraid of that. Maybe if we adopted a native …
Cooper, I’m told that people here either love the place or hate it, no middle ground. Every place runs by its own rules, and the Dudes are just announcing themselves as effing haoles by complaining about what they don’t yet fully understand. There is a reason why we’re not in New York … 😉
I like this post, OC, you are a funny man! And thanks for the link to the homeless. I was glad to read that MAYBE they are going to start trying to do something about the problem. I’ll never understand how we can spend millions saving whales or something, and have hungry people without homes.
Hi Quilly and O.C……….Ya, all islands, it seems, are expensive, even the ones close to a mainland. I really hope you don’t have to pay tourist prices for food and necessities.
In Jamaica, anyone is allowed to take food off of trees or from crops, even on private property. if it’s not fenced in…and most is not. (a few at a time, of course. I’m sure, they frown on taking your own bushel baskets.) m-m-m? How many pineapples could a homeless Hawaiin eat? Just asking! Imagine the acid reflux!
Teachers in Canada get good reinbursements…$50,000 after 5 years with a B.A., for grade school, and that was years ago. (Weather…you say! Southern Ontario is on the same latitude as northern California…..but it’s not as great as Hawaii. ) And we are a university town. So, will we be seeing you folks soon?…………Judy
Well, Judy, I lived in Montreal for two years. We’ll see … 😉
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