| Real
Change is not a cult. New recruits are NOT brainwashed
immediately, the same night they join, so that they become
zombie clones of, say, me. Sometimes I think this is a
pity, because zombie clones are fun to tease and make
great playthings. Also, if everyone in the office were
a zombie clone of me, I wouldn’t hear so many complaints
about my garlic breath.
Still, though the office does NOT consist of zombie clones
of me, or whomever, people who work here seem to be in
remarkable agreement on one matter: If there is anybody
at Real Change who could become the next Internet equivalent
of the chubby, light saber–wielding Star Wars Kid,
it’s me. They all have faith in my potential to
become famous for 15 minutes by acting unbelievably weird
in public. “You do it around here,” the reasoning
begins. It continues with nitpicks about past behavior
and my past choices of beverages.
For the record, I have sworn off malt liquor entirely,
and I don’t see why everyone has to keep bringing
up the Bad Art Show post-party of 1997. I wasn’t
the only one who said, “I love you, Man, you’re
aweshum” to the cat that night.
All this including the cat bring me to this point: I am
currently engrossed in updating my “Internet presence.”
As a result I am totally distracted from most of the usual
things I obsess about. I am not thinking about the war.
I am not thinking about homelessness. I am not thinking
about how to save the planet. I am thinking, how can I
get the Real Change cat, Sidney Vicious, to do something
adorable on video, so I can upload the result to one of
my three new blogs, just so the billions of people in
the world who will not look at any of my three blogs,
ever, will have something to miss?
I just lied slightly. I AM thinking about homelessness
a little. That’s because I’m trying to get
stuff I’ve written in the past neatly loaded on
one of these blog thingies, including an article I wrote
in 1996 entitled, “So, You’re About to Become
Homeless… or, How to Hit the Street Feet-First Not
Face-First.” This was the piece that tried to offer
advice to people poised upon becoming homeless for the
first time, while at the same time helping others understand
how much of a pain homelessness is.
The trouble is, the article is totally out of date. For
example, it turns out that the cutting edge homeless person
no longer bothers with cheap voicemail, when s/he can
score a cheap cell phone that has Internet browsing with
email, music playback, a personal organizer, a camera,
a camcorder, games, and a radio, and wakes up everybody
in the shelter when it rings Wagner’s Ride of the
Valkyries at 3 a.m.
The article mentions “Walkmen.” That’s
Old Man Speak for “iPods and the like.” There’s
a discussion of the relative merits of backpacks and shopping
carts, but not one word about rolling suitcases!
The original article hinted that you could find storage
spaces that weren’t actually intended for homeless
peoples’ use. Those places still exist, but even
to hint that anyone avail themselves of them would be
inappropriate now. You can all forget about hiding bags
in unconventional places, unless you like donning the
little plastic handcuffs and answering loud angry questions
for 17 hours.
The 1996 article makes me laugh when I read how it
advises readers to look up crisis information on the
Internet. It says use a library computer to telnet to
it. It’s like giving someone two sticks when they
ask for a light. Ha! No, you don’t do that. Instead,
you go to www2.ci.seattle.wa.us/crisisclinic/
in your “browser,” and then you “navigate”
to the information you want.
And, if you want to miss seeing Sidney Cuteness Vicious,
continue to NOT set your browser to the one of my new
blogs that’s at www.wesrunoff.blogspot.com
and find the Feb. 8 entry.
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