Mean Midwesterners

That's it. This isn't really garden related, unless you see the WORLD as GOD'S garden (you do? seriously? tool.) in which case I would like to make the point that the Midwest is as nasty and weedy a part as any other. I have heard so many people claim that the Midwest contains a different sort of person than the rest of the country - specifically a NICER sort of person.

Um . . . . . bullshit.

Seriously.

Bull. Shit.

I would like to take a moment to decry that particular sentiment as the sad mix of patriotism/xenophobia and anti-urbanism that it is. This belief is founded on the idea that Americans are somehow the best people and that the Midwest is somehow, due to its geographical position, the part of the US that is the least corrupted by the outside world (the incredible number of Mexican restaurants in a town the size of Champaign notwithstanding). Alternately, it is founded on the belief that people in cities have somehow been corrupted by the evil inherent within them and that this evil manifests itself as a lack of "nice".

Crap. Crap. Crap. Self-serving, egotistical crap. Are you serious? Does anyone really think that Americans are better people? Or that people in cities are somehow less wholesome? Look, I'm sorry if the only time you went to New York you got freaked out by the homeless guy in Times Square but lets be reasonable. Cities scare you. That doesn't make them evil. And anyone still laboring under the belief that Americans are a superior group of people needs to carefully consider both John tesh AND Paris Hilton at the same time.

So look, cut the crap. Some old ladies in the Midwest are every bit as crabby and pushy as those in Philadelphia. Some bouncers at bars in Chicago are every bit the assholes that bouncers at bars in L.A. are. Silly teenage mallrats dress ridiculously all over this country. Peopl here are not inherently nice. nice people are nice people. They are everywhere and they deserve nice treatment in return. Crabby, pushy, scolding old hags are also everywhere and need to be dealt with through sarcasm, name calling, and possibly jokes about Jesus.

I am going to go pick some beets, and if Grandma gets cheeky I'm gonna belt her.