My original idea for this column was to report to you from the 93rd Annual Convention of the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions in the manner of Hunter S Thompson.
Since we are not, in fact, the Duke, it would never occur to me or to Anitra “Mistress Gonzo” Freeman (I’m not prejudiced against Christians, I live with one!) to wade into Grand Ballroom 2 at the SeaTac Doubletree Inn among up to 1000 missionaries without prior consent. Our Editorial Manager Adam Hyla called ahead. He got a nice PR woman, who said something like, oh yes, we know about Real Change, and I read that column by Wes Browning on us a few weeks back, and ha, ha, he sure doesn’t like Christians does he? And then we got permission anyway; so I thought, time to pack our drugs.
But then I thought, Good God, is even their press agent 90% satire-impaired? The column mentioned was NOT anti-Christian. All I did was satirize the AGRM’s website. I wanted to show how their own talk about homeless people might feel to the homeless people themselves by turning it around and applying the same language to missions. If the missionaries were offended by it, they were supposed to understand that they themselves had provided the template.
Clearly, these people need training wheels on their satire. Setting an impression of Hunter S Thompson before them without any exegesis would be like renting your 12 year-old nephew an expensive hooker and not telling him which end is up. It just results in waste. I was going to have to explain in excruciating detail that I don’t actually pop pills or do hookers or drink until noon-o-clock in the morning.
Then the day came, and we were in the ballroom. The head honcho at the dais was saying how great it was that George Bush had appeared on closed circuit TV earler to say a few words to the gathering . Ah heck, we thought, we missed it because we were too busy scoring acid. NO WE WEREN’T, we were across the street downing Sourdough Jacks and jalapeño poppers, because we couldn’t afford $32 for the conference meal.
The best part of the evening was the Total Experience Gospel Choir. Too bad there were too many missionaries in the way, or we could have danced until we ripped a hole in the floor.
Speaking of ripping holes, it was time then for Dr. Kenneth “Hutch” Hutcherson to talk. This was what we really came for. What would the famous Hutch want to say to the AGRM, besides that gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry, etc? Surely he would have a special message. We were right! He came to talk about ripping holes!
Specifically, he discussed Mark Chapter 2, wherein Jesus heals a paralytic that had been lowered through a hole in the ceiling. From this he arrived at the idea that when people come to missions for shelter and food (which he calls “coming for the wrong reasons” as if the missions don’t deliberately set that bait!) it is up to the missions to “rip parts of their lives out of them” (like the hole in the roof, get it?) to reach hollows in their hearts to shove Jesus into! You couldn’t ask for a less disingenuous description of what I referred to previously as the spiritual violence of proselytism. Hutch is for it! Treat the existing spirituality of the homeless people who come to you like so much roofing! And the audience cheered!
Here’s the satire part, for the missionaries reading this: My final recommendation to the rest of the world is we all do to you what Hutch says do to homeless people. We lure you into coming to us for the wrong reasons, by letting you believe we care what you think about gay marriage. Then without your permission we rip your bad-ass violent hearts a new one, and shove tolerance into the hole.
Mahalo.
Showing posts with label violence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label violence. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Dr. Wes’ Missionary Position
Over a year ago I was goosed about a huge discovery. I’d learned most homeless missions everywhere are linked. They’re members of the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions, or the AGRM.
Founded in 1913 as the "International Union of Gospel Missions,” the AGRM provides missions with program resources and guides for helping the homeless. It provides courses in starting up missions, and ongoing organizational advice. Members are certified by the AGRM. Never sleep at an uncertified mission! Always look for the AGRM Seal of Approval!
None of us at Real Change had known about this. Our Editorial Manager, Adam Hyla, had never heard of AGRM. So I was thrilled! For once I, Dr. Wes Browning, had an idea at an Editorial Committee meeting, and I was awake! “Hey everybody! Let’s write about this! It will constitute news to our readers!”
