Wes and Kirkpatrick Kissing In a Tree...

A couple of days ago fellow "editor" Michele "I'm Back and I'm Bossy!" Marchand suggested that I write about that film City Without a Home that Adam Holdorf reviewed last issue. I saw City Without a Home myself (I like to call it Film Without a Clue) and Michele and I are in absolute agreement that it would be a good thing if I derided the film in a civil and thoughtful manner.

Unfortunately, in order to do that up right I would have to recap for you all what the film is about. I would have to tell how the filmmakers lived at Tent City 3 for eight days and interviewed a bunch of residents there. Then I would have to get all detailed and picky about why I thought the treatment was biased beyond belief. This would entail my remembering that fact to myself and raising my blood pressure.

I've done that too much lately. My whole last column was written in a pissy fit. I need to talk about something that amuses me. So, let's talk about recent constitutional amendment proposals!

One constitutional amendment proposal was recently in the news as California Governor Schwarzenegger backed the movement to allow foreign-born people to be president. Now, I'm all in favor of such an amendment, in spite of the fact that if it had passed in 1963 it would have allowed Barry Goldwater (who was born in the Gadsen Purchase) to have become president and I might not have enjoyed that. But if Schwarzenegger really wants the amendment to be passed, shouldn't he lie low about it? Does it really advance his cause to scare everyone with the prospect of a President Schwarzenegger?

I say let's annex Austria BEFORE we let that happen, OK?

But the amusing amendment for all time has got to be the one you knew I was going to bring up. That would be the amendment, currently being discussed in the House, intended to ban same-sex marriages. That would be the amendment of which arch-conservative James J. Kilpatrick has said, "This mean-spirited and bigoted resolution spits in the face of freedom." Me and James are in bed together on this one, ready to pick out a ring. OK, Anitra, just kidding. But seriously, I am a conservative today. Is that amusing, or what?

The amendment, in the form it is being considered in Congress, is called the Musgrave Amendment after its sponsor, Republican Congressperson Marilyn Musgrave. Its authors include lawyer Matt Daniels, who grew up with one mother and no father and doesn't want that to happen to anybody else and thinks this gets him somewhere with that, and Robert Bork, who might have been a Supreme Court Justice if the Senate hadn't freaked when they found out what a fruitcake he was. We now get to see just how right they were. That was some bullet we dodged.

You know your constitutional amendment sucks when legal scholars already can't figure out what it really means, not a hundred years after enacted, but even when it's proposed. Here it is: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the Constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."

The authors say the intent in the second sentence is not to ban civil unions but only to keep courts from mandating them, while allowing state legislatures to decide the issue. But in fact what they have written allows local officials everywhere to defy state laws altogether!

Let's say this amendment passed and say I ran for mayor of Seattle and won. Know what my first act in office would be? Quoting the Musgrave Amendment I would ban all marriages in Seattle. If gays and lesbians can't marry, I would say, then in the interest of equality nobody can. And the Musgrave Amendment would grant me the right to do that, because it says no state law can require marital status to be conferred on anyone who isn't already married!

Q. What reason does Marilyn Musgrave give for opposing same-sex marriages? A. None! She says she's a representative, not a minister, so she shouldn't discuss that! Is that a hoot, or what?

Pooty Free Ameter

In last month’s Real Change we announced that we would throw a birthday party for our (that is, Seattle’s) mayor, the distinguished and beloved periodic Frenchperson, Paul Schell. I bet you all thought we were just goofing, didn’t you? Hah! We really meant it! We love to do things like that! Anything for a hoot and a piece of cake! That’s just the way we feel about it around here!

Meanwhile, as the evening of the party approached, what with the flurry of preparations etc., there was an absolute, literal, palpable air of excitement here in the Real Change office. I mean, you could actually really FEEL the air, it was so palpable. Or at least, stuff in it was...

So, anyway, I was inspired by something palpable in the air in our office to write a humble little speech for the occasion of Mayor Paul Schell’s Birthday. Lacking anything better to do, I would like now to share that speech with the entire Real Change readership, at this time (now). So here is that speech:

I would like to talk about Mayor Schell, because this is, after all, HIS birthday party and that’s why we’re all here, to talk about Mayor Paul “max-a-million, any-million” Schell.

But before I do that, I would like first to take some time out to praise iambic tetrameter.

Iambic tetrameter is, as I have said many times before and in many places, the ameter without which the immortal line “they’re coming to take me away, ha, ha!” could never have been uttered.

If that were the only praise I could sing of iambic tetrameter, I would sing that praise endlessly, but luckily, for all of you here listening to me this evening, there is so much more:

For example, iambic tetrameter is NOT a pooty ameter, like that iambic PENT-ameter is, and this endears it to me, as it should to all right-thinking and right-feeling Americans.

Indeed, for hundreds of years pooty English poets, both in their native England and in their non-native other countries that they’ve gone off to (like this one), have pooted all over the place with their pooty iambic pentameter, whose every single pooty line drags on exactly one pooty beat too long.

