excuse me, I have to vent

[blustocking]

Why Topeka Will Never Be a City of Art and Culture

Because it's a town full of Republicans.
Because it's a town full of old people who are scared of youth, a town where money is the top priority, and because it's fearsome youth have bought this as well.
Because it's a town of people who pride themselves as being cultured, though they've, most likely, barely left the state.
Because marketing the "exotic" goes further than sheer talent/skill.
Because what passes for talent and skill are far below the "national average".
Because the hypocrisy, oppression, and self-righteousness reach National Security Threat levels within the bubble of its borders.

I don't think I can describe to you how much I hate this town, how much I wish my family and a few friends didn't still live there. It's something, in the end, rather indescribable, something the sensitive of the world would feel upon being subjected to its rows and rows of chain stores. I'm rather close to never saying it's my hometown again. The newspaper, nothing but conservative-bent surface treatment, color graphics, no meat, no bones, all fat. Downtown, nearly vacant, struggling to breathe like a fish out of water. The West side cluttered with neon and the safe predictability of one-in-every-city. Every new idea crushed, only to be re-born in the endless supply of committees and search parties, looking, desperately searching, for new blood, new opportunities, a revival. Sprawling, reaching out like box-shaped cancer to swallow the plains with tar and concrete and the illusion of happiness found monthly on credit card bills and bank statements.

Nothing will change until the people change.
And that will never happen.

Comments

[malevolencia.livejournal.com]

I feel much of the same loathing toward Los Angeles, what with its obsession with money, being a size 00, Hollywood filth, the idolization of celebutards that have the personalities of amoeba, the glamour that people somehow see (I have no idea where that is), the real estate market, the cost of living, the so-called "perfect weather", the so-called "culture" and "history" and "pride", the cookie-cutter communities, the flakes, the fakes, the fake and bakes. I'm over it, man.

[blustocking.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, Topeka reminds me of L.A. in that the priorities of the citizens are similar. But hell, the crap coming out of L.A. is designed for those poor saps in the middle states who don't get to experience the fabulousness of that smog-filled bubble firsthand. Topeka would kill to be L.A., or at least dating L.A.'s second cousin's stepsister.

It's just so weird that a town 20 mins away, most likely because there's a large university here in Lawrence, things can be soooo different.