As I remember, Adam’s first reaction was on the order of, “It might have been news in 1913.” His second reaction, on hearing that AGRM is based in Missouri, was “What’s the local angle?”
I said something like “Geeze Louise, Adam, there’s not one but THREE member missions right here in Jet City, USA. Plus another 10 of them across the rest of the state. How more local do you need?” “A lot,” he said, scoffing at my genius, as so many always do.
Well, scoffers scoff no more! I’ve got your local angle right here, Adam! They’re bringing their show to town!
Yes! Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission will host the 93rd Annual Convention of the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions. From May 27 to May 31, a swarm of homeless-mission folk will fan out to hit all our best tourist traps, then reassemble to compare mission shop notes, like how Jesus would create a non-profit governing board, how to use the Bible to get homeless people to behave, or how to stop homeless gays from marrying (Dr. Kenneth Hutcherson will be one of the featured speakers.)
AGRM’s website, www.agrm.org, is a window into the ideals and philosophies of Christian homeless missions, which have a huge impact on the lives of thousands of homeless people.
Inspired by a similar item on the website, and in the spirit of sharing, here’s my EIGHT WAYS TO TRULY HELP THE MISSIONS:
1. Never give cash to a mission. Too often well-intended gifts meant for homeless services are used to support the missions’ pernicious proselytizing habits. Volunteer your time, or give them food or beds instead.
2. Talk to the ministers with respect. Talking to a poverty pimp respectfully can give him a weapon to fight the social isolation that induces him to treat his clients as moral and spiritual inferiors.
3. Recognize that missions and their ministers are not all the same. Some of them make you go to the service before you can eat, while others let you buy your way out of the chapel, for instance.
4. Share God's love. If Jesus were walking the earth today, He would certainly spend time with the homeless. But, maybe He’d talk to a mission’s minister too, on a slow day. So can you.
5. Pray for the missions. THEY like that sort of thing, and actually believe it does them good. Humor them.
6. Take precautions for your own safety. Some workers at missions on the streets are criminals and fugitives running from the law. Watch your wallet at all times, and avoid bending over in front of them.
7. Encourage your local mission to help their homeless clients both physically and spiritually but always within their clients’ own spiritual understanding. Too often missions will work to undermine and degrade that existing spirituality, so as to try to supplant it. Proselytizing does spiritual violence.
8. Demand transparency. Do the “converts” really get the best beds? No one knows, because no one talks, including the clients, who fear the consequences of speaking out.
A “convention” is a “coming together.” Let’s all share our ideas and try to come together!
Founded in 1913 as the "International Union of Gospel Missions,” the AGRM provides missions with program resources and guides for helping the homeless. It provides courses in starting up missions, and ongoing organizational advice. Members are certified by the AGRM. Never sleep at an uncertified mission! Always look for the AGRM Seal of Approval!
None of us at Real Change had known about this. Our Editorial Manager, Adam Hyla, had never heard of AGRM. So I was thrilled! For once I, Dr. Wes Browning, had an idea at an Editorial Committee meeting, and I was awake! “Hey everybody! Let’s write about this! It will constitute news to our readers!”
As I remember, Adam’s first reaction was on the order of, “It might have been news in 1913.” His second reaction, on hearing that AGRM is based in Missouri, was “What’s the local angle?”
I said something like “Geeze Louise, Adam, there’s not one but THREE member missions right here in Jet City, USA. Plus another 10 of them across the rest of the state. How more local do you need?” “A lot,” he said, scoffing at my genius, as so many always do.
Well, scoffers scoff no more! I’ve got your local angle right here, Adam! They’re bringing their show to town!
Yes! Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission will host the 93rd Annual Convention of the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions. From May 27 to May 31, a swarm of homeless-mission folk will fan out to hit all our best tourist traps, then reassemble to compare mission shop notes, like how Jesus would create a non-profit governing board, how to use the Bible to get homeless people to behave, or how to stop homeless gays from marrying (Dr. Kenneth Hutcherson will be one of the featured speakers.)
