Poor Mojo's Newswire

For a growing number, the food in garbage bins helps make ends meet. At the huge wholesale fruit and vegetable market on the outskirts of this city recently, workers bustled, loading crates onto trucks. But in virtually every bay, there were men and women furtively collecting items that had rolled into the gutter. "It's against the dignity of these people to have to look for food in this manner," said Eduardo Berloso, an official in Girona, the city that padlocked its supermarket trash bins. Mr. Berloso proposed the measure last month after hearing from social workers and seeing for himself one evening "the humiliating gesture of a mother with children looking around before digging into the bins." The Caritas report also found that 22 percent of Spanish households were living in poverty and that about 600,000 had no income whatsoever. All these numbers are expected to continue to get worse in the coming months. About a third of those seeking help, the Caritas report said, had never used a food pantry or a soup kitchen before the economic crisis hit. For many of them, the need to ask for help is deeply embarrassing. In some cases, families go to food pantries in neighboring towns so their friends and acquaintances will not see them. In Madrid recently, as a supermarket prepared to close for the day in the Entrevias district of Vallecas, a small crowd gathered, ready to pounce on the garbage bins that would shortly be brought to the curb. Most reacted angrily to the presence of journalists. In the end, few managed to get anything as the trucks whisked the garbage away within minutes.

For more than a decade now, the Beaumont Independent School District’s Taylor Career and Technology Center in Texas — which has the worst website you’ve seen in a long time — has offered an Adult Cosmetology class. It caters to a lot of single moms, according to instructor Cequada Clark, and she was excited for the new school year. But she recently found out the class was canceled by Principal Thomas Amons. Was it because of budget cuts? A bad evaluation? Nope. It’s because Amons thought one of the students enrolled in the class this semester looked gay. And since it’s illegal to bar someone from a public school because of his sexual orientation, Amons — who is, not surprisingly, a deacon at a Baptist church — decided to just cancel the class altogether . . .

It's an old story: Famous, beloved musician raises a crapload of tour money on Kickstarter. Said musician writes an enthusiastic blog post asking for volunteers to play with her on her tour. Professional musicians get pissed about the fact that a successful musician is asking for free labor. Controversy ensues. Okay, it's not that old a story. In fact, it's happening right now. The musician in question is singer/songwriter Amanda Palmer, who recently raised 1.1 million dollars on Kickstarter to support her next tour, "Theater is Evil." Palmer recently put up a casting call on her blog seeking freelance musicians—a horn section and a string quartet, specifically—from each of the 30-odd cities on her tour. Sounds normal so far, right? Big touring acts hire local players all the time, especially for "non-essential" parts like horn and strings, where it's easier for someone to just roll in and read the charts down without much rehearsal. Well, here's the catch: In this case, the players in question have to attend a soundcheck rehearsal and play the show... for free, paid only in beer and hugs/high—fives. . . . Palmer responded yesterday, telling the New York Times, "If you could see the enthusiasm of these people, the argument would become invalid. They're all incredibly happy to be here … If my fans are happy and my audience is happy and the musicians on stage are happy, where's the problem?" Palmer then pointed out that paying the musicians would cost her around $35,000, which is more than she can afford. That, of course, raised more eyebrows, given Palmer's fame, past success, and million-dollar Kickstarter. . . .

TOKYO — A former president of IBM Japan has been questioned by police after allegedly filming up the skirt of an unsuspecting woman in a train station, local media reported Thursday. Takuma Otoshi, 63, used his iPod to take the illicit footage as the woman rode an escalator at a busy Tokyo station, the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Mainichi Shimbun reported. Passers-by saw what he was doing and reported him to police officers who found the recording, the papers said. Otoshi told officers he was “interested in voyeurism”, according to investigators. Broadcaster NTV said the case would be sent to prosecutors “soon.”