My Stand on the Plej of a Lejents

I want to talk about the recent 9th Circuit Court decision about the Pledge of Allegiance in schools, because it's such a hot topical subject. But then I realized that the only experience I've had with reciting the Pledge in schools is over forty years old, so in order to talk about a hot topical subject I'd have to reminisce about my passage through the Fifties as a grade schooler.

Oh well. We love irony.

Why do you suppose apples are called that? Why aren't they called brullers? Bruller sounds like an English word. A bruller should be something. Why not an apple?

In 1955, when I was six, I solved this question by noting that "apple" is a reddish word, whereas bruller has a coffee color. Therefore "apple" would be more suitable for describing apples, which are far more often red than coffee colored. So we don't call apples brullers.

At that age I spent a considerable amount of time testing the hypothesis that if a baseball was thrown at the air hard enough it would bounce off. I also believed that if I ran fast enough air would support my feet and I could climb skyward for at least six or seven feet before I got tired.

Though I lived 35 miles from Boston at the time I was sure that I could, given time and enough sandwiches in a paper sack, walk almost anywhere in the world. The question was not could I walk to Paris, but how many days would it take. I guessed somewhere on the order of a week. I knew that if I walked due east I would run into the Atlantic Ocean, but the plan would be to sidestep that.

The year before I started grade school the Supreme Court banned the leading of prayers in public schools. However the news of their decision must not have made it from Washington, D. C. to Ayer, Massachusetts, in spite of the easy walk, because my grade school there required me to recite the Our Father thingie for two years.

I call it the Our Father thingie because at that point those were almost the only words I could make out of the whole thing. The teacher would say, "Everyone bow your heads and say the Lord's Prayer," and so everyone was mumbling into their shirtsleeves. I couldn't see their lips moving and it was almost impossible to follow along.

I do remember being able to make out the part about my cup running over and "give me my daily bread." These words had me worried. What cup are we talking about? What's in it? Why is it running (runnething) over? I pictured a boiling cup of potion like in a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde movie. I didn't want to drink from a cup like that.

And since when do I have to beg for daily bread? What happened to full balanced meals? Don't I get dessert? What about give me my daily Mars bar?

I started school just one year after Eisenhower got the words "under God" added to the Pledge. Not all of my teachers accepted the change. My first grade teacher had us say it the "traditional way," i.e. without the addition. In my mind it went something like this: I plej a lejents to the flag, something, mumble, something,

for which it stands, invisible, with liberty and justice for all.

What, I wondered, was a lejent? And why was I plejing one?

I'm still not sure. And that's where I stand on the 9th Circuit Court's opinion.

OK, I'll clarify a little. What I'm saying is, let's use our schools more to teach kids things like where words come from and how big the world is, and less to indoctrinate them in religion or nationalism. The indoctrination doesn't work anyway.

Stupidology

Some recent talk has got me reflecting upon the nature of stupidity once again.

You're probably right now asking, "Wes, what makes you such an expert on stupidity?" Well, I once stuck my finger in a live light socket out of curiosity. So why wouldn't I be an expert on stupidity?

But seriously, when you are a mutant as I am, your stupidities stand out in stark relief to those of the normal humans. You become more clearly aware of your own stupidities, while, at the same time, normal people's stupidities just drive you to the need for psychiatric medications.

A typical normal human stupidity is the Talk Over The Answer stupidity, or TOTA. People who exhibit TOTA have sense enough to ask questions when they don't know something, but their sense leaves them when it comes time to listen to the answer. They talk over it.

Sufferers of TOTA often have what I have identified as "negative IQ." I first discovered negative IQ when I was forced to team up on a job with a person who had a severe TOTA problem. Lets call her Ms. D. Even though I have at least an average IQ, I could tell that, while working as a team, Ms. D and I were two suits short of a full deck. I mean Ms. D brought my usual IQ down to somewhere around my ankles, and a job that took two hours to do by myself took four hours with her "help." Ms. D had a negative IQ.

One of my own stupidities that fascinates my friends is what I call my detail-discrimination impairment. This can take many forms in others, but for me it is a persistent, long term, inability to bring myself to make distinctions among objects that don't directly concern me.

For example, let's say my way is blocked by a tall woody leaf-bearing plant. I might be heard to utter something like, "Oh. Tree." To myself I might note whether the thing were a deciduous tree or a familiar evergreen, but that's about as far as I'd analyze the situation. Over the long term, since I haven't often noticed the differences between trees I've encountered, the result is that I can't tell most of them apart. Therefore, when the subject of trees comes up, I'm as stupid as two postage stamps glued to each other.

