Swing State Syndrome and Why This Writer Guy can Piss Off

For those of you just catching up, I recently moved from Cleveland, Ohio to Wilmington, North Carolina to go back to school for creative writing. This has, therefore, been an extremely painful yet cynically entertaining  election cycle for me. One swing state to another, not much changes. I registered to vote here in NC as soon as the campus drives started, and since then I've been bombarded with fliers, phone calls, Hulu ads. I've had an Obama volunteer knocking on my door looking for me every day for the past two weeks. I live in a predominantly black neighborhood, so the Romney volunteers have been noticeably absent.

The only people who cared more about early voting than Ohio were North Carolinians. I'm one of those perverts who enjoys going to the community center on Election Day and making a whole ritual of it, and it got to the point where I was lying to the volunteers and telling them I had already voted, just so they would stop trying to give me directions to the library.

This morning I was laying in bed, contemplating my very non-political thoughts, and as I hopped on Twitter to post my deep musings about the correlation between my vibrator and my teddy bear, I saw THIS ESSAY linked to by my friend Angie. I have a lot to say about this, so you'd better go read it first, even though I absolutely hate to give this guy the page views.

First of all, fuck you. Just had to get that out there.
Alright. Let's try this again.

First of all, Ohio didn't choose to be the lynch pin of the electoral process. It's not like years ago, we somehow bid on it, somehow lobbied to be the place where every four years campaign strategists cum on our faces with 300 political ads a day and tie up our cellphones with blocked numbers just because one time we decided to sign that Move On petition. Oh yes, Ohio has email, can you believe it? No wait, actually some parts of Ohio DON'T have DSL, because not a single one of these candidates blowing their coffer loads here comes back in between elections to help us out with real issues - like accessibility of internet services, alternative energy sources, or a governor that's trying to frack us all into a giant hell pit. We are not rubes, we are very well aware of the disparity and the abuse we suffer at the hands of these invaders. There are not a bunch of Ohioans walking around going "Oh man, I'm so special and important, I'm the future of America." No, instead we're sitting in our finished basements, being pissed off that we can't watch our Black Key's youtube video without first having to sit through our 17th Romney ad of the hour.

Second, let's address this idea you posit that all human beings of vitality and vision leave Ohio as soon as they are able to crawl. It's painfully obvious that you consider yourself one of these visionaries. Let me assure you, your style is mediocre David Foster Wallace rip off at best, so tone it down a bit Chump. I mean, I sympathize, because I am obviously one of these glowing talents as well, and yes, I too ran far away from Ohio. To an even smaller town, in the Bible Belt, where grown men regularly call me honey and the job market is so slow I've been considering selling "used" underwear on Craiglist just to make rent. Look, I grew up in Revitalized Cleveland, so I'm well aware of the concept of "Ohio good", and I am not a fan of the legions of cheerleaders whose sole mission in life seems to be to convince me that Ohio is the very best place to live in the entire world because we have a restaurant with weird grilled cheese sandwiches.

But, and I'm going to go ahead and siphon off some of your ego here, I'm a good writer. The reason I am a good writer is not because I somehow had the far reaching vision to escape Ohio, but because I stayed there. I lived there for my entire formative twenties. That means I had to find jobs in Ohio, entertainment in Ohio, love in Ohio, and confidence in Ohio. In order to accomplish any of that, I was required to learn perspective.  You dismissively call Ohio "our republic in a can", and that's right. A lot of rednecks, some lone outposts of urban minorities, a thin icing of college educated professionals. That's absolutely correct, that's our country. Growing up in that microcosm, I am now able to live wherever I want in the country, even this weird little coastal town full of Republicans, and get along with people. I can even genuinely like them. I am capable of having an opinion about people with opposing viewpoints that doesn't involve degrading or vilifying  them. Those famous writers you cite, Anderson and Thurber and Crane, you know what they had that you don't have? They LIKED people. They were INTERESTED in people. They didn't just immediately dismiss anyone who didn't go to Princeton as intellectually inferior to them, or maybe if they did, they understood that intellect isn't necessarily the mark of a good man.

