PORTLAND!

What city is more smug than ours?

If you said Seattle as recently as 3-to-4 years ago, you’d still be right.

But these days, Portland is King of the Hill as far as smugness goes. Granted, I’ve never been to, say, Brooklyn — and I’m sure it’s smug there too — but it can’t possibly be as bad as it is here. In New York, you still have a solid bedrock of tough, hard-working people who have lived through disappointment, frustration and pain and emerged with greater strength of character.

Not so here!

We are beset by condescending, privileged twerps.

Just look at the following photo, for Chrissakes, snapped secretly by a friend at the airport the other day. It’s two garden-variety Portlanders. For all I know, they might be wonderful people. Salt of the fucking earth.

But nearly EVERYONE in town looks just like them. Ironic clothing…ironic eye-ware…the same old tiresome song.

To be clear, I have no problem with anyone’s personal aesthetics. I frequently see Portland idiots dressed up as pirates, and though I don’t think of them in positive terms, I spend no mental currency on their place in this world. Honestly, smug Portlanders — I couldn’t care less if your wardrobe personifies indie-rock cliche. When it’s all said and done, you’re just another jerk I’ll go out of my way to ignore.

Here’s the rub though: these wiry, unfruitful clods don’t simply ignore others. NO! They sneer and scoff at anyone who doesn’t fit their DIY Cool Person Template.

It has steadily gotten worse in the 10 years I’ve lived here. It’s one effed-up milieu of shit.

More than ever, the city is teeming with unoriginal, emaciated oafs who wear tight brown pants and sing loudly to themselves at the bus stop.

Such individuals!

(No, I’m not going to hunt down data to support my assertions, but I know there are data out there just waiting to be culled for those exact purposes.)

Frustrating stuff.

I try hard to avoid the cliche of misanthropy. Misanthropy is an easy emotion. But the oppressiveness of the cool Portland alpha culture has reached an intolerable apex. I can’t count the number of times I’ve looked up from reading my book on the bus and some skateboarder fuckwad was glaring (or smirking) at me because my dress shirt and slacks didn’t ooze awesome-fucking-street-cred.

These days, the forecast consistently calls for a torrent of fist-showers…on the faces of Portland “creatives!”

O! I wish to pummel these creatures!

If there was but one day a year when I could rain blows upon their smug faces w/o fear of legal reproach!

O!

What happy times those would be, friend!

So there you have it — another fatuous diatribe, and I’ve been singing the same song since 2000. A terrible earthquake on Belmont would go a long ways toward mitigating PDX’s alpha culture.

Nature? I’m paging you.

• America’s “Most Patriotic City” is…Portland?!

• Well, now we know why Christopher Hitchens cancelled his appearance in Portland a few days ago. He has cancer. Fuck. I hope he beats this.

• A leprechaun is on the lam in Colorado.

• Wikipedia’s list of Nonexistent People.

• Portland artist Bijijoo provides a great service to our nation — portraits of our presidents cradling ham hocks.

• Three questions: What is a “second chakra,” what is it doing in the pubic area, and why does Al Gore have an alleged interest in releasing it? (h/t Jack B)

• Why Peruvians are painting the Andes white

• Big, bad-ass bears from Kamchatka

• Sperm whales, unlike many Portlanders I know, have personalities

• Swimming lizard robot. Hi, fella!

• Bagby Hot Springs gets a write-up in Atlas Obscura

• Does the public function as a mass, partisan critic of administration moves, or does it behave more like a thermostat?

• Following a mishap with a combine harvester, Oscar the Cat gets bionic appendages

• Mark your calendars, Oregonians: July 11, 2010, AD at Lincoln City — the prestigious Competitive Rib Eating Contest returns. Making an appearance will be Joey Chestnut, the world’s most decorated gustatory athlete.

• Did a bag of potato chips lure a confession out of a portly rapist?

• Screwing up makes us whipsmart

• Why is a Ukrainian jet stuck in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan?

• 5 Interesting tidbits about Stevie Hawking

• Obama and cheeseburgers

• The most grating mystery of our time, and one deserving of unrelenting scientific inquiry, is the question of why Ozzy Osbourne is still alive

• Why don’t Penn and Teller attack Islam on BULLSHIT? The reason is a valid one, and I respect and appreciate it, although it offers a sad, illuminating commentary on the state of the world: they have families, and they don’t want to see them beheaded or suffer some other insane atrocity at the hands of murderous, pathological thugs who are offended by what two magicians say on TV.