One more universal class of stupidities is what I call the Reversal Stupidities. The Reversal Stupidities manifest in a habit of thinking that if some idea isn't true, then the idea you get by reversing everything about the first idea has to be true. So you think if X isn't your friend, he has to be your enemy. You think that if X and Y are arguing, and if it's clear to you that X is wrong, then Y must be right. You think if evolution is false, creationism must be true, or vice versa. You think that if UFOs aren't glowing marsh gas, then they must be piloted by extra-terrestrials.

There is something about the hard-wiring of the human brain that causes otherwise highly intelligent people to jump to these sorts of conclusions. You have to always be alert to this kind of stupidity, and it doesn't help to think that you yourself are ever free of it.

What can help is an occasional "heads up" from a friend. We're all in this together. Here's a heads up to my well-meaning Pioneer Square neighbors who want to add limits on what alcohol can be sold there: your solution to the "alcohol impact problem" would in effect result in two sets of laws, one for the rest of the state, one for our neighborhood. We would begin to live in a de facto ghetto.

How about a solution that doesn't single Pioneer Square out for ghettohood? How about backing alcoholic treatment for everybody that wants it, wherever they live? Or, if you don't like that idea, think of a better one. How should I know what would work? But don't ghettoize my neighborhood just to inconvenience alcoholics.

Remember, they can buy their brands outside the neighborhood. I already do.

News I Can Lose

So. Do any of you people out there read this paper? How about a show of hands?

OK then, what have you thought of that graphic at the top of page four, the News You Can Use graphic? What's been up with those guys? Why have they been reading the Dallas News all this time? What do you think they're up to? I think the guy on our right has been showing the other guy a personal ad he wrote about him. I think they're a hip, swinging, Texan couple. But we're in Seattle, which is nowhere near Texas, so why has the caption below them always said "Close to Home?"

Being on the editorial board of this august rag, I am part of the very body of individuals who has decided each two weeks to continue using the graphic of the hip, swinging Texan guys. I would in fact be the individual who insists most loudly that we keep it. I think the hip, swinging, Texan guys are cool. But the voice of Dissent grows ever louder with each issue we print. The voice of Dissent will eventually get her way, if not in this issue, then in the next, she'll get so loud. So consider those guys history.

All of this must be a metaphor for my mood. After all, all events everywhere and at all times are metaphors for the moods of me, Copyright Dr. Wes Browning. This particular event, the change of the News You Can Use graphic, is specifically a metaphor for my specifically current mood. I know this, because I am a Poet, and that's how we Poets are. This is one of the things I have learned from many valuable conversations with Cindy, Muse of Other, my Muse of Few Words.

I would be sitting around, just like now, with a deadline in two hours, whining that I didn't feel like writing. And Cindy would ask me what's going on and I'd tell her the first thing that would come to mind. Like right now I'd say that the graphic for News You Can Use is changing, and she'd say "Ah." And I'd say, "What do you mean, 'Ah'?" And she'd say, "So you've been reading News You Can Use." And she'd be right. What a smart Muse.

Of COURSE I don't want to write with all that depressing news tumbling down around me. Especially lately since we've been printing news from all around the US and Canada. Yeah, that's it. I don't want to write because the news reports I have to work from are getting too disgusting. I mean, I'm supposed to be lightening things up, that's my job, but how do you lighten up a fleet of Sherman tanks, you know? (I'm speaking metaphorically again. Get it? Sherman tanks are really heavy.)

Just to pick one example: last issue we carried a story dealing with the video "Bumfights: a cause for concern." The video is said to depict actual homeless people, "bums", engaging in drunken fights among other things, in return for such things as food and clothing. How do I lighten this up? Now you know why I'd rather go on about the Texan couple.

What we ran in the story was only a hint of how disgusting the video is. According to a report by the BBC, in addition to showing homeless people fighting each other, there are scenes of people induced to injure themselves, scenes of people pulling their own teeth out with pliers, others of a man ramming his head against walls.

Other homeless advocates have been condemning the video on the grounds that it exploits the people depicted. As an ex cab driver and former teacher, I know from personal experience that you don't have to be homeless to be exploited on this planet, and I worry a lot less about the condition of the "stars" of "Bumfights" than I do about the part of the public that considers such garbage entertaining. It's the ignorant, bored, brain dead audience that's most being exploited.

