Hey, Jayna, My Pants Are On Fire.

[Zan]

Content removed.

Zan,
Is nobody's 2d class citizen.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

That reminds me the following song:

Esta zamba canto a mi tierra distante [This samba I sing to my distant land]
Cálido pueblito de nuestro interior [warm little town in the heartland]
Tierra ardiente que inspira mi amor [burning earth that inspires my love]
Gredosa, reseca de sol calcinante [dusty and dry with a cooking sun]
Recordando esa tierra quemante [reminding such burning land]
Resuena mi grito: ¡Qué calor! [resounds my cry: 'It's hot!]

Cómo te recuerdo mi lindo pueblito [I recall my beautiful town]
Con tu aire húmedo y denso de día [with your humid and dense air]
Noches cálidas de fantasía [warm nights of fantasy]
Pobladas de magia, de encanto infinito [filled with magic and infinite charm]
Y el cantar de tu fresco arroyito [and the song of your fresh stream]
Salvo en los diez meses de la sequía. [with the exception of the ten arid months of the year]

Siempre fue muy calmo mi pueblo adorado [always very quiet my beloved town]
Salvo aquella vez que pasó el huracán [with the exception of that time of the hurricane]
Viejos pagos, qué lejos están [old places, how far those are]
Mi tierra querida, mi dulce poblado [my beloved land, my sweet village]
Tengo miedo de que hayas cambiado [I'm affraid you've changed]
Después de la última erupción del volcán. [Since the last volcano eruption]

Tierra que hasta ayer mi niñez cobijabas [land that yesterday my childhood kept]
Siempre te recuerdo con el corazón [I always remember it with all my heart]
Aunque aquel arroyito dulzón [even if that sweet stream]
Hoy sea un hirviente torrente de lava [today is a hot lava river]
Que por suerte a veces se apaga [which with luck at times turns off]
Cuando llega el tiempo de la inundación. [when the time of floods come]

Los hambrientos lobos aullando estremecen [the hungry wolfs howling scare]
Cuando son mordidos por fieros mosquitos [when they are bitten by angry mosquitoes]
No se puede dormir por los gritos [you can't sleep with the screams]
De miles de buitres que el cielo oscurecen [of thousands of vultures that darken the sky]
Siempre algún terremoto aparece [always an earthquake shows up]
Y al atardecer llueven meteoritos. [and in the afternoon we have meteoroid rains]

Y si a mi pueblito volver yo pudiera [If to my village I could go back]
A mi viejo pueblo al que no he regresado [to the old town I haven't gone in a while]
Si pudiera volver al poblado [If I could go back to the town]
Que siempre me llama, que siempre me espera [that's always calling and always waiting for me]
Si a mi pueblo volver yo pudiera [if to my town go back I could]
¡No lo haría ni mamado! [I wouldn't do it in a thousand years!]

[youtube=425,350]Bpx7sjr4o9c[/youtube]

[Griffin NoName]

For some reason Zan your post reminded me of "Edge of Reason"; until that is I remembered that was actually a Bridget Jones book so not really relevant.

It sounds intolerable.

[Opsa]

Hey Zan, are you sure you don't want to put that in the creative writing threads? It sounds like a good narrative for a Film Noir. Reminds me of the opening monologue of Sunset Boulevard.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

This town is broken.  This town has always been broken.  ....

..

Or Kill Me.

Are you sure you're not channeling Roger Waters (late of Pink Floyd)?

Hey Zan, are you sure you don't want to put that in the creative writing threads? It sounds like a good narrative for a Film Noir. Reminds me of the opening monologue of Sunset Boulevard.

Indeed, it does wax poetic, in a darkly disturbing way-- I had to read it twice, to get the full flavor myself.

[Zan]

For some reason Zan your post reminded me of "Edge of Reason"; until that is I remembered that was actually a Bridget Jones book so not really relevant.

It sounds intolerable.

I suspect most people live like this.  They just find ways to pretend everything is okay.

[Zan]

Hey Zan, are you sure you don't want to put that in the creative writing threads? It sounds like a good narrative for a Film Noir. Reminds me of the opening monologue of Sunset Boulevard.

If you think that's where it belongs.

But I wasn't trying to be creative, I was just puking up a rant.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Art is a constructive way of ranting.

