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.

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)

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.

TIme to rant

VSP responded to my sharp criticism today -- with a story about a high school girls track star. Dayum!

Fresno isn't the kind of place that would let an era of worldwide business fraud go by without getting a hand in. Turns out we had our very own Bernie Madoff or Ivar Kreuger right here in the pit. I mention Kreuger because our guy had the good sense to kill himself before he got caught.

"In this case, Mr. Otto is essentially the California Madoff," Jabagchourian said Tuesday. "He decimated several hundred people in the Valley."

People around here complain that the valley gets lost in the hype around the areas to the north and south. But see here, they didn't call him the valley Madoff, he won the whole state! There's some local pride for ya.

I guess I should say something about the Surpreme Court ruling about gay marriage. I do feel badly about it and wish the gay folks well. The more I read, the more it amazes me that this qualifies as an issue. How a single person can convince themself that two gay people they will never meet getting married will affect their life... I wish we had better things to debate.

Ex. The story about the investment fraud, the one that swindled local residents out of about 138 million dollars, has no comments. The one about gay marriage has 14. Let's find a few...

Go fight a battle that is truly more equal. Go fight global warming, go fight hunger, killings, poverty. Make a difference in something that is going to help the world. This is like the civil war all over again.

WHAT!?!? The CIVIL WAR!?!? Guess which side of the issue this guys in on, just guess.

Like donuts, I grew up in Fresno and moved to LA and never looked back. It's people like you Joe that make Fresno unpleasant and forces good people to look elsewhere to live.

Oh wow, this entire blog is summed up in that statement.

Get with it, please. Your hedgemony in CA is over.

He spelled hegemony wrong and severely bastardized its meaning. Guess which side this guy is on?

Next we could have people wanting to marry children or animals.

Conservatives and the slippery slope, a match made in heaven. Get it? Heaven!?!? Ahahahahah!!

It's got a pulse

I'm sorry dog, but it's time to start the death clock for valleysportspulse.com

I was seriously excited when I heard about the site, but it just ain't cuttin it. One of the lead columns has been up since April 2nd and has the following subheadline:

Fresno State head coach Pat Hill is not one for offering many prospects before their senior year.

I check this site several times a week, and every single time I try to figure out how to fix this sentence. I think the words "a scholarship" would help right? But even then it's still SO AWKWARD!!

Then there's Takada's latest column (Up since April 29th) about the Oakland Raiders.

"psssssssst. it's called valleysportspulse.com dumbass!!!"

And dude, nobody thinks Al Davis is a good owner. You might as well write about how walking involves legs.

Now look at some of the quotes from the welcome column "written by Andrew Marden."

I suuuuuuuuuuuuuure don't know how, but for some reason more of the shit is about Takada than the site! Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm:

He also believes he is the right person to run this operation. And why not? George Takata has lived in the valley since 1985. He has been on TV in the valley since 1996.

I mean shit, as long as there isn't anyone who has lived here longer than 24 years or been on TV before '96 I guess he's right!

“People have always asked me when I was going to try and make the jump to a larger market,” says Takata."

Translation: "When will I not have to see you anymore? I can't stand your cocky ass!"

He credits friend Chris Miller for coming up with the name “valleysportspulse.com.” But now it’s his name - George Takata - that’s all over the media kits and the business cards.

How surprising

What is valleysportspulse.com?

That is a question owner/president George Takata has been asked several times over the past few months.

Quit asking, that's rude. And before you go off about the difficulty of working on a budget or the economy or whatev, look how many times Fresnomore has been updated since April 2nd...

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lazy

The relief at being outisde of the valley for the summer is indescribable. I feel like I've been rescued.

The paper had something about record setting heat, a special election that will either rescue the jacked up state budget or just let it fail that hardly anyone from Fresno is showing up for, a 15-month-old ingesting meth, blah blah blah.

It all seems like a big joke, a terrible dream that you wake up from relieved as HEYUL that it's not real. Of course I'll be back in August, so I better keep in mind that the covers are coming back.

This thing here really is cool. You can type in any address in Fresno and find the last 50 crimes within a quarter mile, half mile, or whole mile radius. They even have color codes for what kind of crime it was. Try it at your own peril.

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Just read it.

"I plead insanity." "pssst. No, you idiot! The LAWYER is pleading insanity!!"

Leading off, a truly crazy story. A local lawyer is pleading insanity. As noted earlier, they usually tell their clients to do that right? Say it with me boys...

"IT'S FRENOOOOO!!"

So the dude swindled a ton of clients out of money between '02 and '04. And he's pleading insanity because of a tragic plane crash -- in 1992. Apparently it took him 10 years to realize he was insane.

