you should see someone about that, seriously.
Third'd. That's not good at all, please do what Eris said!
LLLLLOOOOONG Blog: Recently, there have been a lot of problems with hard drugs in my town; in a town of less than 5000 people, we have had over 22 different heroin arrests, all people in the 18-21 range. Also, drug use has become extremely prolific, as in kids are seriously starting some heavy shit in junior high. Now, I really don't care what people do recreationally, and in fact I am the only straight edge person I know of that will actively campaign for the legalization of marijuana, but whatever you want to say about drug use being "good" or "bad" or "ok" I think we can all agree, a freaking 13 year old kid should not be shooting up.
So anyway, it's a huge problem right now, and all the community leaders are wringing their hands over 'What could possibly be making our children go astray?!!?" and they've all decided it must be The Devil™. So they gathered some money and put it towards erecting a bunch of billboards near the different school buildings in the county. What these billboards say is supposed to be a message from Jesus. They say things like "Satan, I'm coming for you! Stay away from our children!" and "Satan, I command you to take your drugs out of our town."
Meanwhile, there is basically nothing whatsoever for the kids to actually do. The skaters have no where to go, and every time they try to skate in town they get harrassed and fined by the local cops. Someone tried to present an idea to the city council that maybe we could open up a skatepark so they could have somewhere to skate and not destroy anyone's property, and that got shut down. Because it would cost too much. There's no youth center, no basketball courts (well, there are but it's property of the college which is now out of session, so everything is locked up, and if you try to play a game there, you'll get arrested for trespassing), there's a mall, but almost every store in it is out of business...so when I say that there is nothing to do in this town, I mean there is NOTHING. But our leaders are doing something about it - they put up billboards, right!
So over the past few weeks, I have taken over hosting duties for the open mic nights at a local coffeehouse. I've got a pretty good reputation because of having read at the open mics for roughly three years myself, and I want to try to use that to maybe fight the whole "this town sucks" vibe. But it's kind of a losing battle. Very few people show up, when they do almost no one participates, and most of the time they don't even stay to watch. They use the cafe as a place to drop off their stuff, then go outside and smoke, and throw their trash on the sidewalk in front of the store. The owner of the cafe is getting frustrated and has threatened to shut down the open mic night until next fall when the college students come back. I'm getting frustrated because A: no one in any kind of authority position in my town seems to give a shit about anything except for keeping up their Mayberry image. B: outside of myself and two friends who are helping me, no one is doing anything to change this situation, and it feels like what we're doing isn't anything at all. C: the kids bitch about how there's nothing to do, but when someone takes it upon themselves to try to get
something started, they basically just shit all over it.
I have no intention of giving up, but I am getting damn exhausted.
TL;DR edition: BLUUAAGAGHHHHHAHAAAAHHHHUUUGGGHHH!!!!!
