Don't You Dare Duck, Either

Family dysfunction. You don't see me discussing it much because I'm a little bit raw from it. On the one hand, reliving pain is the best source of humor. On the other hand, reliving pain is the best source of relapse, which is the best source of a med-adjustment, which is on the road to Zombie Town and/or a new room at Harborview with built in straps, and new friends bearing needles for those all-important around-the-clock blood tests.

But I think I can avoid all that by not actually making family dysfunction the subject of my talk, but rather the day's primary source of analogies. Therefore I will not be talking directly about such situations as occur such as where Mommy "lovingly" corrects you too hard and breaks your brain permanently. Instead I'll talk about other stuff that happens and only refer to those situations by way of illustration.

So my goal today is to piss away the rest of my column space talking about things that resemble family dysfunctioning that I've known.

How 'bout that Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness?

We're all one big happy family at the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness! Why wouldn't we be? We're ending homelessness! In ten years! We've said so!

Turns out that's a bit like promising to honor and obey until death do us part. After about two or three years a promise like that has a way of morphing into, "You expect me to do what? You want to die?" Which if you think about it is the same thing.

Some of you might recall that back in January I had fun laughing about a thing, in the planning of the ten year's planning, called the Ten Year Plan dashboard. That was a document, or maybe it was a 'device', which was not finished, which WHEN finished would tell the big shots at the top of the planning process when the planning car was in need of oil or gas or a tune-up, so they could order their underlings to take care of that.

It turns out that it was totally dysfunctional of me to -- using the day's primary analogy source -- "snicker at Daddy that way." You're not supposed to snicker at Daddy when Daddy is busy telling you how things are going to happen around here in the future. You're supposed to hold your tongue until Daddy has made a new rule, and then, when you are spoken to, you may say what you think of the new rule, provided you speak respectfully.

It was especially dysfunctional of me because such things as governing dashboards are common in organizations. Even Real Change has been working on one. So I had snickered at Daddy for doing something all Daddies do. Next thing you know I'll be laughing at Daddy for breaking wind.

In a slightly different vein, last week our director Timothy "My Cage Is Too Dirty" Harris smelled something bad coming our way from the Seattle weekly named so. A writer at that weekly was asking questions of Real Change folks that made it seem like either a bogus 'expose' was being manufactured, or that someone had a bean and cheese burrito for breakfast.

We've seen these things elsewhere. A local 'investigation' reveals that some vendors at a street paper make so much money they can afford apartments, and they aren't fired for it! Some vendors meet the conditions of incentive programs to get guaranteed turf and other vendors don't! Vendors are caught drinking alcohol in their time off, as if they were ordinary people, and the director does nothing to stop them!

So Tim did a dysfunctional thing. He had the audacity to use his blog, Apesma's Lament, to object in advance of anything actually happening. The writer hasn't even written a story yet!*

What have we learned today? 1) Never giggle at your Betters. 2) You're not supposed to scream before your Betters hit you.

* That was when I wrote this. The article under discussion, by Huan Hsu, is out now.

Magic, Mushroomed

As many of you know, I am not currently homeless. I am in a 52-unit DESC building very similar to the one DESC, the Downtown Emergency Service Center, is proposing to create in Rainier Valley, and it really ticks me off to hear that some residents out there think people like me wouldn’t make good enough neighbors. So I bet you think that I, director of Rant Central, will write about that.

Ha! Fooled you. No, I chose to take my blood pressure meds early this morning, and focus my thoughts on sweet things like baby bunnies, adult bunnies, pretty flowers, and dead Eyman-initiatives. And with my thoughts so cleansed and cheerified I chose to use the remainder of my space to cherish the magic.

I was inspired to do this when DESC workers delivered a brand new “Magic Chef” refrigerator to the woman that drew me to my housing, Anitra “Co-Conspirator” Freeman, and she said, “What’s magic about it? It’s not even energy-efficient! Doesn’t DESC know they’re wasting power and money by buying cheap energy-inefficient refrigerators?”

Poor, poor, jaded Anitra does not see the magic! Here she has a box that sucks invisible stuff out of the wall and turns it into coldness! You don’t have to feed it ice to keep the inside cold! In fact if you give it water it will turn it, magically, into ice!

There is so much magic in our lives. Our running water for example. We have a cold stream and a hot stream in our apartments! Right inside our apartments! Next to our toilets!

Thinking about these things made the weird neurons in my head (the ones in the back) zap my amygdala, or so it felt. I was motivated to ask, “What’s the most magical thing ever in all of our lives?”

The answer I gave myself was, “Volition.” I didn’t have to give myself that answer; I did it anyway, because I WANTED to. Isn’t that amazing?

People can make choices, then tell themselves -- tell their own dumb bodies -- to do what they decide, and their dumb bodies do it! Like magic! It goes on all the time every day, week after week, year after year!

