before it gets too old to bother
Various notes from after the trip, mostly cranky, in no particular order:
1. There were three (3) other people at the Lexington airport ticket counter. That's not "in our queue." That's at the entire ticket counter for the entire airport, all of which you could see from one vantage point. It was pretty weird.
Also, there were zero (0) other people at the security checkpoint.
2. All our stuff still stank of tobacco this morning - even the couple of things I never unpacked. (Everything else has now been washed, yay.)
3. Billboard seen in Lexington:
ELECT
JESUS CHRIST
S A V I O U R
Name M. Name, Lexington City Council Candidate
4. Radio ads for Chaser, a pill you can take before you go on a drinking binge to reduce your hangover symptoms the next morning. The pitch was specifically that you could get drunker and stay that way for longer. I didn't know alcoholics were a target audience.
5. Washington State is a "blue" state - voting Democratic. We're the ones they like to say are all government dependent and all that crap. But we get back something like 92-93 cents for every dollar we send to the Feds. Kentucky, on the other hand, is a "red" state, trumpeting self-reliance and social conservatism and votes Republican - and iirc, they get $1.08 back for every $1 they send. So that delta is by something like 15% or so.
And you can really tell. Endless government construction projects (and/or the results thereof) everywhere. Every half-assed road to some half-assed town, every major arterial, they're all one step below Interstate specs - four-lane to eight-lane divided highways, just not completely limited-access. The kind of sprawl the encourages is revolting, too; you really do have to drive just about everywhere; pedestrians mostly don't seem to be thought of. There were no neighbourhoods I saw that I'd consider walkable; it's islands of houses connected by impassible highways. I would, in fact, estimate that Lexington has significantly more high-volume highways than Seattle does.
I mean seriously, what does Lexington, Kentucky need with several eight-lane divided highways?
(Also housing projects, massive government buildings (such as the new courthouse complex in Lexington which features - well, I'll get to that in a minute), and... well, you get the idea.)
6. The "art" installation in front of the new Lexington courthouse which looks exactly like a gallows frame. No lie. (I'm told that normally, there's water falling off it, and it doesn't look like that. But when I saw it? Gallows frame.)
7. The worst. talk. radio. I have ever. heard. And I've heard some bad talk radio. "It's not fear! It's contempt!" is the kind of thing that comes from this crowd. The worst part is that they didn't even seem to be very good at radio. There used to be a lot of well-done radio in Lexington. I didn't hear much of it this time. Maybe all the better talent was on holiday.
8. Truck commercials that actually just come out and say that if you don't fantasize about trucks, you aren't actually a man. Without irony. No, really. Kind of neat. It's the kind of thing that makes you think that whole fucking part of the country needs serious therapy.
9. Lots of ads for personal-injury lawyers and other ways to get money via lawsuits. No wonder they're so hopped up about tort reform. Also lots of Jesus ads, Jesus radio stations, Jesus billboards, and so on. And yet, there's plenty of (local talk radio) chatter about how oppressed Christians and social conservatives are. What the fuck?
10. UK students are behaving exactly like UW students w.r.t. brutal abuse of neighbourhoods around them. Our friend Scott E. had to sell his house and move for exactly the same reasons we did, complete with party riots (including overturned cars and the like), assaults, vandalism sprees, and everything else I've complained about here in the past. It started a couple of years after it got bad in our area. Local police were more responsive than police in our area, but UW's reaction was likewise the same: crackdown on alcohol on campus, establishment of the Bright Line of No Responsibility Whatsoever. Yay.
11. Irritated sane people telling me that they get told to their face that minourities (particularly immigrants, particularly Asian immigrants) aren't welcome for employment at firms. Women are okay, as long as they accept lower pay. They aren't the victims in this case, but their classmates are and they know about it firsthand. It's not that this is new; it's that it's pretty much overt now.
Southern culture isn't on the skids anymore; I think it's in farking free-fall.
1. There were three (3) other people at the Lexington airport ticket counter. That's not "in our queue." That's at the entire ticket counter for the entire airport, all of which you could see from one vantage point. It was pretty weird.
Also, there were zero (0) other people at the security checkpoint.
2. All our stuff still stank of tobacco this morning - even the couple of things I never unpacked. (Everything else has now been washed, yay.)
3. Billboard seen in Lexington:
ELECT
JESUS CHRIST
S A V I O U R
Name M. Name, Lexington City Council Candidate
4. Radio ads for Chaser, a pill you can take before you go on a drinking binge to reduce your hangover symptoms the next morning. The pitch was specifically that you could get drunker and stay that way for longer. I didn't know alcoholics were a target audience.
5. Washington State is a "blue" state - voting Democratic. We're the ones they like to say are all government dependent and all that crap. But we get back something like 92-93 cents for every dollar we send to the Feds. Kentucky, on the other hand, is a "red" state, trumpeting self-reliance and social conservatism and votes Republican - and iirc, they get $1.08 back for every $1 they send. So that delta is by something like 15% or so.
And you can really tell. Endless government construction projects (and/or the results thereof) everywhere. Every half-assed road to some half-assed town, every major arterial, they're all one step below Interstate specs - four-lane to eight-lane divided highways, just not completely limited-access. The kind of sprawl the encourages is revolting, too; you really do have to drive just about everywhere; pedestrians mostly don't seem to be thought of. There were no neighbourhoods I saw that I'd consider walkable; it's islands of houses connected by impassible highways. I would, in fact, estimate that Lexington has significantly more high-volume highways than Seattle does.
I mean seriously, what does Lexington, Kentucky need with several eight-lane divided highways?
(Also housing projects, massive government buildings (such as the new courthouse complex in Lexington which features - well, I'll get to that in a minute), and... well, you get the idea.)
6. The "art" installation in front of the new Lexington courthouse which looks exactly like a gallows frame. No lie. (I'm told that normally, there's water falling off it, and it doesn't look like that. But when I saw it? Gallows frame.)
7. The worst. talk. radio. I have ever. heard. And I've heard some bad talk radio. "It's not fear! It's contempt!" is the kind of thing that comes from this crowd. The worst part is that they didn't even seem to be very good at radio. There used to be a lot of well-done radio in Lexington. I didn't hear much of it this time. Maybe all the better talent was on holiday.
8. Truck commercials that actually just come out and say that if you don't fantasize about trucks, you aren't actually a man. Without irony. No, really. Kind of neat. It's the kind of thing that makes you think that whole fucking part of the country needs serious therapy.
9. Lots of ads for personal-injury lawyers and other ways to get money via lawsuits. No wonder they're so hopped up about tort reform. Also lots of Jesus ads, Jesus radio stations, Jesus billboards, and so on. And yet, there's plenty of (local talk radio) chatter about how oppressed Christians and social conservatives are. What the fuck?
10. UK students are behaving exactly like UW students w.r.t. brutal abuse of neighbourhoods around them. Our friend Scott E. had to sell his house and move for exactly the same reasons we did, complete with party riots (including overturned cars and the like), assaults, vandalism sprees, and everything else I've complained about here in the past. It started a couple of years after it got bad in our area. Local police were more responsive than police in our area, but UW's reaction was likewise the same: crackdown on alcohol on campus, establishment of the Bright Line of No Responsibility Whatsoever. Yay.
11. Irritated sane people telling me that they get told to their face that minourities (particularly immigrants, particularly Asian immigrants) aren't welcome for employment at firms. Women are okay, as long as they accept lower pay. They aren't the victims in this case, but their classmates are and they know about it firsthand. It's not that this is new; it's that it's pretty much overt now.
Southern culture isn't on the skids anymore; I think it's in farking free-fall.