Amusing incident during Monday's first aid class:

[bubosquared]

Instructor: When someone's on fire, it's important they don't run around, because that fuels the fire.
Melle: Also, they could topple off a cliff.
Apparently Only Other Person In Class Who's Seen RotK: *snicker*
Rest of class: Weh?

In other news ...

Comments

[rane-ab.livejournal.com]

*dies* You know I don't even think I'd have got the reference immediately, and I saw the movie plenty of times… Definitely a fun way of interrupting class, though!

Can't see the 'other news' bit, as my server keeps sending me a 'gateway time out' message. :-)

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

I have a bad habit of blurting out one-liners in classes. Although back in school, no one usually got it (or, in some cases, even heard it) but the teacher.

The "other news" bit is a v. interesting article from the Straight Dope. Hang on, I'll c&p:

Dear Cecil:

Am I a moron for believing that "mole people" exist in New York City's underground? The mole people, as documented in an eponymous 1993 book by Jennifer Toth, are homeless people who live in subway tunnels, sucking down electricity and other resources for free a la Ellison's Invisible Man. Is Toth lying? Hallucinating? What documentation is there? --Gina G., via the Internet

Cecil replies:

Can't blame you for being skeptical. Parts of Toth's book read like something out of Dickens. I didn't venture into the tunnels myself, but I did speak to Toth, who was a Los Angeles Times intern when she wrote the book. I also corroborated some of her facts with other sources. While one can be certain of nothing in this deceitful world, I'm reasonably satisfied that the events in her book, God help us, happened as she described them.

The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City details Toth's early-90s encounters with several dozen of what she estimated at the time to be 5,000 homeless people living beneath the streets of New York, mostly in subway and railroad tunnels. Particularly large populations inhabit (or inhabited, anyway) the multilevel labyrinths beneath Grand Central and Penn stations. Many tunnel people are solitary loonies not unlike the guys you see living aboveground in cardboard boxes in any large American city. In a few cases, though--this is where it gets truly weird--sizable communities have coalesced, some allegedly numbering 200 people or more, complete with "mayors," elaborate social structures, even electricity. Toth describes one enclave deep under Grand Central with showers using hot water from a leaky steam pipe, cooking and laundry facilities, and an exercise room. The community has a teacher, a nurse, and scampering children. "Runners" return frequently to the surface to scavenge food and such, but others--the real "mole people"--routinely go for a week or more without seeing the light of day.

Sounds almost homey, eh? Like hell. According to Toth, most of the people living in the tunnels are alcoholic, addicted to drugs, or mentally ill. They're terrorized by roving gangs, ravaged by illness, hassled by cops, and preyed upon by each other. The majority live like animals. In one memorable passage, Toth describes a fellow who traps "track rabbits"--raccoon-size rats--which he kills by slamming against a wall, roasts over a fire, and eats.

Nonetheless, many of the tunnel people Toth speaks to in her book are intelligent and enterprising. A few have college degrees. Roughly half, she guesses now, had some source of honest income, such as collecting pop bottles; half of those held jobs at least part of the time; all told maybe an eighth had steady employment, albeit of the minimum-wage variety. Now and then a tunnel dweller managed to escape life under the streets, but Toth reports few success stories. One fellow had lived underground 12 years.

(Part two in second comment.)

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

(Part two.)

Oddly, Toth's conversations with the more articulate tunnel folk are some of the most chilling parts of her book. One "mayor" she meets is a simmering tyrant who pulls a knife on a recalcitrant minion; another is an educated misfit who's convinced himself that life in the tunnels is better than it is up top. She meets a criminal gang under Harlem that claims to make a living murdering for hire. A menacing, unbalanced character called Dark Angel, feared by other tunnel denizens and even the police, tells Toth: "Leave, little lost angel, before the tunnels swallow you and you are one of mine."

