Notes from the Underground

Occasionally yours truly speaks at people about having been homeless. (I usually wait to be invited.) Last Sunday I was asked to participate in a panel discussion about parks and park benches, and say why homeless people need parks. So this led to some six minutes of me expressing the concept “duh” different ways.

However, I also mentioned that I’ve personally never needed parks, per se. I’ve always felt a need for catacombs, which I regard as park-equivalents. I couldn’t elaborate on that at the event, so I thought why not squander 550 words doing so now?

I guess the first time I felt I needed catacombs was at age 9, on the Day the Music Died, Feb. 3, 1959, when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash together. I began to believe I needed to live below ground. I don’t know if there’s a connection, but I know people don’t fall up.

Two years later I got my first pimple. Again, I don’t know if there was a connection, but I began to have compulsive fantasies about digging a cave out of the side of a hill, and installing a camouflage door. I could figure out how to have camouflage skylights, a garden, fountains, and a working oven. I could eat roots, blanched grubs, and ant-paste. But how to get TV? I could tap into power lines, but that would be illegal, and, sadly, I was addicted to the law.

Then in high school I answered the call of Bill Speidel, who wanted to excavate the Seattle Underground, make it a tourist attraction, and promote the cleanup of Pioneer Square. Between hours spent underground shoveling dust without a helmet or mask for my new slave master Mr. Bill, he entertained us high schoolers with stories about how the Underground came into being, and how after it was closed up bums lived there! Since Bill wrote non-fiction, and it was around 1965, I believed him.

There was hope. Perhaps there were outlets down there and I could estimate the bills and send checks. But on closer inspection, there were no outlets. Besides, having an address Underground, I would not be able to maintain checking.

Years later I realized, only just in time to get married and live in a house with a Seattle City Light connection, that I would not solve the TV problem until the Future arrived and with it, the invention of low-power sets that would make the pedal-driven generator a practical power source. But I still felt the Call of the Catacombs in my heart and soul.

Perhaps I could have gotten help with my TV addiction, or my law addiction. There should be a patch for the first and a Twelve Step Program for the second. But no matter how hard I try to remember that the power company just stole the power from the river and the fish or made it by burning coal from out of the Earth that no one rightfully owns, still, it’s “theirs,” somehow. They bought that Earth from someone, who bought it from someone, who… stole it. It’s all stolen property, ultimately.

Not everyone is so conflicted. James David Hodge, who lived 12 years beneath the UW Music Department, didn’t care if he paid for his electricity. An unknown number of residents of the New York City subway tunnels in the nineties had TVs with VCRs, washing machines and dryers, using so much power it must have slowed the trains each day by a second or two. I just couldn’t let myself be the cause of so much tragedy.

So I’ll have to wait until I’m dead to live down there. Then, in a million or so years, mutated descendants of the rats or the squirrels or the cockroaches who survive us will fight over the power released from burning me, in order to get high and laugh at Twilight Zone tapes.

Tells of Indecision

Let's talk about the undecided!

There have already been a lot of people doing that. For example, just last Sunday, Andy Rooney, a TV commentator and veteran of the Hundred Years War, more or less came out and said that the people who haven't decided how to vote in the presidential election coming up are stupid.

That was very insensitive of Mr. Rooney, and we, of course, would never choose to emulate his politically incorrect example, however tempted we were.

Still, you've got to wonder, don't you? I mean, Bush and Kerry have each been around a while. They've been arguing with each other since Friends went off the air. The third party candidates have all declared their positions in detail. Some of them have run for president before. There's been nothing on TV but reruns and that Vanuatu junk, so there've been no distractions there. So what's it going to take to get the undecided to make up their minds? Do we have to buy them all beers and salted nuts?

Did you all notice how the audience at the Town Hall debate between Bush and Kerry included undecided would-be voters selected by the Gallup organization? I bet some of you imagined that to pick undecided voters you should just get a bunch of folks into a room, ask who all is decided, and then tell the ones who didn't raise their hands to get in the van. But if you think that's how it is done, that just shows how unscientific you are when it comes to undecidedness.

Actually spotting someone who is undecided about the 2004 presidential election requires great ingenuity, talent and professional experience. If you or I did it, we'd probably be still looking. But the Gallup guys got the job done right on time, and they probably only charged more than all the money I've ever seen in my life put together.

Just how do you find the undecided? Well, like finding the homeless, the gay, the vegetarian, the Scrabble enthusiast, the ambidextrous, or the Irish, it takes a keen eye and a deep familiarity with the culture of the target.

