Missouri Loves Company

So, I'm considering adopting a new course of action when I tell Kalifornians where I'm from. Rather than regail them with my anecdotes of how much better it is to live in the midwest, I am going to do the opposite: tell them how shitty the midwest is. 'Why, oh why do you wish to disparage your homeland?' you might ask. The reason is simple. Native Kalifornians and those who choose to make this land their home (aside from those poor wretches like myself who are forced to live here for a time) are rude, thoughtless, idiotic, and apathetic. I've probably left some deragatory adjectives out, but we'll go with that for now. I see first hand every day what those qualities do to the place around me. I would hate to see the values (or lack thereof) and qualities espoused by Kalifornians to make it back to the midwest and make it downright miserable. We already have horrible conservatives back there. No need to make everyone an asshole, too.

So when people ask me 'How was life back in Iowa?' because they equate Iowa with Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and pretty much any state that isn't Kalifornia, Texas or New York, I'll reply 'Shitty. It's horrible. You never want to live there. You would be miserably unhappy there. Tell your friends.' Hopefully we won't have to live in the apathy that pervades this place.

On a side note, the average reader might get the idea that I hate this state. Not so. I say I hate this state out of convenience of not having to say 'I hate the people in this state' over and over. Besides, the state itself is a human-contrived notion, so saying I hate the state is more like saying that I hate the people here. This state is beautiful in places. Mostly those unraped by excessive human filth, but there are beautiful places nonetheless. I am amazed at the trees, the birds, and some of the mammals that have managed to survive out here despite the horrible dehabitation that goes on.

Sideshows and idiocy

The mayor of Oakland has a blog. Kind of a new, techie, hip thing for a mayor to do, and an interesting form of feedback. The particular link that I have is the link to his piece on 'sideshows'. From what I've been able to gather on these events, they are drunken, drug-induced wreckless driving stunts pulled on the streets of Oakland. It happens in bad neighborhoods, around 1:30am on weekends, and involves cars racing at high speed to an intersection where they block all traffic and proceed to pull doughnuts, have people dancing on hoods of cars, etc. It's a huge mess. The crowds that gather are usually high/drunk, and can be very dangerous. These idiots assault people who happen upon the 'sideshow'. There's two things that kill me about this: 1. The comments put out by the people on the Mayor's blog site are idiotic to say the least 2. The Oakland police haven't figured out a way to do anything about it, and sideshows started somewhere between 1985 and 1988. C'mon, that's ridiculous.

To show how stupid the Kalifornia justice system is, they are now confiscating vehicles for 30 days from sideshows. Well, that's fine and dandy if the driver owns the car, but most of these cars are stolen. Now they're talking about auctioning the cars confiscated from sideshows off. Oh, good, so now that your car was stolen, you can have the police sell it as a way to make money to ineptly chase these sideshows off your already crime-ridden streets that you are forced to live on because you make little to no money in an incredibly high cost of living area.

Here's my suggestion: arrest these drivers for wreckless driving. Hmm. Not hard, eh? If they're all drunk and or stoned, how about taking away their license, and pushing a DUI on them, too? There's no reason that you can't just start putting people in jail for this. Yeah, it won't keep others from doing it, but eventually, once everyone's in jail, they won't be driving like idiots anymore. Yes, it will crowd prisons, but aren't these the kind of people we want locked up?

Some of the comments on the mayor's blog are things like 'bring in the national guard and tanks.' That's a good idea. How about we just arm the citizens of the neighborhood and tell them to start shooting at the sideshows as they happen? That'd be a great way to start a full-scale gang war against the citizens or the police. People are idiots.