The James Stephen Allred Issue
April 2007
- Preacher-formerly- known-as-Gary’s name officially changed
- Angelina Jolie’s child slave ring discovered
- A Convenient Truth: Beaches getting closer
- The Japanese invent everything
Do not leave your belongings unattended
Bitch, I’m trying to get this shit stolen!
Why am I hot? This is why:
- Glitter on my butt cleavage (60.3%)
- Faulty air-conditioner (4%)
- Grandma's Itchy Wool Sweater (18%)
- Cause I'm Fly (3%)
- Plastic Surgery (5%)
- The scalding Sun (10.7%)
April 2007 Articles
- Center Spread: Hobo House Party!
- How to spend the last ten days of your college life
- Fiery death teaches hard lesson on fire code
- “Weathermob” busted
- BoUNCe finds the truth behind on-campus environmental activism
- Savory shrimp sauce seduces
- Senior’s final article anticlimactic
- Want the perfect roommate? Create your own!
- Ask Alli
- Like working but not getting paid? Then get an internship!
- Stereotypes are gay and smell funny
- Daily Vanity: Your reliable source for SUPERHERO GOSSIP - #205
- Candidates clamor to showcase spouse’s ills in a full out battle for sympathy vote
- NCAA hoops, Aztec-style
- Reading lesson a “sex”-cess
- CA primaries cause debate, time travel
- Duke’s Next Top Karate Star premieres
- Suffragin' Succotash! Vegetables Get the Vote!
- BoUNCe Sells Out
You may have noticed the people shamelessly begging for money on the behalf of the environment on campus a few weeks ago. These people have generally identified themselves as members of Environment North Carolina. However, through multiple interviews, back-alley dealings and acts of cloak-and-dagger espionage over the course of several weeks, BoUNCe’s top reporters have learned the truth; they were actually homeless people.
More like legions of homeless people, legions led by a renegade street person called Winston Randolph (“Chip”) Wood IV. After receiving his MBA from Harvard Business School, Wood moved to New York City to found several doomed online fantasy gambling ventures. He filed for bankruptcy after the SEC sued him for securities violations. He then found a Styrofoam cup on the street, poured the rainwater out of it, and curled up on the corner of 42nd and 8th in a position that implied he would like passersby to put spare change in that cup.
After one especially fruitless day of begging, Wood picked up a copy of The New York Times from the gutter to use as a blanket, when a piece called “The Year Without Toilet Paper” caught his eye. Wood had an epiphany. People care way more about the environment than they do about homeless people. Remembering his training at Harvard, Wood decided he could turn this into a profitable enterprise, applying the skills he learned as a derelict to a cause people would be more inclined to support.
Wood rounded up some of his itinerant companions and sent delegations to other environmentally conscious whistle-stops, namely San Francisco, Boulder, Austin, and Chapel Hill. Upon arriving at each town, the delegations rounded up hobos and trained them according to Wood’s theories of effective begging.
Rather than saying, “can you spare some change?” or “I’m trying to get a bite to eat, man,” associates were instructed to ask, “Do you have a minute for the environment?”
“You have to phrase your inquiries in a way that would make any reasonable person feel like a dick if they refuse,” Wood told one delegation, according to someone close to the operation.
Then, once the passerby is cornered, the associate is safe to hit him or her up for cash, knowing that the passerby will feel awkward for having listened to a supplication, nodding in agreement at all the appropriate times, unless he or she contributes to the cause.
Wood’s approach has been wildly successful. To date, Environment North Carolina and its counterparts across the country have raised over $8 million, less generous contributions to the malt liquor lobby, and made about 16 million pedestrians feel like total putzes.