My wife mentioned to me the other day how she might want to move to Florida. I assume that's because she is seeking to increase her exposure to 15 foot pythons, man-eating lizards, fatal hurricanes, bird-eating spiders and the sort of body odor that can only be coaxed from a human in +90 degree, 100% humidity type of weather. I got to thinking after hearing of the Florida Alligator Massacre that claimed the lives of three people down in the godforsaken jungles of the Sunshine State that living right here in Western New York ain't such a bad thing. We've been branded losers because of our sports franchises and bad weather, but as of last check, we don't have dinosaurs shooting out of Lake Erie or the Niagara River scooping up joggers for lunch. We haven't had anything resembling a real blizzard since that measly 10 feet of snow that fell a few years ago, and my house was still standing after that, unlike a lot of joints after those hurricanes blew through the southern states over the last few seasons. And now, according to the news, FLA is being overrun by enormous pythons that are eating the alligators and exploding, making a godawful mess of those lovely swamps down there. How did we get such an inferiority complex here in the Buffalo/Niagara Falls area? Why are people leaving this area as if the Ebola virus were running rampant and forcing our precious bodily fluids out any available orifice? There are immediate reasons.
Problem # 1: When I was in college a great many years ago, if you asked just about any student, they would tell you that the good jobs were all somewhere else. Of course, they would also tell you that they had drunk 22 beers and done a half a dozen bong hits at the "Save the Rain Forest" rally the night before. Unfortunately, that giant sucking sound you're hearing is not a night on the town for Hugh Grant, but a Ross Perot metaphor coming true. Our jobs are migrating down to the Carolinas and parts south. There are many, many Democrats in power here, and one great big drain on our State resources we like to call the Big Apple. Its the tax black hole so nice they named it twice. And its not that Democrats are always the problem. There are Democrats in power in many of the Southern states where all our jobs are going, but here in New York we have the worst kind of high-tax, politically correct Democrats. Both of our idiot Senators actually voted against making English the official language of the United States. Hillary worked hard to make our Federal Government (which has a hard enough time delivering the mail) responsible for controlling the entire health care system. Charlie Schumer would love to confiscate all our guns, abolish the death penalty and make life easier for all New Yorkers who have broken or are thinking about breaking the law. You may say, "But don't you guys have a Republican Governor up there?" Yeah, we do, but our Republicans up here run just to the left of Democrats in most other states. But, we keep on electing the same cast of baboons, so we get exactly what we deserve: high energy costs (although we have Niagara Falls, the greatest source of natural power and Indian gambling on the face of the planet,) high taxes and a fantastic abundance of economic malaise. So, on the political front, we're basically screwed. And I don't see that getting fixed anytime soon.
Problem #2: It gets kinda cold here. Of course, it gets kinda cold in a lot of places, so I guess I should revise the previous statement. It gets real goldang cold here. People who live down south probably don't know what it feels like to walk out of the house in the morning and have the mucous freeze solid in their noses. This is what we here in Western New York cleverly refer to as "snot-freezin' cold." You then proceed to your car and commence scraping. This can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes, depending on how much glass your vehicle has, the temperature, and how much time you have to get to work. If I'm running late, I do a quick scrape job on the area immediately in front of where I will be looking through the windshield, and then kind of rub that spot as I'm driving to keep it clear. As far as looking through the side windows to take turns, I normally just pray and go. This may make it sound like harsh life here, but this normally goes on for only about a month, and then the slush season starts. Which goes on just into baseball season. It's still better than hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.
Problem #3: Sports failures. Yeah, we lost 4 straight Super Bowls. How many teams even made it to 4 straight Super Bowls? None, that's how many. Everyone in this area, to a man, will tell you how difficult it is to make it to 4 straight Super Bowls. And every single one of them would most certainly give up the three blow-outs for that one 40+ yard field goal in XXV. And we went to 2 Stanley Cup finals and lost both of them (although one of those losses came via a goal that shouldn't have counted in 1999.) Oh, and we lost our basketball team back in 1978. And we got passed over for a Major League Baseball team during the expansion back in the 80's. There's other disappointments, but I don't have time to go into more detail.
Problem # 4: Low self-esteem. (See problems 1-3)
The bottom line is that this is still a great place to live. Niagara Falls is an awesome spectacle, and the Falls would be a bigger asset if we didn't have to share it with Canada. Those dang Canadians went ahead and made a tourist attraction of their side of the Falls instead of building countless landfills, ghetto style housing and allowing it to become a Mafia stronghold. What else would any responsible community do with one of the seven wonders of the world? Well, the Canadians built up scores of wax museums, souvenir stands, and one big mother casino worthy of Vegas. Sneaky, sneaky Canadians. So, after spending approximately 4 minutes on the U.S. side, Joe Tourist normally says something to himself that goes kinda like this: "Wow, all these landfills are really nice this time of year. I think I'll pack up the wife and kids and go to Canada now."
Buffalo is full of beautiful old buildings, many designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, a fantastic downtown AAA ballpark, and the HSBC Center, a state of the art arena which is home to the Buffalo Sabres. The Sabres and Bisons are a tad lonely down there, and surrounded by a great number of empty, crappy looking buildings. The beginnings of something great are here. Unfortunately, they've been here for quite a while. And beginning is as far as we've gotten.
So, in conclusion, I would like to make a suggestion. We, as citizens/voters, should immediately un-elect literally every person who is holding office right now. If a retarded pedophile is running against an incumbent, vote for him. Convince your friends and family to vote for him too. He can't do any worse than the guys that are in there now. If you feel you can do a better job than the retarded pedophiles who are already in office and you have the constitution to be a public official, run. I'll vote for you. And I'll talk all my friends and relatives into voting for you too. As far as the weather is concerned, there's not much we can do unless you listen to these environmentalists and their global warming theory. If you believe that whole thing, you may want to drive your car more and do some serious polluting. We also need to win a Stanley Cup, and we're pretty dang close right now, but knowing us, we'll probably screw it up. We're playing the Carolina Hurricanes in the Conference Finals, so Carolina (that great Hockey town)won't be happy with stealing all our jobs, they want the Cup too.
You know what to do. Now get to work.
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