You're Cabbage!

Caught Southpark last night.  Absolute genuis.  Check it out at:

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s14e09-its-a-jersey-thing

Nice try Zuckerberg...

Facebook founder and uber billionaire Mark Zuckerberg donated $100,000 million dollars to the Newark school system yesterday.  Thanks for the charity Zuckerberg, but if you really wanted to do something charitable you should have donated a couple hundered million more.  We could have bought the whole state and built a giant fence around it. 


Now that's a service to humanity.

It's because I'm Italian...

"Oh, it's because I'm Italian".   Sometimes it's a badge of honor, sometimes, an excuse.  It's the catch all phrase that many from Jersey use to explain their outrageous behavior.

You know what. It's horseshit. What does your ancestry have to do with the way in which you conduct yourself?  Maybe I don't understand this because I'm from the South where we just simply separate people by color. (kidding!)

If you were born in Italy and moved here. Congrats, you're Italian. Pat yourself on the back and feel free to say "It's because I'm Italian" all you want.  We're cool.

To the rest of you.  You're not Italian. You're an American. You, you're from Hoboken/Ewing/Egg Harbor/Asbury Park/Middletown/Cinnaminson (whatever) and that makes you an American. Just like the rest of us.

To say that you're Italian because your ancestors were is idiotic. Sure, somewhere on the far reaches of your family tree, someone was once Italian.  Was your Grandmother born in Naples? Did she swill wine, pick grapes and live a charming life.  Fantastic, she's Italian. 

You're an impostor and an asshole.

If you were born here, you're an American. End of story. You are a part of American culture, you watch the same stupid American TV and drink the same cancer-laden water as the rest of us.

What's wrong with that? Why can't you just be an American?  Is that not enough for you?

Sure it's fine to celebrate your heritage.  There's nothing wrong with that.  I celebrate mine. I'm from the South, that's my heritage.  But I don't use it as an excuse for my behavior.

 "I got drunk and pooped in your mailbox Ma'am, but you can't blame me, I'm from the South."

To say that you act and behave a certain way because you're of Italian ancestry makes about as much sense as saying that you really love going to IKEA because your great uncle was Swedish.

My family has a small bit of Irish ancestry. Does this entitle me to steal money from you if you happen to stash it at the end of a rainbow?

I have Polish relatives too, so I'm going to need someones help installing this screen door on my submarine.

Oh, by the way, my family is also a little bit Scottish. So please forgive me if you have no idea what I'm talking about.

And now for a tour.

Courtesy of the good people at Cracked

We don't pump gas, we pump fists

It's a well known fact that the biggest no-no in the Garden State is trying to pump your own gas.  I discovered this first hand the very first time I stopped to get gas in New Jersey.  A bearded attendant screamed at me in broken English to "Put the pump down before I hurt someone."   

This seemed laughable at first as I've been pumping gas before I could even drive. (Grandma E used to give me a dollar to pump the gas for her when I was a child)  I discovered that pumping your own gas is completely illegal, on par with running over a nun escorting ducklings across the street or badmouthing the Phillies

This escapes me.  I don't understand why I'm not allowed to do this myself.  In forty-eight other states anyone everyone (even 7 year old me for a crisp dollar bill) can pump gas.

 Is there some sort of special gas station school somewhere?  Like an ITT Tech for sticking a nozzle in a tank and hitting a button?  Perhaps a class in advanced receipt delivery?

Apparently I'm not alone,  Adam B. Schaeffer of the National Review agrees.  In his article, I want to pump myself he states,

This might have made some sense in 1949 when the law was passed and when most of the population still smoked and stupidity could conceivably kill at the gas station. But times have changed and pumping gas is a safe activity that almost everyone but the handicapped can perform with the greatest of ease. Pay-at-the-pump technology is standard at gas stations coast to coast. Motorists fly through stations with the breathtaking efficiency only Americans can take for granted. That is, except in New Jersey and Oregon — the only two states atavistic, sadistic, and masochistic enough to still require thousands of "professionals" to waste time, money, and inconvenience customers. Read the full article here

I'm totally with Adam on this.  I don't understand why I must sit and my car and wait for an attendant to come over to perform such a simple activity. Put the pump in the car, pay, wait, replace pump and drive off.  Instead, you must wait....and wait...and wait. 

Honestly, if you want to perform a valuable public service New Jersey.

HOW ABOUT YOU BAG MY f#$%ING GROCERIES??


Bagging your own groceries wastes time and inconveniences everyone. During the time I'm bagging my groceries I could be doing the following:  handing my savings card to the cashier, navigating the 97 buttons on the debit card machine and signing my receipt. 

