News From The Homefront

Friends,

Some of you may be aware that I grew up in a backwater, blue-collar, metal-flake-rain, dirty steel mill town. If not, well, there you go. You are now aware. And let it be said that I wouldn't want it any other way. I love my hometown for its ridiculousness if anything.

Recently, they tried to ban the "Tall Boy" beer cans (you know, the ones 24 oz and greater...I think 40 oz bottles were in this discussion too) because those are the preferred drinking containers of Granite City's criminal element. I love that logic. I mean, if they bad people can't get their 32 oz can of High Life...then clearly they will move away. Or, better yet, it will force the bad people to carry several cans of beers in their pockets, and they will be so weighted down during their getaway that Granite City's stellar police will be able to catch them easily.

And in my hometown there is a low-income state housing project called Kirpatrick Homes....or KP the those in the know...and The Flats to people who really know. KP is a maze of identical brick buildings all clumped together. I don't know how many buildings there are, but I will say that the area would make for a bad-ass paintball course. There's a multitude of things that make KP interesting and woefully sad. My dad lived there for a period of time when he was growing up and from my last knowledge I have a half brother who lives in there somewhere (never talked to the guy...I think his name is Jason) so I got nothing too bad to say about the place. However, the powers that are decided to completely raze KP and rebuild it. So they will be moving all these people out, then trying to move them back in. Now, KP is filthy, there's not denying it. While there may be the unfortunately poor and sad cases who have fallen on very bad times that live there, but there are the disgusting and nasty poor who have IQs just north of retarded who rub cheeto fuzz on their Dale Earnhardt shirts to "gussie-up" before hitting the buffet at Ponderosa in their 1987 shitbox Camaro. So when the destroy KP, a swarm of pestilence, roaches and rats will escape then descend on my hometown like a plague on Egypt. My parents live about two blocks from KP, so I hope they invest in some glue traps real soon.

And finally in the Granite news is this item. I went to high school with the guy pictured on the other end of that link. In fact, during my most recent trip home, there several signs that said "Bathon for Treasurer" and I wasn't sure if it was for the kid I went to high school with or his father (who has been treasurer for Madison County for years). Turns out that it was his father running...well, read the news story at the end of the link...it makes me laugh. Maybe it was because the kid arrested was kind of an asshole in high school, sort of snobby, better than most people because of his dad & wealth...you know the type. Now, it seems very funny to me that he is apparently some kind of drunken political goon....and that he beat up a funeral home operator over a political sign.

Home sweet home.

VIVA EL MUSTACHE!