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.

Let's get personal

So, aside from stories I find in the paper, I'd like to recount a few personal encounters.

These also may have less to do with Fresno than with California or the whole West Coast, but it's still strange to me:

The other day they make a big announcement at work, "We're buying pizza for everybody!" Then they ask what everybody wants. Somebody says, "I don't care." The next person says, "Pepperoni, I guess." The third guy says, "Vegetarian." I try to hide a laugh. The person after that also says, "Vegetarian". 'Seriously!?' I think, 'What the Hell is wrong with these people? What's gonna become of the world if you eat a pizza with meat on it?'

It comes to me, I try to make a joke, "Meat". In response, "Oh, you mean like the kind with tons of meat on it, like 5 different kinds?" 'Jesus Christ!' I think, 'They must think I'm some kind of barbarian now.' "No, I was just joking. I just meant I'd like a pizza that isn't vegetarian." (Or something like that, it was awkward)

Later in the day somebody says their chair is uncomfortable, and our boss tells us he is going to have people show up in two weeks to show us the proper way to sit in our chairs and use a computer so we don't suffer from "repetitive stress". That's right, repetitive stress -- while sitting down.

I said, "Ha ha, yea man that's a good one." Wrong!

"No seriously, I had to quit a job once because I suffered from repetitive stress."

The next day we've got to take a golf cart somewhere. Who will drive? "Well" says another higher-up, "Who has had the defensive driving class?"

"For a golf cart?"

"Oh yea! You can't drive it without taking the class."

"Look, I've played plenty of golf in my time, and-"

"Well that's why you need the class!"

I thought about explaining that golf courses let you drive a cart without taking a class (you did DRIVE A CAR THERE after all), but decided the effort would be futile.

I know that asshole!

"Hey, what do I look like?"

So I'm scowering through the Bee this morning, looking for stuff that might confirm Fresno sucks in a humorous or interesting way, and I come across something familiar.

This guy Chuck Poochigian is trying to get nominated as an appellate court judge, and it turns out he is rated as "not qualified" by some committee. Looks like he hasn't practiced law in over 20 years. Of course, as the article says, the govanaata will probably appoint him anyway.

"Okay" you say, "A Republican gets a position even though he isn't qualified. What else is new?"

Well, I've met this guy! Believe it or not, I interviewed him once last year. He was a complete asshole, completely full of his old white male self. I asked him what his fondest memory of Fresno State was and he responded that it was organizing a charity event.

He then went through his history working with other Republican FSU graduates and talked about how knowing these guys got him good jobs. He said something like, "I've never made friends for the purpose of advancing my career, but [that's exactly what I've done]."

Then he asked me if I knew anything about "Sin City" behind the frat houses. I told him no, but did he know anything about it? "No." Really dude? You bring this up to me and don't know anything about it?

And as soon as the formal interview was over he stormed out of the place, his chance for self promotion over. Oh yea and he hassled me to get a transcript of the interview for the next week until I got him one so he could sue us if we said anything slanderous (like we gave a f--- about him).

So, I'm glad he's rated as "not qualified", because he's white Fresno through and through.