First, you must weed out unlikely subjects. You rule out anyone wearing a hat for instance. Anyone who can pick out a hat and commit to it for even a day can decide among this year's presidential candidates. It is no accident that there were so few hats in the audience of the Town Hall debate. The one guy with the beret just wandered in to bum cigarettes.

Do the socks match? Here's a dead give-away: right sock red, left sock blue. But other mismatches can also tell a woeful tale of indecision.

Pollsters regularly make use of vast archives of data from past surveys, which they share among themselves freely. So the Gallup people knew to contact the Pepsi people and obtain their extensive listings of people who couldn't complete the Pepsi Challenge. Gallup itself has amassed long lists of people who don't know if O.J. did it, or if Nixon should resign or not, or whether the Vietnam War was a good idea or not.

You know you might have someone who is undecided if they aren't sure whether we've been to the moon. Maybe we have, maybe it was a hoax, who knows? You might have an undecided person if they're waiting to choose between creationism and evolution for the final definitive study on the subject. Or they think there may be an answer nobody's thought of, perhaps dealing with can-openers.

When, looking for the undecided, you see someone who has a Pro-Life or Pro-Choice bumper sticker on their car, let them pass. You don't want to talk to the people who've made up their minds about stem-cell research, any of them would have no trouble deciding who to vote for. The people you want are folks who think maybe we shouldn't rush into this women's suffrage thing until we've looked at all sides of the issue.

They say there are still 5 million undecided voters for president in this country. Yikes.

Famous Lamous

OK. I was in a really foul mood when I was writing this column for last issue, and that may have caused me to froth excessively. But to refer to it as "my lamest column ever" as one person did is simply ignorant. My lamest column ever was in fact the Sept. 1, 1997 column, which opened with the words "In a world of Labrador Retrievers, I am a duck!! (OHHH YES!! OH YYESSS!! A DUCK, I AM, a DUCK, oooooooh yesss!)," and ended with the sad admission that I was not a duck after all. When I think of lame, I think of that column, which forever set the standard of lame for all columns everywhere.

There is absolutely no possibility that any new column I write will ever be as bad as the duck column, owing to the superiority of my current anti-psychotic medication. Still, I want to try. Because, what is life without hope? If we don't challenge our challenges, what will we challenge? I, for one, vowed long ago that I would not surrender to a shallow, vain, pursuit of excellence.

I could just write "I suck" 400 times and turn that in as a column. The management of this rag has assured me that they are prepared for that eventuality. There is in fact a not-very-secret document in a file cabinet in the back room entitled "Wes sucks" that provides no less than two plans. Plan A is to run an old column (preferably the duck masterpiece.) Plan B is to go ahead and print "I suck" 400 times and to sign my name to it.

But that would be too easy not only for me but everyone else involved. It would give the proofreader too little to do. I would not feel as though I had earned my complimentary copies. Homeless activists everywhere would be disappointed because I hadn't been active enough, they want me to break a sweat. At least every other line I should insert the words "and homelessness sucks too" in order to stay on topic.

So I am always on the lookout for creative new ways to suck without merely saying so. That's why I need television.

Without television and the great communicators that communicate to me on television, I would not know how to be as lame as I am. That's why I have shacked up with a sexy rich woman, Anitra "Pay-Pal" Freeman. I sweep the floor, buy the groceries and do the dishes. In return my woman buys TV and TV access for me. It's all so I can watch Andy Rooney and learn. ("Have you ever noticed how bourgeois I am?" is an actual quote. So is "Why do you think my head is so big?" and "Have you ever noticed lots of people call themselves people-persons but nobody ever calls themselves a thing-person?" )

Thanks to television and to its cousin the internet, I have learned that the only thing that matters to most Americans is the quality of middle-class life. Even poor people in this country don't really care about what other poor people are doing or how things are going to get better so that there won't be any poor people. All they care about are the latest adventures of middle-class people like they wish they were.

But I digress. What's important here is finding creative ways to be lame. So what I want to do today is to join the chorus of hand wringing over the fate of the middle-class in America. How about if I call attention to the tragedy of middle-class homelessness? Here we go:

"That's right. This is a huge problem, people. Every day tens of middle-class people become homeless. I'm not talking here about people who were middle-class who suddenly became poor and are now living on the streets. I'm talking about people who still are middle-class and are now living on the streets.

"OK, they aren't really living on the streets because no one with money would do that. But they're living in motels and hotels and RVs. Some of them are even living in Mexico, being forced to read Spanish for Travelers dictionaries and listen to Berlitz tapes at night.

"It is all the more a tragedy because these people pay the taxes that pay the truck drivers to deliver our government cheeses, and yet no one considers their plight(s)."

