Tell me more tell me more, (cuz it sounds like a drag)

I was supposed to go to the Fresno fair today, but got ditched. The people of Fresno do it every time.

Fresno is now officially the dumbest city in America.

The description is priceless:

The race to the bottom wasn’t even close. The largest city in California’s San Joaquin breadbasket, Fresno, had deficiencies across the board. College education (less than 20 percent of the local population have four-year degrees), graduate studies, academic institutions (not much besides Fresno State), book purchases, voter engagement—it ranked in the worst 5 percent in almost all of our categories. Problems with gangs and crystal meth tend to deter the best and brightest.

In other words, we are the dumbest by a wide margin. You can read the pollsters' shock between the lines.


And the headline of the day:

Coroner: Workplace shooter was drunk

The cold, the wind and the rain

Yesterday was an atrocious day for football, with Cal embarrassing themselves in a way unmatched by anything I've ever seen until I saw the score of the Houston-UTEP game.

Looks like we'll all be hearing about USC and Ohio State coming down the stretch again this year.

Inebriated, and yet still bored, we walked around the apartment complex to see if anyone was outside.

No. They weren't.

The sprinklers had been running all day for some reason and the sidewalk had about a half-inch of standing water that soaked my loafers.

Finally, turning towards the last opportunistic corridor of apartments, a huge gust of wind blew cold in the direction of our apartment, followed immediately by the sprinklers coming on yet again and spraying everything in sight.

We went home. Another Saturday down.

Awaxawhat!?

Welcome back to Fresnomore, brought to you by this giant cactus:

This picture was taken in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, which is being celebrated locally by a festival.

The shirt needs to now read, "Not Hispanic! Not Latino! Not Mexican! Oaxacaxacianan!!"

Yet another culture found in this crazy-ass clusterfuck. I'd go check out the festival, buuuuuuuut I don't have anyone to go with.

Elsewhere, a murder charge from 1974 was dropped today by local prosecutors. But wait! There's more:

Fresno County prosecutors this morning dropped murder charges against a 53-year-old man in a case that dates to New Year’s Day 1974 -- but the District Attorney’s Office says the case is far from over.

Dude, how much farther from over can this thing be? It's been 35 years! You tryin' to catch crooks on geologic time!?

I'm going to start counting how many strollers, homeless people on bikes, and good ol' bag people I see on my way to work, starting tomorrow. Aw shucks, let's make it a 3-for-1 and throw in the white trash.

It'll be a Fresno adaptation of the old Tiny Tunes bit!

No seriously...

I really hate this fucking place.

A haze sits over me as i write this, wading through a never-ending daydream caused by an inability to sleep off any more of the hours I'm trapped in this hell hole. Options: drink a bunch of liquor and pass out for a few hours (J/K totally kid'n man!......ya), or try to do something productive.

Blogging!

I managed to walk to a bar last night like the old days, except I had to cross a busy highway and was more or less scared the whole way there and back.

Oh, and I was alone.

The bar, okay, it was the Red Wave, was actually pretty good. They had tacos for 50 cents and Miller High Life for a dollar. The place was packed with Mexicans and whenever a new norteno song would come on they'd all start yelling, "Ayayayayayayay!!" and stuff like that. Oh and they drank these beers with GALLONS, OCEANS, TRUCKLOADS (low riders? ha ha) of salt in them. I drank about a quarter of one and, as Snoop Doggy Dogg says, "I had back up off it and sit my cup down."

"Don't worry SPM, there really is a Mexican Heaven."


Anyway my one friend who doesn't live with her parents gossipped with me all night about the people we know who do live with their parents. Okay, okay, I really like the Red Wave. But it's the only decent bar I've found in this city. And now I have two whole days to kill and tonight's football game will end at 7 pm and I will want to murder the inventor this stupid f*cking time zone again.

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Headlines!

The best one from today is the pictures released of a Visalia Bank Robber:

1) This is so damn obvious. "Hello! I'm wearing a safari hat and sunglasses indoors, y'ever think I might rob somebody!?" And
2) The dude just looks goofy, like how I'd expect a fat guy in a church play to dress if he was in a bank robbing scene.

We've got 400% unemployment, meanwhile Mr. Not Qualified got confirmed to the state appeals court.