More importantly, his mental insanity just happened to make him a lot of money! And now that they caught him, the insanity is gone (suppressed by meds anyway). Interesting case. Surely the jury won't buy a 10-year delay for post-traumatic stress disorder. Eh.

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I went to Wal-Mart today:

I'm not gonna go there again for a while.

---------------------------------------------------

On a serious note, there's some big Hmong trial going on in Sacramento.

I read the article but am still fuzzy on the details, especially where the guy on trial stands historically. However, I can still point to this as a chief example of Valley mentality.

An ocean of Hmong went to Sacramento to say the trial should be dismissed.
"It's a fact cuz we say it is!"

Plainly, obviously, these people were not making calls based on evidence. It's not even possible 8,000 Hmong all came to the same conclusion dialectically while almost everyone from the other races evaluated the situation and came to the opposite one.

Excerpt:

...a defining moment, comparable to marches led by Martin Luther King Jr...

That would be accurate if there were currently Jim Crow laws against Hmong.

Here's a gem:

Sacramento shaman Wang Her Vang burned symbolic paper money as a sacrifice to the ancestral spirits, asking them to release the case.

This is retarded by itself. But really, you couldn't even burn some ones? Cheap ass...

And so it goes. The Hmong know they're getting screwed. So do the Armenians. So do the Filipinos, the Koreans, the Hispanics, the Blacks, the Indians, Hell even the Whites for cyin' out loud!

I saw a shirt the other day that said, "Not Latino, not Hispanic, Mexican!"

I know a guy and a girl who are both Indian, both Gujarati Indian at that, but their parents won't let them date because they are from different classes within their race within a race.

Do you see how this place drives me insane?

(Don't even try calling me racist, I'm not. And if you do, I'll just pull a Fresno and plead insanity... my dog died when I was 10.)

Iiiiiiiiironyyyyyyyyyyyy

I got a very nice complement about this here ol' blog a few days ago. Freaked out when I saw a comment as I'm always afraid it'll be from some high-ranking official who has discovered the site trashing his city (in good fun of course!!...) and is vowing to hunt me down at any cost.

But this one was nice. He complemented the conciceness of the blog, how it was updated often and stayed on subject. The being famous part was nice, I'm sure it's a pipe dream every blogger has (cough cough fresnofamous.com cough), but eh.

SO, I finally found the comment -- after updating 2 times in 2 weeks with stuff about Las Vegas and San Francisco A.K.A. doing the opposite of the ish I got the complement for. Stupid me.

But hey, that's Fresno.

Back on da topic:

"I'm comin' out. I want the world to know..."

Truth in advertising came out from the Bee a few days ago, and for once I completely agree with some valley politicians.

The article details the difficulties of the valley legislators in getting any attention for their region of the State ("The Armpit of California"). Apparently towns like Mendota have 40% unemployment rates, which is admittedly a shocking number.

So they're organizing a march on Washington (still unscheduled) and marched locally for water last month.

It's not an opinion piece, but the article nonchalantly asserts the New York Times as "agenda setting" because it put the valley water march on page A17. Dude, the paper operates out of NEW YORK. What you expect? And have any of these unemployed thought of the obvious thing, LEAVING!?

As the story goes, Americans don't care about the unemployment rate here because it's always high. They also don't buy the farmers' excuse that environmental protection is ruining them since there's plenty of food. And they don't care about food shortages from the world's richest agricultural region because prices haven't gone up.

In other words, they have no incentive to feel sorry for the people here. Another tragedy of modern life. Farms the world over can fill in our gap, men are outdated.

THE POINT:

They need to succeed! They need to march on Washington! They need to get the attention of Barack Obama!! (after Saturday night I'm sure he could make some priceless Fresno jokes) Everyone in America needs to know about this!!!

...Cuz if everybody knows, suckers like me will know better than to move here. Oh no, oh Fres-'No, more

Lame-azz wannabees......

First off, I'd like to congratulate Fresno for becoming California's 5th largest city. Yay.

Elsewhere, the city dropped Mayor Swearengin's plan to use GPS devices to track sex offenders even after they have been released. It's a great idea, but, um, oh ish, it's not legal. I tell you what though, if she had ran on making weed cheaper in Fresno I'd have voted for her anyway.

Speaking of sex offenders, a famous one is about to move back here!! Sherman Polk is apparently famous around these parts and has been in jail since 1985. But he still knows where the action is baby; Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeef Naw.

