If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past 10 years, about all of the elected officials in office in Oregon, I would be rotting in prison cells from Coffee Creek to the Eastern Oregon Correctional Facility. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism. A word to the wise is infuriating.
We all know that in Portland, when the going gets weird, the weird turn professional. Look at Bud Clark, Randy Leonard and Steve Novick. If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the 9-to-5 hours. So do half of the bureaucrats in this town. For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled. Sane is rich and powerful. Insane is wrong and poor and weak. The rich are free, the poor are put in cages. Res Ipsa Loquitur, amen. Mahalo.”
Journalism, like politics, is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits — a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.
The business that makes this whole thing work is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.
There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool Oregon breeze on any summer afternoon can turn Crater Lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It’s a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die.
Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Portland to Bend with the music blasting. Faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death. After all, yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why. Pray to God, but row away from the Castle Rock. Remember friends morality is temporary; wisdom is permanent.
The greatest mania of all is passion, and I am a natural slave to passion. The balance between my brain and my soul and my body is as wild and delicate as the skin of a Ming vase. Remember folks, this is the fast lane. Some of us like it here.
My advice to readers is to walk tall, kick ass, learn to speak Arabic, love music and never forget you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers and warriors. Buy the ticket, take the ride for God’s sake. At the top of the mountain we are all snow leopards. All I can say in ending is, “Keep Portland Weird.”
This article is part of Street Roots' annual satire edition released each year for April Fools Day.