AGRM’s website, www.agrm.org, is a window into the ideals and philosophies of Christian homeless missions, which have a huge impact on the lives of thousands of homeless people.
Inspired by a similar item on the website, and in the spirit of sharing, here’s my EIGHT WAYS TO TRULY HELP THE MISSIONS:
1. Never give cash to a mission. Too often well-intended gifts meant for homeless services are used to support the missions’ pernicious proselytizing habits. Volunteer your time, or give them food or beds instead.
2. Talk to the ministers with respect. Talking to a poverty pimp respectfully can give him a weapon to fight the social isolation that induces him to treat his clients as moral and spiritual inferiors.
3. Recognize that missions and their ministers are not all the same. Some of them make you go to the service before you can eat, while others let you buy your way out of the chapel, for instance.
4. Share God's love. If Jesus were walking the earth today, He would certainly spend time with the homeless. But, maybe He’d talk to a mission’s minister too, on a slow day. So can you.
5. Pray for the missions. THEY like that sort of thing, and actually believe it does them good. Humor them.
6. Take precautions for your own safety. Some workers at missions on the streets are criminals and fugitives running from the law. Watch your wallet at all times, and avoid bending over in front of them.
7. Encourage your local mission to help their homeless clients both physically and spiritually but always within their clients’ own spiritual understanding. Too often missions will work to undermine and degrade that existing spirituality, so as to try to supplant it. Proselytizing does spiritual violence.
8. Demand transparency. Do the “converts” really get the best beds? No one knows, because no one talks, including the clients, who fear the consequences of speaking out.
A “convention” is a “coming together.” Let’s all share our ideas and try to come together!
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
Good Grief, Indeed
I'm in for it this time: I let myself get talked into making this column about the death penalty and Ridgway's sentence deal. Look out, everybody, we're in for a laugh riot now!
This situation came about because our beloved "editor" Adam "Designated Cat-Herder" Holdorf wrote an Op Ed piece last issue (Nov. 13) on the same subject entitled "Beyond Retribution." That article contained elements which various of us other "editors" on the "Editorial Committee" thought was, well, let's just say we thought Adam was experimenting with unusual pesto recipes when he wrote it, if you get my drift.
Now we all know that anybody who reads Adventures in Poetry for fact-based analyses of deep contemporary issues would eat cardboard for the vitamins. We hate facts here the most. We hate detailed analyses the second most.
Growing up I had many traumatic experiences involving facts and analyses. I was repeatedly forced to compare and contrast things. It was torture. This one may have scarred me for life: "Compare and contrast the maple producing industry of the Northeastern United States to the production of papyrus in Egypt circa 1000 BC, indicating the social effect either has had. Be as specific as possible and incorporate at least one pie chart."
Because of that psychological scarring I now constantly make fun of facts and analyses. A day isn't complete unless I have found a fact to mercilessly tease and poke for my sick amusement. While I avoid targeting innocent people who might get in the way, I sometimes will inadvertently slip and tease a human who just happens to be standing next to an intelligent critique. I deeply regret these incidents. I want to especially apologize for the "pus-filled wonk" comment some time ago. It was horribly, horribly, wrong.
So I am naturally very reluctant to comment on Adam's Op Ed. But I must. Adam's piece was an intelligent critique if I ever saw one. It had a lot of good parts to it. Therefore, I need to pick at it. It is my twisted purpose in life, thanks to my twisted nurturing.
One of the very good parts of it is the part where Adam says that capital punishment is in no way a deterrent to murder. As strong as that statement looks, it isn't strong enough. There is strong evidence that capital punishment actually increases murder and other kinds of violent crime. There are other factors affecting the murder rate, such as economic and social and cultural conditions, that can mask these increases, but really the evidence is getting so massive that continued denial of it is beginning to look seriously stupid.