Instead, I must frantically stuff items into plastic bags before the cashier hits the total button like some supermarket sweep style duel. 

Even the seediest, scariest upon scary, pants shittingly ghetto grocery stores in Virginia bag your groceries for you allowing you to spend that type completing the transaction and move out of the way.

 To be fair, the occasional nice cashier will place the items in the bag if you only have a few.  But what I really want to see  see is an ex-Walmart greeter or a pimply faced teenager standing at the end of that register strategically sorting my items into appropriate bags.  How about we send all those gas station attendants to grocery bagging school instead?


AND DAMN IT, I WANT SOMEONE TO ASK ME IF I WANT PAPER OR PLASTIC!

New Jersey on the small screen

The creation of television shows like Jersey Shore, The Real Housewives of New Jersey, Jerseylicious and Oxygen's newest TV-turd Jersey Couture have moved the trashier parts of New Jersey to center stage.  While each of those shows highlight's the state's goofier characters it has many residents up in arms over the negative depiction of life in the garden state.

Personally, I couldn't have any less sympathy for the angry.  Get over yourselves.  No one honestly believes that everyone in New Jersey wanders around sporting a Brooklyn Blowout ,chugging down vodka and red bull while spouting about how great their mama's meatballs are.  But there are some in New Jersey who do act like that.

I know this because I've been to Seaside Heights on a Saturday night.  And don't give me the, "they're from New York" line,  I've seen just as many Jersey license plates there.


All stereotypes are rooted in some element of truth and every state has to deal with things they're not proud of.  After all,  I'm from the same region as this guy and he won a seat in the the U.S. House of Representatives:

Cooter gets er done.

Who knows, maybe this woman will be our next president:

Snooki.  Hail to the Chief y'all.

What some real life examples of stereotypes I get to deal with?

The winner gets a jug of moonshine and sex with his sister.

I've actually seen this dude driving...slowly.

A peaceful Sunday morning in the south.

And of course, who could forget this wonderful part of southern culture:

I especially love the ninja in the middle.

So what's my point? Every place has to deal with stupid stereotypes and the people that believe them.  Yours are hilarious, mine are just sad.  Get over it New Jersey. Nobody really gives a shit but you. 

Now with polling data!

I saw this on Gwaker and thought it was hilarious. Link to the Gwaker article at the end.

New Poll Confirms That Living in New Jersey Sucks

Finally giving validation to decades worth of Jersey jokes, a new Quinnipiac University poll (all they do up there is poll, all day long) says that 75% of Jerseyites are "dissatisfied" with the state of things in their, uh, state.

Is big fat Republican monster Chris Christie to blame for all of this? Perhaps. 43% of those polled called the governor "a bully," and 61% of folks didn't like his plan to slash funding for public schools. That same percentage said they wished Christie would have signed a bill that taxed millionaires. Ha ha, dumb, miserable Jersey people.

Remember when Chris Christie ran on his platform of "I'm an awful millionaire who wants to help my awful millionaire friends and no one else," and you voted for him and he won the election? Well now you have to deal with it. That's how politics works. Have fun being sad and orange and coughing on factory smoke. Trenton makes, world takes, always.

http://gawker.com/5566280/new-poll-confirms-living-in-new-jersey-sucks

I think this sums it up nicely...

Many thanks to Daniel who found this on GraphJam and sent it to me. I think it pretty much sums up my feelings.

If I wanted to pay to play in the sand, I'd take up golf

I love summer. There's something invigorating about sitting on the beach under an umbrella, drinking a bourbon and coke and reading a book. Call me a 45 year old woman if you will, but it's my thing. It takes practically no convincing to get me to go to the beach. Unless it's one of the fine (read: sarcasm) beaches of the Jersey Shore.

By the way this is the only time you will ever hear me refer to it as "the shore." But that's another rant for another time.

When I moved to the New Jersey coast for my job, I could not wait for summer. The thought of living 15 minutes from the ocean was exhilarating. My first encounter completely changed my mind.

My girlfriend and I visited Belmar, a beach she often frequented as a child. We parked the car and trekked 1/2 a mile to the beach,(Why beach towns here don't build parking lots near the ocean, I will never understand)and finally arrived.

I couldn't wait to feel the sand between my toes. I began to walk down the boardwalk steps towards the ocean when an 85 year old woman barked, "You didn't pay".

"Pay for what?" I asked. The boardwalk troll replied, "To go on the beach". This seemed oddly foreign and completely ridiculous to me. I asked how much and was told that I needed to pay 8 dollars for admission to the beach. OH HELLLLLL NO. I thought it was a joke at first.

