State Of Emergency
From what I understand, there is a fair amount of good-natured rivalry between states out there.

I'm not that familiar with the phenomenon myself as I'm from California, a state for which there is no comparison. The long coastline overlooking glorious Pacific sunsets, three internationally-reknowned major urban centers (San Diego, San Francisco and the Greater Riverside area), the weather, the cosmopolitan mix of peoples and cultures, the world class public highway system... In public education, I think in terms of dollars spent per child we might rank 50th. That's right, 50th. There's no bigger number than that when you're counting states in America.

Nobody can touch us.

Some people might say "Yeah, but look at Florida. They have sunshine and a Disney theme park without the smog and the traffic and all the Mexicans. Plus they stole all your citrus industry." Well, you might have a point there, Hypothetical Argumentative Racist, but consider: Florida borders Georgia and Alabama. It even almost touches Mississippi. It's got Red State taint bleeding all over the northern half of it. California borders states that offer us something, like Oregon (ashram-grown pot), Nevada (gambling and whores) and Arizona (giant global heat-sink).

And the southern half of Florida, yeah, maybe there aren't very many Mexicans, but that place is crawling with Cubans. Everybody knows historically speaking that Mexicans have been much, much more efficiently and viciously exploited for their free-to-cheap labor doing jobs white people no longer feel they should have to do, like fruit-picking and raising their own children. So we got you there, Florida.

Plus Florida doesn't have all our citrus industry now, that all went to Chile, which as of this morning, was not yet a state.

Yeah, California puts 'em all in the shade. Well, technically I guess it's not so much "shade" a shadow cast by a layer of smog so thick that the rays of the sun are unable to penetrate, but still... if we can't see you, you're not there.

What I'm trying to say is that the rivalries between states--usually bordering each other and best expressed by which side gets drunker in the parking lot before a college football game--is odd to me, though I do recognize that it exists.

It is just possible to take this sort of thing too far.

Texas has always been the worst. Judging by every Texan I've ever met, heard of, refused to vote for or seen on reruns of Dallas, they take their state pride very seriously. You've all heard the motto "Don't Mess With Texas". Their stance is so pre-emptively belligerent that, to me anyway, it comes off as sort of defensive. The only impression that such a forwardly aggressive attitude of self-aggrandizement can give is that they're desperately overcompensating for something.

I think it's probably safe to assume that Texas, as a state, has an incredibly small penis.

That or they're trying to keep our attention focused on the state-pride argument so we won't look any deeper into what's happening in that state, especially what it is they're really doing with all those cattle. I'm not directly suggesting anything sexually untoward, but a people who wear that much leather might just be working through some kind of sublimated shame and self-loathing.

I knew Texans were capable of taking this state-rivalry thing too far, but I didn't know how far until this week.

Louisiana has a category-4 hurricane hit it?

Texas all of a sudden has to have a category-5 bearing down on it.

Tacky, Texas. Obvious and shamefully tacky.

Louisiana has to evacuate New Orleans, it's largest city?

Oh, what do you know, Texas is evacuating multiple cities, including parts of Houston, the fourth largest city in America.

Nice going, Texas. You can't let anyone have anything, can you? Isn't it enough that you have the President of the United States and you stole the crappy NFL expansion team that was supposed to belong to Los Angeles?

Go on, kick sand in the face of a little state like Louisiana. Yeah yeah, your disaster has to be bigger because "Everything Is Bigger In Texas". Please. Might as well be "No, We Just Went Swimming, You Have To Give It A Minute, Honest".

You know what, the next time there's a chlamydia outbreak among the livestock at a cattle ranch, we're not going to play along and pretend it's (wink, wink) Mad Cow Disease (wink, wink) again. You cow-fuckers are on your own.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 3.6


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 10:33 AM