i friggin' hate connecticut & it isn't just because of joe lieberman or their inability to keep the whalers. ever since i moved to nyc back in 01, connecticut has become the two-and-a-half hour nuisance in the middle of my four hour drive to boston. when i first moved here, i used to love driving through connecticut. i had to drive up to new england a lot for work, so i'd often grab a rental car & take an afternoon drive up the west side to the merritt parkway, gliding through its twists & green trees & under its uniquely designed bridges. in recent years, as i've become uber-acquainted with the cheapo nyc-boston chinatown buses, which travel up interstate 95 out of nyc, i've wasted countless hours sitting in traffic near bridgeport & new haven & hartford and i now curse the state. i'm sure the 6pm holiday traffic tomorrow to nh will be swell, especially since i've now acknowledged my curse in writing.
florida obviously sucks intensely. it makes connecticut look like disney world. i've made many many quick judgements about florida, most of them based on my eight months of residency & two weeks of "vacation" there. i went through two hurricanes. some dude driving a van that transports disabled people around was waiting in front of my girlfriend at the time & i, as we sat in her car at a red light leaving the borders parking lot. when it turned green, the dude accidentally put the van into reverse, stepped on the gas & drove right up onto the hood of our car...& then tried to flee. this woman in our apartment complex had a daughter in high school who had no homework because there weren't enough text books. the sushi place in the shopping plaza next to our apartment complex made me sick. there's also the 2000 election, the two florida marlins world series wins, jeb bush, awful tans, sprawling development, disney world, oppressive anti-gay movements, the miami p.d., trafficking trafficking trafficking, more hurricanes, etc.
you know what place is even worse than florida though? zimbabwe. growing up, when i heard the word "zimbabwe," i envisioned it as one of the cool places in africa. in later times, i'd often choose the zulus (impi power!) when i played civilization. i thought of it as some place i'd want to check out some day & at one point, it was that place. people considered it to be one of the jewels in the african crown. then president robert mugabe came along & in 1999, 19 years into his rule, he introduced his whole land reform program & agriculture & tourism went down the pooper & the country has just spiraled downhill since then as he's violently held on to power. technically, they now have a 10 quintillion dollar bill in circulation. back in august, a loaf of bread went for 1.3 trillion dollars. inflation is at 230 million percent...& mugabe just won't quit. he's probably waiting for them to come out with a googol dollar bill before he decides to hang it up.
#48 - totally rippin' on places.
snack: frey pear & caramel chocolate bar
drink: rype orange tingled wheat beer
this frey pear & caramel chocolate bar is really tasty, with lil crunchy bits & pear flavors & whatnot. they don't have this particular flavor listed on their website, but there are a boatload of tasty sounding flavors (they claim to have 350 choices!)...tiramisu! hot chili pepper! cinnamon & blood orange! wha wha! oh. apparently they're only available at target...how exclusive.
anyway, if there's one thing that the swiss should be known for, it's chocolate. oh and their cheese & their babes & their army & their army knives and backpacks, which they don't even use because they're all peaceful & neutral & whatnot. two of their cities, zurich & geneva, are considered some of the best places to live in the world. they have all that stuff down pat. get this though...most of the people don't even speak english. and instead of baseball, they have hornussen, a cross between baseball & golf. seriously, i watched a few of the videos. i can't even begin to tell you what's going on or if it might be fun. the name means "hornet" though. never was a big fan of things that can sting me, especially when they don't make me honey.
in the "washing it down" department, i'm having me a rype orange tingled wheat beer. it has a sharp & clean, modest looking label, but the beer's pretty bland, clean & boring. the moniker-advertised "orange tingle" doesn't even tingle. it turns out that the beer's made by four+ brewing company, out of salt lake city. this could explain its blandness. it has 4.0% alcohol by volume, which by utah law, is the highest amount of alcohol any beer can have if it wants to be served within the beehive state. mormons hate alcohol almost as much as they hate fun. take mitt romney. it's a good thing mccain didn't pick him as his veep. sure, he's from massachusetts, one of the best places on earth, but that dude's a mormon & he hates fun. nothing like his actual pick, that non-mormon sarah palin, who clearly loves fun. hockey moms! lipstick on a pig! nothing but priceless yuk-it-up gems out of that sarah. but seriously, i hear that utah should never be visited ever, unless you have a really good reason. "i was on my way to vegas" is an acceptable reason.
UPDATE: turns out that utah is the fastest-growing state in the country. god knows why...or maybe joseph smith does.