Yes! As lame as the campaigns!

It's a Happ'nin!

Recently I was talking about how I am stupid. I was saying, actually, that everyone is stupid. The trick is to figure out, for each one of us, how. One of the ways that I am stupid is that I suck at history.

I don't completely suck at history. For example, I can be a part of history, no problem. You could in theory go back to certain of those old news tapes of events ("happ'nins") in the sixties and find me. OK, I would be the guy on the edge of the shot looking like I got lost on the way to the chess club, but I'm, like, there.

My problem is, I don't know where there was. In the case of the sixties this makes me good at history, because there wasn't any there there, actually. But it doesn't work for other times.

I first realized how much I was going to suck at history right at the beginning, when my third grade teacher was explaining to my class that history had to do with things like the Hundred Years War and some French girl who got herself burned at the stake and that that would be on the test. I looked around and I didn't see any charred remains, know what I mean? How should I know this girl got roasted? Then I found out that we were even supposed to know WHEN she got roasted, down to the exact year, and that it was HUNDREDS of years ago, and I knew this history thing was not for me.

One of my big problems with history was figuring out why, when we were talking about battles and what famous people were getting burned at the stake, THAT was history, but when we were talking about, say, ancient customs and what kind of culture they had, our history books were supposed to be closed because talking about culture was some kind of social studies. If history isn't social studies, what is it? I still don't get that.

Sometimes people come along with audio-visual aids that help. So back when Masterpiece Theater showed its TV version of Winston Churchill's book, the First Churchills, I learned a thing or two about history then. I learned, among other things, what papists were, that there were such people as Roundheads, that in the olden days (at least ca 1700) everybody was incredibly erudite, and that there might be worse things than just being burned at the stake, parts of you could be burned separately in front of you. Ouch!

The other thing I learned was that Winston Churchill, a former prime minister of England, who wrote the book, must have been incredibly erudite himself. Or else he couldn't have wrote it.

Speaking of audio-visual aids, I believe Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who also must suck at history but unlike me doesn't know it, has been watching too much of the History Channel. Mr. Rumsfeld is displaying all the signs of a man whose knowledge of the history of the world consists mainly in knowing how to make blowing up sounds. I wouldn't mind but now he's favorably comparing George W. Bush to the afore-mentioned Winston Churchill.

I mean, I didn't know Churchill. He wasn't a friend of mine. But shee-yeah, right.

I'd be less likely to scoff if Rumsfeld wanted to call GW Bush the William McKinley of the new millennium. Not that Churchill wasn't an imperialist in his own day, he was, he was, but I can visualize Bush being McKinleyesque without cracking up.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about in this column. What I wanted to talk about was the art of making blowing up sounds. I don't think it's wrong to be good at making blowing up sounds. I think it's a shame that more people aren't practiced at making convincing explosive noises with their mouths.

I firmly believe that the reason Rumsfeld and Bush want war with Iraq is because they have no buddies to play war with who can make good artillery and blowing up sounds.

I urge everyone who is adept at making blowing up sounds to contact the White House and offer their services in this regard. Thank you.

Dry Turkey

"Insert humor column here:" Oh, how those words mock me each and every fortnight. Every two weeks, rain or shine, in war or peace, in sickness or in health, with croutons or without, I must bring myself around to face that command, and comply.

But even clowns despair. Even Jerry Lewis must weep, even in France. Even Charlie Chaplin had to make Limelight. Even Pee Wee Herman had to have time-outs to... well, no, that's not a good example. But you get the idea.

It's my turn. I'm in a foul mood. I am probably coming down with a virus or two, most likely viruses previously used by Anitra "Oh no you don't, YOU gave it to ME" Freeman, who is just now recovering from bronchitis and who is no help at all. On top of that there's this war thing. On top of that, I've never been to Bora Bora. It was just Thanksgiving the other day, and the turkey we had was much too dry. Furthermore, I've never learned how to dance the Rhumba, a modern ballroom adaptation of a complex rhythmical dance that originated in Cuba. As if all that wasn't enough, there's this whole bleakness-of-the-universe business that comes up from time to time.

Here's another thing. Don't ever try to use your flesh-and-blood partner for a Muse. It never works. They'll talk too much or they'll talk too little. They'll try to take over from you or they'll bore you with their own whiny gripes about their own deadlines. Worse yet, they'll try to tell you how sick and tired they are, as if you have time for that.

Fortunately, I have never retired my one True Muse, Cindy Holly, Muse of Other, AKA Muse of Few Words. So I asked her what I should do here today.