I guess that’s where we are these days in terms of global, intellectual discourse — if free speech still exists, it’s either hanging on by a loose, tattered thread or floating about nominally. Markets used to rule the world, and back then, we thrived. Now pathological madmen who live in caves rule the world, and nobody can speak ill of them lest we want to see our loved ones slaughtered in the streets.

Barbarism. Seventh-century idiocy. Nukes as readily available as Little Debbie Snack Cakes.

Yep, I like the direction this world is headed in.

Via Jack B and RED EYE:

Well, shit.

Looks like Christopher Hitchens‘ appearance at Powell’s tomorrow is cancelled. I was looking forward to that.

As a proxy for the genuine article, I’ll supply links to a January interview with Hitchens conducted by local journalist Michael J. Totten. It’s in two parts. Hitch goes for the throat from the get-go. Regarding the January attack on Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard by an angry Muslim with an axe, Hitch says (emphases mine):

Let’s do a brief thought experiment. I tell you the following: On New Year’s Eve, a man in his mid-seventies is having his granddaughter over for a sleep-over, his five-year old granddaughter. He is attacked in his own home by an axe-wielding maniac with homicidal intent. Your mammalian reaction, your reaction as a primate, is one of revulsion…

…then you pick up yesterday’s Guardian, one of the most liberal newspapers in the Western world, and there’s a long article that says, ah, that picture, that moral picture, that instinct to protect the old and the young doesn’t apply in this case. The man asked for it. He drew a cartoon that upset some people. We aren’t at all entitled to use our moral instincts in the correct way.

…This is a sort of cultural and moral suicide, in my opinion.

Classic, unmitigated Hitchens, for sure. But as always, he throws us some curve balls, particularly in his praise for Barack Obama:

There’s something everyone has forgotten, and Obama has never tried to remind them. He doesn’t get credit because he’s never asked for it. Do you remember when the American crew was taken by the pirates off the coast of Somalia? It’s the same country of origin of the axe-wielding maniac who just tried to murder Kurt Westergaard in Denmark.

Someone went to the Oval Office and said, “Mr. President, you have three choices. We can have a standoff with the Somali government, we can negotiate with the pirates, or you can order the Navy SEALs to fire four shots.”

I wouldn’t like to be a newly elected president and have that dumped on my desk. He must have said, however long it took him, “Use the SEALs.”

But that’s not what impresses me. The point I’m making is not the one you thought I was going to make. What impresses me is that he didn’t give a speech later about it. If Reagan had done that, everyone would remember it. There would be hubris. “They can run, but they can’t hide.”

I like his nature. Those who need to know, know. We don’t have to make a big fucking circus out of it.

Fair albeit arguable points, I suppose. At some point, though, I’d like to hear Hitchens’ take on Obamacare and aspects of his governance that don’t involve war. The cynic in me thinks Hitchens is wealthy enough that matters like health care don’t hit him in the pocketbook as much as the rest of us, so he has no interest in discussing it.

But that’s merely a guess. (FYI: Yes, I do know that Hitchens endorsed Obama in the 2008 election.)

It’s been awhile since I’ve discussed my favorite home invaders, Alexis, Jorge and Benito.

You may recall that these young men — innocent until proven guilty, of course — recently (and allegedly!) traumatized a 12-year-old Troutdale girl while attempting to burglarize her home.

Oh…

And lest I forget, these Three Stooges were arrested just down the street from my place — 30 minutes after two or three cretins ransacked every room in the house and stole $3,000-plus worth of loot.

Curious! A many layered quilt, this world! Will coincidences — and wonders — ever cease?

These cretins not only traumatized the heroic 12-year-old girl who called 911 on them, but they’ve made it hard for me to explain to my 5-year-old son why our home was completely trashed one night and a bunch of stuff had suddenly disappeared.

I did not tell him that two or three animals broke into the house, helped themselves to beer and soda and began taking anything and everything of value. I never told him, but he knows something strange occurred. He knows that his home, a place that’s supposed to be safe from the garbage of the outside world, was somehow violated. That unsettling feeling will stick with him for awhile.

The Elephant in the Room

There’s an interesting subplot to this story, as one or two of the Three Stooges may be illegal aliens. And if you read some comments on local blogs and news stories about Alexis, Jorge and Benito, you’ll see plenty of rancor coming from the anti-Mexican crowd. Read the comments, please do, but promise me this: don’t shed any tears for Alexis, Jorge and Benito.

Their ALLEGED crimes couldn’t come at a worse possible time. Race-fueled arguments are taking place all over the country due to what’s going on in Arizona.

