Hope Springs Eternal

I haven't said much about the Iraq War lately. I hate repeating myself and you can't not when you're talking about the repetitive.

But, holy cow, look what happened this morning. First, I beat my head on this keyboard, to bang a column out. Nothing came out of my head as usual (the head-banging trick almost never works) so I did what I always do next. I checked CNN.com, to see if anything had happened overnight. And there was the story, just 39 minutes old, "Blackwater security firm banned from Iraq."

Just the day before, Blackwater contractors had been blamed for killing 8 civilians and wounding 14 in what was seen by many Iraqis as a scatter-shot response to small arms fire on a State Department motorcade.

You could say, "Insurgents shot at our State Department officials, and the Blackwater people were contracted to protect them, so what's the problem? When the insurgents stop shooting at us, Blackwater can stop shooting back." You could say that if you missed the fundamental issue involved, namely that whereas American military personnel are accountable for their actions in Iraq, to the military and ultimately to the American people, individual contractors are not. All we can do is cancel an entire contract, and that won't happen because the security companies have too many friends in the Bush Administration. Worse, our government has not permitted their puppet government in Iraq to hold military contractors to Iraqi justice. So without any investigation of the shooting having begun, everybody in Iraq had to know that the contractors involved would never pay a price, even if they had knowingly mowed down unarmed citizens in a deliberate massacre. It wouldn't matter.

Since I knew the puppet government in Iraq couldn't try these guys, it never occurred to me that they might get away with booting them out of the country altogether. It will be interesting to see if the order sticks.

I don't know about the rest of you, but this news gives me hope. I want to relish that hope. I want to savor every drop of it. Therefore I will indulge in fantasies, dreaming of the great news to come that may have just been heralded.

It might be that this is the first of many such bannings. Blackwater could be banned from Afghanistan. Then, countries where Blackwater isn't working now could ban Blackwater from working there in the future. Then, countries where Blackwater might never work anyway might ban Blackwater from passage through them. The result could be that Blackwater could be stuck operating entirely in the United States.

That done, the American people might wake up and come seriously face to face with the reality that the only remaining reason for Blackwater's continued existence is to wait in the wings until the scheduled roundup of undesirable Americans and facilitate their shuttling off to the concentration camps. And having witnessed the banning of Blackwater in the entire rest of the world, they might get the cajones to do it themselves, right here in the freedom-loving U.S. of A.

What's that? It can't happen? Americans won't get their rocks until the day comes they can tell Iraq from Afghanistan on a map? Hey, don't rain on my dream.

I'm not done. If the Iraqis, who don't even have a real government, can tell Blackwater to shove off, anything is possible. Americans could see straight to try the board and management for treason. They could elect a really good president.

The emerging testes could even affect us here in Seattle. Seattleites might realize they've been irresponsible to allow the MID Yellowjackets, unaccountable hired vigilantes, to force poor people to conform to the selfish greedy whims of the megacorporations that control the Downtown Seattle Association.

One more dream: Instead of peeing themselves every time they're asked for a quarter, and trying to put a stop to the practice, Seattleites could get the balls to just say no to panhandlers and keep walking.

Rocks Are Hard Dirt

I want to tell you all to stop controlling my mind. I tell you dirt is nutritious. You are trying to stop me from knowing that, by focusing contrary brain waves on my truth receptors. You are wrong to do that. Smart people like me, who read, know eating dirt is good for you. Ask any smart person like me who reads, like Jesus or Moses. (Moses used to read stuff on rocks.)

Did you know that rocks are hard dirt? Yes, it’s true. It shows you how much God loves dirt, that He wrote the Ten Commandments on a hard form of it. Praise dirt. (It is also highly nutritious.)

I don’t know if this has anything to do with dirt (?), but this week the Seattle Times reported that Kate Joncas, a human, said that establishing two hygiene centers downtown was “right”. She said that it can’t be good for a neighborhood “to concentrate that many needy and damaged people in one place.”

I agree totally with that, which is exactly why I steer clear of neighborhoods where I see too many television antennas on the roofs.

So I was very sorry to hear that Kate Joncas, also Downtown Seattle Association President, said she was sorry to have said what she was misquoted saying. Because it was so true. Homeless people and people like me who have been homeless are damaged. By homelessness! That’s why we don’t like it! “Duh!”

Speaking of duh, I’m reminded of the Third Man Theme by Anton Karas, which has no words, and was originally performed on a zither, which has a sound that is extremely difficult to reproduce vocally.

So when I “sing” the Third Man Theme, it sounds like this: “DUH duh duh duh DUH, duh duh, *dum dum*, DUH duh duh duh DUH, duh duh, *dum dum*, etc. What a great movie theme! It rocks!

So what does this have to do with dirt, you ask? Well long ago, between the first time I was homeless, and the second time, I spent four cool days in Vienna, or as I like to call it, the Third Man Theme Park. (The Third Man was a movie that was made in 1949.)

I went there precisely to see all the sights from the movie. I wanted to see the street (Stiftgasse) where Harry Lime (Orson Welles) was run over by a car according to the porter in the movie. I wanted to see where the porter lived. I wanted to see the Mozart Cafe. I wanted to see the Bahnhof (train station), I wanted to see rubble left over from World War II. I wanted to see a small scary man holding a puny dog.

And I did! It was great. It was all there, and I got to see it, all the while thinking to myself, “DUH duh duh duh DUH, duh duh...”

Well almost everything was there. There were no underground tours of the Vienna sewer system where Harry Lime (Orson Welles) took that fatal bullet from Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten). I really missed that, and I’m hoping that Vienna’s city council or whatever they’re called will eventually get with it and offer tours of the sewers, preferably with zither music piped in.

But all the best stuff was there. The high point of my trip was my visit to the Prater, where, on the ferris wheel, Harry Lime (Orson Welles) almost shoots Holly Martin (Joseph Cotten), before he finds out that Holly Martin (Joseph Cotten) has already told the police about him. While I was in the Prater (http://www.wiener-prater.at) it was very crowded, not like the movie, but at one point I passed a man with one leg who looked liked the balloon salesman in the film. I thought, “Cool! The Balloon salesman! DUH duh duh...” and then an old woman started shrieking at him in German.

She screamed how dare he appear in public where so many tourists could see him. She shrieked that he was disgracing Vienna and Austria by exposing his shame (his missing leg) for all the world to see.

At first I thought, “COOL! Anna Shmidt’s (Alida Valli’s) landlady!” Then I thought, “How wonderful it is that I live in a country where we don’t hide our damaged and disabled, where we actually do what we can to help our most injured to live full healthy public lives, where we care about people themselves and not about how they appear.“

That thought made my trip to Vienna the perfect fantasy! Thank you Vienna! Thank you America!

Social Solvents

The fall equinox* has come and gone and now I got the fall equinox blues. I'm reminded of my 1996 statement on the subject, which I have as yet failed to improve upon. (A symptom of auld-tymer disease, says those that know me.)

(*: It has been called to my attention that not everyone in the Real Change Readership may know what an equinox is. For those people I will explain. An equinox is an equine-ox, that is to say half horse and half bovine. Therefore it is equi-noxious, to both horse-haters and

bovine-haters. Personally, I hate afghans, because they are cats merely pretending to be dogs, which I find despicable. But that's just me.)

My 1996 Statement Regarding The Fall Equinox,

Whose Actual Title Is Much Longer Than This,

So Much Longer That I Can't Include It Here,

Except To Say That It Includes the Words

"to be Sung Dolefully in the Key of Flat"

by © Dr. Wes Browning

The first day of Fall is the Fall Equinox;

This day means as much as a bag full of rocks.

Not a damn thing has happened, the sky is all gray.

I live in Seattle, we like it that way.

At the first of the month I will get a fat check;

Then maybe this season'll get my respeck.

Until then I'll merely be biding my time,

With nothing to do except write silly rhyme.

The Equinox isn't all that's come or gone and I'm not just talking Presidential politics. Remember those Chris Bayley ads? With no mention of Patty Murray, just "Linda Smith this" and "Linda Smith that"? Way to go, Chris!

Thus was our esteemed Editorial Board moved to weigh in on the local races that still remain, now that the primary is over. So we held a Special Meeting just to decide upon "our" endorsements. And are we at all surprised (it happens every time) that my recommendations are ignored by that August Body? No we are not.