And on a personal note, I had a very "special" trip planned for this weekend to San Francisco. Me and two friends had planned on it since January and by Tuesday night had worked out most of the details. On Thursday, they both suddenly had different plans. One wanted to "go to Vegas!" on a whim (Las Vegas is overrated BS from lame movies BTW) and the other, more bizarrely, wanted to go to San Luis Obispo.

The Vegas guy went, the SLO guy didn't. And I'm still going to San Fran dammit!... albeit with people I barely know. I won't blame my friends' erratic behavior on Fresno because they are not from here and I'd thought before yesterday that they were above the lameness of the city. Rather, they have engaged in some sort of pathetic alpha male stunt. San Francisco wouldn't work because it was my idea and they couldn't be so shamed.

Pardon my French, but Fresno 'em.

What's so special about Fresno?

Oh ish, this is what I've been waiting for. I received an invitation to take a survey about what makes Fresno so special.
"So tell me, good sir, what three words describe the best things about being waterboarded?"


Here's the link (though it probably won't last long)

Among what you might like about Fresno is the choice: Limited earthquakes, floods, tornados or snow. Okay, it is pretty good in the national disaster area.

Crap, the second questions asks me to rank my top 3 choices. I only picked 2! (the other was agricultural heritage) Okay, I added "fresh produce", since that's basically agricultural heritage 2.0

Now I need to use three words to describe Fresno's personality. Let's see: Satisfied, uncreative, divided. Divided isn't quite right, it's hard to describe how the place is diverse and yet there is no diversity at all because people stick so hard to only others from their race. But um, we'll go with divided.

Next: when talking about the Fresno region, what do I brag about? Jeez, the winter is mild I guess.

Hmm, is the region's image getting better or worse? I really have no idea, but I hope that one day someone will read this blog (just a hobby BTW, not something I expect to get anything out of), so I'll say it's getting worse.

Will we overcome the negative image? Not if I can help it, ya baaastuds!

How is Fresno's esteem? I must admit, it's at least average. There is a strange pride among the locals about Fresno... I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

Now they want to know if I'm a manager or business owner, I guess they want to see if my opinion ACTUALLY matters. I'm neither, so I guess it doesn't.

Aaaaaand the demographic information.

The Bee seems to have taken notice of how ludicrous the city looks to a viewer of its local stories and has started hiding the really funny ones in other areas of its web site. When I quit being so lazy I'll figure out where. In the meantime, they still couldn't hide the Bulldog gang member who tattooed his 7-year-old son against his will. Claaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaassic!

Relay for Life

Saturday night I trekked it on down to Relay for Life. I'd like to say it was because of my commitment to cancer research, but it was more an attempt to relieve boredom than anything else.

TNJ, a natural at questioning authority, came up with the ingenious plan to reverse the walking direction at midnight. People had been walking counterclockwise around the track since 9 that morning. At midnight mista NJ came out and said, "All right! We're supposed to change direction at midnight!" He convinced the walkers that it was true, and many even walked their first backward lap while wagging their finger in the air in circles to indicate the switch.

Convinced of his i'm-da-shitness, TNJ spent the next 10 minutes musing about how most people blindly follow the crowd through life and don't think for themselves. It seemed a little melodramatic, especially since most people probably don't give a flying fudge which way they walk at Relay for Life. And for some reason the people we played poker with insisted on playing counterclockwise. Here, mista NJ protested, but played on anyway upon finding out that nobody else cared. A contradiction, eh?

This passes for interesting on a Saturday night here.

I'd like to congratulate Bear Pascoe and Tom Bran...stateAAh!, on getting drafted Sunday. Maybe once outside of the valley our boy Tom will blossom. He's a three-year starter, stands 6-5, weighs 230 pounds, and throws the ball on a rope when he wants to. He's a good metaphor for Fresno itself, cuz it really shouldn't suck that bad here! Anyway, if he can get over his mental tendency to completely freak at the first sign of trouble he ought to be good.

More importantly, I'm going to miss getting drunk and yelling his name like that.

Lastly, this swine flu thing is a little creepy. It just came out of nowhere! This time yesterday I'd never heard of it and now I've read four articles about the "pandemic" and it's all over Facebook and everything else. Bird flu, mad cow and SARS ended up being nothing, but I've read The Stand, and I'm still scared.

So, if you are one of the lucky survivors who made it through the swine flu pandemic that killed 99% of the population and you happen to be reading this... look man, don't rebuild Fresno.

(J/K, of course!)

More local ish

I apologize for not updating in the last few days, as I experienced the full fallout from my vacation -- i.e. I got depressed from realizing I really am stuck here for a whole nother year and I'll be another year older when I get out -- jeez, feels like a damn prison sentence.

