20 Reasons I don't want to live in the Texas Tropics
1- The Birds; These awful creatures like to make video game sounds and are annoying as hell. When I go outside I find myself expecting Super Mario to start chasing me with a mushroom. They delight in shitting on you, and then laugh. (I think they are agents of gnomes.) Seagulls scream at each other and laugh at people like a group of out of control teenagers. Pelicans look like demons, and hide the fact with ungainly movement and comic walks.
2- The humidity makes going outside feel like walking into soup, a thin unsatisfying soup that wets your clothes but not your palette. I love the water, but not when it is just vapor until it touches my skin, where it condenses into a film that makes me feel slimy and unclean. On a humid day I usually feel like a mobile mold ranch.
3- Low pay (I would be lucky to make a third of what I make now.) The pay scale here SUCKS. And from what I have been seeing, talented worker persons pretty much have to be imported from other areas. The workers that do live here don’t seem have much in the way of ethics, skills, or a sense of the right thing to do. They don’t call in, they arrive late, sneak out early, sleep on the job, and just take days off because they feel like it. Then they wonder why they are not employed more and blame it on ‘The Man’. (‘The Man’ being anyone who actually holds a job for more than, let’s say, a year.)
4- There is some strange aspect to the culture here, like slavery just ended a decade or so ago. They don’t call you ‘Massa’, but sure they do call you ‘Sir’, and ‘Mister’. It seems like a polite society, but it seems like a scared society at the same time. This bicultural situation seems like an uneasy truce for some reason that I have been unable to put my finger on and don’t really want to know more about.
5- I don’t like to eat fish. I don’t eat seafood. That makes me seem like an alien to those who like it here and eat that shit and claim to love it. Eating shrimp reminds me of eating pencil erasers. (Don’t ask. I may have won that bet, but I shit funny for a week.)
6- I don’t speak Spanish. Bilingual is the norm here. Half my day is listening to people jabber at me in a language that I don’t understand. When they figure out that you don’t understand, they take advantage of that and pretend they don’t speak English. I caught one of these fakers that actually speaks FOUR LANGUAGES, yet pretended he did not speak English. English is his first language.
7- Drivers here consider the shoulder (AKA; the breakdown lane) a waste of taxpayers’ dollars and drive on it as much as on the road. They expect you to drive on the shoulder when they want to pass you, making things interesting for bicyclists and others pulled off to the side to take a phone call or change a tire.
8- Speeding. Everyone here travels at least ten miles per hour over the posted speed limit, and if you are not going at least that fast, you are in danger of being run over by a beat up 1986 Buick with primer gray patches and bald tires. If you don’t pull into the shoulder, they will get as close to you as physically possible without actually ramming your car in the ass.
9- It is so fucking hot! It was in the 70s before sunup in the first week of March! (New phrase; Not a snowballs chance in South Texas in Spring.) The summers here must be brutal. I long not to experience the summers here firsthand.
10- Local Female news anchors tend to look transgender. I spend the whole Newscast looking for an Adams apple and miss the content. The males all look either horribly gay or too strange looking to be in any other market. Some days watching local TV news is like watching a geek show. “ Honey! Come watch! That guy with the twisted mouth is doing the news! He is sooo funny! Watch when he says ‘Rio Grande Valley! He looks like his tongue is trying to strangle his nose!”
11- Third world meets technoland. Most people here equate technology with magic. I would not be surprised to see phones with rotary dials in some homes. I have overheard conversations involving fear of things like the Internet and cell phones. It is a widely held belief here that the Government cares enough that they actually monitor where everyone is and what they say. It does not matter that you would have to have at least one dedicated government employee for each person in this country in order to do what they think the Government is doing. They believe that the Government can do anything.
12- Time is an illusion here; no one is on time. Tomorrow is actually three days from now. People show up for work fifteen minutes late and leave one half hour early and think they have worked eight hours. The half hour for lunch begins at 11:45 and ends at 12:25. It’s like being in a third world nation that lives right here in South Texas. I have caught people taking a ‘siesta’ in their pickup truck with the air-conditioning on. (In February)
13- I hate polka music, and whatever else you call it, it still sounds like polka. Accordion music is seldom appealing to me and sometimes sounds like a bag of pissed off cats. I like cats.
14- Rodeo very is popular here. I know nothing about rodeo except it is very loud, dusty, and involves people who are called ‘Bubba”.
15- The name “Bubba”. Bubba sounds like something you would call a carwash or a porcelain object in the bathroom, not your sisters husband.
16- I feel uncomfortable in a place that seems to think that aluminum foil is the latest thing in window treatment.
17- Being in the building trades, I have noticed that the people here seem to put more thought into the front door than into the whole rest of the house. I have seen $5000 doors on a one-bedroom shotgun shack in a shitty neighborhood. It’s like gold plating a turd.
18- They don’t seem to use road signs here, instead they use piles of discarded tires. ”If you are goin’ East on 501, right after the light ya see that pile o’ 275-15s, turn left. Don’t turn at the ol’ truck tires, they ain’t worth a shit.”
19- Spring break, 40 to 100 THOUSAND drunk and horny young adults in the same place at the same time seems like a recipe for disaster. I heard that there was a betting pool about how many kids would die this year. I did not win.
20- Waste disposal is anywhere beside the road where no one is looking. Huge piles of trash mark the roads here, sometimes right in a person’s yard. They can afford to take the refuse to the country, but they can’t afford to take it to the dump where they might get charged as much as two dollars. Am I missing something? Do they think that there is some secret Old Mattress Elf that only lives out of the city limits?
21- Mold. There is black shit growing EVERYWHERE. I usually live where it is dry and mold does not have a foothold. Down here mold gets to vote in municipal elections and larger colonies are even allowed to drive a car. I can’t believe some of the places where that shit grows.
