Why do I live here again?

I'm sure everyone has by now seen this YouTube sensation. Sadly I can reach this person's house in fifteen minutes from where I currently sit.



Then of course there's this lovely candidate for Govenor.



And of course that whole civil rights thing a few years back.

Focus: How does the city/state you live in embarrass you to the point you question why you live there?

 

Let's answer them all at once shall we.

Yes, I have all my teeth.
No, I've never engaged in sexual intercourse with a family member.
No, I don't have a ridiculous drawl.
No, I don't have a mullet.
No, I don't drive a Camaro with naked lady silhouette mud flaps.
Yes, I do drink Natty Light on occasion.
Yes, I have an education.

I think that just about covers it.

 

Well, most recently a guy decided to murder 9 of his co-workers in the town I live in, that was fun.

I'll try to keep this as fresh as possible since I know I've bitched about CT enough.

- Several doctors have radio ads for vasectomies, my favorite sales pitch: "because you want an experienced quarterback to handle your footballs." I honestly thought this commercial was a joke from some liberal campaign poking fun at how medical care is a business the first time I heard it. Honestly though, how is there enough of a market to make these ads profitable? This is not a very densely populated area.

- There are strip clubs everywhere, and not the hot "I'm paying for college" ones, they're the ugly "I've been in this business for 15 years and it's all I know how to do for money" ones.

- There is a 24 hour prayer tower with a yellow neon-ish sign on main street. What the fuck is this? No seriously, I don't know what it is. Do you just go there at 3 AM and pay to pray or something?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not mister wholesome or anything, but have some fucking pride people.

 

Townies everywhere.

Townies on meth.

Hippies.

 

I've lived in Scranton PA my entire life. Up until 5 years ago this place was a shithole. Now it's a shithole with more diverse restaurants and tourism. Also, http://www.theofficeconvention.com/ <- This terrifying weekend.

 

While I cant think of anything too out of the ordinary at the moment I do recall one time when I was driving through town and I swear I seen three homeless guys trying to break into a fire hydrant.

 

Just two nights ago I got a text from a Jewish girl friend of mine saying that she wants to hang out with me because she doesn't want to stay in her neighborhood that night. The Jews in my city all live in the same general vicinity and all know each other through one or two degrees. It turns out that some Jewish kid killed his little sister and everyone was upset about it. I didn't really care, shit happens, but I got a call the next day from my friend:

"Yo buddy, remember that Sara girl you went on a date with last summer?" The date in question was comically bad, like disastrous and just a goof of epic proportions.

"Ugh yeah, I try to forget it -"

"Her little brother killed her sister. That's the thing on the news everyone's talking about" I don't read or watch the local news so it took me a second to put two-and-two together.

"Oh shit. Was Sara killed??"

"No, her 14 year old sister was stabbed by her 18 year old brother, in front of her"

"Holy shit!"

The 24th murder of the year in my city. I'm thinking of placing some flowers innocuously and anonymously, I live near to where she lives, but I don't know what the right thing to do is.

 

I'm pretty sure 3 outta 4 "People of Walmart" were originally Floridians.

 

Bullshit. The restaurants are crap unless you're eating at Sidels or Carmen's. And don't go telling me about Amici's and Patsel's. That's not Scranton.

All that being said, if you can swing a remote gig for a big company, Scranton's cost of living is pretty fucking amazing.

I think I have outlined my rants re: Philly enough times in the last few weeks. But new to the list: a SEPTA employee recent drove a fucking bus through the front of my favorite bar. Bastards.

 

HAHAHA. All of this shit pales in comparison to Durban.

Right now, the municipality, led by Dr. Michael Sutcliffe and his lackey, Julie-May Ellingson, is trying to evict the yacht clubs which have occupied a space in the marina for the last 100+ years to a new (much smaller) location. Doing this will completely fuck up Durban's bid for the 2018 Olympic Games, since the new space is not of sufficient size to handle the olympic sailing events. The reason they want to evict? To make more space for commercial shipping. Durban is already one of the biggest ports in the Southern Hemisphere. The road access around the harbour is fucked already and you want to put down the need for MORE trucks for moving containers? Really? Dipshits.

These two have also:

- changed half the road names in Durban to those of "struggle comrades". The problem is, you ask the average Black guy (even the older guys aged 60+) who these supposed "struggle comrades" are, they can't tell you - because they don't know themselves! This, by the way, also fucks people's ownership agreements with property - you can't say you live in Essenwood Road anymore (Extremely high value address here in Durban) and the property value is lower as a result of living in Steven Gumede Road. Or like Cowey Road - which has MANY small businesses, and is now named Problem Mkhize Road. Guess what? Many of the businesses left - who wants to be in a road named Problem anything? Fucksakes. Why not go name some roads in Umlazi, where the names might have significance, and where most of the roads are NOT names but numbers? Assholes.

- Durban's bus service, which was operated by the municipality, was then sold off to Remant Alton Land Transport, who operated it with some success until last year, when 56 buses were torched during a strike action by its employees, resulting in very, VERY reduced bus service. The Municipality have done NOTHING to rectify the situation in the +- 11 months that have passed.

