(If ex-thieves can have a television show, current thieves can have a diary all to themselves.)
The men behind robinhood.blogspot.com, a blog that details (sometimes without much detail) the travails of two Missouri burglars, say the economic recession has meant so many empty homes that they sometimes struggle to pay their bills.
"Before 2007," user Robin Hood wrote Tuesday on the blog, "you could tell if someone was on vacation just by looking at who was picking up the mail. If the person came from the outside and then didn't walk inside with the mail, the house was a good target. Otherwise, the family was home.
"But now, with so many homes empty, we've had to find ways to tell between houses that have no residents and the houses that also have no furniture. It was really tough at first, and we actually had to dip into our savings."
"Robin Hood" and "Little John," who thus far have managed to conceal their true identities -- they steal their Internet connection, though they won't say from whom -- declined to be interviewed for this article.
(Did I mention my application at The Onion was rejected?)
Missouri Attorney General Maria Williamson said the "criminals' plight should not and does not endear them to us. They are criminals, they are breaking the law and bragging about it, and Missouri's finest will apprehend them and ensure that they are prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent of the law."
Many of the comments on the blog are from critics of the criminals, but several longtime thieves and more than a few self-proclaimed "Merry Men" also frequent the site, which draws more than 50,000 hits per month.
When Robin Hood discovered some users were blocking the ads that help pay the thieves' bandwidth bill every month, he applauded what he called "life's great irony. It's the best laugh I've had all month.
"And if I ever find one of you leechers, I'll take everything you have down to the tacks keeping your carpets on the floor."
Little John lamented the decline of the travel season for burglars:
People who used to put their electricity on automatic timers aren't doing that anymore. It was great, because who the hell turns their lights on at exactly 8 p.m. and then turns them off at exactly 11?
But that's if they even go on vacation. These staycations are really pissing us off. You guys need to get out more. Nature is a great place to go to get away from it all -- literally.
Robin Hood issued a more delicate suggestion later:
In these difficult economic times, it's important that the residents of Missouri and surrounding states understand that we're just trying to get by -- just like them. We're not looking to hurt anyone, just reappropriate things people didn't need in the first place. You leave your house for a week, some nice-looking item happens to be missing when you get back, you thank your lucky stars you weren't injured.
We can even supply a list of foreclosed homes to stay in for a few days so it feels like you're in a rented vacation house. Just bring your own food and water. Don't like staying inside all day? Bring sleeping bags, snooze under the stars and dig a toilet. Go walking through other people's yards while they're at work -- if they're at work. It's all the fun of camping, and you don't have to deal with bears.
Little John wrote a week ago that the criminal capers had extended their "reclamation radius" from 100 to 150 miles because "people just don't have as much to steal anymore."
It was really bad last summer, when gas was like $4 a gallon and we were driving 200 miles roundtrip to hit a house for like $300 worth of loot. That meant we could do like two trips a night, max, whereas before, we could hit three, four places in a row. At one point, we were even taking people's carpets just for the $5 a square yard we could get for them at Goodwill.
And now, the worst part is, people aren't even keeping their semivaluable stuff anymore. They're hawking it on eBay. We'll go in one week under the ruse of spraying for mites or whatever, and the next week, we'll to go case the joint, and that $500 vase will be gone.
And even the eBay market has gotten pretty competitive. Plus, more and more people have learned to not bid until there's 30 seconds left in an auction. So we've had to start helping to maintain the market value of our wares.
Cuz at the end of the day, legitimate business or not, a guy's gotta eat, and I'm not talking baloney sandwiches. You gotta eat healthy to lug oak tables around. Thank God for flat screens, though. I can carry two of those at once. I just don't get to much because nobody's buyin' 'em.
Robin Hood, who said in the blog that he keeps abreast of political developments "like grants for Missouri police departments," recommended that Midwestern Kossacks attend Netroots Nation:
So Daily Kos users in Missouri, I hear there's this Netroots Nation meeting thing going on in Pennsylvania. You should all go to that. I strongly recommend it. We need the netroots to all be able to come together for at least a week and talk a lot about how to organize people to improve our country and work for our president. We want Missouri to turn blue for the next election. The netroots is a vital part of our economic infrastructure. So go out and meet people. Leave the fancy computer and the new digital camera at home, and just go interact with your fellow Kossacks in your blogging clothes -- jeans and a T-shirt. Take the bus, too. It'll save you some money, which you can donate to Netroots for the Troops, and it's better for the environment.
Oh, and TiVo "Antiques Roadshow" for us. We watch every episode.