However, here’s what makes the timing of these three goons’ ALLEGED misdeeds so idiotic: the truth, for those who care to know it, is that Americans are slowly coming to empathize with illegal aliens. Perhaps not in Southern California, perhaps not in Arizona, but there are signs of progress.

Case in point: A great article called “His-Panic“ recently caused quite a stir in the American Conservative, of all places. The piece works hard to destroy common misconceptions about immigrants. Its sub-header reads:

“Talk TV sensationalists and axe-grinding ideologues have fallen for a myth of immigrant lawlessness.”

Author Roy Unz does a nice job with both the story and some crime statistics (which are always easily manipulated, sure, but let’s put down our Cynic Gloves for a moment). Writes Unz, all emphases mine:

“Nearly all of the most heavily Latino (American) cities have low or even extremely low crime rates, and virtually none have rates much above the national average. Eighty percent Latino El Paso has the lowest homicide and robbery rates of any major city in the continental United States. This is not what we would expect to find if Hispanics had crime rates far higher than whites. Individual cities may certainly have anomalously low crime rates for a variety of reasons, but the overall trend of crime rates compared to ethnicity seems unmistakable.”

Intriguing, right? And what makes the ALLEGED acts of Alexis, Jorge and Benito so impossibly dumb is the following passage, which literally hits home. Unz makes a convincing case that cities with giant Latino populations generally have LESS crime than predominantly white cities, like…drum roll…PORTLAND, OREGON.

“…if we restrict our analysis to major cities of half a million people or more and compare the average crime rates for the five most heavily Hispanic cities—Albuquerque, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Antonio, and El Paso—to the those of the five whitest—Oklahoma City, Columbus, Indianapolis, Seattle, and Portland. This time, the more Hispanic cities are the ones with the lower crime rates—10 percent below the white cities in homicide and 15 percent lower in violent crime. A particularly remarkable result is that gigantic Los Angeles—50 percent Hispanic and frequently perceived as a dangerous urban hellhole—has violent crime rates close to those of Portland, Oregon, the whitest major city in the nation at 74 percent.“

So it’s not all hatred, not all doom and gloom. Things may be getting better for race relations. Or so it seems. But the situation is fragile enough that the slightest misstep, even on a local level, can start to unravel the majestic quilt of tolerance.

As always, there’s plenty of blame to go around. But if you wish to channel your self-righteous liberal rage at those who perpetuate racial discord, then please start with three awful human beings named Alexis, Jorge and Benito.

They make atheists like me wish there truly was a hell for them to roast in. If you have a problem with this, then I suggest you join Alexis, Jorge and Benito in the furnace. Tell Satan I said “hi.”

• A guy named Malcolm and a story about  his indifference to social media
• Christina Hendricks writes a Letter to Men
• Pro Football Talk…the print edition…
• Portlanders! Walk Against Tinnitus
• Cliff Pickover’s Guide to Writing a Best-Selling Novel
• The Lester Dent Recipe for Pulp Fiction
• Top 10 Photo Editing Tips
• Roger Ebert reviews Sex and the City Part II
• Ted Haggard’s new church
• Tipper Gore, Friend of the Zappa Family?
• My Congressman…and something about his bike…
• The unbearable hotness of former Citibank employee Debrahlee Lorenzana
• More Debrahlee
• A salute to the Debrahlee lawsuit
• Luke Ford has Debrahlee photos bubbling from all orifices
• Uzbek referees are the greatest referees
• Third-party candidates making presence felt in Oregon race for governor
• Meet Chris Christie, the Bill Parcells of governors
• To live and die (by the sword) in Los Angeles
• Psychedelic fish
• The Oregonian enables woo merchant Dr. Oz
• Traci Bingham in Playboy
• Russian military vets wrestle while fishing and die
• Why does sex make guys sleepy?
• Nazi tentacles
• Liberals: do they suffer from arrested moral development?
• An Oregon wolf in SacTown
• 10 Offensive Board Games
• Barbie and Ken, deep in the throes of coitus
• Sherilyn Fenn talks Twin Peaks
• Former Oregonian reporter enjoys nepotism in Kansas City
• Some suspicious dealings between Sam Adams and the Oregonian
• Helpful collection of PhotoShop tutorial videos
• The Devil’s Kettle

Some of you are aware that my bike was recently stolen (on Monday, May 24, 2010).

• I began composting! Sure, the city’s omnibenevolent composting pilot forces me to compost, and getting out of this scam appears impossible. But unlike some affluent gentrifiers in town, I’m actually DOING it — I’m composting! Mother Gaia has repaid me by increasing the number of flies that gravitate toward rotting food at my house.