Well, that wasn't very lightening of me, was it? Still, I feel lighter for having raised the subject. I've gotten a Sherman tank off my chest.

Don't Step In That Stupidity

We've decided that it's time that we here at Adventures in Poetry take stock of where we are, sniff the air, and then go out on some different limbs and take some hard stands on the controversial issues of the day, courageously facing any mixed metaphors that we might encounter on those limbs, staring them down the narrow ends until they lose their grips, while we miraculously keep all of ours.

For example we are opposed to homelessness, in general. But we are not completely opposed to yurts. We are reserving judgment on yurts until we have actually lived in one. We are leaning in favor of them, though, ever since we saw Julia Roberts sleep in one on TV.

We are opposed to rape. Yes, I know that may surprise some of you, because we have gone on record as being pro-sex. But we assumed at the time that everyone would understand that we meant consensual sex. I mean, we've been raped ourselves, so we know it's not nice. Rape very very bad. Consensual sex very very good.

We are opposed to unfettered capitalism. We are not communists, quite, but we think that if dogs that have once snapped at babies should have to wear muzzles in public from then on, then capitalism should be fettered. Capitalism has done a lot worse than snap at babies in its day.

However, there are good fetters and there are bad fetters. The drug war, for example, is a bad fetter on capitalism. It needs to be replaced with non-martial fetters, like drug regulation and taxation along with drug abuse treatment and education.

We are in favor of global warming only in those instances in which it can be shown necessary to counteract global cooling that might have otherwise occurred. We do not consider this to be one of those instances. There should not be ice-bergs the size of Rhode Island breaking off the Antarctic ice shelf every southern summer, in our considered opinion, until someone can figure out how to put them back.

As far as the environment in general is concerned, we are for it. We believe everyone should have an environment, not just rich people. In fact, we believe that non-humans should be allowed to have environments too, and we don't just mean whatever environments are left over on the bottom shelves, but decent quality environments comparable to the ones they had before people started taking them all.

We are opposed to police practices that result in the deaths of people who wouldn't have warranted the death penalty for their crimes, if any. In saying this, we are not in any way expressing an opposition to the police themselves, only an opposition to the practices we don't like. We could not not like the police, they have guns.

We are opposed to stupidity. But we do not believe that stupidity should be rooted out and lined up against the wall and slaughtered. In our experience, the slaughtering of stupidity only fertilizes the next crop.

It is in fact in the nature of human beings to be stupid at all times and in all places. The object can't therefore be to eliminate stupidity, because that would require the mass annihilation of human beings, and we are against that. The object must be instead to support universal education, to expose as much as possible of the stupidity to the light of day, so that our fellow humans will know how to walk around all of it, without any of it sticking to their feet.

Well, that wasn't our best batch of metaphor, but we feel like we are improving overall.

Speaking of metaphors, this whole India-Pakistan nuclear war scareis a real downer, isn't it? We are, by the way, opposed to nuclear wars.

Only Half Stupid

Let's talk about found poetry!

One of our unstated goals here at Adventures in Poetry is to find and expose the poetry in every doorway and alley, anywhere it seeks rest from the great outdoors. We do this partly because we are lazy, and it beats making up our own poetry, but also because we think it ends up pretty good, even if it usually doesn't end up looking like poetry.

Well, the art of writing and not writing found poetry, itself, is right up one of our metaphorical alleys, snoring away as we speak. Just let me sneak up and nab it from its metaphorical behind. I'll make it breathe some metaphorical chloroform -- there, that does it, it's stopped struggling. Now let's ease it ever so gently onto the metaphorical examining table, and -- there! We're ready to talk about found poetry!

By the way, I call my last paragraph "Metaphorical Chloroform", or, when properly chopped into lines, "Opus Prose Poem Frank, Serial Number 05200230, PFC," or just Frank No Last Name, for short. It is my first poem named Frank No Last Name. I find that which I just said deeply poetic, so it's just the sort of thing that I am talking about. I do not digress!

But let's inject some Generality into our subject. Next, let's slice our subject in half. Doing so we find it consists of two pieces, one "found" and one "poetry". Well that's about as General as you can get. Now let's reel back in disgust and consider another example.

