Hell with the lid off...

So last night at the Bistro, i made a new friend. We'll call her 'A' for now. She's from Birmingham, Alabama. i've been to Birmingham. Writer H.L. Menken once described the city of Pittsburgh during the 60's as "...hell with the lid off." At that time, Pittsburgh was an industrial blue-collar town whose primary role was to forge steel in huge molten blast furnaces. The winter skies would be burned black with smoke and soot and the whole city had a depressing feel to it (watch the movie "The Deer Hunter" if you don't believe me). Anyhoo, since Birmingham has become known as the "Pittsburgh of the South" for being the second-largest steel producing city in the U.S. i feel that Menken's words are an apt description for that place. My stay in Birmingham lasted for 2 days, and in that stretch i blew a tire on a busy highway, ran over a piece of concrete in the middle of the road that tore out some vital organs underneath my car, was knocked down in a resturaunt brawl, and had no cell phone service for most of the time. i've got to say, if the government wanted to hide an alien hybrid, develop exparamental aircraft or assimilate a foreign political refugee secretly into the public Birmingham Alabama would be the place to do it. No one would want to look there. It's that bleak.

But i digress. 'A' is a charming girl with a lovely accent who moved to Memphis in search of something better. I'll have to let her down easy on that one. But her boyfriend plays poker for a living. i mean, really, this guy's job (his income, his means of supporting himself and 'A') is to play cards for money. F*cking hell. Either he's incredibly lazy and dangerous, or he's on to something. So i've dug deep into my little brain to see if there are OTHER ways of making a living that perhaps i've overlooked:
• i could watch ESPN, memorize last night's scores, and regurgitate them to people on the street for money.
• I could follow people to BestBuy when they want to purchase a new video game, and offer to beat the game for them for money.
• i could sit next to some member of upper management and verbally support whatever idea he comes up with, for money.
• i could play solitaire for money.
• i could stand in as an extra family member if their boy is over seas, sharing meals with his family and posing for family photos, for money.
• i could just get back to work, which is what they're paying me to do right now...