• I made serious commitments to DOWNSIZE! To consume less, buy local  and repent!

Sweet Christmas broheims, I was en route to becoming a noble steward of the environment until some thugs ruined my humble dream.

There’s a way to help, though. You can “re-green” me by donating to my PayPal account (see the yellow “Donate” button below). All funds will go toward the purchase of a new bike. The new wheels will lessen my carbon footprint in Multnomah County and points beyond. If this scheme successfully reunites me with the pleasures of bike ownership, I’ll even bike to work once or twice.

Re-green me, good eco-citizens of Green City USA!

Let’s get this party started!

Here in Portland, Oregon, anything that’s “large” is generally frowned upon. (A strange concept, given that Portland supposedly has some of the largest penises in America.)

Portland: the City of Hank Pym’s Erotic Dreams

Forbes says we have one of the most doomed real estate markets in the nation. I blame Smart Growth proponents. Drunk on their own sustainable power, these beady-eyed pipsqueaks will not rest until high-density housing projects, tiny cottages, and compact, skinny homes breed a new race of sprightly elven cyclists.

My own home is less than 900 square feet, and even with those tiny dimensions, the monthly mortgage payment is a terrifying adventure in creative financing. Claustrophobia and cabin fever are the prevailing motifs in our living space.

In the business sector, things are bleak too. Whenever I use a public restroom, I must squeeze into the narrow urinal stall with the skill of an ace contortionist. Fully erect, I stand 6-feet-2-inches and 255 pounds, so this is a logistical nightmare.

A brief aside: when the Hefty Gentleman urinates, his feet need a wide base in order to produce the most efficient and orderly stream of urinary discharge. This kind of control isn’t possible when one is crammed into stalls built for the indie-rock master race. It’s fucking madness. I’m not a Micronaut, and I am not a fool. Build wider fucking urinal stalls, Portland.

Portland Aesthetics, Portland Pride

Portland is built for spindly men. Hefty brutes like me are viewed as bizarre anomalies, grotesque betrayals of the preferred aesthetic (emaciated, twiggy, and smug). But due to the proliferation of media trend pieces, the rest of the country looks to us for guidance. Read the work of credulous and fawning journalists here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. It’s as though editors in New York and Los Angeles are beset with a strange PDX case of Tourette’s Syndrome:

Portland!

****TWITCH!****

Light rail!

****FART!****

Bikes!

****SPLOOGE!****

To paraphrase Gore Vidal, I find these articles as compelling as a sack of condemned veal!

A Civic Duty to Downsize

If you’ve read this far, it should be clear that Portland is famous for its triumphant livability. In fact, we have so much livability that I want to fucking kill myself.

Maybe our omnibenevolent city planners know what’s best, though. They have God-like powers of social engineering, after all. Who cares if they use regulatory mechanisms as marital aids — who am I to judge?

Another brief aside: If someone started producing erotic infrastucture films in Portland, the city’s horseshit economy would explode into new heights of Big-Money Nirvana.) I’ll even get the ball rolling with some names:

• NIMBY Nymphos
• Rodgered on the Red Line
• Supple Sustainability
• Limber Localism
• Exurban Erotica
• Free Rail Frolic
• Eros on the Steel Bridge
• Max Train Mega Trollops
• Turbo Sluts in the Transit Mall

and so on…

Back on topic, though: living “large” is evil. Big, throbbing eco-footprints kill the mood. So every night, prior to enforcing its earth-friendly curfew laws, PDX broadcasts a giant hologram of our mayor’s face that shouts buy local!…consume less!…repent!

That’s big time, Broseph. When the mayor calls, I’ve got to respond. For Chrissakes, he bikes to work, he’s openly gay, he hates plastic bags, he’s totally hott and omigod he’s so dreamy i would marry him if he were straight and didn’t have a totally awesome life partner ***coo!***fart!***splooge!***flush***gasp*** ***faint***!!

LOL!

Mayor Sam, I shrivel and shrink for no man, but for you I make an exception. You, Mayor Sam, make me want to be a smaller person. Below are some downsizing trends I’m therefore looking into.

Tiny Houses

• I like the egg house. It would be good for a swashbuckling environmentalist such as myself. I’d like to come home to the egg after a good tree sit.

• As long as the U.S. is importing bad ideas from Europe, why not add Loftcubes to the list? (Actually, these look kind of cool, though not quite right for my family unit.)

• The Tiny Tumbleweed Company makes various types of diminutive homes. Dig the weebee, y’alls.

• Along similar lines, there’s the weehouse.