- you don't catch the trains here. Or anywhere in S.A..

- trying to evict the Sharks rugby team from ABSA Stadium and move them to the adjacent soccer stadium (also known as The White Elephant and The Bread Basket) AND trying to then charge increased rent - pity they have a fifty-plus year lease and told you to fuck off.

- also responsible for the massive budgetary shortage with the WC stadium, which will now fuck the taxpayers for the next 20+ years. Awesome.

- quadrupling the Rates costs over a 10 year period. They're also responsible for pandering to the useless civil servants in the city. A lovely survey, whch was done by PriceWaterhouse Coopers, showed that (before the WC), the only memorable thing about Durban was the level of general dirtiness in the city. NICE JOB DICKS!

I actually met The Gnome (Sutcliffe) once. I resisted the urge to punt him down an elevator shaft. I should've let rip. Fucker. He's so awful his SON emigrated to England because he couldn't stand being known as "Mike Sutcliffe's Son". Seriously. Jesus.

As for Obed Mlaba, he's completely worthless - he employed Sutcliffe after The City of Johannesburg fired the twat for incompetence.

Oh, also for Sutcliffe's other dealings, check out the wiki of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abahlali_baseMjondolo.

He was on TV just before the World Cup doing a bungee jump in the stadium - I was hoping the cable would snap.
I'm going to stop here before I have an aneurysm.

As for murders on the local news, we get at least one a week, or someone in a shack burns to death with their three kids aged six and under. Most of the time, those don't make the news either.

 

Who said anything about the restaurants being good. I'm just saying they have become more diverse in the last five years ( and by more diverse, I'm referring to the thai restaurant and Osaka)

 

I live in Washington, DC. For the most part, it's not a bad place to live.

But just about every person in this city thinks they are personally saving the world. It's pretty damn annoying. The cliche that this is Hollywood for ugly people certainly rings true—most of DC is ugly, and everyone thinks they deserve to be famous.

Not to mention, it's disconcerting how many people I meet that genuinely remind me of Patrick Bateman. Seriously. It's creepy.

And, of course, there is a strong supply of people like this (mostly guys, the women in DC fit their own stereotype). The depiction of that kind of guy is so accurate it transcends its intended satire. I meet people exactly like this literally every day. Ugh.

 

I live in Australia. I'd stress, fucking Australia. I work with people who are at least notionally intelligent. They have reasonably high level, specialist skills and they are reasonably well educated. And fucking yet...

Currently I'm being bombarded by people who are very upset about the Mosque being situated near Ground Zero, these people have never been to America, letalone New York and have never had any first or second hand exposure to Islamic Extremists. They're also bleating about who Uppity Negroes in the US are being overly sensitive about a white lady being made fashion director or something for some American magazine aimed at black women's fashion. For fuck sake.

Also, despite approximately 140,000 illegal immigrants coming into the country every year - they're all terribly concerned about illegal immigrants arriving by boat - despite less than a thousand of them arriving per year. They're terribly opposed to gay people being able to have children - because it will lead to some kind of farming program for faggot children (strangely they don't think adoption will be an issue... but they're terribly worried about gay men forcing women into some kind of breeding program so that they can have their own children - like gay people can't possibly find anyone to have kids with at the moment, but if a law legalising adoption passes - there'll be puppy farms where women are held against their will and turkey baster inseminated with gay men's semen). Apparently gay marriage is redundant because gay men can already marry a woman if they want to, and a separate but equal class of recognised gay relationships has no obvious flaws as proven by the long and glorious history of separate but equal legislation throughout the world. Also, apparently any woman who can't carry a rape charge through to conviction should be charged with fraud and sentanced as if she had commited the act she alleged was enacted against her.

I even heard someone ask why we're not putting a fence around our coast line to keep the boat people out while typing this. A fucking fence around Australia's coast line. Apparently it's how America is dealing with it's illegal migrant problem and we should follow America's lead in things like this - since they deal with it so fucking well.

 

My home state. Jersey Shore. Jerseylicious. Jersey Couture.

Checkmate.

 

Whoa, that figure is way off the mark sunshine.

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Also defacto gay couples are now fully recognised by Australian law, this call for religious marriage is just headline grabbing bullshit.

 

Hey, at least we're not in Adelaide. That place fucking sucks.

All in all, this country's immigration policy sucks. It's easier for a refugee to get in than a skilled worker, it seems. But at least we've formally dropped the "White Australia Policy". At one stage, to gain residency/citizenship here (not sure which), you had to sit a written exam in a European language. They liked you? You got it in English. You didn't? Gaelic, Welsh, Russian.... take your pick.

I'll concur with Durbanite's post through second-hand knowledge. I work with a fair few South Africans, and they consider this place paradise compared to the shit back home.

 

Exhibit B: Big ups for Queensland. Just remembered this one.

Judge rules that "nigger" is not offensive.

We're big on tourism here. Come on down....

 

You rarely see Adelaidians on the internet. They're usually too busy trying to get out of Adelaide or kill themselves. Which would be funny if I was making it up.

 

I think this is a good reminder of why i live where i do.

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