I’ll give some examples. I’ll give you a second to contemplate baby bunnies before reading them.

Right. Lt. Ehren Watada became a Lieutenant of his own free will, by enlisting in the Army in 2003, by some accounts AFTER the Iraq War started. Now by his own free will he is ready to go to prison for refusing to join in that war. And he probably WILL go to prison! Volition: magic!

Here’s another example: The United States Senate consented overwhelmingly (89-2) to the UN Charter in the summer of 1945, making the UN Charter a part of US law. Since then there has been only sporadic and relatively insignificant popular protest of that action. So it can safely be said that the vast majority of the current populace of the US either agrees that the UN Charter should be US law, or is too apathetic to give a damn one way or another. Volition: magic!

Of course, that means that it is “our” choice, the freely-willed choice of this vast majority, that preemptive wars be illegal. Our government signed it in 1945, and we have since, as a people, freely consented to it! We’re enlisted! When does the warmaker go to prison? Volition: magic!

One more example. Pharmacists on the Washington State Pharmacy Board want to give pharmacists in the state the power to refuse lawfully prescribed medicines, when they feel like it, one at a time, just by referring patients to another pharmacist, who could also refer them to another, and another -- effectively depriving the patients of THEIR power to make the moral choice themselves, and violating the principle, “my body, my choice, you bastards.”

Yo, Pharmacists, you enlisted! If you don’t like the duty, you can will yourselves to resign. Volition: magic!

Outrage Fatigue

Oh no! I was about to write this column on my latest righteous outrage du jour, when suddenly to my horror I didn't have one. Should my meds be adjusted again? Have I become laid-back now, according to the principle that everyone becomes the person their friends tell them they are, no matter how wrong their friends' perceptions were originally?

I've never been laid-back. I've always been a seething pool of anger and fury. OK I kept a lid on me, pool that I was, in order to prevent unacceptable actions like land reclamation and inappropriate commercial development of human pools. Boy, this metaphor sucks.

So anyway, like I say, I'm a pool of anger, fury, etc. And I thought I had some outrage to dish up this week. I went so far as to mark my territory (another sucky metaphor!) by warning Anitra "Op Ed Mama" Freeman off the topics of my outrage. "Don't talk about the news about the Pentagon Channel," I said, "because I'll want to rant about that." "Don't talk about the Senate Nuclear Option," I said, "because that really has my panties in a bunch."

But now deadline approaches, and here I am. Though poised to rant, I am rantless. I am like the roarless lion, the croakless frog, the yell-less sixth-grader. I am also lacking even one decent metaphor.

Well, here's the deal, anyway. You know how the government lies to you all the time? They've been lying to our troops since the Napoleonic Wars, but now the Pentagon is institutionalizing it's process of lying by going forward with plans to bring the "Pentagon Channel" to the widest civilian audience possible on cable and satellite dish outlets. They will be providing national and international political news and analysis as well as the expected in-house military news.

An example of Pentagon editorializing-by-headline, from their 24-hour streaming website (www.pentagonchannel.mil): "Taking its cues from President George Bush, the international community is now standing up to Syria demanding the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon." Yes, the international community is just helpless without cues from George. What will they ever do when they lose his manly leadership?

So, terrific, we have the beginnings of our very own US equivalent of Pravda. Why aren't I up in arms about it? Am I losing my touch? Is this that male menopause they're always talking about?

When I first heard about the Senate Nuclear Option I went nuclear. I paced back and forth in my hovel punching the air with my fists. How dare Bill Frist even suggest such a thing, I thought. The thing he suggested was that Cheney, as President of the Senate, outlaw Senate filibusters by fiat, at least for the debate of judicial nominees.

Part of my outrage was at the way some are distorting history of the filibuster. The Senate had UNLIMITED debate before the rule on filibusters was initially established in 1917. The "filibuster rule", currently requiring a 3/5-ths vote to close debate, was actually an improvement on a tradition, since 1806, of no closure without unanimity. Would Frist like to return to those good old days?

But, hey, I don't love the filibuster. I remember how it was used to delay civil rights legislation for years. So the real outrage is about the timing. Under Clinton the Republicans didn't need the filibuster; they blocked Clinton's nominees by refusing to allow the nominees names to go to the floor.

Now it's all the power the Democrats have left. So this is the time the Republicans decide they want to do away with a 199-year tradition, so that a Republican administration can install judges into the federal courts that anyone even slightly to the left of Mussolini or Bill O'Reilly would regard as extremists.

How pathetic is that? How can anyone stay angry at such pathetic behavior? I can only feel revulsion.

I Loved That Monkey

Let's talk about everything!

