A Letter of Hate to Dayton, Ohio, and other such things.

Hello all, I have made my (not-so) triumphant return to the world of the internet. I apologize for the delay, some things popped up there. I'll try to post at least once a week from here on out, at least for the foreseeable future. blogging is an interesting thing... it will definitely get away from you if you aren't careful. it's like a yard or potted plant or something; if you take care of it, tend to it, apply fertilizer and water as needed, you'll have a healthy ass lawn plant. if however, you go away for a long weekend and forget about it... before you know it, your plant is dead and your lawn has taken on a life of its own and now looks like a setpiece from dances with wolves or the lion king and then it takes your whole weekend to mow the damn thing. (did i lose everyone with that ridiculously convoluted analogy yet?) so anyway, this post is my saturday afternoon that i spend hacking through 5 inch grass because i got lazy with my law, enjoy.

well, as many of you know, i took the bar at the end of july, and you may or may not be wondering how said exam went. well. i can't really say, honestly. i feel like i worked hard preparing myself for it (not as hard as i possibly could have, but i don't feel as though i was underprepared) but its just the nature of the beast that you really don't know what to make of the thing when you walk out of there. the #1 question is always "was it hard?".. and hard wouldn't be the adjective i'd use to sum up the creature that is the ohio bar exam. tricky would be. tricky and obscure. it's honestly not about knowing the law, because if that's all it was, the bar, quite frankly, would be rather easy, because knowing the law is pretty simple. it's about finding the most obscure, exceptions-to-exceptions nonsense to try and leave as many people behind as possible. is this the best way to conduct a test that determines whether or not someone should be admitted to the profession? probably not. but hey, why would anyone start listening to me now?

some thoughts: • Why is fighting such a bad thing? I mean, yes, I understand the need to keep the peace and all that, I'm not condoning reckless behavior, random violence or attacks. What I'm talking about is legally sanctioned bouts between two adults due to adequate provocation. For instance, lets say some below average individual was fucking up a relationship situation you might have going on. Is that adequate provocation? Absolutely, and this is grounds for a fight, from which no legal consequences can come, as long as the violence stays within normal fight parameters (i.e., no weapons, one on one, basically fight club rules). Lets look at a particular group of individuals as an example. I'm talking about "hipsters" in general, and diminutive, cowardly "men" specifically. These kids are running wild, they've been raised in an environment in which there are no consequences for acting like a complete dipshit. Call them the "jackass generation". Little kids who like to pretend like they are cool and "different" because they like the same things as each other. (isn't conformity with a certain set of cultural standards still conformity?) Why have these kids taken over bars, loft apartments and parks across the country? Because they were coddled and allowed to do whatever the hell they want while growing up, while allowed to talk trash and act like an idiot because physical retribution was forbidden. I'm just going to say this. Physical violence, in certain situations, is a good thing, and establishes a natural pecking order. For millenia, it was understood that certain acts would result in getting your ass beat. All of a sudden, in the past 20 years, we've decided that we know a better way to do things. Don't get me wrong, i'm not opposed to progress, but i am opposed to things that are bad and wrong. Taking away the consequences to certain anti-social behaviors is bad and wrong. It used to be, if you were a little twerp, you either learned how to fight, got some big friends, or you learned how to shut your mouth. Now? Everyone just runs their mouths, freely and openly, without any fear whatsoever. Is this a better outcome? I put that inquiry to you, and leave it to you.
• Want to hear something cool? I agreed to move in with a friend, sleeping on the pull-out couch, thinking that I'd be staying over with a certain female companion of mine a solid 4-5 nights a week, and so I would not in fact be sleeping on aforementioned pull-out couch every night. However, said female companion decided to take this opportunity to "dump" me via text message while I was out of town, and is now "dating" a "male" of below average size and intelligence. So now I'm single as shit and sleeping on a pull-out couch 7 nights a week. That'll make you feel like a titleholder. And really, having seen the kid, beating him up wouldn't even be satisfying. He'd have to combine with 3-4 of his undersized hipster friends like Voltron to even form a normal sized person. The best adjective to describe "him" would be "impish". He looks like someone that was forced to work in the circus as a youth, stunting his growth and causing him to cap out at the size of a normal 11 year old.
• Its good to know that I do in fact, have some morals and scruples left. For the past... ohhh, 5 years or so, "seeing Erin Andrews naked" was on my top 5 list of wishes. Now that I have, I feel creepy and dirty for watching the hotel video. It's kind of refreshing, actually, the knowledge that some morality exists. This is what Amish people feel like when they catch a glimpse of a thigh while taking a trip to town. while i tend to pride myself on being "enlightened" and unencumbered by the traditional scruples of polite society, it was actually refreshing to feel a pang of disgust. i feel like i'm going to go stone a couple of adulterers.

ok. now the meat of this badboy, the discussion of Dayton, OH, "Ohio's Taint", and its devastating effect on interstate commerce, culture, and the continuation of the union. I'm going to express my disdain via letter, an intimate medium.

Dear Dayton,
I'll never forgive the pain and suffering you've caused me through your combination of horrible urban planning, idiotic road design, non-sensical work projects and perpetual road repairs that evidently only make the roads in fact, worse. There is no possibility of any city in any western nation causing more of a disturbance to a major interstate thoroughfare while contributing less. Two weeks ago, I left Cincinnati heading to Fostoria, Ohio, a 177 mile trip. It took 77 minutes to travel 20 miles through the greater Dayton area. This would be understandable if you were in and of itself a destination or attraction. Sadly, you are neither, and indeed, are quite the opposite. Rather than a destination, you are home to a greater exodus than anywhere south of Detroit, and indeed serve as an obstacle to travelers far and wide. As a "city", you are the functional equivalent of a barricade and you serve as the shame of the entire interstate system, once the pride of the Western world. Within the perilous bends of your pathetic excuse for construction projects there is a 40 degree turn that requires all traffic slow to a speed of under 50 miles per hour. Needless to say, on a road as busy as I-75, that is never going to end well. This is simply inexcusable in a city of nothing but abandoned warehouses and factories. It is, plainly, time to embrace the fact that literally no one is trying to get to or from Dayton. People are merely trying to get THROUGH Dayton. You had a population of 260,000 in 1960 and a population of 155,000 in 2007, an impressive achievement in this day and age of burgeoning population. As a poster child of post-industrial waste, I propose that you do us all a favor and bulldoze blocks on end to make for a logical and adequate interstate passage. This entire letter is referring only to your pisspoor design and execution, and epic failure of your road system and repairs. I'm choosing to skirt the issue of your decline and fall into utter waste, and completely ignoring the fact that literally every single person from the Dayton area is vaguely overweight. So I guess, Dayton, I'm asking you to burn yourself down so that people can actually pass through your sorry excuse for a "place".
Thank you for your time,
A.B.