I was going to write a snarky little paragraph here about how you must have come from some beige little suburb town, and how the deeper subject of your essay is obviously your own unresolved bitterness towards your hometown. But then I tried googling your biography, and there wasn't much to find, except maybe you converted to Mormonism as a teenager once? Here's what being an Ohioan has done for me - I read that and immediately felt this pang of sympathy for your childhood. In my head those sugars converted to "oh, he probably just doesn't know any better" and now I've completely lost steam to make fun of you because I just feel bad that you think of your country as someplace to escape from, instead of the unending weird and interesting place it actually is. I mean, if you've made a career out of non-fiction writing, you must know this too, at least intellectually if not viscerally.

Here's what you did in this essay. You saw a week of the country crowing about the Impressive Mediocrity of Ohio, the Breadbasket of the Boring Modern Man, and you somehow felt compelled to scream against it. Nevermind that it only happens once every four years, and it isn't fooling anyone. You said to yourself "Stupid Ohio thinks it's so fucking special, it's time I remind the rest of this high school who the real cool kids are" and then you tried to pants us. So good for you, you reminded your peers that Ohio is fat and unemployed and stupid, that's awesome. We totally deserved that right? Cause god forbid, anyone pay attention to an entire section of the country that needs jobs and education and love. That isn't what politics is about at all, right? No, politics is about proving you're smarter than everyone else. Way to be a visionary there. And I hope, when Ohio goes blue tomorrow, you have a follow up essay prepared about how that doesn't really matter, because being a normal mediocre person still sucks. That will for sure help the effort to convince the "rednecks" here that they should vote with compassion towards their fellow man.

The Winter Nothings: Give Me More Things To Hate Please

This song is like, the only thing keeping me going today so thanks Elly, I owe you.

It started last week, and has crept into my bones like some sort of evil nasty dinosaur skull eating parasite - The Winter Blues. Not even Blues, cause I like the color blue, and I have blue eyes, so technically I always have the Blues. Didn't you know that's what that means? People who are so full of the Blues it shines from inside their head out their corneas? So, not the Blues, the WINTER NOTHINGS.

Also, let's be honest. This blog has sucked the last week, possibly much longer. I need to be outside exploring things, not answering questions and writing long suck things about personal thought SUCK. My last good post was the one about the babies, and for god sakes, they're babies. Like, I couldn't have fucked that up if I tried.

I did do some cooking. I made a tomato tart, and a chicken/rice/mushroom thing, and an oatmeal loaf. But I also ate a lot of cold cereal. I am uncharacteristically bored with television and mad I can't go to the gym because of the ice. GRUMP. I am a big lurking troll grump right now. Also, did you know going to the gym every day makes you hate yourself? A lot? All the time? It makes you feel ugly and awful and not fit to go in public. My face has broken out badly. My body is swollen and painful and exhausted all the time. I sort of want to cry constantly. I do cry, a little. I can't even imagine having sex with anyone ever again. Whatever fucking endorphins you people are on about all the time are apparently hormonal poison to me. I mean, has anyone thought about that? That maybe the reason I've been fat all my life is because working out makes me feel awful, that my body is allergic to those particular chemicals? I feel like this could be a real thing. That guy was right about the butterflies after all.

I know logically that this is probably my hormones trying to balance themselves out, after such a long period of being one way, and then suddenly being forced to deal with new chemicals in amounts they're not used to. I know the blame probably lies in my thyroid or my estrogen levels or some horrible crap like that, because in reality I'm just a robot who should be getting regularly scheduled oil changes. I know I'm supposed to give it three months and it's supposed to get better.

Either that, or I should just put a salt lick in my kitchen. A salt lick and a sugar lick, right next to a water fountain. And I can stand there, next to my cats, licking until I feel better.

Please let the snow go away soon. Actually not the snow. I like the snow. It's the bone crunching cold I'm done with. The cold is trying to digest me. It's molars are grinding me to dust.