I mean if you're standing on railroad tracks and you hear a whistle blowing, you get off the tracks. You don't stand there and insist that it might not be a train.
It's a matter of survival. The evidence strongly supports the view that a brutalization effect is at work that is stronger than any deterrent effect. So to persist in supporting capital punishment is ASKING for more murders.
Yet it is now being suggested that this deal with Ridgway to trade his death penalty for confessions provides a new justification for the death penalty. In Adam Holdorf's words, "It indicates that, however cruel and arbitrary the death penalty may be, its existence functions as a tool to coax confession."
No! We can't be mandating the death penalty as a tool to engineer good grief management outcomes. "Coax confession?" The word is "extract" and we don't need to go there. We don't do torture. This is morally equivalent and subject to the same uncertainties. Torture does not guarantee truth.
What we need is to take the step to humanize society by doing away with the death penalty once and for all.
This situation came about because our beloved "editor" Adam "Designated Cat-Herder" Holdorf wrote an Op Ed piece last issue (Nov. 13) on the same subject entitled "Beyond Retribution." That article contained elements which various of us other "editors" on the "Editorial Committee" thought was, well, let's just say we thought Adam was experimenting with unusual pesto recipes when he wrote it, if you get my drift.
Now we all know that anybody who reads Adventures in Poetry for fact-based analyses of deep contemporary issues would eat cardboard for the vitamins. We hate facts here the most. We hate detailed analyses the second most.
Growing up I had many traumatic experiences involving facts and analyses. I was repeatedly forced to compare and contrast things. It was torture. This one may have scarred me for life: "Compare and contrast the maple producing industry of the Northeastern United States to the production of papyrus in Egypt circa 1000 BC, indicating the social effect either has had. Be as specific as possible and incorporate at least one pie chart."
Because of that psychological scarring I now constantly make fun of facts and analyses. A day isn't complete unless I have found a fact to mercilessly tease and poke for my sick amusement. While I avoid targeting innocent people who might get in the way, I sometimes will inadvertently slip and tease a human who just happens to be standing next to an intelligent critique. I deeply regret these incidents. I want to especially apologize for the "pus-filled wonk" comment some time ago. It was horribly, horribly, wrong.
So I am naturally very reluctant to comment on Adam's Op Ed. But I must. Adam's piece was an intelligent critique if I ever saw one. It had a lot of good parts to it. Therefore, I need to pick at it. It is my twisted purpose in life, thanks to my twisted nurturing.
One of the very good parts of it is the part where Adam says that capital punishment is in no way a deterrent to murder. As strong as that statement looks, it isn't strong enough. There is strong evidence that capital punishment actually increases murder and other kinds of violent crime. There are other factors affecting the murder rate, such as economic and social and cultural conditions, that can mask these increases, but really the evidence is getting so massive that continued denial of it is beginning to look seriously stupid.
I mean if you're standing on railroad tracks and you hear a whistle blowing, you get off the tracks. You don't stand there and insist that it might not be a train.
It's a matter of survival. The evidence strongly supports the view that a brutalization effect is at work that is stronger than any deterrent effect. So to persist in supporting capital punishment is ASKING for more murders.
Yet it is now being suggested that this deal with Ridgway to trade his death penalty for confessions provides a new justification for the death penalty. In Adam Holdorf's words, "It indicates that, however cruel and arbitrary the death penalty may be, its existence functions as a tool to coax confession."
No! We can't be mandating the death penalty as a tool to engineer good grief management outcomes. "Coax confession?" The word is "extract" and we don't need to go there. We don't do torture. This is morally equivalent and subject to the same uncertainties. Torture does not guarantee truth.
What we need is to take the step to humanize society by doing away with the death penalty once and for all.
Thursday, October 17, 2002
Everything Reveals Everything
Last issue I talked about my cab driving history. Since then I have been met with deep, penetrating questions by my readers. Questions such as, "What?" and, "So how was it?" So I have decided to keep at it a while longer.