I'm sorry, but that's %^&*!@@# insane. I'm not cheap by any stretch of the imagination and I don't mind paying for things. But I do not understand why the beach towns in New Jersey charge admission to something that is free everywhere else in the country.


What does this money go towards anyway?

It certainly doesn't go towards keeping the beach clean, And it certainly doesn't go towards keeping it safe.d I know this because I passed a couple having sex under a blanket while searching for a place to sit. And it doesn't go towards keeping the number of people on the beach down because it took forever to find a place to sit.

The locals argue the money goes towards paying for lifeguards and police to "babysit" the vacationing "Bennies" or tourists. OK fine, I understand that. But do you honestly believe that other beach communities across the country don't have those same needs?

They do, and they pay for them with taxes.

Why?

Because those tourists come to town and they spend money. That money (through taxes) helps to improve the quality of life in the community. Without those tourists, the town would not thrive.

QED: catering to their needs a little is probably a good idea. I've never seen more instances of "biting the hand that feeds you" than a Jersey beach town. (I'm looking at you Point Pleasant Beach.)

If you're not willing to endure summer traffic and annoying tourists without complaint, and if you're not willing to pay for it, then perhaps it's time to move to place where no one wants to visit, like Kansas.

It really doesn't matter to me either way though. You won't catch me soaking up the sun on a Jersey beach anytime soon.

Recalculating...

New Jersey drivers are angry, impatient, and rude. Honestly, I don't blame them. Driving is a pain in the ass here.

First, let's define a New Jersey road. I've driven on nicer cow paths. Jersey roads resemble the face of a 13-year-old boy: pockmarked, cracked, and riddled with oil, dirt, and shame. I realize that there is a much greater volume of traffic here than you might find in the south and thus, the roads deteriorate faster.

The problem, however, is many of these pot holes will never get fixed and instead continue to grow in size until they swallow a Lincoln Navigator on its way to stare at Springsteen's shore house in Seaside. THis isn't a shot at the hard working people of NJDOT. Those guys are doing the best they can. But they're outnumbered 6 Billion to 1. However, I digress...

New Jersey's road system had to have been designed by a 3 year old with a broken Etch-a-Sketch. They say the quickest way between two points in a straight line. There's no such thing here, instead. We have the jughandle.

What's a jughandle? Why it's the most backwards way to turn left EVER! Instead of going left, you go to the right! Think of it as an interstate off ramp at nearly every turn.



Often, the jughandle is on the opposite side of the cross street from you. That means in order to turn left. You must wait for the light, drive straight through the intersection, immediately exit to the right and then...WAIT FOR THE SAME LIGHT AGAIN, ON THE STREET YOU JUST CROSSED!

If the point of a jughandle is to speed up the flow of traffic then how is that accomplished by increasing the amount time a car will spend navigating a single intersection?

There are a few places where making a normal left hand turn is possible. But driver beware, you will never have the right away due to the constant stream of traffic driving past you. You’ll probably end up making that left just as the light turns red.

And because you made that last second dash to the left, someone will probably HONK and yell at you for making them wait 3/10TH of a nanosecond. For God's sake, don't bother giving them the finger…that's how we say hello in New Jersey...

By the way, don't bother using your GPS. It won't help. Honestly, the good people at Garmin and TomTom etc. should just remove New Jersey maps from their GPS models and replace them with a little flashing message that simply says: "You're F$%#ed. Welcome to the Garden State"

A blog about hate for the Garden State

Three years ago I moved to New Jersey for a new job. Until now, I have spent my entire life in Virginia and North Carolina. Upon arriving in Jersey, I immediately felt like a stranger in a foreign land and after 3 years I still find the strange ways of the Garden State unnerving on a daily basis.

What follows are my observations on life in what I consider the most backwards state in America. Before you unleash a mortar barrage of hate mail because you don't agree with my point of view, keep several things in mind.

These are my personal observations at some of the funnier/more ludicrous things about New Jersey. I don't hold any animosity towards the people living here and I genuinely believe that they do love this place. I simply don't.

Before you call me a hick or a redneck, remember, I lived in the south for 24 years, I've heard it all. If you really feel the need to list all the things that are terrible about life in the south, (funny accents, the racism and the ignorant people) go ahead, I've heard all that too. The South is far from perfect. Just as an aside, I've experienced all of those things here too.

Finally, If you just can't keep from emailing me to say, "If you hate it so much, then leave," fear not my friend, I plan on heeding your advice as soon as possible. For now, I'm here and I'll keep laughing at this place.