The American West coast is without a doubt the worst thing to happen to our nation since the American East coast.
That being said, it is definitively important to remember that the East coast, unlike its sunburned, smug little brother, is not all bad, having brought us, after all, not only John Adams, but also milkmen, lunch pails and Melungeons, as well as our very first liasons with the Canadians. Back in the day, Virginia claimed throne of sophistication and luxury, while the west loomed a slovenly wilderness of gophers and poorly surveyed homesteads. We could console ourselves with the land's savagery; what it lacked in refinement, it made up for in boll weevils; what it craved in intellectual discourse, it fed with sprawling fields of grass. There were barn raisings aplenty.
But the glorly couldn't last. The west changed. We built square gray buildings; we discovered surfing. Cowboys and Indians has been replaced with Xenophobes and Mexicans, and the murderous broods of horse thieves that once roamed the land have settled down to manage L.L. Bean outlet stores. Nary a mail-order Chinese bride, and all we have to show for ourselves in the betrothal department is Bristol Palin. And although Governor Sarah makes it look easy to shoot game, disenfranchise women, and establish reckless dictorship over an isolated town, I can assure that not all the grandeur of Gunsmoke has been so well preserved. Sure, Idaho was the tops in 1838; I'll grant it that: it was the place to be, especially for frustrated young men with a taste for ruthlessness and no hope of sexual satisfaction anyway. But we have anime for that now.
Meanwhile, the East has lost none of its glory; still industrial, still smoke-sooted, still stressful, incomprehensibly diverse, overcrowded, and painfully cerebral, it remains the gilded gloryseat of urban fulfillment. Why waste your years doing pilates and sipping yerba mate when you could be profiting from every espresso-jacked moment? Why ponder canyons when you can fall into electrically-charged subway tracks? People, please.
There comes a time when every woman must choose her heroes. This is not a question of land, of space, but of the human spirit, and we must ask ourselves, once and for all: Dr. Weil or Dr. Oz? Shwayze or T-Pain? Leno or Letterman? These are the chasms we must cross, both spiritual and intellectual, before we can achieve unity once and for all. But we must first remember what will unite us in the end: deep and enduring scorn for the midwest.
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