Usually, if I would have trouble deciding what to write about, I would blame it on being depressed. Maybe my pet monkey was just assassinated, or maybe I just found out that a certain legally prescribed medication shouldn't be, too late to stop it from turning me into a hairless goat. Or maybe my country was just taken over by yahoos and I started wishing I could move somewhere that had a constitution that the government in power respected.

Downturns like those can ruin your perspective so that you can't see straight enough to write about anything in particular, so you write about everything and hope for the best.

But upturns can have the same effect, I now know. Last week I got such good news that I am now giddy as a schoolgirl. I won't say why, because I'm such a tease, but I will instead distract you all with this: seeing Colin Powell sing as the construction worker in the Village People gave me new life and hope for America. How can you not love a man who can swing a hammer from his belt like that? Am I right, girls?

So here I am, feeling so good I'm ready to say: this IS the best of all possible worlds! Let's count our blessings!

Hooray! Saddam Hussein is being tried by the people we installed in his place, the very same ones we picked out because they hated Saddam the most! How great is that? They're even following our democratic example and making him submit to interrogation without letting him once see a lawyer! Not only that, but they're charging him with invading another country (Kuwait) without provocation! Our newly created allies have learned American democracy perfectly, and are beginning to master American hypocrisy too! I'm sure Saddam will have a wonderful trial, much better than any he could get from an international court. Maybe the Iraqis will even behead Saddam, encouraging more insurgents to behead more of us! Off with everyone's head!

Hooray! It's now OK for the President of the Senate to tell a Senator to go F-himself whenever it makes him "feel better"! Abuse of power and position be damned! It just feels good to tell the leader of the party out of power off for having the audacity to criticize one's precious self and one's superior political opinions. It's especially great to be able to tell some Democrat to go F-himself the same day Republican legislation passes to fine the bejeezus out of anyone else using the same word on TV or radio. Did someone say "hypocrisy"? I should have to call it H, or pay a gigantic fine! But even when we can't say it in print our leaders will still H. It will make them feel better!

Most of all, hooray for the newfound uses of detaining innocent people while calling them terrorists without formally charging them!

Last week the Supreme Court said you can't merely hold people as "enemy combatants" indefinitely. Eventually you have to allow them to legally challenge their detention, or you have to release them. This is called "human rights", something that we have said we were for, at least for the past 228 years or so, when we weren't doing the H-thing.

But the court will let the President detain potentially innocent people for reasonable periods of time, whatever that might be. I was worried about this loophole until I heard that the New York Times was reporting that the US, with Britain, had secretly traded Saudi prisoners held at Gitmo for Brits that had been tortured and held by the Saudis. How heartening.

The released Saudis were surely innocent; our government would never, NEVER, trade real terrorists even for innocent Westerners. That would be letting the terrorists win.

So there is something to be said for locking up innocent people, after all! Think of them as if they were pennies. Have a prisoner, give a prisoner! Need a prisoner, take a prisoner! It just saves trouble, and that's what America is all about!

Oh no. I AM a hairless goat.

Birds Are Nuts

This is going to be one of those columns that isn't about anything. All the conditions point to it. For one thing, all the news is too depressing to write about here. You can only make fun of North Korea so much, and then people start to whimper. Iraq isn't at all funny anymore. The economy is only good for about ten lines and then I remember that my rent is due. Then Anitra "on whose kitchen floor I used to sleep" Freeman insists that I pick up malted milk balls for her at the store. A dollar eighty-nine. For a stinking bag of malted milk balls.

The good news: I'm back on my meds. The bad news: I'm back on my meds. No more interestingly bizarre perspectives. No more am I able to write pages and pages extolling the virtues of experiencing paper cuts and surviving.

It's times like this that being scattered is all I have. It's my anti-foundation, a non-solid core to wrap myself around. All my security emanates from my liquid centerlessness. Without it I would have to settle down and be something, which would surely result in doom. If that doesn't make sense to you, then you understand more than you know.

Mr. Stephens taught me that you could be scattered and still collect a paycheck. Mr. Stephens was my 8th grade math teacher. He was stark raving scattered. He would spend the first minute of every class going over the answers to the homework due that day. Like this: "The answers were 5, 17, 16.3, and 1." Then he would spend 50 minutes telling us about his house on Mercer Island, and about the patio he just built over his carport, and how he built part of the patio around a tree, and about how we should all respect how cool that was. Then Mr. Stephens would spend the last four minutes giving us the next day's homework.

At the same time I was taking "business principles" from Mrs. Wilson (these are not the real names.) "Business principles" was all about how to write out a check, mostly. I don't know how the schools got away with wasting kids time like that in those days. I hope they do better now. But Mrs. Wilson wasn't satisfied with just wasting our time with the syllabus. She felt it was necessary to spend at least thirty minutes of each class telling us how her daughter was a swimmer for the US Olympic team, and she won a silver medal for something. I learned that Mrs. Wilson's daughter got the silver approximately sixty times. That is roughly equal to the number of spitwads that I personally landed on Mrs. Wilson when her back was turned, during that term.

