I HATE SJ

I hate you, SJ. I hate your ugliness (intentional!), your stupidity (willful!) and the way you do everything wrong, always deliberately choosing to set everything up to FAIL. “WE LOVE FAILURE” should be emblazoned on a giant banner at all entry points into your stupid “city centre.”

I hate your “mill” but even worse I hate how every inbred moron in town pretends that “you can’t really smell it”, that “it’s not really that bad—we hardly notice it at all!!!” Yeah, like LOSERS with the worst BO ever, of course YOU hardly notice your own stink—it takes SOMEONE ELSE to point it out to you, and only then because it’s intolerable.

And I hate your stupid restaurant RIGHT BESIDE THE “MILL” — WTF??? More than that, I hate all the losers who go there saying things like “Oh! Isn’t this nice? This is so nice!!!” NO, you idiots, it ISN’T “nice”—it’s SHIT and if you had any brains — if once in your life you had ever BEEN to something “nice”— you would know better. You actually need people smarter than yourselves to EXPLAIN to you the difference between “nice ” and “shit” because you are incapable of distinguishing between the two concepts.

I hate the way you say “Meet Me at the Market!” in that corny, sing-song way—God!!! do you have to repeat fifty thousand times in every conversation this little nugget of historical fact (and I’m quoting here): “Meet-me-at-the-Market—That’s-what-they-useta-say-ya-know—Meet-me-at-the-Market” — — WELL OK, maybe that IS “what they useta say” but fuck, did they always say it in an obnoxious GEEZER VOICE?? Why do you all have to use that stupid voice every time you tell (and re-tell) that dumb “story?”

I hate “uptown”, I hate the “thruway” (and I hate how you demolished all of your truly cool buildings when you built that monstrosity—but you probably think it’s “nice” don’t you?), I hate your “Club”, I hate the “Loyalist Guy”, I hate the “Golden Mile”, I hate “the Square”, I hate “the Slip” and I hate your ugly third-world-style “newspapers.” (Like, does the TG/EGT actually have a staff member whose job title is “uglifier?” Surely things can’t get that ugly and stupid accidentally.)

Most of all I hate the way you all think the height of your kids’ success is in them “not being better than they are!” You mean not doing anything “better” than YOU ever did! You pass on your dreams of failure to your kids, you discourage them every time they are just on the verge of succeeding, and aren’t you so very, very, quick to tell them ” Oh, well, son, I guess (CAREER X) doesn’t look like it’s gonna work out—time to think about that job at the “RFNRY!” Hey you stupid, stupid people: the correct advice for your kids is: “TRY AGAIN UNTIL YOU SUCCEED” — NOT: “BETTER GIVE UP NOW AND TAKE A LOW WAGE JOB FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE AS A CONSOLATION PRIZE!”

Oh, but I forgot, I guess you, SJ, have such an abundance of skilled professional talent floating around in all that “Reversing” sludge that you don’t really NEED any more kids to grow up become GOOD AT THINGS.

Because you are all really stuck in the 1940s aren’t you, wishing it was still the Second World War so you you would have a great fantastic reason for existing, rather than trying to adapt to the MODERN WORLD, where people actually need “schoolin'” and “book-learnin'” to get those “fancy” jobs that ACTUALLY REQUIRE MORE THAN A GRADE TWO EDUCATION! That may have been enough in your day but it certainly isn’t good enough for anyone trying to scrape by in this century.

Well kids, here’s something dear old Miss Ann never told you: SJ sucks! Yes, it’s true: there is no reason for you to stay there. Leave and let the place rot away without you. Roll out your dad’s 1974 Bricklin and drive yourself anywhere, ANYWHERE else, NOW! You’ll thank me someday.

—The Bitch of Fundy

This article appears in May 21-27, 2009.