You're thinking: Oh, sure. One wonders at times how an innocent twentysomething who'd announced her plan to tell the story of the tunnel people to the world could survive so many forays among such desperadoes. Having spoken to Toth, I'd say it was by making friends who watched out for her. Even so, she had close calls; a former tunnel guy who befriended her turned out to be a paranoid schizophrenic, and after he decided she'd witnessed him committing a murder he began stalking her. She fled town; the book ends.

Is it all BS? Even allowing for the possibility that some of Toth's informants jerked her around a bit, I don't think so. Plenty of TV reports, newspaper features, and books by other authors have told substantially similar stories, in some cases involving the same people. Filmmaker Mark Singer lived with his subjects to shoot the 2000 documentary Dark Days, which won an audience prize at Sundance. Are the tunnel people still down there? Probably, although clampdowns and cleanup efforts have no doubt forced some relocations. How does stuff like this happen in our day and age? The cynic will say: Nobody ever said drugs were a shortcut to success. But anyone who's felt the occasional tremor beneath his own feet knows--the abyss is closer than you think.

--CECIL ADAMS

I really must get my hands on this book.

Re:

[rane-ab.livejournal.com]

Wow. I didn't realise it all went that far. It almost sounds like some ominous SF book. I suppose it makes sense that there is some kind of social order. There's always a leader in a pack. That they sort of made it official, though... Well, I suppose there are quite a few homeless people with a high education.

I suppose that when youtake a moment to think about it, it isn't all that surprising, if perhaps a little more extreme than I expected. They're basically approaching 'normal life' as much as they can, making use of what facilities they can find. And when you're desperate and have nothing to lose, you become quite creative.

For some strange reason, this reminds me of Tom Sawyer. You know, the part where they take off to live on a deserted island. They also make do with whatever they can find, and they also live in their own world, with their own rules, and whatever comfort they can find. I never read Lord of the Flies, but I've heard of it, and that, too, comes to mind. I suppose there is some parallel -- take away all the social constraints of the world at large, including the laws, and people will reorganise themselves.

It also makes sense that they should have lost touch with reality. It's not like they hve much to live for, so of course they live inside their own head, and abide their own rules, though I must admit this is what shocks me most: apparently it goes quite a bit further than I'd have expected. But I suppose alcohol and drugs take their toll, not to mention that a certain percentage probably ended up being homeless because of their mental illness. Isolation would, I presume, only exacerbate the symptoms. But it must be really, really scary to live there.

... it really does remind me of some dark SF novel. It's good to be pointed out to that this kind of thing really happens, that it doesn't just exist in people's imagination; and that things really are quite a bit worse than one would imagine.

Ugh. Sorry for the ramble.

Also, I didn't get around to feedbacking last night, because I got home rather later than I'd anticipated, and then my stepfather decided that he wanted to shower first... :-/ Hopefully tonight. :D

Re:

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose there are quite a few homeless people with a high education.

Ooohhh, yes. I'm not going to get started on this unless you want me to, but this is one of my hobby horses.

Ugh. Sorry for the ramble.

No problem, I wish I could be half as coherent about this as that!

Re:

[rane-ab.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to get started on this unless you want me to, but this is one of my hobby horses.

Please do, if you've the time. I had no idea there was such a homeless problem amongst the higher educated until you showed me that article.

Remember, you asked for it ...

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

It's really not so much that in specific as the fact that there's this common misconception that people become homeless because they're already poor and/or too lazy to work or whatever, which isn't true at all.

(My parents both worked in the homeless sector for most of my childhood, so I know this stuff.)

First of all, there's more to being homeless than just not having a roof over your head (hence why I get annoyed at the English language's lack of distinction between "thuisloos" and "dakloos". Becoming homeless is kind of a gradual process, for example after someone's been in jail for a longer time, when they get out, they've no place to live, no job, and often no family or friends or any sort of network to fall back on. It's difficult to explain, but the thing is that it's not nearly as simple as "Put 'em in social housing and make 'em get jobs and it's fixed!"

(It's also not romantic, nor is it "so much easier than worrying about silly things like we do," as I once heard someone on the train claim, but that's really getting into ranting territory.)

Re:

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

Yay, welcome! :D