A friend forwards me a link - a GoFundMe page for an old chef I used to work with. The chef, 65ish and forever changing phone numbers - on the run, like so many out here - from a host of irate creditors, ex's, dodgy as fuck. One of those people who make reasonably great money yet - month after month-end - after liquor and cigarettes always a dollar short and a day too late, and when enough of those dollars had added up would skip out on his creditors, find a new town to lie low in.
Only now it seems he's run out of places to hide. He'd left for a year - places unknown, and now he's back.
His job ran out - they always do, he'd start off, make a good impression, only soon he'd be drinking before work and coming in hammered, during work, after work until late the next morning, then repeat. It became too much. And he got other jobs, where sobriety was less important, and they too would run out.
He made good enough money even when he wasn't working. He lived with his girlfriend - another big drinker and smoker, and between them - with CERB and his pension and her band money they easily brought in $6,000 per month. Only it all mysteriously vanishes.
Now the girlfriend - younger - maybe 45, but you wouldn't guess a day under 70. Lifestyle. Severely plagued with predictable health issues - all of which are covered by the band. Now she needs some dental work, and so he has the bright idea of setting up a GoFundMe to raise $5,000 to fund her dental work.
I'm not making this up. And - looking over the link I have to laugh - they - him, her, the band - they could cover this tomorrow - if they laid off the sauce, cut back on the smoking. But of course they can't. They won't. And so they've set up a GoFundMe to pay for dental work she will never get - more a GoFundMe to keep them both on the preferred painkillers of choice (Budweiser), and I'm laughing, shaking my head, how fucked up do you have to be to set up a fundraiser to keep you drunk?
Mind you, there is the invisible machine...
This GoFundMe - it's nothing new, I've seen them for people looking to travel, buy a better car, house, go to Shambala, it's crazy what people feel entitled to, that somehow society is responsible for keeping them in the lifestyle to which they've become accustomed, or is somehow obliged to bail them out of their shitty life choices. Me, I've always grown accustomed to less, had modest ambitions, or none at all, and then learned to lower the bar, realized I was asking too much, and maybe I need to set up a GoFundMe - fuck, I could use serious dental work, a 12" schlong, better Vodka, more cigarettes, and when I got that I could raise the bar, make it a living, sort of "Instagram reality" that would probably be a bit too fucking real for Instagram, but - hey - maybe time to put the "reality" back into reality TV...
Anyways, I saw it, between laughing and outrage had to share.