Famous Lamous

OK. I was in a really foul mood when I was writing this column for last issue, and that may have caused me to froth excessively. But to refer to it as "my lamest column ever" as one person did is simply ignorant. My lamest column ever was in fact the Sept. 1, 1997 column, which opened with the words "In a world of Labrador Retrievers, I am a duck!! (OHHH YES!! OH YYESSS!! A DUCK, I AM, a DUCK, oooooooh yesss!)," and ended with the sad admission that I was not a duck after all. When I think of lame, I think of that column, which forever set the standard of lame for all columns everywhere.

There is absolutely no possibility that any new column I write will ever be as bad as the duck column, owing to the superiority of my current anti-psychotic medication. Still, I want to try. Because, what is life without hope? If we don't challenge our challenges, what will we challenge? I, for one, vowed long ago that I would not surrender to a shallow, vain, pursuit of excellence.

I could just write "I suck" 400 times and turn that in as a column. The management of this rag has assured me that they are prepared for that eventuality. There is in fact a not-very-secret document in a file cabinet in the back room entitled "Wes sucks" that provides no less than two plans. Plan A is to run an old column (preferably the duck masterpiece.) Plan B is to go ahead and print "I suck" 400 times and to sign my name to it.

But that would be too easy not only for me but everyone else involved. It would give the proofreader too little to do. I would not feel as though I had earned my complimentary copies. Homeless activists everywhere would be disappointed because I hadn't been active enough, they want me to break a sweat. At least every other line I should insert the words "and homelessness sucks too" in order to stay on topic.

So I am always on the lookout for creative new ways to suck without merely saying so. That's why I need television.

Without television and the great communicators that communicate to me on television, I would not know how to be as lame as I am. That's why I have shacked up with a sexy rich woman, Anitra "Pay-Pal" Freeman. I sweep the floor, buy the groceries and do the dishes. In return my woman buys TV and TV access for me. It's all so I can watch Andy Rooney and learn. ("Have you ever noticed how bourgeois I am?" is an actual quote. So is "Why do you think my head is so big?" and "Have you ever noticed lots of people call themselves people-persons but nobody ever calls themselves a thing-person?" )

Thanks to television and to its cousin the internet, I have learned that the only thing that matters to most Americans is the quality of middle-class life. Even poor people in this country don't really care about what other poor people are doing or how things are going to get better so that there won't be any poor people. All they care about are the latest adventures of middle-class people like they wish they were.

But I digress. What's important here is finding creative ways to be lame. So what I want to do today is to join the chorus of hand wringing over the fate of the middle-class in America. How about if I call attention to the tragedy of middle-class homelessness? Here we go:

"That's right. This is a huge problem, people. Every day tens of middle-class people become homeless. I'm not talking here about people who were middle-class who suddenly became poor and are now living on the streets. I'm talking about people who still are middle-class and are now living on the streets.

"OK, they aren't really living on the streets because no one with money would do that. But they're living in motels and hotels and RVs. Some of them are even living in Mexico, being forced to read Spanish for Travelers dictionaries and listen to Berlitz tapes at night.

"It is all the more a tragedy because these people pay the taxes that pay the truck drivers to deliver our government cheeses, and yet no one considers their plight(s)."

Yes! As lame as the campaigns!

Rest from 9-11

Our government cheese connection:

As we enter our seventh year of writing this column, we try to stay focused. We try to remember to call ourselves "we" all the time. We try to remember to use the word "homeless" at least once in every column. And we try to find something amusing to write about.

Here's something that I, whoops, we, find hilariously amusing. The literary world has been awed by the news that author Fay Weldon has been paid an undisclosed sum of money to mention the jewelry company name "Bulgari" twelve times in a novel. Ha, ha, big deal! We just found an undisclosed sum of money up our left nostril!

I mean maybe it's undisclosed because it's a nickel a word, 60 cents. Why get worked up about it until you know how much it is?

But after being amused, it occurred to us to wonder whether we were ready for this new kind of trade in words. Could we mention the name of a company or a product twelve times in a novel? How hard could that be? What company would we choose?

We would go where the big money is. Forget companies, we would kiss up to the government! And we would cram twelve mentions into a quarter page, to really give them their money's worth! Now what does the government produce that we could possibly write that much about?

When we think of the times we have been homeless we think of government cheese. There was nothing like the satisfaction of sitting down in a park with a 50 cent bag of day old bread and a block of government cheese. Government cheese was not our first choice, but it came from our government, whereas our first choice came from Limburg, some foreign place.

When government cheese is heated enough and then subjected to sufficient compression, it becomes a fair to passing condiment which squirts. We believe a hot dog without melted government cheese is like an unbuttered hippopotamus.

If all the government cheese in the world were laid end to end, some of it would probably get wet. But, as we always say, wet government cheese is better than no government cheese at all.

In our experience, nothing catches mice better than government cheese. Not only do the mice prefer it, but a government cheese fed mouse is a tasty mouse, in our experience.

It has been said with authority that even though Bill Gates can afford any kind of cheese he wants, he would eat government cheese if he thought it would make him twice as rich as he already is. Like that would happen.

Not many people know that government cheese is highly prized as material for headgear among the indigenous Inuit of the upper Sepik River Basin. Interestingly, not any more know it even now that we've said it.

In a completely different vein -- the following quote was brought to my attention last week and I thought it was worth sharing.

"I feel this way about it. World trade means world peace and consequently the World Trade Center buildings in New York ... had a bigger purpose than just to provide room for tenants. The World Trade Center is a living symbol of man's dedication to world peace ... beyond the compelling need to make this a monument to world peace, the World Trade Center should, because of its importance, become a representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and through cooperation, his ability to find greatness."

-- Seattle native Minoru Yamasaki, 1912-1986, was the chief architect of the World Trade Center.