Friday, May 31, 2013

May Is Over? But I Still Have So Much Bile to Spew

As I was saying...

Having replenished the supply of precious Prozac coursing through my veins (or wherever it is that Prozac courses, I'm a blogger, not a doctor, dammit), I can now present yesterday's scheduled post, "Plano, Texas Is Full of Wankers."

Plano before the arrival of the wankers.

Full disclosure: I lived a significant portion of my teenage years in Plano. I graduated from Plano Senior High, Class of None of Your Damn Business. My parents lived in Plano for nearly 30 years before fleeing to a cabin the middle of the woods in northern Wisconsin, which to my mind represents a clear improvement to their quality of life.

To this day I maintain an ambivalent attitude toward Plano.  I mean, on the one hand it's good that so many shallow sheep-like consumerist soulless hypocrites have volunteered to contain themselves within its discrete boundaries. On the other hand, that concentration of toxic material canNOT be good for the environment.

Is that a poor person? Set hose to "obliterate."

And of course I'm way over-generalizing here. There are many fine people who live in Plano. For the  most part, you'll find them quietly going about their useful, productive lives while the wankers jump and down and wave their arms (or have their au pairs do it for them) and bleat about what fine people they are. Also, COMMUNITY. VALUES. They yell those words a lot. I think it's a specialized form of Tourette's Syndrome, possibly brought on by the high concentrations of entitlement around them. I don't know, it's sciency.

So, the big news out of Plano is that voters finally approved a measure allowing retail liquor sales! Yay! Unless you think liquor is Satan's nectar, in which case ERMAHGERD DOOM GLOOM DESTRUCTION OF THE NUCLEAR FAMILY JESUS.

Oh, honey. If you put him in Plano schools,
it's not "liquors" he'll be shooting up
before he's 15.

Click here for a brief, entertaining (albeit now somewhat dated) history of alcohol in this part of the world.

In a nutshell, last week, 36 years after it allowed beer and wine to be sold in stores, Plano finally, overwhelmingly voted to allow liquor stores in the city. Because that's how democracy works. Because most people in Plano wanted the convenience, the jobs, and the tax revenue that retail liquor sales represent.  Also because the opposition's argument against liquor stores boiled down to: OH MY GOD DO YOU KNOW WHO SHOPS IN LIQUOR STORES WHORES AND PEOPLE OF COLOR THAT'S WHO.  And apparently, even in Plano, Texas, that argument doesn't fly because LIQUOR.

Hear, hear.

Actual pre-election quote from Collin County Commissioner Matt Shaheen, opposition tool:

"I used to have to walk by a liquor store on the way to work. And there are a lot of people who have turned to alcohol and they're hanging out in the front of a liquor store. And you can tell the devastation it's having on that surrounding area."

Yes. Because all the urban blight that results from poverty, political disenfranchisement, neglected infrastructure, high crime, and lack of investment would be free to resolve itself if only the outer wall of the local liquor store weren't such a comfy, tempting place to lounge.

Not to mention those sweet zero-lot park benches.

But just in case you're tempted to flock to Plano to buy delicious, legal liquor, be aware that the city is teeming with snakes.

Why, are they Muslims? WHAT.
OK, so according to a local news outlet, Plano snakes have been gettin' it on like crazy this Spring, resulting in a lot of goddamn snakes. This was a troubling development to one alert Planoite, who did what any responsible suburbanite would do when confronted with the prospect of God's creatures living and breeding in a natural environment: He called the city on them.

To be fair, there is very little one can do in Plano that won't result in having the city called on one, including painting one's mailbox - or being born with one's skin - the wrong color. But I digress.

The city came out to the serpent-infested park and discovered that every last, single, solitary snake there was non-poisonous and harmless. As, you know, actually, most snakes are.

Hi!

But really, dude? This is Texas. There really ARE poisonous snakes here; even in the suburbs, it's totally normal to see water moccassins and copperheads among the rat snakes and garter snakes. (They're the bitey ones.) And my message to you, Mr. Concerned Citizen, is that if you live in Texas and can't tell the difference between a poisonous and non-poisonous snake, you are too stupid to live in most places, but most definitely in Texas.

But mostly, this quote:

"Most kids like to get close to the water, and they don't know the difference between a snake and a turtle," he said.


OMG. They're freaking twinsies.

Forget legal liquor: I'd like some of whatever this man is illegally ingesting that causes his mind to create the terrifying snake-turtle hybrids he believes to exist in Plano.


He'd probably shit if he watched "Piranhaconda."

I've got one more wanker for you.  This one is a doozy.

So a few years ago, Plano had this idea that maybe its emergency responders should be able to do their jobs effectively. To that end, they planned a wireless communications network that would cover the entire city. Most of the equipment was installed on city-owned power poles. But six percent of Plano wasn't covered by the data net because the local power utility owned the poles in those areas and didn't want the city to piggyback its equipment on them. So the city erected 30-foot poles to make sure the network was complete.

Well, some of the fancier-schmancier neighborhoods where they were installed decided the integrity of emergency communications simply wasn't worth the cost of having a hideous eyesore in their midst.

I'm guessing they're pretty pissed off about
the aesthetically unpleasing fire hydrants, too.
One wanker in the Hills of Prestonwood - which is an area of McMansions that has no hills, no woods, and is nowhere near Preston Road - mounted a campaign to have them removed. His sane, logical, and not at all batshit-insane argument against them?

"We don't like unsightly things. This is a golf course community."

Because yeah.

This week the city announced that, instead of spending time, effort, and money on things like hiring firefighters or repairing roads, it had worked out other arrangements for their equipment and would tear down the poles at the taxpayers' expense.

Because the needs of the wankers outweigh the needs of everyone who doesn't live in a 4,000 square-foot house.

Don't worry, the Prozac will mellow me out any minute now.

Just wait for it.

P.S. It's the last day of May, and I haven't done X, Y, or Z for the A to Z Swearing Challenge. Xiphias! Yikes! Zounds!

P.P.S. OK, a xiphias is just a swordfish. Sue me. Or, in the spirit of the challenge, go fuck yourself.

P.P.P.S. I love you all!

1 comment:

  1. Once while visiting the reptile building at my local zoo and explaining to my children the dangers of poisonous snakes, I was corrected by a overzealous zoologist who informed me, and I am passing this lovely tidbit on to you for your further enlightenment, that snakes are venomous not poisonous and in TX we have 4 species of venomous snakes with several subspecies (15 total).

    ReplyDelete

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