"Well, let's see. You're depressed, right? And you're feeling desperate, right?"

"Right."

"Well, then, if I were you, I'd write about that."

"But what would that have to do with homelessness, or poverty issues, or the concerns of other marginalized peoples?"

"What wouldn't it have to do with them?"

I had to admit, she had me there. How many times, I wondered, had I been homeless, starving, desperate, and just a little bit sore at the cosmos? At least once or twice.

For me, what was so horribly depressing about homelessness wasn't so much the periodic hunger or the absence of a warm dry bed, or the fact that I didn't have money to replace the shoes I was wearing -- the shoes that leaked and kept my socks cold and wet all winter. No, what was so horribly depressing about homelessness was that Life Sucks and Then You Die, but unlike homeful people I had none of the usual means to distract me from that fact.

If only I could have been watching Señor Wences, instead of sitting in that alley forced to be aware that we as humans lack the means to become truly connected, or that the one most human thing we all do, which is to die, we must all do alone.

If only I could have been bowling and sharing pizza with some buddies, instead of scrounging the gutters for pennies unable to forget as I did so that the alternative to this un-asked-for life was and remains, as far as any of us really knows, only the eternity of oblivion that we can imagine as having proceeded all of our recollections, and in all likelihood will succeed them.

Surely I am better off even now, even in my depression, given that I may spend an evening watching the TV premier of The Phantom Menace, rather than spend my dark nights counting the number of stars above me that couldn't relieve the anguish of existence and dividing the total into the amount of my anguish.

Surely I am better off too, as I can now watch election returns, and can witness the political fortunes of Mark Sidran. Yes, now I feel much better.

Star Power

I am happy to report that great new opportunities for lucrative employment for us homeless people are opening up. I'm not talking about day labor, not yard work, not washing dishes, but something specific to the homeless, something we can, in principle, do better than anyone else.

We can play homeless people on TV!

So there I was hanging out at the Real Change dump, getting my ears blasted by 120 decibels of Critters Buggin, trying to get some writing done, trying to forget that I could instead be writing to a mere 60 decibels in a cafe if I just had enough money for a cup of coffee to justify my presence at one, when a call came from Magic Hour Films in Belltown.

They were doing an ad for United Way about programs for homeless youth and needed six older homeless types as extras in the ad. Could the Real Change to send some on over? "Why, sure, we could ask some vendors if they'd be interested. And Dr. Wes is here right now, we're sure he'd do it. Dr. Wes will do anything."

What a great gig! I was paid $10 an hour to wait 4 and a half hours until they needed me. While waiting we got to watch television, drink coffee, and eat sandwiches. They also asked us all to smoke, and to save up our cigarette butts in a cup, for props. No problem!

In fact the only problem that surfaced was that the film company expected that we would all be much more scary looking. As our director Holly said, after lining us up to look at us, "They're all so NICE looking!"

So, OK, maybe homeless people can only play themselves best *in principle*. Actors may still be required to get the stereotype down.

But I tried hard to oblige when it was my turn to be filmed. After all, all I had to do was sit on a step and root through the "props" while staring with annoyance at the hand-held camera as it was walked by, something that comes as natural as breathing. Took three minutes to tape it three times.

I'm going to see if I can't do this more often.

Non Sequitur

or Opus Marcus Sidranus

I'm not going to complain about Sidran,

though he's given me brand new reason:

He now wants to be given authority

to rid parks of rampant illegality

without bothering with due process

as laws and courts are such a mess!

What a truck-load of BS!

We elected him to make them work!

But, no, I'm not going to do it.

I'm not going to say he's a ____.

Instead I'll just change the subject, and talk to myself aimlessly -- as we crazy homeless people are apt to do, scaring the decent folks away from the city parks and sidewalks that belong only to them.

I am asking myself why I do this. Why do I write? After a few cups of reheated coffee, and a half-dozen cigarettes, the reasons slowly return to me.

1. Attracted to the wild lifestyle -- writers really know how to party!

2. To annoy politicians and collect fun hate-mail to show off to my friends.

3. Getting too old to make it as an exotic dancer.

4. But not too old to make it with "writer-groupies."

5. I've always enjoyed working with my fingers.

6. Why not? What's going to happen? That nobody reads it? If I don't write it, how are they going to read it?

7. If I didn't, Tim the Editor God would chase me away from this computer. No more reheated coffee.

8. "Uh, I can't attend your important meeting, I'm on deadline."

9. "I'm a writer" sounds better than "I'm chronically unemployed."

10. I was MADE to sit on my ass all day. This is my essence.