Remember that ordinarily when we make a poem while being stupid or lazy, we do it by taking someone else's poem, throwing out all the words to get an empty form, and then stuffing our own words in. The result is an ordinary poem. But in the example I am giving, half the words stuffed into the form are found words, so the result is an ordinary poem slash found poem slash mutant clone poem, or something. And since it's half as hard as a regular poem, that means it's twice as easy, so we can be twice as stupid while we write it!

"Song of the Printer's Dummy,

Packed Reluctantly Into

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,

How'd the heck I get so wet?

Consetetur sadipscing elitr,

that's not a very good space-heater.

Sed diam nonumy eirmod,

I laid upon it with naked bod'.

Tempor invidunt ut labore,

The wetness came from out' the floor.

Et dolore magna aliquyam erat.

My song is not about a bat.

Sed diam voluptua at vero.

My song is not about DeNiro.

Eos et accusam et justo --

I sing my song with cheer and gusto.

Duo dolores et ea rebum --

a printer's dummy is not at all dumb.

Cha, cha, cha.

See how that works? Only the half that I wrote is stupid. Or is it? You can't tell without a working theory of stupidity, but all the world offers are countless theories of intelligence, as if intelligence were something more than the absence of stupidity. Oh stupid world.

But I have been talking about found poetry. I will have to talk about theories of stupidity in another issue. Perhaps when I get distracted by politics again.

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.

No-Sitting Ordinance Prevents Hemorrhoids

I want to discuss a delicate subject today. It's a subject that we homeless and/or formerly homeless folks feel very uncomfortable discussing. It's not passing gas. It's not the heartbreak of psoriasis. It has nothing to do with hemorrhoids. Heck, homeless people almost never get hemorrhoids, they aren't allowed to sit anywhere that long.

Besides, what I have to say is more embarrassing than hemorrhoids. Here it is: Hitler Was Homeless, Too, You Know.

A month doesn't pass us by here at Real Change that some submission doesn't arrive from a well meaning supporter, which has as its gist the alternate thought that Jesus Was Homeless, Too, You Know. And we almost invariably reject said submissions, with extreme prejudice.

Writers want to know why. Now you all have it, here's your answer, I'll say it again: Hitler Was Homeless, Too, You Know.

You just can't have one without the other. If you make a big deal that one of us was a Son of God, you have to also allow that one of our number turned out to be an icon of evil incarnate.

For that matter, if I have to own Christ's homelessness, I would also have to own the temporary homelessnesses of William Shatner and Joan Rivers. Would YOU want to be compared to William Shatner and Joan Rivers? I thought not. There, now you know how I feel.

Recently a satisfied reader informed me of a site on the internet that lists "noted celebrities", both alive and dead, who have been homeless at one time, and pointed out that somehow the list mistakenly contains my name! When have I been a "noted celebrity?"

But there I am. The site is at http://lists.hollywood.com/homeless.html for those who are internet linked and want to see this nonsense with their own eyes. I am on the same list with William Shatner and Joan Rivers! I'm on the same list as Sally Jesse Raphael! AND Jesus! Oh, the shame.

And the worst of it is, Hitler isn't on the list. That makes it worse, because it makes it look like we are all trying to say that we formerly homeless belong to one big club of good guys.

As if homelessness were ennobling, when it's only a very tiring and dis-abling experience, of itself.

Our goal here at Real Change is to break down stereotypes about homelessness while focusing attention on the fact that the real problem is a shortage of affordable housing. Not to make the homeless (or the obdachlosig) out to be saints.

Maybe Hitler could help there. In one respect Hitler fit the stereotype of the lazy panhandler. At least, he DID turn down some work, as being beneath his dignity. And he did resort to begging.

On the other hand, in spite of that, he managed to work his way out of park benches and into a hostel (today's reader read: "transitional housing") in a matter of months.

Also, Hitler's situation was clearly due to the overcrowding of Vienna at that time, and the corresponding lack of affordable housing. Whatever else was wrong with him, he wasn't a drug addict or an alcoholic. He wasn't even mentally ill, so much as anyone noticed at the time.

I can't quit without mentioning some other "Hitler Was ___, Too, You Know" lines.

Hitler Was a Teenager, Too, You Know. Hitler Was an Artist, Too, You Know. Hitler Was a President, Too, You Know. Hitler Was a Self-Righteous Former Smoker, Too, You Know -- he even came up with the idea of warning labels! Hitler Supported Light Rail, Too, You Know.

Hee. I made that last one up.