Presidential Game

I have a new game. I watch the presidential campaign news with half my brain shut down. I don't need illegal drugs, I have a natural gift! Besides, my doctors prescribe brain-shutting-down medicine, because it makes me so darn happy. They've seen me not happy, and it wasn't pretty.

[Right: Me not happy, from the Wes Archives.]

So let's put those filters up and examine the 2008 presidential race not with our right brains or our left brains, but with our leftover brains!

I was especially excited last week when McCain camp said Obama isn't fit to be president because the leaders of Hamas have said he's the Cat's Meow. The exact quote used was a statement by Ahmed Yousef who said in an interview: “We don’t mind — actually we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will [win] the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, he is like Kennedy, the Cat's Meow. Of course Kennedy loved Israel and would have despised us and crushed us militarily, but hey, he was American, you take what you can get."

Subsequently McCain deflected similar charges against him by sort of renouncing his endorsement from John Hagee, the man who said "Everybody gets me wrong when I say the Catholic Church is the Great Whore. I didn't mean ALL of the Catholic Church, just most of it. Gee, lighten up people." McCain says he still likes Hagee 'cause he has that old-timey religion, but he now acknowledges that Hagee is political rat-bait. His exact words (this part I'm not making up!), in response to being asked whether it was a mistake to accept Hagee's endorsement were, "oh, probably, sure." He then went on to say that, still, he was "glad to have his endorsement."

In other election news, Hillary Clinton has charged Obama as being "out of touch" for saying working class Americans are bitter. She went on to explain, "Where was he when they came out with Prozac? I've been using it since I married Bill! Bitter? Who, me?"

Speaking of questionable endorsements, Hillary Clinton has been endorsed by none other than the ring-leader of the vast right-wing conspiracy, conservative billionaire publisher Richard Mellon Scaife, who sank millions of dollars into the effort to keep Whitewater alive. Tomorrow Barrack Obama will charge that Clinton is unfit to be president because, "That is just so whacked."

In the latest news, upon hearing Obama say that McCain would be a better president than Bush, Clinton responded with, "We need a nominee who will take on John McCain, not cheer on John McCain." McCain responded with, "We need a nominee who is John McCain; and let me tell you, I am not bitter either." Hamas responded with, "John McCain is better than Bush, but he is no John Kennedy. We never knew John Kennedy, but, look at McCain, he is surely no John Kennedy." Hagee responded with, "John Kennedy is just what we don't need. We need a candidate that won't suck at the tits of the Great Whore. I did NOT just say John Kennedy would have sucked at the tits of the Great Whore. We need John McCain." Richard Mellon Scaife responded to that with, "Twinkle twinkle little bat."

Questions for Further Abuse

1. Turn to your neighbor on your right and explain to him or her how the identity of endorsers became more important than all other issues such as the economy, the war(s), health care, homelessness, the environment, education, racism, energy, or food prices. If you have no neighbor on your right, talk to the wall until the bell rings.

2. Compare and contrast the odiousness of endorsements from Hamas, Hagee, and Scaife. Remember, comparisons themselves are odious, so wash your hands after.

3. Obtain drug treatment if necessary. Then, when you are clean and sober, listen to Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues on a continuous loop for five hours. Now you're clean and sober, and nevertheless half your brain is out to lunch. See? I told you it was possible.

Search Me

Lately, Dylan's been saying, "The sun is beginning to shine on me... but it's not like the sun... that used to be..." Well, there, that's right. For one thing, the Union Gospel Mission is in the way.

The good news is I'm newly housed. The bad news is that that's the backside (not round enough) of the Mission out my window. Or, if I really crane my neck, I can gaze upon the building that was tallest west of the Mississippi back when Smith-Corona meant something besides "what, you don't use computers?" Back when cotton was King and papyrus ruled Middle-Earth.

So one minute you're poor and homeless, next minute you're just as poor as ever, but you're peeling it out for rent in the Old Quarter, the Altstadt. You're living in the perpetual Pioneer Day Festival. Because you desperately need a change in your life and even this is an improvement. Even if it means starving. That much less money per month for food.

As I write this at a Mac in Word 6.0, my words are automatically saved by a stupid - idiotic - moronic- imbecilic - brainless machine every five minutes. Odd, because it takes five minutes to write five words. So - what's the rush?

Are you hearing the poetry? Do I sound ungrateful? Lean in closer...

Opus Take a Number, and Sit Down and Wait!

or, No, Not You! The Poem.

Want to know what's great?

Being homeless a while!

Then you get a section eight!*

It makes you smile...

There's nothing better!

