Susie Bright: If you want to live in a van or be a stripper, then she's got some tips for you.

Tara the Hobo Stripper is a van-living, traveling striptease dancer and self-taught herbal medicine guru who's recently settled into a remote cabin in her native home of Alaska.

Even if Tara weren't expert in so many trades, it would be hard to put down her diary:

It's winter. I'm reading a lot. I'm drawing and figuring out how to make recycled sock monkeys. I keep an eternal pot of tea (a sort of infusion, really) on the stove with a big jelly straining bag as the tea bag. It's ginger oatstraw right now, and I drink it with honey.

Another pot on the stove is a perpetual snow melter. A full pot of snow makes two inches of water in the bottom of the pot. Yesterday I balanced one of the candles on top of a water bucket, which, piled on top of other water buckets, made the light just right for sitting in this chair and reading. Then I got a phone sex call and decided to make dinner and forgot about the candle until my water bucket caught on fire!

Now I have a water bucket with a hole in it and a dead candle that probably would have lasted another week if I'd blown it out and let it re-harden before it burned all the way through.

Other essential HoboStripper writings:

(Almost) everything you need to know about living in a van.

The Stripper Audition

The Joy of Nettles, One and Two

(Susie Bright is a guest blogger)

• [HoboStripper]

  Okay, I dunno what’s up with the hosting. It’s supposed to be on a dedicated server, but it keeps going down. Tech support keeps upgrading the problem. The main page does seem to work more often than individual pages do, for now, and hopefully it’ll be fixed really soon (it’s escalated and expedited with the hosting people now).

• [FoetusNail]

  I’m going to miss Susie. She’s fun and interesting as hell.

• [Scribbler]

  Bng Bng.cm. Nw wth strpprs lvng n vns.
  By, hs ths wbst dgrdd.

• [MomTheBlog]

  h hr prnts mst b ‘s prd’?!

• [Mark Frauenfelder]

  txtmssg: A2 ||| A23409:239380-0 SP-43093|||
  SND: codeHound
  [URGENT]
  LOC: Sector 13m

  unHappy Mutant ALERT: 23411a.98rx3456.3

  PROFILE: [Scribbler"]
  DESCRIP: Be on the lookout for netizen, [Scribbler]. Self-styled sexual morals critic and armchair judge of human behavior.

  nWOB ntelligence: Known unHappy mUtant. Smug. Agressively not interesting. Socially inept.

  Action: Ban [Scribbler ] for one week. Once reinstated, if [Scribbler ] continues to publicly make offensive ass of self enforce permanent ban.

  Ciao –

  Kata

  txtmssg: A2 END ||| A23409:239380-0 SP-43093||

  Transmission channel: WARDPARKWAY

• [acrocker]

  aaand it appears that her site is exploded… too many people interested in striping, apparently.

• [UglyDeafMuslimPunkGurl]

  yeah, we already have Diablo Cody. We don’t need another Diablo, thanks

• [Glossolalia Black]

  Kudos to her for unashamedly living her life, and an interesting one to boot. I doubt I have it in me to live in a van, even if I did come to town 16 years ago with only $30 and a backpack.

• [Rectifier]

  Tara from the vandwellers group! The internet is a small place? I used to read a lot and post a little on that group, but under a different name that I forget now.

  Always thought you were mighty tough to live in a van in Alaska. I couldn’t even make it in the winter in Canada… just couldn’t beat the humidity, and the soggy damp life was not for me.

  Sadly I had to give up the van dream, but I’m still working on a proper woodstove for the van, slowly.

• [SimplyAaron]

  I’d be interested to see her publish a book about her current lifestyle, I totally dig people who create their own outside the typical system; van living stripper being waaay outside the norm.

  Maybe a working website too, that would be cool.

• [Grey Eyed Man of Destiny]

  google cache can get you most of her posts, here’s a link for “the stripper audition”

  http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:0Y8QdsD_OGAJ:www.hobostripper.com/171/stripping-101-the-audition/+http://www.hobostripper.com/171/stripping-101-the-audition/&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a

  and hey scribbler, just took a peak at your history; did Susie kill your dog or something?

• [WeightedCompanionCube]

  I can get the occasional page to load, but usually I get the following:

  Firefox can’t establish a connection to the server…
   IN A VAN…
    DOWN BY THE RIVER!

• [Takuan]

  an UnHappy neh? Reckon we’ll get the nets and mutanting irons unlimbered, sometimes they go rogue. Don’t forget to take your antidotes.

• [Anonymous]

  none of the links worked for me, I got the error:
  “Error establishing a database connection”

• [HoboStripper]

  Sorry, everyone! You guys blew up my hosting. I upgraded and it should work now, tho you might get the occasional DNS error.

• [HoboStripper]

  Sorry, everyone! You guys blew up my hosting! I upgraded, and it should work now, tho you might get the occassional DNS error.

• [Mark Frauenfelder]

  Scribbler’s been banned for a while so s/he can have some time to calm down and play nicely.

• [buddy66]

  Scribbler likes neither vowels nor girls.

• [minTphresh]

  scribbler’s a whiney asshat. my personal take on it, anyway! i just don’t get why anyone would go out of their way to sign up for commenting on this site, and then use that to just whine about suzie bright. WTF? not the first time he has been sent to bed w/out his supper. i’m sorry, maybe ‘asshat’ was a bit harsh. more like a butthead. or a bevis.