What I hate about the Midwest.
The weather: The wind has been blowing at 20 mph for as long as I can remember. Today it’s getting up to 40. This winter, it was equally windy+ it snowed and at froze at least 4 times. It stayed frozen on the ground for weeks. It was slicker than horse shit. Lately we have tornados in the vicinity. At least nothing has been hit yet. The wind woke me up last weekend at 3 am. I was reminded of Hurricanes David, Hugo and Opal, all of which I “participated” in. Those were fun in comparison. Last year we didn’t get any precipitation in the winter or spring to speak of, so instead we had grass fires. One of which was next to my house, my wife had to call the fire department, and another time we had to pack our stuff because they evacuated a neighborhood near by.
The people: They are on an individual level as nice as any other people from a rural area, and arguably nicer than those from a large city. None of what follows is really their fault. Almost all are native’s, they are so homogeneous as to be truly boring. They are overwhelmingly conservative. Most have almost no frame of reference for other parts of the country and even less for other parts of the world. I am sick and fucking tired of hearing about what church they attend. In short most are a bunch of boring bible thumping conformists who should take their support our something ribbon bumper sticker and shove it up their aged pearly white ass.
The traffic: There is almost none. In fact when I moved here I thought it was great. How foolish. I drove in Atlanta for 15 years and never had an accident. Here I have already been hit once it took less than 18 months. The drivers are very old, very inconsiderate, and very, very oblivious. Frankly (even when cycling) I miss heavy traffic. At least they mostly paid attention.
The cows stink. When the wind blows in the wrong direction, this whole fucking town smells like cow shit. I used to live next to a paper mill, it was better. Oh and the locals like to say that’s the scent of money. Try cycling through a cloud of dry cattle shit from a feed lot which looks like a concentration camp.
Did I mention the scenery? Flat and dusty with about 60 billion billboards’s advertising some shitty chain. And there’s some stupid millionaire whose idea of art is to buy more even more signs which say stupid shit for peoples front yards.
How about someplace to eat? Restaurants are great here if all you want is a fucking hamburger. Or a plate of melted cheese which is euphemistically called “tex mex”.
Did I mention the nuclear bomb factory? Reassuringly they take them apart there now.
My neighbor Beelzebub moved out. He said he couldn’t take the weather. It’s too bad because when we moved in he was the only one in our goddamned neighborhood who came over when we threw a BBQ to meet our neighbors.
