As egg prices continue to skyrocket, have we lost faith in our chickens? Have Easter Egg Hunts become a sign of prosperity reserved only for the upper echelon? Maybe it’s time to replace a dozen chicken eggs with a single emu one. Maybe size does matter.

We’ve built a world on margins.

Corporations apply ruthless tactics to already healthy business plans, leading to skyrocketing profit margins sending even more commonfolk into the margins of society. These margins are dug trenches establishing the battlelines except most of us have discovered the cost of a shovel is now groundbreaking.

The New York State Returnable Container Act of 1982 established the redeemable 5-cent return on recyclable cans and bottles. Almost half a century later and it’s still a nickel. If 5-cents today is the same as 5-cents in 1982, when factoring in inflation, think how little your 2-cents now matters.

Inflation and the insignificance of a nickel has led to homeless adopting more entrepreneurial endeavors most notably begging for change at traffic lights. And in the wise words of Smash Mouth, we could all use a little change. Are any of us Allstars anymore?

Once while pumping gas a homeless man offered me a joke in exchange for money. I provided a dollar, he held up his end of the bargain: Why did the duck end up in jail? He was selling quack.

A dollar provides so little fuel these days. How minuscule of a distance George Washington can still carry us.

The homeless business plan has gotten profitable enough some of the homed dress down in worn dirty clothes and try their luck at automobile intersections making more than a minimum wage job would offer.

Hansel & Gretel’s story becomes much more streamlined when you can’t even afford bread crumbs and when looking at the cost of groceries it does seem a little less risky to kill a witch to eat her home to save some money. Of course, eating too many homes could once again lead to a housing crisis and leave even more homeless. Especially if Hansel & Gretel were a metaphor for large corporations buying up single family abodes.

That quack is looking awfully good now but we must return to our original point, why emus? Well, because they won a war against humans armed with guns (the great emu war) and maybe revolution isn’t the sole prerogative of the birds unless we’re chicken.

Face smudged, eyes taut, ribs exposed under a sunken chest, his unbuttoned black shirt flapped in the wind. I gave him another dollar and asked for another joke. He quickly pocketed the dollar, pointed to my car’s sideview mirror. “Look in there,” he said smiling with yellow teeth.

What the duck, I thought.

Already twenty feet away, he fished a can out of the corner garbage bin and kicked the 5-cents down the sidewalk in front of him as he strolled along without a care in the world.

What’s the point of a 24/7 world if it’s behind the display case that is our phone screens? Right in front of us, beyond our reach. The greatest inconvenience store ever constructed by man.