[Jayna]

Dear Zan,

I live in a green Utopia where everyone is intent on making sure we all know that Everything Is Okay. The economic boom of the 1990's that skyrocketed the average price of a 3-bedroom home from $35,000 to $350,000 was GOOD for us... so wages couldn't quite keep up and the cost of living made it impossible for adults to live without roommates, but we were PROSPEROUS, right? So Nike pulled out and Intel pulled out and a few other giants pulled out and took their big factories to Texas where they can pollute at will, and the economy crashed and housing prices never really went down and rents went up because there's no rent control and a flood of recently-foreclosed-upon desperately needing a place to live... but that's OK, because everything's so green here, we're so friendly, and remember, Keep Portland Weird! It's Different Here! We Recycle! Portland, The City That Works!

Unemployment's at 12.5%, but that's not the bad news. The bad news is that if you're just an ordinary working stiff, you can expect to get paid $12/hour for manual labor, while paying $1200/month in rent on that kind of so/so apartment. You can expect to be trying to buy a house for $240k that the seller paid $20k for in 1996, in what used to be the ghetto but is now "gentrified", wherein "gentrified" means the old houses have been bought up by white fake hippies with blond fake dreadlocks. Smugly vegan Prius-driving hippies, who do coding for the few big firms left here and wear $60 hemp T-shirts sewn by the same children that sew Old Navy's $8 cotton T-shirts. They'll tell you, sure enough, with a big white smile, that Portland is Great! We Love it Here! And they won't mention the old lady who used to rent the house across the street, rented it for 22 years, got evicted because the new owners wanted to double her rent and she couldn't pay it, and she had to move out to the new ghettoes in the suburbs where rents are cheap again in the ticky-tacky warrens that were upscale in 1994 but are slowly peeling apart layer by layer now. They won't even think about her.

Everything is great here... it's so green, and friendly, and we recycle. I'll never move.

Here in my beautiful green paradise, here where the housing boom never really quit and the unemployment boom never really took off and everyone works for a temp agency and no one has insurance and no one works full time, here in the land of the eccentric, the land of individualism, the land of the setting sun, here where the eastern horizon is marked with massive mountains that used to be snow-capped all summer but now are gray, here where the western horizon is still a wall of green but soon may become a wall of identical upscale housing developments, here where two of the most massive rivers in the country flow together and one of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in the city lies at the tip of the peninsula, where there used to be vast beauty but now is only vast plains of shipping containers and unwanted brand-new cars, here where the summers are unbearably beautiful and the winters are mild, here in Utopia.

We drink more here than anywhere else, drink until we forget that we don't make enough to pay the mortgage and we forget that love keeps coming and going but mostly going and we missed opportunities or threw them away, we should have spent that money on fixing the furnace instead of strippers and now it's getting cold and everyone's taking happiness pills, everyone's not supposed to drink because they're taking happiness pills but they drink anyway and sometimes the happiness pills and the strippers and the alcohol don't work and they walk the short walk out to one of our 14-soon-to-be-15 convenient bridges and drop over the railing and off the face of the earth and sometimes someday a corpse is found but most of the time it never is.

Or they use guns or pills or alcohol or razors and sometimes those work, too, in Utopia. You keep hearing that's all wrong, there's nothing wrong, the stories aren't right they're misinterpreting people are happy this is the best place on earth, we love it here it's so beautiful friendly environmental most habitable city on earth there's nothing wrong but I can feel the edge and I know THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG and I can't

get

out.

[Opsa]

Art is a constructive way of ranting.

Exactly right!

Shades of Burroughs. Let it out, man, where it won't fester so much, and you can look at it and make something out of it. Even poop can be sculpted, if you're not afraid of the mess.

[Zan]

Art is a constructive way of ranting.

Exactly right!

Shades of Burroughs. Let it out, man, where it won't fester so much, and you can look at it and make something out of it. Even poop can be sculpted, if you're not afraid of the mess.

There once was a man on the moon
Who with the aid of the juice of the prune
a flexible trowel
and a badly stained towel
created his very own Dune.

Apologies to Frank Herbert.

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

I like that one, Zan. Very nice.

[Zan]

I like that one, Zan. Very nice.

Thanks, I guess.