Flatlander cancer

In Vermont and northern New Hampshire, a flatlander is any non-native, but particularly one from southern New England (including Massachusetts), downstate New York, or New Jersey, and very particularly one who has recently moved to Vermont or northern New Hampshire and would prefer that the state change to better accommodate newcomers, rather than the other way around

A principle that I have followed in my life, at least to the extent I've been aware of its applicability in any given situation, is this: when you intend to spend any significant amount of time in any place, you should first try to understand the "locals" and how they do things, and try to find ways to fit yourself into those ways of doing things.

This principle has served me well as a small child sleeping over at a friend's house, as the boyfriend being served dinner at a girlfriend's family's house, as an employee in my first job working for another person, and as a person seeking to move to a new town, city, state or region. I have to admit that when I was in college and law school, I really didn't work too hard at fitting into the respective surrounding cities, partly because I saw my real challenge as fitting into the school's microcosm, and partly from the arrogance of the short-timer whose stay is purely utilitarian.

This short-timer, utilitarian arrogance is at the heart of the derision intended in the term "flatlander," described above. The flatlander tends to imagine that his or her desires or habits are more important than whatever are the local customs or habits. I know from experience that the flatlander can be so self-centered in varying degrees. There can be a benign neglect of the locals, or there can be a fully conscious awareness of the local customs and habits, and a desire to overcome those local ways and impose one's own ways as the new "local" method.

The flatlander is enamored with "progress" and thinks that everything must be in a perpetual race for "best," even when "best" is nothing more than restatement with new window dressing and no real substantive modification or improvement.

The flatlander wants all roads paved, preferably in pretty asphalt, and hopefully renewed every 3-5 years for that race-course-perfect surface. The flatlander will drive his or her Escalade or Audi sports sedan over these pristine paved surfaces, but not on any 3d-rate unpaved surfaces, thank you.

The flatlander is afraid of the night. The flatlander will put huge spotlights on his or her property, keeping the bright light of the mid-day's full glare operating at all times. This is because the flatlander fears undomesticated animals, and believes the locals are savage thieves who are expert stalkers and incomparable cat burglars.

Whatever roads the flatlander drives between his house and

the office (which employs quite a few flatlanders)
the mall (where you'll find locals who long to become flatlanders)
the grocery store (where the flatlander will bump your cart)
any Starbuck's Coffee spot (a major reason for the flatlander being here)
the sushi bar (started by an earlier-arriving flatlander)
the country club (founded by a local who wanted to become a flatlander)
the Gold's Gym (another major reason for flatlanders to be here)
the university football stadium parking area (where the flatlander pretends to be local)
the minor league baseball stadium (financed by the city, connived by recently arrived flatlanders)
the "downtown" area (with flatlander-favoring "boutiques" and "salons")

should not only be paved with that perfect asphalt, but also should be lit up with the same sort of hyper-candlepower light. And certainly, in the colder months, the roads should be kept absolutely free from all traces of snow and/or ice.

If the locals are perfectly happy with dirt roads and no street lights, this is irrelevant. The flatlander wants to improve things so that the locals will have a better life.

Note, reader, whose idea of "better" operates here.

The flatlander will insist that if the local ski hill won't pave and light and keep clean its road, then at the very least it should significantly widen that road and constantly sand it, so that the flatlander can drive her Audi sports sedan comfortably as if it were "properly paved." Up at the ski hill, the flatlander competes and jockeys for the parking spot nearest the base area, and will park her Audi sports sedan in unique parking orientation to achieve this necessary end of absolute primary stature granting full convenience. If this means parking where it's not allowed, so be it. The flatlander is an advanced species, and will take full advantage of all that she deserves and to which she's entitled, socially speaking.

The old 2-seat chair lifts move too slow for flatlanders, so they constantly complain about the lifts and the need for "high-speed quads." In the very same soliloquy they will complain that the lift tickets are much too expensive, because the mountain doesn't have such high-speed quads and doesn't really groom the snow. Because the flatlander is able to envision these amazing improvements and is proud of that vision, he insists that others not only listen to his overloud harangue, but agree with him to the point of joining the flatlander's demand for the mountain to "improve operations" to meet the flatlander's preferred configuration.

The flatlander is not happy unless he can use his "downtime" waiting for lift chairs. Consequently he will bust out the cell phone and do some important business in the lift line. It is imperative that the flatlander make these peacock displays of business importance, else how can the flatlander justify to himself the 80-hour work weeks and the pushy, hurried attitude whenever he's at the ski hill?

