The Unfortunately Necessary Disclaimer for the Irony-Deficient
The following post, like many others of this blog, contains frequent use of a semi-humourous and patently hostile tone with some similarities to the personality of Eric Cartman. Those who are incapable of discerning a mocking, frivolous tone would be advised to seek out alternative reading material, such as the Wikipedia entry on NAFTA. Those who are prone to taking offence would be advised to consult their health insurance representative to determine whether a pine-cone-up-butt-ectomy is covered by their insurance plan.

Georgia Can Stuff a Peach Where the Sun Generally Declines to Radiate

So I spent all of yesterday in Atlanta, Georgia. Got up at 3 sodding AM in the morning, got on a plane that left at 6, and I managed to make it to the convention center around 10:30. Had a boring and fruitless cruise of the competitors' booths, and then had a fruitful and helpful lunch meeting with a software developer and business partner of ours (at a food court, no less). Very nice guy, and it is great to be working with him, so that puts a blemish on an otherwise uniformly rotten day.

Got back to the airport at 4 in the afternoon. Cripes! Not to interrupt my own thought, but my bally ears just popped. Right now. Tuesday afternoon. I really hate flying! But as I was saying, I spent the next, oh, say, 7+ hours at the airport as my flight was incrementally delayed hour by hour. Got home finally at 2AM, meaning the previous 23 hours were all consumed with travel. One more hour and I'd have been awake and on work business for 24 hours straight.

Now on to Atlanta. Or, Craplanta as it will now be known. Perhaps Asslanta if it doesn't offend too many people. Because if New Jersey is the Armpit of America, At-arsing-lanta is the Butthole. It is freaking hot there all the time, they do not believe in air conditioning apparently. It wasn't even that hot outside, but inside the airport and convention center, it was freaking hot.

The hostility I developed towards Craplanta probably had something to do with being marooned there, homesick, missing my wife, and worried that I was going to have my flight canceled while my contact lenses slowly dried up into shriveled little irritants on my corneas. I've heard Craplanta is a “beautiful city”. I suppose if you are comparing one stinking manmade heap of concrete and steel to another stinking manmade heap of concrete and steel, Craplanta is not as big of a festering, pustular eyesore as some. But I just see very little beautiful about most cities, as a personal preference. The simplest and poorest little acre of woods in the country is typically so much more aesthetically appealing than these gargantuan monuments of human tastelessness packed to the brim with churning masses of angry, sweaty pedestrians and reckless, dangerous cab drivers. No thank you! Keep your annoyingly pretentious museums of modern art, keep your music halls, keep your overpriced hipster restaurants, keep your dingy streets, keep your bums, keep your “nightlife”, keep your traffic and its ceaselessly raging din, and just keep your cities. It certainly isn't as cool to do so, but I prefer the country. Good Lord, it makes me seem like one of those shallow materialistic ignorant-drone types (Ed., for sarcasm-blind readers, please note mocking, sarcastic tone) to even suggest this, but I even prefer suburbia.

So, Craplanta, if we had met on better terms and circumstances perhaps I would not be so resentful, but if a man is marooned from his home on even the most utopian paradise of an island, it still will be but a stinking boil on the face of the ocean, compared with his own land. Kansas City, I could kiss you!