One of the Valley's famous unnamed conservatives commented that he hopes this will bring common sense to the judges. Ah yes, common sense, that thing we fall back on when our argument can't be made with logic or evidence. He should bring plenty of that.

2 teachers were arrested on child porn charges. No, I'm not going to blame this on Fresno. The best thing to do on a story like this is read the comments:

cal_stunn wrote on September, 24 8:50 PM:

it's funny how some people are quick to defend these kind of people that are teachers, police, etc that get charged with these offenses. Wonder why ???? they should'nt even get hired on the first place, they should run some kind of test on them before they even think of hiring them.

So, the reason people defend them is that they shouldn't get hired "on" the first place. In the wide world of non-sequiturs, this is still an amazing stretch. Should go in the non sequitur hall of fame. (Because if football can have a hall of fame, non sequiturs deserve one too!... that one'll hit ya tomorrow)

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeven better, they should run a test on teachers, police, etc. before they even think of hiring them. Since we cannot determine exactly when someone first thinks of hiring someone, this test must be administered to everyone in the world starting right now, presumably as soon as they are born in case granny is tempted to say, "He's so loving, I think he'll grow up to be a teacher".

I once thought that an (untested) friend of mine should be hired as a teacher, for which my sincerest apologies go to cal_stunn. I have let you down friend.

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This blog has not been updated much recently. So what. The point was always to get something up on Google to warn people who are thinking of moving to Fresno or the Valley that it's a bad idea.

So, do not move to Fresno. Fresno, California sucks! I would not advise living in THE CENTRAL SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY OF CALIFORNIA, CA, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, USA. CULTURE, PLACES TO LIVE, HOUSING, COST OF LIVING in CENTRAL CALIFORNIA, EDUCATION, SCHOOL SYSTEM.

Don't move here, ever!

(P.S. If I sound slightly insane, it's because I've lived here for over a year now and am starting to come unglued)

Valley Logic

Madera County bans pot dispensaries

Madera County voted, unanimously, to get rid of all the medical marijuana dispensaries in the county limits. Conservatives do things like this, why?

Supervisors said dispensaries can increase crime, including drug-dealing, robbery and loitering, which impairs the health, safety and welfare of the community.

So they increase crime, including drug dealing.

Let's get this straight. They are going to close a place that sells legal marijuana, and this will DECREASE the amount of illegal drug dealing taking place?

Robbery.

How?

And loitering.

This is a crime now?

which impairs the health, safety and welfare of the community.

Right, because we would never want to be like the places that have dispensaries A.K.A. LA, San Francisco, and every place in this state that anyone would ever actually want to visit.

Latest Headline

First day of fall to top 100 degrees

The Goods

Saturday my buddy and me went movie hopping. "Isn't that something you do in high school?" Well, yea. Unless you live in Fresno and have nothing else going on.

It was fun though, reliving high school a little bit. It was great being afraid of getting caught when we darted in between theaters (they had a good bit of security too). I liked having authority to be afraid of instead of just being afraid of my own stupid actions.

We saw District 9. Eh. Inglourious Basterds. Great movie! Nothing to do with Fresno though.

But The Goods. Surprise surprise, it's got a Fresno joke! I wrote earlier about the astonishing number of movies which make fun of a city most people on the east coast have never heard of.

In fact, I took note of the lowest-common-denominator nature of most of the jokes in The Goods. Almost all of them were either racist, sexist, made fun of retarded people, or were simply about sex. If they weren't that then the humor depended on simple volume or the juxtaposition of a businessman wanting to be in a boy band (a.k.a. effeminate). Anyone from any era anywhere would get these jokes as we all know what Asians are and what sex is.

This makes the Fresno joke an anomaly, it's one of the most sophisticated and thought out jokes in the whole film! Why do they run this joke knowing it will be completely lost on more than half the people who see it (as the east coast has way more citizens than the west)?

I can just see that part of the film playing in a theater in my hometown. The whole audience would be silent.

It's an inside joke. And yet they still couldn't resist.

I wondered too about the other people watching the movie. Does it bother them that their hometown gets constantly lampooned by outsiders? Do they ever wonder if it really is better in the outside world? Do they think that maybe this many people just can't be wrong and that they need to do something about it?......

Nope, they don't.