At the end of the day, the flatlander drives his Chevy Suburban as fast as possible down the ski hill's access road. He tailgates the slower driving local, flashes his lights, blows his horn. Eventually he tires of the local's obstinate refusal to speed up to a more reasonable 45 mph (on the 20-25 mph road) and floors the gas pedal and launches a slingshot move into a position ahead of the local. This additional form of peacock display justifies the expensive customized Suburban, as he turns to his flatlander girlfriend/wife and says, "if these hicks would just quit being lazy and earn themselves a real sport utility vehicle, they could drive a proper speed on this road, and then we could raise the speed limit to 45 mph where it..." and suddenly the flatlander's Suburban slams to a violent halt, where it lays stuck in the roadside ditch.

The local drives by chuckling at the flatlander's blind arrogance, and then shakes his head in pity. The local has noticed the town's increase in these flatlanders. Suddenly, the local realizes that instead of making the town better for those who already live there, the city's elected council seem interested in "boosting the economy" by having comparatively-more-"wealthy" flatlanders move to the town. The local starts thinking that politicians are flatlanders at heart, and even those from rural local areas have a secret desire to become flatlanders.

Meanwhile, in their deluxe-and-custom-but-still-stuck-in-the-snow Suburban, Mr and Mrs Flatlander are both in panic mode and are on their cell phones. Mr is dialing the tow truck, Mrs is calling the insurance company to report the damaged Suburban. The two of them finish their calls and then after a 15 second mutual cursing round of complaints levelled at the ski hill's operators, they both call their lawyer. They're going to sue these backward hillbillies to recover damages for not keeping the road up to "modern" standards.

Their lawyer is a fellow flatlander who has set up a plaintiff's personal injury practice in town. He is not well liked by the local bar, but the jurors seem to fall for his slick expert-filled presentations and televangelist-like courtroom demeanor. Approximately 15 months after the flatlander couple wrecked their Suburban, they have received a $265,000 settlement from the ski hill's liability insurance company.

How would you fight this cancer, reader?

http://cbfz.blogspot.com/2008/01/flatlander-cancer.html

Generally called Yankees in these parts. We get our share around here, that epithaph referring as much to attitude as to regional origin. The coast is eaten up with them and their fucking golf courses, the place is damn near ruined, fuck Sun City South, fuck Hilton Head, fuck Pawley's Island, fuck Myrtle Beach. They are an abomination, they have disfigured a paradise.

Same story in northern Michigan.

Patio Man: Homo obnoxious - Habitat: Sprinkler City - Motivation:



--THE GOAL OF THE TOGETHER LIFE. When you've got your life together, you have mastered the complexities of the modern world so thoroughly that you can glide through your days without unpleasant distractions or tawdry failures. Instead, your hours are filled with self-affirming reminders of the control you have achieved over the elements. Your lawn is immaculate. Your DVD library is organized, and so is your walk-in closet. Your car is clean and vacuumed, your frequently dialed numbers are programmed into your cell phone, your telephone plan is suited to your needs, and your various gizmos interface without conflict. Your wife is effortlessly slender, your kids are unnaturally bright, your job is rewarding, your promotions are inevitable, and you look great in casual slacks.

You can thus spend your days in perfect equanimity, the Sprinkler City ideal. You radiate confidence, like a professional golfer striding up the 18th fairway after a particularly masterful round. Compared with you, Dick Cheney looks like a disorganized hothead. George W. Bush looks like a self-lacerating neurotic. Professionally, socially, parentally, you have your life together. You may not be the most intellectual or philosophical person on the planet, but you are honest and straightforward. You may not be flamboyant, but you are friendly, good-hearted, and considerate. You have achieved the level of calm mastery of life that is the personality equivalent of the clean and fresh suburban landscape.

--THE GOAL OF TECHNOLOGICAL HEROISM. They may not be stereotypical rebels, and nobody would call them avant-garde, but in one respect many Sprinkler City dwellers have the souls of revolutionaries. When Patio Man gets out of his Yukon, lowers his employee-badge necklace around his neck, and walks into his generic office building, he becomes a technological radical. He spends his long workdays striving to create some technological innovation, management solution, or organizing system breakthroughs that will alter the world. Maybe the company he works for has one of those indecipherable three-initial names, like DRG Technologies or SER Solutions, or maybe it's got one of those jammed together compound names that were all the rage in the 1990s until WorldCom and MicroStrategy went belly up.

Either way, Patio Man is working on, or longs to be working on, a project that is new and revolutionary. And all around him there are men and women who are actually achieving that goal, who are making that leap into the future. The biotech revolution is being conducted in bland suburban office parks by seemingly unremarkable polo-shirt-and-chino people at firms like Celera and Human Genome Sciences. Silicon Valley is just one long string of suburban office parks jutting out from San Jose. AOL is headquartered in Loudoun County. You walk down a path in a Sprinkler City corporate center and it leads you to a company frantically chasing some market-niche innovation in robotics, agricultural engineering, microtechnology, or hardware and software applications.