My buddy told me there was a story in the Bee involving a kidnapping. The dude had gone to a local high school and offered some girls candy. The dude was dumb enough to believe that ish from the movies! Thinks he's in a holy cross between the Truman Show and a creepy episode of Unsolved Mysteries... probably makes a chick keep her bra on to have sex. Um, never mind, I couldn't find the link anyway.

For all the men in Fresno who wish they could get some gender lawsuit action, it just happened! They gave some old man $348,000 because it turns out he didn't assault somebody. Now there's an accomplishment worthy of Fresno.

Lastly, there's a story about local thieves who drop a string with glue on the end into mailboxes to steal the mail. So they're replacing the public mailboxes with something else. Crimes that don't even exist in other places are a problem here!

Wish me luck as I try to numb myself today.

Movie night

Q: What do these 5 seeeeeemingly unrelated things have in common?

A: They all make fun of Fresno!!!


I found out yesterday that the new computer-animated movie Monsters vs. Aliens has a scene involving da 'No. The scene is, the main guy in the film is marrying the main girl. They are supposed to move to Paris, but at the last second he tells her they are moving to Fresno instead, and that it is "better".

She responds, "In what universe is Fresno better than Paris?"

Funny huh?

Don't worry though, Seth Rogen and Reese Witherspoon offered a half-assed apology for the unbecoming joke on the city, saying that they didn't destroy it in the movie like they did San Francisco.

Turns out they didn't destroy any OTHER cities either, but who's counting?

Researching a bit more, I found out there are Fresno jokes in Con Air, Thelma & Louise, and EDtv, as well as many on the Johnny Carson show. I got lazy before I started searching for links on those, but dude, seriously!?!?

Consider all of this, and then add to it the fact that millions of people in America, and billions the world over, have never even heard of the place. This reduces the value of the jokes a ton...



THEY COULDN'T RESIST! IT'S THAT FREAKING LAME!!!

Vintage days!? More like Vintage Fresno...

So I got up the courage to head down to Vintage days at Fresno State. Surely this won't suck, I thought. I have no idea why the event even happens or why it's called Vintage Days. Maybe they'll be giving away some free kuzies (sp?) or something, maybe a step show or a singer or a band.

Sorry, no pikchas. Soon! Soon!

Anyway, WRONG! No kuzies, no music, no entertainment. It was a bunch of booths -- and every single one was trying to sell you something. Fresno mentality, me me me! So many of them were selling food that it was virtually impossible any of them would make a profit. I went to my buddy's booth and bought a hot dog to be nice. It was three bucks. He asked if I wanted green peppers and onions, I said sure and handed him a twenty. He handed back 16. I asked for my other dollar.

Green peppers and onions cost a dollar extra. Oh, em, gee.

The Olde Fresno Dust Bowl Revolution of 2009

In today's news, we have an impending dust storm... Really?

What's next, swarms of locusts eating the crops? I mean, I read about these things in text books and stuff when I was a kid, but this still happens here? Apparently my mental image was a little off, as a huge cloud of dust never engulfed my house. But jeez, isn't the air here bad enough already?

And, as if the economy here isn't bad enough already, the city is putting a new plan before Obama and the Govanaata. They couldn't get the coveted "economic disaster area" label based on unemployment rates, so now they're taking the drought angle. And they didn't even throw in the dust bowl part. Come on guys, use it or lose it!

They should too, the dust bowl thing that is. Obama got desperate enough to not come here that he went on the freaking Leno show. Just tell him it's a dust bowl. He probably won't even look into it and we'll get some extra stimulus money! (I mean ish, if you told me ANYTHING happened here I'd be inclined to believe you.)

With any luck, I'll be able to attend Fresno's tea party tomorrow and report on it, maybe even confiscate some of the tea for my fridge! But this is Fresno, so I probably won't have any luck.

Store bought just ain't the same...

After reading today about the ridiculous tea parties going on across America, I should have known that there would be one here.
(What passes for clever to old white people)

How these are supposed to relate to the original Boston tea party I don't even know. The slogan, "Taxed Enough Already" is such a sham that I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it. Anybody else wanna bet that the idiots pouring out Arizona brand iced tea across America don't make 200,000 dollars a year or more? Hmm, I'm sure I could find some Fresno idiot to take me up, maybe even the guy who said this:

"We're being taxed without being heard. We're hoping to get enough people involved, and have a loud enough voice, to force the politicians to listen to us."

"So, you didn't get to vote last November? Oh, you did!? And, hey, aren't you about to have your words quoted in the local newspaper? Oh, you are!?!? Well, in that case you sound kind of like a whiny only child!"

