California Rocks Most-Polluted City List Yet Again

loud and proud Southern California rocked the American Lung Association’s annual list of American cities with the worst air pollution yet again in 2004, with the region bringing home seven of the top ten slots in the report. Despite stiff competition from such air-polluting powerhouses as Houston, Texas and Detroit, Michigan, area residents insist their confidence never faltered that So. Cal would once again bring home the gold.

“Booya, bitch!� gloated local resident Tyrell Dipps between coughing fits. “Smog!�

Area residents were so confident that California would dominate the competition, in fact, that most of the anticipation leading up to the study concerned which part of Southern California would out-pollute all others, a matter of considerable local pride. Emotions ran high in the weeks leading up to the report’s publication, as area residents waged a war of words in this yearly competition between the various So. Cal regions, each hoping to take home the ALA’s “Black Lung� trophy for having the nation’s foulest, most unbreathable air.

“Bakersfield can suck my dick with their pansy air, man! You come down here you gonna get asthma, baby!� enthused Los Angeles resident Hector Villanova, while idling three cars simultaneously on his lawn.

Residents of the air-polluting upstart Bakersfield region relish their underdog status, dreaming of one day knocking Los Angeles off of its hazy brown perch in the national rankings.

“L.A.’s time has come and gone, man,� insisted Bakersfield resident Arlo Vipatna, reclining in a parka with his home’s air conditioning unit running full tilt. “Ain’t no way they gonna hold Bakersfield back, not with all them movie stars they got driving those little electric fag cars down there and shit.�

“Damn right,� agreed Arlo’s brother Uday, feeding from a disturbingly large bowl of chili. “I got your greenhouse gasses right here, yo.�

Numerous other Bakersfield residents were caught up in the excitement as well, spraying aerosol cans into the sky and setting fire to piles of tires in between bouts of wheezing and frequent breaks to sit down for a while.

When the rankings were finally released, Los Angeles was a familiar sight at the top of the list, with the surprise dark horse region of Visalia-Porterville sneaking in at number two. A clearly stunned Bakersfield ranked third, slightly ahead of Fresno, who didn’t know there was a contest and just has really shitty air. Houston, Texas was the lone top-five entrant from the other 49 states; a slot some think was wasted on them since Texans don’t believe in air pollution. The California cities of Merced, Sacramento and Hanford rounded out the top ten with Knoxville Tennessee and Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, the last two Southern cities likely having some kind of BBQ cook-off the week the air quality measurements were taken.

American Lung Association officials assure the commune they plan to check in on Texas and Tennessee soon to make sure neither of the states is currently on fire, since the aberrant presence of non-Californian cities in the list’s top fifteen likely points to some kind of catastrophic Southern brushfire no one from any more-newsworthy states has yet noticed.

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I hate to sound like a party pooper, or even worse, like I've grown cynical, but I have to admit that this year will be known for me as the year I stopped believing in Santa Claus.

It wasn't any one particular thing, just a series of things that built up until I said, "You know what? I'm fed up. Every year I keep asking for stuff I never get and there's too much proof. There is no Santa Claus."

Kids line up around the block to sit on my lap and tell me what they want for Christmas. And this isn't any one place, it's every town and every city everywhere all over the world. How is Santa supposed to be in all those places at once, you tell me that? It's just physically impossible. Some of them don't even look like me, they'll be Asian guys or black guys or occasionally a woman or something. Nothing wrong with that, of course, I just think it's obvious most of them—oh, let's face it, all of them—are guys in suits pretending to be me. Well, there goes Christmas, kids. You just told some minimum wage former stockboy what you want for Christmas. That helps.

This thing about the flying reindeer, too, it's complete baloney. Reindeer? Flying? Now if the story was that Santa had magical kid-loving dragons whose back he rode on, that would be pretty cool and believable. But you can see reindeer anywhere. Go ahead, push one off a roof, tie one to the back of your Cadillac and pull it five hundred yards at 60 mph, of all the things it will do it won't fly. If there's ever a time to go ahead and fly, that would be it, and they don't.

Who makes all these friggin' toys, too? Sure, in the days of the wooden rocking horse and the worthless rag doll with buttons for eyes, I could see that being the product of some elfin workforce laboring away in freezing conditions, but what about these cell phones, Playstation 2 consoles, Casio keyboards, and computers these kids are getting these days? Forget the difficulty in building toys that require high-tech skill, let's just ask about Star Wars figures or Pokemon cards or something. Not that elves couldn't make that stuff, but they'd be in violation of serious international copyright laws. You're talking about one bad-ass criminal St. Nick there.

He must be trained in some shady business to infiltrate houses all over the world. How many houses have chimneys these days? Santa's out there squeezing down air ventilation pipes, under locked doors, through keyholes, through sealed windows, all sorts of unimaginable stuff. Forget laughing with a "Ho, ho, ho," the Santa they're talking about must be a scary Eugene Tooms X-Files motherfucker.

