Shooting the Dream

This is the week my American Dream died. Maybe yours is still fogging the mirror but mine is cold and stiff, prostrate, and staring up at me with fish eyes.

Like most other Americans, I dream of living better than the majority of you. I tolerate all of your social and environmental problems that rule over you by corporations creates, with the understanding that one day I may use the same laws that have let them become rich off all of you, by exploiting your labor, to also make myself richer than I deserve to be. You could call this philosophy Marxism for Number One.

Lately I have been browsing downtown condos looking for the home I would want to live in after I strike it rich, because I'm not much for suburban living. Under the guise of creating a photo album of Seattle's most interesting alleys (which I've been posting on the personal blog, the one nobody reads) I'm actually scoping out which condos look nicest from their backsides. Then I go online and check out the prices.

That led to the first blunt-force trauma to my American Dream. I'm really, really, going to have to exploit the hell out of you all to get a decent condo.

I was stunned to discover that a lot of the guys who brag about their high-rise condos are living in studios with fewer than 500 square feet, because that's all the poor suckers can afford. So it's like, they have trainer condos for the not-so-rich. I've seen bigger rooms in hospital wards. You don't even need a million dollars for one of these trainer condos. You can get one for a quarter million if you shop around. It's sad to see how far the reality is from the glamorous myth. I bet in some of these "luxury" condos you have to sit on the toilet to shower. You have to dress in bed because there's no standing room.

I'm going to need at least half a million to get me a one-bedroom with a view of a loading dock and dumpsters. I'm not sure I want to exploit people that much, it hardly seems worth it.

The hit that killed my Dream once and for all came in the news last week, with reports that a Milwaukee man was arrested and faces up to 6 years and 3 months in prison plus a fine up to $11,000, for shooting his own lawn mower, in his own yard, for not starting.

OK, witnesses say Keith Walendowski was intoxicated when he fired a "shotgun or rifle" into his Lawn Boy, last Wednesday morning. But that is no excuse for arresting him and charging him with a crime. It was his house, his yard, his shotgun and/or rifle, his intoxicant, and his Lawn Boy. And we know that the lazy mower, a glorified tin can, had it coming.

[Right: Our man's mug shot. He looks homeless, but he was housed when he was arrested. When he's released in 6 years, who knows?]

How can I enjoy dreaming about being able to own my own home if, when I finally get one, I can be arrested and put in prison for more than half a decade every time I shoot an insubordinate appliance or motorized lawn tool, even one that's asking for it?

What are they going to do next? Spy on us in the privacy of our own kitchens and arrest us when we shoot our worthless, non self-defrosting refrigerators? Is it now going to be against the law to throw your shoe through your stupid TV screen when your stupid team loses? Did you know that the last pope did that once? Would you lock the pope up for 6 years? Why should anyone even have a stupid TV? Why own a house?

As I despaired of ever being truly free in a home of my own, I realized that's why there's so much homelessness in America today. It just doesn't pay to have a home of your own. You can't do anything in it that you can't do on the streets.