Aren't tea parties an English thing? I thought y'all hated foreign countries. And hey, you could drink the tea you know! Save some money since you're so conservative! To recap, they're raising Hell in support of rich folks who screw them over every day, and whining about getting taxed less!

As I get older, it saddens me to find that the right really exists like this. I keep waking up thinking, "There has got to me more to these people than this. They really believe this childish bullshit!?!?"

Speaking of which, the govanaata was in Fresno today!

Reading the article, the state of California becomes even more baffling. Apparently, he's here in order to support a program which will train health care workers because there aren't enough here already. Aren't we in a recession? Isn't the unemployment rate skyrocketing in this "economic disaster area?" And people still aren't trying to get into this field? Then there's the fact that government money will pay to train people. Aren't conservatives against that sort of thing? I thought the free market was supposed to fix the problem. And aren't there millions of "illegals" who would die for a job like that and fix the problem that way?

As the scientists say, these proposals are not even wrong. Refuting them gets us no closer to an actual solution. You ask if these are good ideas, and I respond, "F-No!"

Back to the Frind...

Alas, my lovely vacation from the 'No is 'No more. However, this did give me an update of the airport. Whereas I have made fun of the FAT in the past for it's high praise of Yosemite Park at the expense of the city of Fresno, it has really outdone itself this time:

(Fresnomore sincerely apologizes for the insanely low quality of the pictures)

They now have life-sized replicas of the redwood trees to give off the impression that you are actually inside the park! It's gone from "Don't pay attention to the Fresno part" to "Don't worry, you're not really even in Fresno." Both baggage claim conveyors also have big pictures of the dome thingy now.

Another Fresno First happened today. Heading down to Target on Blackstone I noticed something peculiar; the Target was closed!

"Not our fault! If you're in Fresno, you've obviously missed the target anyway."

No idea why this Target is closed. Also, I didn't know the entire storefront can be covered a la the garage at your house. Cool! Except that I can't buy a dress shirt for 3 dollars now...

Lastly, while the Easter picnic shooting and the apparently-heated Bullard pool controversy are tempting, I'll leave you this Sunday with a more personal take on the weirdness in Fresno. You see, while my good buddy and fellow non-Fresnan Abazu was away, his cramped fridge became even more crowded:

This is yet another ongoing problem for him, as he gets less and less room for his own things. And I know what you're thinking; "Really? You're that biased that you're complaining about your friend's refrigerator? As if that one fridge represents every single fridge in Fresno?"

Yes, I am, but that's just it. There isn't one thing that makes this city weird, nothing you can definitively put your finger on. It's a multitude of small things that make no sense which eventually build into a cacophony that pushes you ever so slightly closer to insanity every day you spend here. Of which, this is a good example.

Abazu has a few grapes and a loaf of bread in the bottom shelf. Among the things you will find in this veritable Where's Waldo or Who's Who of Fresno Refrigerator Items are at least 3 bottles of liquor and an energy drink which all have been there since at least September (not sure why the liquor bottles need to be refrigerated), three separate loaves of bread (all open), at least two 2-liter soft drink bottles (in place since January), eggs, oranges which were placed squarely in the middle of the thing instead of a drawer (you know, where you'd expect to find them) and, as you can see, TONS and TONS of Tupperware (who knows if any of the food contained therein is any good at this point).

I once got bold and drank one of the energy drinks which lingered in the murky depths of the back right-hand corner of the fridge. Abazu received a complaint soon thereafter about how that drink would have been used for studying that night. Not only is this negligible on its own terms seeing as how old the drink was, there was another months-old energy drink in the back left-hand corner of the fridge that, apparently, neither party knew about.

If not yet convinced that this is a true Fresnism, remember two more things:

1. The people who push this fridge to its limits with bacteria-laden leftovers simultaneously refuse to use (or let anyone else use) the dishwasher because they view it as unsanitary.

2. Believe it or not, there is also a mini fridge on the other side of the room, itself packed with unused liquor bottles and a 5-gallon jug of spring water.

I'd drink from the liquor bottles in order to forget where I was, but then it would inevitably be the one night they were going to use them... Only

Gottschalks

Gottschalks went out of business today, as one of the two liquidation companies beat out a Chinese company which would keep the place open. Very sad.

Random Ridiculous Fresno story of the day: Mom of boy found eating trash in Madera park arrested.

Lastly, Fresno now has a new hockey team, the Fresno Monsters. I'm officially scared.

I apologize for the lack of output recently, I have been quite busy. I promise to find (Fresno)more material soon!