Elgin, Illinois was designed by moonshine addled muskrat poachers. The urban architecture, that is to say, the layout of the streets, is a bucketful of dumb. An assload of stupid. Those primitive jello-brained mammal rapists laid these streets out like a drunken spiderweb.

I like triangles. I like serrated knives. I like panel siding. Jagged edges are useful and often fun. This statement does not apply to urban planning. I don't like seven intersections in a trapezoid that sport stoplights timed to cause gridlock, forcing frustrated seniors to abandon their vehicles and hobble to the riverboat to gamble away their pensions before hurling themselves overboard into the murk to sink like illegally dumped garbage bags to the bottom of that polluted river. If I wanted to go fishing for spare dentures, I'd cast a line there.

This busy little hilly conglomeration of suburban fuck has single lanes on most streets. The avenues and boulevards crest up and down over hills, curbless. They're jammed with single file cars far beyond the horizon. Great chunks have been shattered from the pavement by rickety freight trucks with imbalanced cargo. During rain, these holes fill up with water, and in the few places traffic is light, the desperate zooming cars shoot tidal waves into the oncoming lanes. I had my window cracked as I drove, and one such wave broke on my face.

When, inevitably, you become lost, the local rubes gurgling ketchup at a McDonald's nested within a gas station will give directions that betray the contents of their skulls as pudding.

"Excuse me miss, which way is St. Charles Road?"

"I uh... It's uh..." She was looking around, hapless and confused, when a booming voice assaulted me from behind. I turned to look. Holy shit. Strom Thurmond is back. They resurrected him, and now he's a salesman for 7-UP.

"St. Charles Road? Shore, shore, thass rot ovuh theyuh young man."

"Um, you're pointing at the sky. I don't have a plane. Which way?"

"Jess drive yonda down Spring Avenue, take a rot by the Sunoco, an when ya see the yella house, drive between the pines in the front yaad. Go through the living room, over the back porch, down throo that ol culvert, and whip snap daddy, you dere."

"Fuck you. Fuck you very much, and fuck your backwards little fuckpit. I hope the undercooked frogs your wife is cooking for dinner have gangrene. I hope you get cancer."

"Dang. Sufferin succotash."

"Eat my fuck."

I'm going to arson school this fall. 4:29 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm