The saying on the street is "There's no such thing as a free lunch." You have to sit through the sermon, at least. It also applies off the street. My experience with subsidized housing is there's no such thing as a free subsidy, either.
People who live in subsidized housing live under rules and regulations that those who have never experienced them imagine only pertain to totalitarian states. I get a minimum of two invasions of my room every month. One for bug spray, one for "inspection." "You are not required to be present for this violation of your privacy." The rules for passing inspection are set by bureaucratic pinheaded suits who have never lived in a 200 square foot studio apartment, or visited one, or know anyone who has. Therefore the rules are insane, as rules tend to be that are not based in any way on any knowledge of reality. Therefore I'm always failing my "inspection" and required to be "re-inspected", at which time I must have corrected the cause of my "failure". So usually there are 3 invasions per month. Re-re-inspections are also possible.
Fortunately, at the re-inspection I can't fail anything I passed at the inspection. So, let's say I failed the inspection because the right side of the room was too cluttered. If the note says, "Your room failed inspection/ the right side was too cluttered/ please correct this for re-inspection on [Month/Day]," that means I can take all the junk on the right side and slide it to the left side. Now the left side is cluttered, but that's OK, because the left side passed previously. So sometimes the insanity works in my favor!
This month I have failed inspection because there isn't a 3-foot wide path from the entrance to my room to the window. The rule that I must have such a path, I've been told repeatedly, is based on the need of paramedics to get a gurney to my limp dying body when it's time for my last trip to Harborview before final discharge to my Eternal Studio in the Burning Pit of Hell. I will presently amuse myself by describing in print how bat spit insane the 3-foot rule is.
First of all, the entrance to my room is itself 2 feet 10 inches wide. So if the gurney is 3 feet wide it can't even get in the door. If they bring in a super-transformer-gurney that can tuck its sides in to get in the door, let the stupid thing tuck its sides in the rest of the way.
If they can't get to my limp dying body because my stuff is in the way, how did I get there? If I store stuff up near the window, that means I'm not going to be dying at the window. I'll be dying someplace I can get to. Do they think I'm going to climb over my stuff just before dying? What, just to make extra work for the paramedics? I don't think playing a lame practical joke on the paramedics is going to be a big priority when I'm choking on that pretzel.
If there's an earthquake and the building pancakes and I'm trapped in an air pocket with tons of rubble around me, am I going to be left to die on the grounds that a gurney can't be rolled up alongside me?
For that matter, if inspection is at 3 PM, and the earthquake was at 2:59 PM and I didn't clean up the mess by the time the inspectors arrive, did I fail? Answer: Yes! Because the rules are made by dumb-asses!
Meanwhile, suppose you don't live in subsidized housing. Let's say you're a serial killer who likes to chop your victims up and saves the variety meats in a freezer in your basement in your own house. Lucky you, you don't get inspected monthly! It's your reward for pulling your own weight in society!
Showing posts with label subsidized. Show all posts
Showing posts with label subsidized. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Thursday, June 26, 2003
African Wild Metaphors
Having been homeless a bunch of times has warped my conception of a good time. It used to be that a good time involved some activity. There had to be a convertible and a woman. I expected some state and federal laws to be broken. Two or three weeks' worth of spending money had to be thrown away within minutes. My idea of a good time is now and probably always ever will be to sit indoors someplace where I belong and not have to get up and move.
That's what I like about the zoo. What I can do at the zoo is pay my money (or someone else's money, I don't care) to get in, then find my way to the food pavilion, sit down with a burger and a drink and watch the other people at the zoo who are running around looking for animals to watch.
As many of you know, I am no longer homeless but live in a subsidized apartment building, the Union, run by the same people who run what's called the Downtown Emergency Service Center. These people, who also call themselves DESC, don't want me to just sit in my room and not get up. They try to entice me out of my room with ping-pong, bingo, parties, and games. Nothing much works until someone mentions a field trip to the zoo.
The zoo is wonderful. You've got your animals. Animals are cool. You've got your basic zoo paradigm: the animals are mostly locked up, but it's made to look like they aren't, if it's a good zoo. Every time I go to the zoo I think there has to be a wealth of political metaphor there. I think of Walden II, Brave New World, and lately the Matrix, and I'm sure I will have something insightful to say in this column about such metaphor, perhaps having seen the orangutans.
So last week I went to the zoo with a bunch of fellow residents of the Union. I couldn't wait to get my hands on some of those hot political metaphors I was going to write about, and then I would check out the snow leopard, and then I would retreat to the food pavilion to sit and not get up.
First we all rushed to see the tiger cubs. We studied our maps carefully and found our way to the tiger cub display. As we approached them I thought of all the injustices of child exploitation around the globe that I had ever heard of. I was thinking, boy, these are going to give me terrific insights. Finally we arrived to see them stretched out on some fake rocks in front of us. What a dearth of political metaphor they represented. I have never seen such a paucity of metaphor in a pair of cats as in those two. I have more political metaphor in my little toes.
Then we went to see the snow leopard. Whenever I had looked for the snow leopard in the past he was almost impossible to find thanks to his camouflage. There'll be a metaphor in that for sure, I thought.
Well, guess what. This year the snow leopard was out in plain view putting on a show for all the visitors. He wasn't hard to find. You could see, hear, and smell him as easily as an incontinent Great Dane. Not much political metaphor there.
There was a little relief in the form of the one neurotic porcupine. But I do neurosis all the time. I was hoping I'd find a metaphor that was more out of the way, a little less common. I can find neurotic at 3rd and Pine.
Finally, just as I was about to give up, our group approached the African Wild Dogs. As we walked up to them I could see four wild dogs running around their area in a single file, nose to tail, always in the same order. I shouted something stupid like, "Hey, everybody, look! Puppies!" Or something like that. The lead dog then made a beeline for me with his three buddies following him in their constant order, and he stood in front of me and said: "Hoo."
Then, when he was satisfied that I was nobody, the lead dog took off with the other three to look for other potential challenges to his power in their territory.
That made my day – I'd seen politicians themselves.
That's what I like about the zoo. What I can do at the zoo is pay my money (or someone else's money, I don't care) to get in, then find my way to the food pavilion, sit down with a burger and a drink and watch the other people at the zoo who are running around looking for animals to watch.
As many of you know, I am no longer homeless but live in a subsidized apartment building, the Union, run by the same people who run what's called the Downtown Emergency Service Center. These people, who also call themselves DESC, don't want me to just sit in my room and not get up. They try to entice me out of my room with ping-pong, bingo, parties, and games. Nothing much works until someone mentions a field trip to the zoo.
The zoo is wonderful. You've got your animals. Animals are cool. You've got your basic zoo paradigm: the animals are mostly locked up, but it's made to look like they aren't, if it's a good zoo. Every time I go to the zoo I think there has to be a wealth of political metaphor there. I think of Walden II, Brave New World, and lately the Matrix, and I'm sure I will have something insightful to say in this column about such metaphor, perhaps having seen the orangutans.
So last week I went to the zoo with a bunch of fellow residents of the Union. I couldn't wait to get my hands on some of those hot political metaphors I was going to write about, and then I would check out the snow leopard, and then I would retreat to the food pavilion to sit and not get up.
First we all rushed to see the tiger cubs. We studied our maps carefully and found our way to the tiger cub display. As we approached them I thought of all the injustices of child exploitation around the globe that I had ever heard of. I was thinking, boy, these are going to give me terrific insights. Finally we arrived to see them stretched out on some fake rocks in front of us. What a dearth of political metaphor they represented. I have never seen such a paucity of metaphor in a pair of cats as in those two. I have more political metaphor in my little toes.
Then we went to see the snow leopard. Whenever I had looked for the snow leopard in the past he was almost impossible to find thanks to his camouflage. There'll be a metaphor in that for sure, I thought.
Well, guess what. This year the snow leopard was out in plain view putting on a show for all the visitors. He wasn't hard to find. You could see, hear, and smell him as easily as an incontinent Great Dane. Not much political metaphor there.
There was a little relief in the form of the one neurotic porcupine. But I do neurosis all the time. I was hoping I'd find a metaphor that was more out of the way, a little less common. I can find neurotic at 3rd and Pine.
Finally, just as I was about to give up, our group approached the African Wild Dogs. As we walked up to them I could see four wild dogs running around their area in a single file, nose to tail, always in the same order. I shouted something stupid like, "Hey, everybody, look! Puppies!" Or something like that. The lead dog then made a beeline for me with his three buddies following him in their constant order, and he stood in front of me and said: "Hoo."
Then, when he was satisfied that I was nobody, the lead dog took off with the other three to look for other potential challenges to his power in their territory.
That made my day – I'd seen politicians themselves.
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