There are retail-concept revolutionaries, delivery-system radicals, market-research innovators, data-collection pioneers, computer-game Rembrandts, and weapons-systems analysts. They look like bland members of some interchangeable research team, but many of them are deeply engrossed in what they consider a visionary project, which if completed will help hurtle us all further into the Knowledge Revolution, the Information Millennium, the Age of MicroTechnology, the Biotech Century, or whatever transplendent future it is you want to imagine. They have broken the monopoly that cities used to have, and they have made themselves the new centers of creativity.

--THE GOAL OF RELAXED CAMARADERIE. The critics of suburbia believe that single-family homeowners with their trimmed yards and matching pansies are trying to keep up with the Joneses. But like most of what the critics assert, that's completely wrong. Sprinkler City people are competitive in the marketplace and on the sports field, but they detest social competition. That's part of why these people left inner-ring suburbs in the first place.

They are not emulating the rich; they are happy to blend in with each other. One of the comforts of these places is that almost nobody is far above you socially and almost nobody is far below. You're all just swimming in a pond of understated success.

So manners are almost aggressively relaxed. Everybody strives overtime to not put on airs or create friction. In style, demeanor, and mood, people reveal the language and values they have in common. They are good team members and demonstrate from the first meeting that they are team-able. You could go your entire life, from home to church to work to school, wearing nothing but Lands' End--comfortable, conservative, non-threatening activewear for people with a special fondness for navy blue. The dominant conversational tone is upbeat and friendly, like banter between Katie Couric and Matt Lauer on the "Today" show. The prevailing style of humor is ironic but not biting and owes a lot to ESPN's "SportsCenter."

--THE GOAL OF THE ACTIVE-LEISURE LIFESTYLE. Your self-esteem is based on your success at work, but since half the time it's hard to explain to people what the hell it is you do, your public identity is defined by your leisure activities. You are the soccer family, engrossed by the politics and melodrama of your local league, or you are the T-ball coach and spend your barbecue conversations comparing notes on new $200 titanium bat designs (there's a new bat called The Power Elite--even C. Wright Mills has been domesticated for the Little League set). You are Scuba Woman and you converse about various cruises you have taken. You are Mountain Bike Man and you make vague references to your high altitude injuries and spills. Or you are a golfer, in which case nobody even thinks of engaging you in conversation on any topic other than golf.

Religion is too hot a subject and politics is irrelevant, so if you are not discussing transportation issues--how to get from here to there, whether the new highway exit is good or bad--you are probably talking about sports. You're talking about your kids' ice hockey leagues, NBA salary levels, or the competition in your over-70 softball league--the one in which everybody wears a knee brace and it takes about six minutes for a good hitter to beat out a double. Sports sets the emotional climate of your life. Sports provides the language of easy camaraderie, self-deprecating humor, and (mostly) controlled competition.

--THE GOAL OF THE TRADITIONAL, BUT COMPETITIVE, CHILDHOOD. Most everything in Sprinkler Cities is new, but much of the newness is in the service of tradition. The families that move here are trying to give their children as clean and upright and traditional a childhood as they can imagine. They're trying to move away from parents who smoke and slap their kids, away from families where people watch daytime TV shows about transvestite betrayals and "My Daughter is a Slut" confessions, away from broken homes and, most of all, away from the company of children who are not being raised to achieve and succeed.

They are trying to move instead to a realm of clean neighborhoods, safe streets, competitive cheerleading, spirit squads, soccer tots academies, accelerated-reader programs, and adult-chaperoned drug-free/alcohol-free graduation celebrations.

For the fifth consecutive year, the Henderson, Nevada, high school Marine Corps Junior ROTC squad has won the National Male Armed Drill Team championship. The Female Unarmed Drill Team has come in first six out of the past eight years. In Loudoun County the local newspaper runs notices for various travel team tryouts. In one recent edition, I counted 55 teams announcing their tryouts, with names like The Loudoun Cyclones, the Herndon Surge, the Loudoun Volcanoes. (It's not socially acceptable to name your team after a group of people anymore, so most of the teams have nature names.) As you drive around a Sprinkler City you see SUVs everywhere with cheers scrawled in washable marker on the back windows: "Go Heat!" "#24 Kelly Jones!" "Regional Champs!"

The kids spend their days being chaperoned from one adult-supervised activity to another, and from one achievement activity to the next. They are well tested, well trophied, and well appreciated. They are not only carefully reared and nurtured, they are launched into a life of high expectations and presumed accomplishment.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/P ... r.asp?pg=2 (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/532gxuur.asp?pg=2)



Yeah, David Brooks, I know...but not so bad.

BTW, this is the crowd that put McCain on top in SC.

http://www.wackypackages.org/stickers/91_topps/11_front_yuppie_chow_small.jpg

Compared with you, Dick Cheney looks like a disorganized hothead. George W. Bush looks like a self-lacerating neurotic.

Compared to this guy?

http://www.brainfleas.com/WindowsLiveWriter/NolteNowakAnnounceMarriage_C79D/nick_nolte.jpg