Iambic tetrameter KNOWS when enough is enough. “ALWAYS LEAVE THEM WANTING MORE!” -- that’s iambic tetrameter’s motto! -- and it lives it, line after line after line after line after line after non-pooty line.

Moreover, iambic tetrameter is faithful. Oh, sure, it isn’t as flashy or as exotic as is, for example, anapestic tetrameter. But iambic tetrameter will always be there for you, waiting patiently and forgivingly while you come slinking home with that anapestic lipstick on your collar, those lacy crotchless silky anapestic panties tucked just inside your left front pant’s pocket, and that anapestic vibrator left carelessly on, wasting batteries, causing that peculiar walk of yours.

There are so many more wonderful things that I could tell you about iambic tetrameter, involving for instance Keiko The Killer Whale and/or Elizabeth Dole, but I have just reminded myself that we are here, after all, to talk about Mayor Schell, so I should get on with that instead.

But before I do that, I would like to present a little poem that I have written. No, actually I was just kidding, I am going to present a poem AND talk about Mayor Schell -- simultaneously! I call my poem

Our Mayor Schell Sure Does Mayor Well!

or Opus 67 (Count Them!) Spanks

by © Dr. Me, Wes Browning

Our Mayor Schell sure mayors well!

He mayors swell! -- as I will tell:

He mayors here, he mayors there,

he mayors gladly anywhere,

He is the mayor with the plan,

he doesn’t sit upon the can!

Five hundred thousand he would spend,

-- far more than any’d dare to lend --

that women & kids be off our streets

as one of many Christmas treats!

It’s not his fault five hundred thou’

is not enough. -- Don’t have a cow!

Our mayor Schell DOES mayor great --

So WHAT if he can’t calculate?

-- Thank You.

Me For Mayor

If you are reading this paper close to the beginning of the month, and if you've been paying attention, you may know that Seattle is about to choose a new mayor.

I myself discovered this fact just last week. Here's how it came to my attention: I was just minding my own business, using the computer to make joke pictures of Tim Harris, our Director. With my back thus turned, he and our production manager were discussing who the Real Change ought to endorse for mayor. They were both certain that there was no way we could endorse either of the two official candidates, so that we would have to endorse a write-in.

Who should we pick? Well, lets see, they thought , who's not here? Why, Dr. Wes can do it! Dr. Wes will do anything! And the next time they spoke to me they said I'd have about 600 words for that wire service article and oh, by the way, we'll be running you for mayor hope you don't mind. Mayor of what? -- I asked, naturally. Of Seattle, they said.

Now I am told that this means I have to have a platform. We're sure you'll come up with something, they say. OK, well then here is my platform. These are my solemn promises to you the Seattle citizen should I be elected mayor.

1. If you have a complaint I will actually meet with you and hear it, once or twice. Maybe. If I feel like it. Lately I've had a cold.

2. I will cash my paychecks promptly and without complaint.

3. I will not maintain a house in a foreign country. Or, if I do, I will not spend much time there.

4. I will create a photocopy of my butt on Mayor's office stationary and send it to the City Attorney's office, and I will include an attachment to the effect that it is the view of the new mayor that the City Attorney's face is not a sidewalk.

5. Just for a hoot, I will propose laws designed to restrict the hours that homeful people can be on downtown streets. When people object, I will say, "Well, they have homes to go to, don't they? So why should we have to look at them?" When people still object I will laugh insanely and lock myself in my office for days.

6. When downtown businesses offer money to get their way with City Hall, I will politely decline it, reminding them that the City's policies are to be determined by its citizens at large and are not on an auction block.

7. Inauguration day: beer and pizza for all!

My slogan: "Let the vegetarians feed first. Then, while they're at it, we'll move in!"

Speaking of moving in, Operation Nightwatch and friends got out at 3am on the 24th for their annual count of Seattle's homeless.

As usual they only counted those who'd passed out in Seattle's "living room".

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I know that the Count is important and supplies a lot of useful information. For example say I want to camp in the Pioneer Square area. Consulting the tables I find that 77 of the 108 street people found there on the night of the 24th were either in public parks or under roads or bridges. Not one was found in a parking garage. So for a quiet restful night's sleep I should head for a parking garage, that's where the privacy is.

But, seriously, I won't be sleeping in Pioneer Square at all, because I don't want to be anywhere that I can be so easily spotted. By Operation Nightwatch, by the police, by thieves, or by anyone else.

When I have slept outdoors, I have always done so outside of the areas that are included in the count, because they get too much traffic, and I have made myself as invisible as possible. So invisible that I don't believe I could ever have been found by anyone who failed to trip over me. And that's the way most of the homeless people I know go about it.

But precisely because we make ourselves invisible we are never counted. The public sees only those who either don't care about their own privacy or who are in no condition to hide themselves effectively.