I know, I know, you are going to point out that that was more than 20 reasons. Let’s say that my cup was overflowing.
2- The humidity makes going outside feel like walking into soup, a thin unsatisfying soup that wets your clothes but not your palette. I love the water, but not when it is just vapor until it touches my skin, where it condenses into a film that makes me feel slimy and unclean. On a humid day I usually feel like a mobile mold ranch.
3- Low pay (I would be lucky to make a third of what I make now.) The pay scale here SUCKS. And from what I have been seeing, talented worker persons pretty much have to be imported from other areas. The workers that do live here don’t seem have much in the way of ethics, skills, or a sense of the right thing to do. They don’t call in, they arrive late, sneak out early, sleep on the job, and just take days off because they feel like it. Then they wonder why they are not employed more and blame it on ‘The Man’. (‘The Man’ being anyone who actually holds a job for more than, let’s say, a year.)
4- There is some strange aspect to the culture here, like slavery just ended a decade or so ago. They don’t call you ‘Massa’, but sure they do call you ‘Sir’, and ‘Mister’. It seems like a polite society, but it seems like a scared society at the same time. This bicultural situation seems like an uneasy truce for some reason that I have been unable to put my finger on and don’t really want to know more about.
5- I don’t like to eat fish. I don’t eat seafood. That makes me seem like an alien to those who like it here and eat that shit and claim to love it. Eating shrimp reminds me of eating pencil erasers. (Don’t ask. I may have won that bet, but I shit funny for a week.)
6- I don’t speak Spanish. Bilingual is the norm here. Half my day is listening to people jabber at me in a language that I don’t understand. When they figure out that you don’t understand, they take advantage of that and pretend they don’t speak English. I caught one of these fakers that actually speaks FOUR LANGUAGES, yet pretended he did not speak English. English is his first language.
7- Drivers here consider the shoulder (AKA; the breakdown lane) a waste of taxpayers’ dollars and drive on it as much as on the road. They expect you to drive on the shoulder when they want to pass you, making things interesting for bicyclists and others pulled off to the side to take a phone call or change a tire.
8- Speeding. Everyone here travels at least ten miles per hour over the posted speed limit, and if you are not going at least that fast, you are in danger of being run over by a beat up 1986 Buick with primer gray patches and bald tires. If you don’t pull into the shoulder, they will get as close to you as physically possible without actually ramming your car in the ass.
9- It is so fucking hot! It was in the 70s before sunup in the first week of March! (New phrase; Not a snowballs chance in South Texas in Spring.) The summers here must be brutal. I long not to experience the summers here firsthand.
10- Local Female news anchors tend to look transgender. I spend the whole Newscast looking for an Adams apple and miss the content. The males all look either horribly gay or too strange looking to be in any other market. Some days watching local TV news is like watching a geek show. “ Honey! Come watch! That guy with the twisted mouth is doing the news! He is sooo funny! Watch when he says ‘Rio Grande Valley! He looks like his tongue is trying to strangle his nose!”
11- Third world meets technoland. Most people here equate technology with magic. I would not be surprised to see phones with rotary dials in some homes. I have overheard conversations involving fear of things like the Internet and cell phones. It is a widely held belief here that the Government cares enough that they actually monitor where everyone is and what they say. It does not matter that you would have to have at least one dedicated government employee for each person in this country in order to do what they think the Government is doing. They believe that the Government can do anything.
12- Time is an illusion here; no one is on time. Tomorrow is actually three days from now. People show up for work fifteen minutes late and leave one half hour early and think they have worked eight hours. The half hour for lunch begins at 11:45 and ends at 12:25. It’s like being in a third world nation that lives right here in South Texas. I have caught people taking a ‘siesta’ in their pickup truck with the air-conditioning on. (In February)
13- I hate polka music, and whatever else you call it, it still sounds like polka. Accordion music is seldom appealing to me and sometimes sounds like a bag of pissed off cats. I like cats.
14- Rodeo very is popular here. I know nothing about rodeo except it is very loud, dusty, and involves people who are called ‘Bubba”.
15- The name “Bubba”. Bubba sounds like something you would call a carwash or a porcelain object in the bathroom, not your sisters husband.
16- I feel uncomfortable in a place that seems to think that aluminum foil is the latest thing in window treatment.
17- Being in the building trades, I have noticed that the people here seem to put more thought into the front door than into the whole rest of the house. I have seen $5000 doors on a one-bedroom shotgun shack in a shitty neighborhood. It’s like gold plating a turd.
18- They don’t seem to use road signs here, instead they use piles of discarded tires. ”If you are goin’ East on 501, right after the light ya see that pile o’ 275-15s, turn left. Don’t turn at the ol’ truck tires, they ain’t worth a shit.”
19- Spring break, 40 to 100 THOUSAND drunk and horny young adults in the same place at the same time seems like a recipe for disaster. I heard that there was a betting pool about how many kids would die this year. I did not win.
20- Waste disposal is anywhere beside the road where no one is looking. Huge piles of trash mark the roads here, sometimes right in a person’s yard. They can afford to take the refuse to the country, but they can’t afford to take it to the dump where they might get charged as much as two dollars. Am I missing something? Do they think that there is some secret Old Mattress Elf that only lives out of the city limits?
21- Mold. There is black shit growing EVERYWHERE. I usually live where it is dry and mold does not have a foothold. Down here mold gets to vote in municipal elections and larger colonies are even allowed to drive a car. I can’t believe some of the places where that shit grows.
I know, I know, you are going to point out that that was more than 20 reasons. Let’s say that my cup was overflowing.
posted by MizfiTroll at 7:58 AM
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