The nice thing about cab driving is that it's just like everything else. So if you talk about it enough, eventually you've talked about everything else anyway. That's why poetry works!
Take fear for instance. Fear is a big subject these days, what with Home Security, snipers, Saddam, et al. Rather than talk about fear of Iraq I can talk about cab driving. It's all the same.
I began cab driving in fear of it. I was just quitting a job that had been making me ill, and I was looking for something completely different. That day, the newspapers were all about a cab driver who had been shot to death for the fun of it, in South Seattle off of Rainier Valley. The murderers were still at large. I read the stories and immediately thought, "That cab company will be needing a new driver," and I signed up with them that Monday.
There was training, and the next thing I knew I was set loose on the whole of Seattle to drive cab anywhere I wanted in the city, six nights a week, twelve hours a night. I was expected to work where the business was, but now a new fear set in. I found I had a powerful dread of working unfamiliar neighborhoods. I lived in the Rainier Valley dispatching area. That was the area I knew, so that's where I worked. Even though the murderers were still out there.
Isn't that just the way it always is, folks? You back away from one fear and another one is breathing down your neck right behind you. I think a grand unifying philosophical principle is involved here. Some day vinyl may be implicated, also.
But back to the fear. The thing we all do in cases like this is ask, "Where are the police? We need police to catch these murderous thugs." All right, I'll tell you where the police were. They were all over Rainier Valley doing their drug busting and breaking up domestic violence, all the stuff you see them doing on Cops.
And guess what the police do when they are breaking up a fight in a family and they need to get one of the parties out of the area? Do you think they haul them out in a patrol car? No way. They put them in cabs and ORDER the cab drivers to take them somewhere, and don't pay the drivers.
One day I was ordered to take a teenage girl who had been beaten by her father to Harborview Hospital. Trouble is, she and her sister who came along didn't want to go to the hospital.
Well, I shouldn't commit kidnapping just because the Seattle Police order me to. The girls wanted to go to a 7-11, so that's where we went.
Wouldn't you know it? The father drove up in his Caddy right after we got there, and the sisters proceeded to fight over which one of them would have the honor of shooting him in the face with a pistol they were carrying.
After one of them waved the gun in the father's face and after a passing gang (I'm not kidding) intervened and took away the gun, the police showed up and lined everyone up against the wall but me. I was the only witness willing to cooperate. Without me the police couldn't prove anything.
I was all set to witness the whole thing when the officer put the girl who had brandished the gun back in the cab sitting right next to me, in the front seat, and she pretended her finger was a gun and stuck it in my ribs. Or I thought she was pretending. But I couldn't be sure so I started to get out of the cab, to get a little away from her, when the same officer karate kicked the door on me. In that one blinding instant I learned always to fear the police.
Suddenly I couldn't remember seeing anything. There's poetry at you again.
The nice thing about cab driving is that it's just like everything else. So if you talk about it enough, eventually you've talked about everything else anyway. That's why poetry works!
Take fear for instance. Fear is a big subject these days, what with Home Security, snipers, Saddam, et al. Rather than talk about fear of Iraq I can talk about cab driving. It's all the same.
I began cab driving in fear of it. I was just quitting a job that had been making me ill, and I was looking for something completely different. That day, the newspapers were all about a cab driver who had been shot to death for the fun of it, in South Seattle off of Rainier Valley. The murderers were still at large. I read the stories and immediately thought, "That cab company will be needing a new driver," and I signed up with them that Monday.
There was training, and the next thing I knew I was set loose on the whole of Seattle to drive cab anywhere I wanted in the city, six nights a week, twelve hours a night. I was expected to work where the business was, but now a new fear set in. I found I had a powerful dread of working unfamiliar neighborhoods. I lived in the Rainier Valley dispatching area. That was the area I knew, so that's where I worked. Even though the murderers were still out there.