My Dad once told me that I was good when I was being mean to people. So I figured, let's try and do a whole post where I talk about things I hate. Maybe that will get the little impy spirits pumping, right? Only I CAN'T THINK OF ANYTHING TO HATE ON. This is how grudged and apathetic I am right now. I am seriously trying to think of things I want to make fun of, and NOTHING is coming to mind. I don't even feel hate towards any ridiculous politicians right now. That thing about the stunt gun law in South Dakota? I'm like FINE, require everyone to buy a gun, DO IT. I don't care. Maybe they will all kill themselves in the dead of winter, and I won't have to listen to their shit about how cold it is. They live in South Dakota, they might as well be dead already.

Oh, wait, there it is.

You know what else I hate? THIS FUCKING ARTICLE ABOUT HOW PEOPLE SHOULDN'T MAKE RUIN PORN. So because you think it makes a city look bad, I shouldn't take photos of the abandoned buildings there? Because it makes people think a city is dead? Are you serious? How about you thank your lucky stars that I have found a way to be happy in this city, and therefore haven't moved years ago, and taken my bar tabs and fucking taxes with me? If you want me to only take pictures of happy shiny pretty new things? Then maybe BUILD SOME. In case you haven't noticed, I like taking pictures of buildings. Not just old ones. Any ones.

I try to see my city as an organic thing, a breathing thing that lives on a timescale outside of people, something beyond our little plastic lives. A building itself is an art form, its a creature. It doesn't stop being a creature when the people go away. We make these animals that last beyond our uses and then they become landscape, like mountains or rivers. If I was trying to write commentary about unemployment and poverty, then I would take photos of people. But my hobby is making stories up, not telling ones. That's what journalists are for. And anyway, whatever, it's my city too. I'll live in it how I want to. This city existed before you and will exist after us, and denying its shedded skins are lying around isn't going to make them blink out of reality. There is a level to a city that is bigger than anyone in it at any given point in time. There's this thing called history that molts and drives forwards and knocks things down and doesn't stop to pick up its litter. We are all just little ants crawling around on rubble constantly, don't tell me it's wrong to look up every once in a while.

The best response to this story was one of the comments "The photography of contemporary ruins however, presents moments of understanding of cultural decay, change, architectural and archeological documentation, and the rediscovery of forgotten moments of cities in a state of constant change and not the static atmosphere we would perceive cities to be in." What that guy said. Only with some curse words added.

Let's see, other things that piss me off? Well, I just lost my power, just now. Fuck you winter.

How about instead of leaving me all that unwanted support about working out that I know you're just itching to do in the comments? How about instead you all just give me topics to hate on and I'll add them to this post as they come. This will be our Wednesday game.
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First Hate: Swimsuit season. I love going to the beach. I will spend all day in the water if you let me. But it should be called beach season. It should be a celebration that everyone gets to be outside and warm and happy. Not this constant grind of "you are not pretty enough, you look ridiculous, you are a bad person" because you're not eating fucking Special K three times a day, or living off black forest cake flavored yogurt, which by the way is an abomination and a slap in the face to everything pure and good about yogurt. Special K reminds me of how cornflakes came to be, the whole history of cold cereal being this health food craze they tried to sell you in asylums for rich people at the turn of the century. I want to create an anti Special K campaign calling them hacks and kooks and witch doctors. Grape nuts. Eat some fucking grape nuts people.

Second hate: Toenails. Toenails and fingernails are gross because they are bones growing outside our bodies. Enough said. I love my feet because they work hard for me and get me places, but I refuse to expect them to look pretty, because by definition toes and fingers are ugly. They are ugly weird stumpy things growing out of the ends of our bodies. And toenails are like the useless soft shells that serve only to give voodoo doctors a way of cursing me.
Now if they were razor sharp claws, with some sort of use, for either killing or climbing, then I might bother to care about them.

Third hate: YES IT IS COLD ENOUGH FOR ME. Because if I buried your frozen body in the snow, nobody would smell it until April.

