A couple of weeks ago, J. Matt made a list of the 10 lamest states  in our great Republic.  Topping the list was Missouri, which I drove through once.  Since I didn't even stop to pee on my way through, I have no way of knowing how bad Missouri actually is, so I'm willing to take J. Matt's word that it sucks.  Where I take issue is with the ranking of the state of Oklahoma at number 4.  J. Matt has never been to Oklahoma, so he placed it #4 because he couldn't think of a reason to go there.   Fortunately, I'm here to set the record straight.  I have been to Oklahoma, and nothing could be worse.   Oklahoma is unquestionably, by far the worst of the 50 states.

      Its no coincidence that of all the 48 contiguous United States, Oklahoma was the one we shunted the Indians into.  Here was a land so foul, useless and disgusting that it was fit only for savages.  I would hate the white man too if I had to live in that shithole.  Oklahoma was the scene of the last great land rush in the U.S. at the end of the 19th century.   Meaning that we only bothered to stop and settle in Oklahoma after every decent place in the country had been filled up.

      The main problem with Oklahoma is that everything in the entire state is dirty.  Everything.  The houses are dirty, the stores are dirty, the public places are dirty, and the people are dirty.  The dirt is everywhere on everything.  Most of the state is given over to dirt.  The rest seems to be devoted to cattle ranching, oil drilling, or Fort Sill, the U.S. Army Field Artillery Center.  Why build a massive artillery range in Oklahoma?  Because there is absolutely no danger of hitting anything of value.  My Dad was at Fort Sill when he was in the Army back in the 70s, and the only story I can remember him telling about it was that he and every other guy in his unit went out for a weekend pass and came back with the clap.  So the women in Oklahoma are especially dirty.  They also play a dirty trick with the beer there.  Beer in Oklahoma is 3.2% alcohol by volume, as opposed to 5% in the rest of the country.  So you can't even have a decent drink to make the fact that you're stuck in the ass-crack of the country any more bearable.

      Some may claim the Oklahoma has some great sports programs at its two major universities.  Aside from the fact that Barry Sanders once graced the abominable toilet with his awesomeness, I have to disagree.  Aside from being the breeding ground for big, no-talent NBA ass-clowns like Brian Reeves and Eduardo Najera, the state is also home to the University of Oklahoma's vastly overrated football program, which couldn't even beat K-State to win the title of its overrated conference.  Then they gave Jason White a Heisman trophy.  Years from now, people will say, "Who the fuck is Jason White?"  while Larry Fitzgerald and Eli Manning are big-ass stars in the NFL.

      All that is horrible about Oklahoma can be encapsulated in one experience.  When I was younger, my Dad, my Brother and I took a long road trip out to Colorado.  We took our time, stopping and camping, viewing various attractions along the way.  In Oklahoma we stopped to spend the night at Lake Thunderbird State Park.  Lake Thunderbird proved to be a giant man-made mud puddle in the middle of the Great Plains.  The "beaches" were basically just barren strips of red Oklahoma dust that ran down to the red, muddy water of the lake.  It must have been a Friday or Saturday evening, because the place was full of dirty, sweaty, stringy little mullet sporting Okies in tank tops and mesh baseball caps and their flabby, slatternly wives and girlfriends trying to get wasted on near-beer.  The women were almost all grotesquely fat, with pounds of flab attempting to burst out of their halter-tops and stirrup pants.  Their innumerable hordes of half naked children were running barefoot through the dust, knocking over piles of spent beer cans and miraculously not cutting their feet on the shattered beer bottles that littered the beach.  They were running in and out of the water, rolling around in the dust so that each child was covered with a fine film of dirt.  What made it worse was that there were a bunch of rednecks with powerboats out on the lake, whose idea of a good time was to bring the boats in as close to shore as possible while hooting and shouting obscenities.  This put an oily slick down on the top of the water as well as sending churning, viscous waves in to the shore, which the little Okies frolicked in, emerging from the water in a glistening coat of oily mud.  It was the ugliest place I've ever been in my life.