Isn't that just the way it always is, folks? You back away from one fear and another one is breathing down your neck right behind you. I think a grand unifying philosophical principle is involved here. Some day vinyl may be implicated, also.
But back to the fear. The thing we all do in cases like this is ask, "Where are the police? We need police to catch these murderous thugs." All right, I'll tell you where the police were. They were all over Rainier Valley doing their drug busting and breaking up domestic violence, all the stuff you see them doing on Cops.
And guess what the police do when they are breaking up a fight in a family and they need to get one of the parties out of the area? Do you think they haul them out in a patrol car? No way. They put them in cabs and ORDER the cab drivers to take them somewhere, and don't pay the drivers.
One day I was ordered to take a teenage girl who had been beaten by her father to Harborview Hospital. Trouble is, she and her sister who came along didn't want to go to the hospital.
Well, I shouldn't commit kidnapping just because the Seattle Police order me to. The girls wanted to go to a 7-11, so that's where we went.
Wouldn't you know it? The father drove up in his Caddy right after we got there, and the sisters proceeded to fight over which one of them would have the honor of shooting him in the face with a pistol they were carrying.
After one of them waved the gun in the father's face and after a passing gang (I'm not kidding) intervened and took away the gun, the police showed up and lined everyone up against the wall but me. I was the only witness willing to cooperate. Without me the police couldn't prove anything.
I was all set to witness the whole thing when the officer put the girl who had brandished the gun back in the cab sitting right next to me, in the front seat, and she pretended her finger was a gun and stuck it in my ribs. Or I thought she was pretending. But I couldn't be sure so I started to get out of the cab, to get a little away from her, when the same officer karate kicked the door on me. In that one blinding instant I learned always to fear the police.
Suddenly I couldn't remember seeing anything. There's poetry at you again.
Thursday, May 16, 2002
Nonconsensual Induced Retching Is Wrong
This probably won't be one of my cheerful columns, because the last few days I have been preoccupied with varieties of violence. It just seems like everywhere I look someone is engaging in some sort of violence. Sometimes it's physical and obvious like the wars in the middle and not so middle easts. Or you've got stupid mailbox bombing violence. Other times it's psychological and social violence right around here.
The funniest example of the latter appeared in Saturday's Times in the, erk, Dilly Dally Alley.
Come to think of it, right there, calling the comics pages the Dilly Dally Alley -- there's some psychosocial violence in that, isn't there? When did that start? What were they thinking? It's like those silly names some restaurants give to menu items so you can't order anything without sounding stupid. "We'd like one Dilly Willy Burger and two Dally Pally Patty Melty Welties. Oh, and Alley-Size those please." Inducing retching is a form of violence that doesn't get all the attention it deserves.
OK, but that wasn't what annoyed me Saturday. What annoyed me Saturday was the "guest" strip, Lola.
As best as I can tell, Lola is meant to be an endearingly crotchety woman of advanced years, who goes around saying endearingly crotchety things that are meant to be amusing. I don't know, I don't usually read it, but Saturday's strip caught my attention because of the appearance of a homeless stereotype, a bench-sitting bearded knit-cap-wearing shopping-cart-near-by guy, "Carl."
Lovable Lola establishes her inherent goodness at once by asking Carl if he is ready to go to church. Carl says, "Can't -- I've got a hangover," thereby rounding out the constellation of the stereotype and providing that hook that every good strip needs, making us want to read more.
In the next panel, Lola sets up the gag by saying, "You're becoming like family, Carl..." The figures are inked over to encourage the reader to hurry on to the zinger. And there it is in the last panel: Lola turns her back to Carl, and says, "I know, because sometimes I feel like smacking you."
Ha, ha! She meant THAT kind of family. She meant the kind of family where she is the one in power and she gets to hit the other members of the family and get away with it. Isn't that hilarious?
No, it isn't. It also isn't hilarious to suggest that an appropriate way to draw an alcoholic homeless man into mainstream community is to threaten him with violence if he doesn't go to your church with you.
