I feel sad...

Well, the Oregon Bush Hackers are as mad as a stirred-up nest of hornets, and frankly I can't blame them. I kinda reamed 'em a new asshole....

This is one weekend of my life that I will never get back. I'm kind of sad, because... well, dammit I was looking forward to meeting new friends there with mutual interests... friends to go wheeling with and do Fun Stuff together. Now all I feel is a sense of loss. Of course, you can't lose something that never was, but it's still normal to feel a sense of loss.

I should have known better than to expect to make friends here in the Portland area. People here aren't very nice -- in fact, they're downright nasty -- and it's one of the reasons I swore to God (I believed in God then) that I'd never come back. But a job offer after three years of being unemployed in Paradise (well, it wasn't exactly paradise, but you could SEE paradise from there!), and I moved here in a heartbeat.

I guess maybe I'm just lonely for the kind of people who live "downstate," as it's called. That must be a Portlander saying, 'coz it connotes that everywhere else in the state is somehow beneath them. And that's the way they act whenever they visit anywhere else in the state.

Anyway, most folks in the rest of Oregon understand a few things that Portlanders just don't get. Respect for other people's property, for instance (okay, not in the People's Republic of Eugene but let's not go there right now).

You won't believe this, but the Oregon Bush Hackers still don't get it!! I had one guy that came right out and claimed that churning up all that mud doesn't harm the environment in any way! Maybe he should talk to a fisheries biologist. Or maybe not; fisheries biologists have better things to do with their time than argue with fools.

Another really nice lady sent me this:

Had Mr. Zeller approached our group as a whole or Jenn individually, which is what he should have done, with what he saw offensive, we would have changed it immediately and enlightened the OBH group to the errors of our ways. But, Mr. Zeller did not approach anyone. Instead, he was very rude and condescending to Jenn and the group as a whole, putting out a blanket, childish statement, about "something" he found offensive. And when Jenn tried to contact him about it and discuss it, he never responded to her.

[Aside: I find it somewhat amusing that people who play in mud puddles think that they have any room to talk about someone else being "childish"....]

Uh, excuse me? This guy is expected to take time out of his busy day to explain the obvious? Hello-o-o-o-o-o....

Gee, I'm really sorry that your mother died but if someone would have just bothered to explain to me that when you pull the trigger on a gun....

or, as George Castanza said once in a Seinfeld episode, "I'm not supposed to have sex with the cleaning lady on my desk? Well, if you had bothered to explain that...."

Why anyone should have to explain why those photos are offensive (there are three more besides the one I posted here yesterday) is... I'm just shaking my head. It's just hard to believe that anyone can be that dense.

Maybe it's time to get the heck out of the Portland area, and try to find a job "downstate" where there are some people with a little bit of sense in their heads.

Ken
WWJD -- What Would John [Galt] Do?