Resting on my Flabby White Laurels - Part 1

It's coming up on my 1st Anniversary here at Hip Suburban White Guy. So I thought that rather than taxing my creativity, I'd take the opportunity this month to dig into the archives and pull out some of my favorite posts from the past year. Not necessarily the ones that got the most (if any) comments. Just the ones I liked and had the most fun with. So, here ya go. This one's from Feb 06.


Costs For Glass Wok Jump $26M


When this design was unveiled, they called it “The Crystal Bowl”. How about “The Big Glass Wok”?


God, this is such an idiotic project. Let me explain why I hate it so much (thanks for asking).




Picture this scenario: It’s August in Kansas City. The temperature outside is about 175 degrees. Humidity is Total. You are packed into the Sprint Arena with 18,000 JoCo yuppies watching whatever 3rd rate Dodgeball team (maybe The Kansas City Sizzlers and their cheerleaders, the Stir Frys) Mayoress Kate manages to lure to town. The sun is streaming into the arena through all that glass, bouncing off of more glass and doing it’s best to incinerate all inside like a little kid with a magnifying glass playing Alien Death Ray with an ant farm. The entire metro area suffers a brown-out as the air-conditioners in the arena suck up all the electricity in a futile attempt to keep the temperature at a reasonably comfortable 500 degrees.

Meanwhile, outside, hundreds of people are blindly crashing into each other, flattening pedestrians and flying off bridges as they have their retinas cauterized by the hot august sun reflecting off this huge, gaudy disco ball that's been plopped into the heart of the city.

Yes, this will be a fiasco. A boondoggle of biblical proportions. But that’s not the worst of it. Oh, no my friends. The worst thing about this project and the reason I oppose it so strongly, is that it will inconvenience me personally! That’s right! Bet nobody thought about that, did they? Huh?

You see, I work downtown. I have to get into and out of this city everyday. It’s bad enough now. Imagine what it’s going to be like when you pour in an additional 18,000 JoCo sports fans who all drove into town separately in their giant SUVs, trying to find their way around a downtown that they didn’t even know existed, talking on their cell phones, going the wrong way down one way streets, making U turns and generally trying to flee west as fast as they can out of fear that a street person might make eye contact with them.

It’s going to be a freaking nightmare.

I’m quite certain that the city planners didn’t factor a royally pissed off, fully road-raged Xavier Onassis into their cost benefit analysis. Their mistake!

But I’m preparing for this. Oh yesssss, my precious! In my secret workshop buried deep in the limestone caves of Clay County, I’m making a few “modifications” to the XO-Mobile. The headlights have been replaced with twin 150kW, liquid cooled laser cannons. Mounted on the roll bar is a 30mm, 7 barrel GAU-8 gattling gun I scrounged from an old A-10 Warthog. Shoots depleted uranium slugs at a rate of 3900 rounds per minute. It can rip through an armored tank like a warm knife through butta.

I am fully prepared to go all “Mad Max” if that is what it takes to get me through the traffic and back home, sitting in front of my 46” HDTV watching porn like all good, redblooded American suburbanite males.

Or, I might just calm the fuck down and learn to deal with it. Haven't really decided yet.