And how many kids throughout the world? How many houses, how many presents? One guy doing all this stuff in one night? Even including time zones and expanding it out to a full 24 hours to get all this done, one guy, I don't care how mystical his ass is, will be finishing that job. Forget it. Not in one year, certainly not in one day.

I'm not even leaving the house this Christmas. It's too confounding to think about. I'll probably just stay in with Mrs. Claus, sit around the fireplace and lick candycanes, maybe watch that Charlie Brown Christmas special on DVD or something, catch It's A Wonderful Life if it's even playing and just take it easy this year. Get a good night's sleep for once and check out the Day After Christmas sales if I get up early enough on the 26th. The only person I'm going to be asking for anything from is Mrs. Claus. If Santa can do all this other amazing crap he can read minds as well, so maybe he'll bring me that Palm V I've been eyeing in the Office Depot newspaper supplements. But he probably won't be happy because all I'm thinking this year is there is no Santa Claus, sorry if that pisses off the time-bending B&E reindeer pilot himself.

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"You down wit OCD?"

"Hold on, I'm washing my hands!"

Ah yes, here we find ourselves again, another day, another Dolf Lundgren. I sit here, striking a dashing pose, young restaurateur (that means brave, right?) with a devil-may-care grimace and a flinty stare that reminds many of the unbridled Amazonian beauty of Larry Flint himself. You, I can just picture you there, commune readers. Sitting in class (not to mention in school), dreamily scratching your rump in a way that reminds many onlookers of Katherine Hepburn, when her ass itched. These are the draconian days of our lives.

"You down wit Oppenheimer Pension Plan?"

"Yes, you are familiar with my customary mode of behavior."

If I could save time in a bottle, I'd probably forget to poke holes in the lid and it would end up dying, its lifeless corpse lying there, feet up, staring accusatorily for weeks until I remembered that oh yeah, I saved time in a bottle, and went to check on how it was doing. That's probably why you can't do it.

Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered conference calls. Some hillrod told me that once.

BTW, I've come to be mildly obsessed by the term "hillrod" lately. Since moving to New Mexico my speech is frequently punctuated with phrases like "Hillrods! Twelve o'clock!" and "Arrr, there be hillrods afoot." The hillrods down in shipping are busy making voodoo dolls out of mud and chocolate, they don't find this sort of thing the slightest bit amusing. They also say "nuclear" funny.

I went to a day spa the other day, I thought it was a brothel but they waxed my Mason-Dixon line instead. That's between your toes, commune readers, you sick and physiologically challenged individuals. I'd hoped deep in the deepest recesses of my elementary school education that the place's design ("De sign, boss! De sign!" "That's right, Tattoo, my troll-like friend. It says 'Keep your midgets leashed'." "I no like puns, boss!") was merely a novel backdrop for exotic Korean handjobs, but by the time the big hand said six and the little hand said six too I had to give up the ghost on that expensive little fantasy and swallow the hard truth that I'd just dropped a hundred bucks to have my face wrapped in avocado and bacon.

When that bill comes due, you'll come over and find me perched on top of the coffee table, floating in a sea of tears that has nothing at all to do with the fact that I tried to flush a cowboy hat down the toilet. I look forward to it; I'll be waiting with Belgians.

Did I mention my apartment is also serving as a half-way house for mice? Even in the desert, you'd think I would have scorpions or Spaniards or something instead. My landlord may be a Spaniard, there's no question he's a worthless turd, which rhymes, sort of. He still doesn't believe I have mice, in spite of the perfect arc-shaped hole at the base of the wall in my kitchen, the "Home Sweet Home" mat which sits just outside that hole, and also the cat-face-shaped dent in my big frying pan.

I've been trying to smoke the little bastard out by blowing second-hand cigarette smoke into the hole every time I remember to do so. At this point it may just be a race to see which one of us gets cancer first, but I heard something about second-hand smoke being more deadly, so I think Vegas should favor my odds. Plus with his small size I'd have to be smoking like one of the Golden Girls to get the same cancer-causing effect per capita.

Truth be told, I'm not sure how many mice are in there, or how I'll even know if they've passed on to Mousehalla. When I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night I swear I can hear them scattering in the kitchen, yelling "SHIT! IT'S THE FARMER'S WIFE!" in their little high-pitched voices. Could that really just be a dream? Maybe I dreamt it all; maybe I don't really have any mice.

Badgers, on the other hand. We're thick with badgers.

All right commune readers, it's time for Stu Umbrage to duck off into the belfry to lunch upon sweet artichoke-hearts and New-Mexican-grown peaches. The Democratic Party keeps calling in an attempt to get me out to the polls this year, and I no longer feel safe downstairs. Could this be yet another sly ploy to get me under a tuna net? We shall see...

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