Why am I telling you this? I just want you all to know things could be worse. In addition to being scattered I could be a broken record, like my unbelievably neurotic middle-school teachers. But at least when I scatter, I scatter in a different direction every time.

Speaking of broken records, Groundhog Day just passed. No I'm not thinking about the Bill Murray movie, although that was good. Instead I'm thinking about a green singing finch I adopted on Groundhog's day 1990. I called him Zino, after the violinist Zino Francescatti, and he was a fantastic broken record. Apparently, birds are the ultimate broken records. They do not know the concept of "enough".

Zino had this trick where he would jump off his perch and attach himself up-side-down to the top of his cage. Then he would drop back to his perch, doing a back flip in the process. All this would be done to elicit a "wow" from me. Then he would do it again, to get another "wow". Then again, for another "wow". And again and again. Until finally I couldn't take it anymore. When I couldn't say "wow" anymore Zino might quit after one or two more times. But he never quit as long as the "wows" came.

I want to believe there is a lesson in all this for all humanity. From a back flip obsessed bird to a patio obsessed neurotic math teacher to a silver medal obsessed neurotic business principles teacher, I want to draw a moral for all of us to live by.

How's this? -- Everybody be careful what you say "wow" to.

Your Post-Meds Trans-Galactic News Roundup

Some of you may have noticed that last issue I took a tiny "vacation". I know what you think. You think all us folks at the Real Change are getting rich off the homeless, living in mansions in Medina, and vacationing in the Bahamas, because the officials there look the other way when rich folks like us "light up", if you know what I mean.

HA! You DON'T know what I mean! I don't get paid squat for these so-called columns, and my vacation was in fact a med-induced nightmare!

Yep. I'm on the med-train. I'm on meds. Or am I in-between my meds? Only my state authorized psychiatrist knows for sure, assuming she catches me when I'm in-between symptoms. But others of you may be wanting to know – hey Wes, since when you talk to aliens?

Good question! It all has to do with the internet! A few weeks ago my state authorized psychiatrist ordered me to take new meds that make me drowsy, and drowsy. Instantly, give or take a few weeks, the following message appeared on the internet in front of my face:

The Big Bang is often described as a big bang. After a bang every thing should be moving away from every other thing. But my high school physics teacher told us collisions happen. How could that be?

From pity I responded as follows:

Let me try to penetrate your thick cranium. First there was nothing. Then there was 2.356x10 to the who knows-how-much kilograms of stuff. According to the (known to be false in this context) theory of Albert "Bertle" Einstein: when stuff appears out of nowhere, space comes with it. At first the space is all curled up in a little ball. But then it spreads out really fast. But some of it, near the really BIG chunks of stuff, doesn't spread out so much. That's where stuff gets stuck in the corners of space and bumps together.

Some little time later I noted the following note from Anitra (On whose kitchen floor I have sometimes slept) Freeman:

To summarize Dr. Browning, the galaxies are running away from each other, but some of them don't run fast enough.

"Since when do galaxies run?" I thought. "Galaxies have no legs, they can't run!" I thought. No sooner did I think that, then I received the following in my "in" box:

This is your Universal Internet news update of the day.

Number of hits to our site yesterday: 235,696,777.

Breakdown: 235,696,767 hits estimated to have been due to electromagnetic fluctuations resulting from a gravitational wave disturbance propagated by a minor spiral galaxy which two days ago inexplicably sprouted tiny little legs and began running around aimlessly.

10 hits from a planet called "Earth".

There were also ten messages recorded on our office voicemail. Nine said "How in hell do I get off this galaxy?"

One message said "Mrs. Elroy P. Feelgood, widow of the late Mr. Elroy P. Feelgood, formerly of Pissatchoo, WA, and now living in Miami Beach, Florida, wishes to announce that she will be one hundred years young tomorrow, God willing. Otherwise she will be survived by her good-for-nothing lazy bum son, John.

Our message to Mrs. Feelgood: "Get a life!" As for the rest of you, "the trick is to rub two sticks together," and "How many times must we have to repeat that?"

In other news, there were 953,465,368 supernovas yesterday, killing roughly 10 to the 25 sentient lifeforms. Traffic was light, weather moderate, visibility 11 billion light-years in most directions.

Sports news: The much ballyhoo-ed Universal Reverse Time Travel Races were called off today owing to the failure of the participants to comply with known physical laws. A committee was formed to investigate. We have however learned that ticketholders who had been planning to watch the races from the finish line were reimbursed approximately one million years ago.

Our happy news of the day: You can still read this!

There you go… I hope that clarifies matters…