Fourth hates: Well, Laura had multiple hates, but since I am guilty of talking on my cell while driving (no texting though) and I understand why Pandora has to give me ads, and I would be even more creeped out if the internet was able to see I already had one insurance company and not show me those specific ads, we're going with the last one. People who wear cologne or perfume to the gym. WHY? WHY WOULD YOU WEAR ANYTHING? The only time you'll see makeup on me at the gym is when I'm forcing myself to go after hanging out with friends, before I go to sleep. I know I just bitched about how awful I feel from working out, but I do like my gym. Mostly because it's empty all the time, and when there are people there, they don't make eye contact. So luckily I have yet to run into the over-cologned guy. I don't think the classy old gay guys at mine would ever make that mistake. As someone who does get sick around too much perfume, and who one time had to run out of a room to vomit because this woman was chewing grape bubblegum when I had a migraine, I sympathize Laura. If it makes you feel better, I'm 99% sure that all those chemicals are soaking into that guys inflamed sweaty skin, and poisoning him from the inside out. Burning his organs into infected pussy black goo.

Fifth hate: Not being able to sing like Aloe Blacc, or wear white pants. Oh Vapid, I know. It's terrible unfair being a pretty talented blonde runner :P But yes, I also hate the fact I cannot sing like him. Or dress like him. Or have a recording contract like him.

Sixth hate: Hipsters who think too much of themselves and lack basic reading comprehension skills. This one comes from C., who ranted about this article that was posted on facebook recently, where the author mentioned the fact that Cleveland isn't known for it's music scene. The point of the article was to then post a mixtape of awesome older Cleveland music. But apparently he got a lot of haters, kids who were upset he dare insult their local bands this way. Well, first of all, the point of his statement was not to disparage the quality of local music, but that no one outside Cleveland knows who the bands are here. THIS IS TRUE. Point of fact, most of Cleveland is also completely unaware of your existence. Point of fact, there are a million people in this county, and probably only about 300 of them know who you are, and out of that there are probably 150 who give a shit. Stop bitching about something that is true. And if you are going to bitch, then at least bitch on topic. Don't be the vegan punk equivalent of those awful commentators on Cleveland.com.

Seventh hate: People who act as Cleveland Cheerleaders without thinking of actual Cleveland at all. There is this twitter thing going on called the #Cle20. Its supposed to foster discussion on twitter about Cleveland's development and issues. I am not faulting the concept here, and I'm not bitching about every person participating. But last night I made the mistake of reading it, and here were the suggestions for Cleveland's development: 1)Build a fancier airport. 2)Put a BSpot burgers in the airport 2)have winning sports teams. 4)Cleveland hasn't got a content problem, but an image problem.

Hey, guess what, Cleveland does have a content problem. It's called nobody with the money to get out wants to live in any of the actual Cleveland neighborhoods, because they are not as nice as Middleburgh Heights. Though some of us would rather die than live in MH. So shut the fuck up about sports teams and the dining scene, that most of the actual Cleveland residents don't use at all, and start talking about the fact that as soon as your wife gets pregnant, you move out to the suburbs because the school system sucks. And instead of trying to lure suburb yuppies back into the neighborhoods, (which sure, is nice, if they come, but hasn't exactly filled up any neighborhoods besides Ohio City), how about you talk about what efforts we could make as a city to try and keep the people who do live here employed, and able to make mortgage payments, and able to educate their children and have neighborhood resources and put new roofs on their aging houses, and not have to deal with their cars being broken into constantly or terrible public transportation that only takes them downtown and not to any of the suburbs where the actual jobs are. Talk about supporting the community development projects that matter, the ones who are working to help out actual Cleveland residents. I don't give a fuck about tourism, and I'm sick of this idea that all these people from the suburbs are going to revitalize my city with the money they spend on Friday nights. Those all have their place in the grand strategy, but what should matter is how many Cleveland residents are not able to pay their heating bills. Because when you bring up the people who actually live on a street, and make it easier for them to pay bills and live in nice looking houses, then people might actually want to move to that street someday. And the people who live there now might not just automatically move away as soon as they get some money.

And oh my god, if I hear one more suggestion to pour money into the airport, I am going to scream. It will be an epic scream, the kind that curdles flesh off your bones.

Eighth Hate: The Bachelor. The only way they could change the Bachelor to make me watch it would be if he turned out to be a parasitic alien, who implants these women with alien babies, who suck out all the marrow from their bones to gestate, live on television. OR even better, if at some point, all the women got to come back and beat the crap out of the producers and the bachelor, live on television. OR if they made a sequel show, chronicling all the contestants going through therapy.