An even subtler kind of violence has been becoming popular in, of all places, Seattle's social service workers and those connected with them. Some of the people who are in favor of proposed changes to the Noel House mission are resorting to a rhetoric that includes specifically attacking the idea of a homeless community.
Ordinarily, attacking an idea is not what I would call an act of violence.
But the idea under attack in this case is the idea that the people who are most affected by the proposed changes form a people at all. By destroying this idea, supporters of the Noel House changes would forever deny the homeless women who live at Noel House or any other homeless any right ever to speak on their own behalf.
If there is no community then there is no voice. If there is no voice, then you might as well have clipped tongues. Stealing people's voice is always an act of violence.
Thursday, March 8, 2001
My Very Successful Prognostication
I'll confess, I'm not a terribly physical kind of guy. I'm not into rough competitive sports like baseball or rugby or marbles. I don't object to sports altogether, but I prefer the solitary sports, sports in which it's just me competing against myself.
My favorite of those is Olympic Style Nervous Pacing. Incidentally, my best score ever against myself in a pacing competition was 9.6 (it would have been a 10 if it weren't for the Russian judge.) Not to brag, but I did so well I cost myself a medal. Myself was deeply chagrined and never competed again. Really. No, not really, I just wanted to say "chagrined".
So naturally, whenever I am in an earthquake, which seems lately to be whenever I am lying in bed naked in a vulnerable position, or at least once per decade, my feeling about it is not unlike the feeling of a student who, having tried out for the varsity band, was instead picked to be a center for the football team. My feeling is that there has been a horrible mistake, I don't do contact sports. I don't even watch them!
Not that earthquakes can't be entertaining to me. Hey, I can be amused as easily as the next guy. It's just that they don't amuse me for very long. It's like sticking your finger in an electric light socket, isn't it? The fun part is pretty much over when you've realized that you have done it and you haven't suffered massive cardiac arrest yet. So, well, that was an earthquake, wasn't it? Hey, I'm not dead! What fun!
Those of my friends who are sports enthusiasts tell me that part of the value of taking part in sports lies in testing their limits, learning what they can accomplish when they throw themselves into something.
I can see that now. I mean, it isn't often that I become so distracted that I forget where I put my pants. Ordinarily I am on top of those sorts of things; "life's little details." So I guess you could say that the earthquake allowed me to discover new depths of self-distraction, great new vistas of blind panic...
Speaking of senseless violence, how 'bout that Fat Tuesday? There's another contact sport I can live without.
The first few nights of the Mardi Gras violence had no impact at all on me, even though I live in the Pioneer District, because I ignored it. (Some things deserve to be ignored, I believe. Like the practice of confounding the District and the Square. I simply don't let myself hear such idiocy. It's the Pioneer District, damn it. Or the Pioneer Square District, at the worst.)
But Tuesday night, as I was riding the bus home at about 11:30 pm with Anitra "not an actual Italian Duck" Freeman, we were unable to not notice the crowds, as they were slowing the bus so much that we were better off walking. So we continued to our Pioneer District apartment building on foot, and I had to notice the way the police were deployed. Not interspersed with the crowds, but on the periphery, in fact, just next to our building.
So I told Anitra (I'm not making this up), "First, I am going to watch Letterman. Then, I am going to do my Real Change duty, and go out there and see what is going on in those crowds. Then I am going to come back, and together we we will be tear-gassed by these police at about 2 am, when they can't think of any better way to control the crowds, which will be dispersing at about that time, under our very windows."
Did I guess wrong? No, I did not. I did exactly what I said. I watched Letterman. Then I wandered out into the Fat Tuesday crowd. I saw the beginning of the brawl that was filmed so well from the police helicopter. At that point I returned to my apartment, and waited to be tear-gassed. We were tear-gassed right on schedule, at about 2 am.
OK, there is a sport I love. I love predicting what Seattle will do next. It's poetry in motion.
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