First of all I think we should pay more attention to the cool names some of these candidates have. You voters have already said no to a Pope, to a guy named Mike the Mover, and to a Medley. OK, the People Have Spoken, but those of you in District 41 still have a chance to send a James Brown to the State House. Who cares who he really is! Come on! Make me proud!

Could I ask that the glorious Ed Board consider such a proposal for even a second? Just listen and take a lousy vote on it? Just listen, then yes or no. Would that hurt?

NOOOOoooo: "we're too busy deciding the fate of the Universe, Wes." "If it's so important to you why don't you do it in your silly column, Wes." I just made those quotes up but Ruth A Fox Rhymes With Box Socks and Clocks actually said "put it in your column and smoke it."

Fine. Here are my other picks then. I'm for Faith Ireland if she'll change her name to Kathy by November. I'm for Kip Tokuda, unchanged, because with a name like Kip "no one needs a golden retriever". I regretfully must therefore oppose Kip's Republican challenger Muhammad S. Farrakhan. That's a shame because it would be so cool if the courts had to straighten out a Farrakhan win.

Farrakhan is claiming that the State can't prevent him from taking office even though he has been convicted of felonies.

Though I don't endorse Farrakhan himself, I endorse his right to run and serve if elected. I probably wouldn't be saying that if this weren't the US of A. But it is, and that means me and you and everyone else I know could be defined by one legislative body or another as felonious at any time, because that's just the way we do things here:

"Got a race problem? Don't sweat it! We'll just figure out how the undesirables 'get by', and then we'll criminalize it!"

"Too many poor people lowering property values? We'll just build more jails and make it illegal to exist in poverty!"

There isn't any social problem that ignorant fools can't "solve" by passing laws against it.

Case in point. Flashback to the Dark Ages. The bubonic plague kills two thirds of all Europeans. There is a huge labor shortage. Serfs leave their lands to become itinerant laborers. They charge MARKET prices. The ruling classes are horrified. Laws are passed making it illegal to charge any more than pre-plague prices for labor.

The outcome? Capitalism. Those serfs became the new Middle Classes. The laws came to be universally violated, with the resulting loss of respect for the governments that created them. Any of those wage fixing laws that still remain on the books are historical jokes, like those laws of the same period that prohibited Christians from engaging in money lending (banking). Was that a bad thing?

And why the hell couldn't we have had a Thor in the US Senate? Where were you Ballard, when we needed you?

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?

e. e.'s thing

Occasionally I visit the Real Change office and annoy the paid staff. On such a recent mission I happened to learn that our beloved Ozula Sioux is actually ozula sioux. She calls this an "e.e.cummings thing".

That got me wondering - what WAS e.e.'s thing, anyway? (I mean regarding caps). And how would I know? I would have to research the matter scientifically, the way I learned in college. So I got the beer, read two or three of mr.cummings' poems, and at the appropriate moment, about 3 AM, appealed to my Poetic Muse for the Answer.

Well, Answers. I'm sure e.e. must have had days like this:

as

mostpeople are stupidugly

creeps do i want

to be likethem no

do i want

to capitalizelikethem no

do i want

to spacelikethem no

inotlikethem

even do i period no

scroom scroomall

But that's not all. We haven't expressed his profound disgust for modern life, it's artificial complexities, it's unnecessary conventions with their distracting demands upon our attentions. Capitalizers aren't just conformists, they're foolish people who turn their backs on the good life. "besimple" must be his motto.

besimple

besimpledontpunctuatedontspacenocapsnoli

nereturnnospellchexnnnoggobackeditnochew

gumchewfoodfreeyourselffromconventionsco

nveningconcomingcomingwithtogethercoming

togetherwithmostpeoplethenyoucantbeherec

ausetheyretheredontletithappentoyousimpl

But that's not all. We haven't expressed the fact that he was a poet ‹ and what do poets make?

Here I feel I can safely speak with the authority of experience!

poor eddie's lament

or opus nothing - i'm so poor

i'm so poor i only own a half-pair of socks

" " " i have to wipe myself w/. rocks

" " " my bank is by the river

" " " i've had to hock my liver

" " " no woman will give me any time

" " " all i got's words that rhyme

" " " i owe five bucks to my fleas

" " " i can't afford new shift keys