[from 8/19/09]
Another week, another column. Time to set aside my many other important writing projects such as my planned pamphlet, The Definitive A-Z on What I Will Admit I Don't Know, By Copyright Dr. Wes Browning, and my developing Field Guide To Bird-Avoidance, to have 666 words of raw fun with the events of the week.
Trouble is, as often happens on the Mondays I have to write these, the events of the week haven't happened yet. In the case of this week's election, they've mostly happened, but the part of the happening that tells what has happened hasn't happened as I'm writing this. Then, there's the health care reform business, which is a story of too little happening. People shout every day. Shouting isn't news.
So I'm forced into Andy Rooney-izing, and to write a column combining my ancient perspective, reminiscences, long held pet peeves, and speculations based on ignorance, to come up with lame ideas relating to something that hardly matters. That something would be the so-called barbecue my subsidized building for-the-previously-homeless puts on every year at a Seattle park. This year the Union Hotel Apartments barbecue will be just about to happen as this issue appears, at a park on Lake Washington.
I call it a so-called barbecue not only because that's what the management, who will run it in all of its significant details, has called it, but out of my own hope that the barbecue sauce will be optional. I despise barbecue sauce, and if it's on everything I am not going to stick around.
I am also not going to stick around if there's a repeat of the incident 3 or 4 years ago at one of these, when a Union management employee less than half my age, half my experience, a tenth my wits was grilling up a burger that I had dibs on, and I told him it was more than done, and he said, "No, I have to keep cooking it so we're absolutely sure you don't get E Coli" and he proceeded to cook me a beef-based charcoal briquet. Which, after one disgusting bite, I slam-dunked into the nearest trash can.
The peeve part is this: How does "formerly homeless" translate into "incapable of ever making their own decisions?" If it's going to be my food, that means it's going to go into my own mouth. Why does some kid who happens to qualify for overnight desk duty at an apartment building get away with telling me what should go into my mouth, when I've been cooking my own food successfully longer than he's been alive?
Morbidly dwelling upon that one annoying incident as if it happened yesterday, as I gird myself psychologically for this year's happy times community barbecue in the park, I have come up with a great lame Andy Rooney-esque idea. We residents of the Union Hotel Apartments are all expected to have case-workers assigned to us to help us deal with all the problems we might encounter in the course of living in the strange indoors with other bipeds. My clever idea is, let's insist that all the management of all the social services have case-workers, too.
I mean, the guy who cremated my burger would really benefit from regular guidance in how to get along with the people he "serves"; maybe a case-worker could also guide him to services that could help him with his irrational germ phobia, or at least get him hooked up with a proper cooking class, if he's going to keep that up.
Once I get a great lame idea I can't stop myself making it greater. If homeless and formerly people all need case-workers, then that must mean, given the fact that anyone in the world could become homeless, that everyone in the world must therefore logically need case-workers. Simon Cowell, Mark Sanford, Harry Reid, everyone!
Think of the savings to taxpayers, if case-workers could steer even a fraction of the chronically over-empowered to harmless pursuits.
Trouble is, as often happens on the Mondays I have to write these, the events of the week haven't happened yet. In the case of this week's election, they've mostly happened, but the part of the happening that tells what has happened hasn't happened as I'm writing this. Then, there's the health care reform business, which is a story of too little happening. People shout every day. Shouting isn't news.
So I'm forced into Andy Rooney-izing, and to write a column combining my ancient perspective, reminiscences, long held pet peeves, and speculations based on ignorance, to come up with lame ideas relating to something that hardly matters. That something would be the so-called barbecue my subsidized building for-the-previously-homeless puts on every year at a Seattle park. This year the Union Hotel Apartments barbecue will be just about to happen as this issue appears, at a park on Lake Washington.
I call it a so-called barbecue not only because that's what the management, who will run it in all of its significant details, has called it, but out of my own hope that the barbecue sauce will be optional. I despise barbecue sauce, and if it's on everything I am not going to stick around.
I am also not going to stick around if there's a repeat of the incident 3 or 4 years ago at one of these, when a Union management employee less than half my age, half my experience, a tenth my wits was grilling up a burger that I had dibs on, and I told him it was more than done, and he said, "No, I have to keep cooking it so we're absolutely sure you don't get E Coli" and he proceeded to cook me a beef-based charcoal briquet. Which, after one disgusting bite, I slam-dunked into the nearest trash can.
The peeve part is this: How does "formerly homeless" translate into "incapable of ever making their own decisions?" If it's going to be my food, that means it's going to go into my own mouth. Why does some kid who happens to qualify for overnight desk duty at an apartment building get away with telling me what should go into my mouth, when I've been cooking my own food successfully longer than he's been alive?
Morbidly dwelling upon that one annoying incident as if it happened yesterday, as I gird myself psychologically for this year's happy times community barbecue in the park, I have come up with a great lame Andy Rooney-esque idea. We residents of the Union Hotel Apartments are all expected to have case-workers assigned to us to help us deal with all the problems we might encounter in the course of living in the strange indoors with other bipeds. My clever idea is, let's insist that all the management of all the social services have case-workers, too.
I mean, the guy who cremated my burger would really benefit from regular guidance in how to get along with the people he "serves"; maybe a case-worker could also guide him to services that could help him with his irrational germ phobia, or at least get him hooked up with a proper cooking class, if he's going to keep that up.
Once I get a great lame idea I can't stop myself making it greater. If homeless and formerly people all need case-workers, then that must mean, given the fact that anyone in the world could become homeless, that everyone in the world must therefore logically need case-workers. Simon Cowell, Mark Sanford, Harry Reid, everyone!
Think of the savings to taxpayers, if case-workers could steer even a fraction of the chronically over-empowered to harmless pursuits.
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