Oh, yeah... it takes a year -

You pray for good weather,

Drink lots of beer...

and stay out of sight,

cause cops got the power

to harass you all night

at any hour

because you exist.

It's the LAW!

[*: Section 8 = Government subsidised housing.]

Let me now prosaically explain all that for the poetically impaired. Yes, you can get subsidized housing, but, depending on your circumstances, you may have to wait anywhere from six months to eighteen for it. Meanwhile you can have no housing at all to speak of, or you will lose your eligibilty. And during the time that you have no housing to speak of, the police will take exception to every breath you take.

Speaking of police harassment: - so I was going out the Speakeasy Cafe the other day, after checking my e-mail (you know how I have to check my e-mail everyday, because I get so much...) Well - I decided to take the back (alley) exit, in order to evade my many beloved but occasionally inconvenient fans. That was my first mistake.

My second mistake was looking homeless. Until recently I have cultivated the look of a graduate student. But I just couldn't pass up the offer of a free army-brown jacket with detachable lining. It isn't really an army jacket but at ten feet you'd think it was, so now I look like a Vietnam period Vet, and those Vets are all homeless, right?

My third mistake was suddenly realising that there was a splinter in my shoe. Right out the door, still in the alley. I should not have done that. That realisation in itself may have been an actual illegal criminal act. I took off my shoe as a result of that realisation, fished out the splinter and tossed it aside.

Suddenly, I was surrounded by two bicycling police-women (I am not making any of this up) asking me questions like "Did you just find a rock in your shoe?" and "Yeah, right, are you sure it wasn't a needle?" and "You know, we find that a lot of drug addicts keep their fixings in their shoes and take them out in alleys. You weren't doing that, were you?" - said one of them, facetiously.

"No" I said.

"Is that so?" they said, not believing me.

Like it mattered whether they believed me or not. I had committed no crime. I had not even been seen doing anything suspicious. Taking something out of one's shoe isn't, in reality, a suspicious act, unless the one doing the suspecting is an SPD officer who doesn't know anymore what's suspicious and what isn't.

Normally the police would not explain their own bizarre behavior. But these women must have been new. After they finished searching me, and after finding no drug paraphenalia on me (because I don't do drugs) they acted embarrassed and apologetic. One of them said "you know, we have to do this, because the businesses around here have been complaining so much, you know..."

I said nothing. I looked at her badge and knew from past experience not to respond. A response gets you a kick in the ribs, and you're black and blue for weeks. (Are you reading this, Norm Stamper? Let me know. Please. I get very little feedback. Thanks.)

She read my silence as disapproval. I said "I don't care what the businesses complain about, I don't do drugs, so why do I have to be detained and searched?"

She then asked me if I was homeless, and when I admitted that I was, she said, "well, see?

that's the problem, isn't it?"

Right.

You, who are reading this - you are next.

Homeless, Again

Hallelujah! I'm a Bum!

It's official. As reported last month I am a lazy jobless penniless homeless bum, again. Send your donations c/o this rag - send mountains of money - and I will promise to spend it only on beer and cigarettes, while I sponge off the system and camp out nightly, 'cause that's the way I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh.

I have already received many sympathetic responses from well-wishers. For example Doug Hogsstutter, of Rat's Tail, WA, who writes:

"Dear Lazy SOB

I used to enjoy the high intellectual caliber of your monthly contribution to the Real Change, but since you were laid off last fall you do nothing but moan and whine. What you really need is a good swift kick to the stratosphere. But instead here's a poem that might `lift your spirits' -

Your intellectuality

Is disappearing constantly

Each day and night

Each word you write

And you already probably

couldn't end this poem for me."

You sure got that right, Doug - but thanks for that inspirational call to excellence. You have obviously been following my progress religiously!

Speaking of excellence, it's about time that I used this space to pay my respects to one of the great poets who inspired and influenced me during the malleable years of my youth. I am referring of course to Percival Dovetonsils, but as I don't have a poem to suitably honor Percy this month someone else will have to do. So let's see, who should it be? I want to be intellectual but I don't want to have to think too much - how about Dylan Thomas?

One flask of Scotch and a half hour alone later,

Camping Out on Fern Hill

An Homage to Dylan Thomas

Now as I am old and stiff upon the clover field

About the lilting dumpsite and happy as the grass is red

The Force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Also digs a root into my spine

And am I dumb to tell the dingle starry

And am I dumb to tell the synagogue of the ear of corn

When only the moon rages and the citizens lie abed

And have TVs at elbow and feet?

Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head,

And pretend a rock is a pillow?