I have always described this site as being sort of a personal webpage akin to some emo crap LiveJournal/MySpace gayness that for some reason or other ends up getting visited by a bunch of people I've never met before.  On the one hand, for most people I know this is their primary source of information for what's going on in my life (which, however sad that may be, is probably true mostly because I suck at returning e-mails and voice messages), but on the other hand the number of hits I receive every week sort of compels me to try and write things that will be entertaining to those folks I don't really know all that well.  I include this preface as a warning that this article may not be all that entertaining.

This week the two things are going to sort of smash up again.  As some of you may already know, the Amazing Bens are more than likely going to be on the move soon.  While I do so love the sunny warm climate of Eastern Massachusetts, Hot Andrea's job contract is coming to an end on July 31st, so we're going to have to move somewhere that she can find work.  As a method of protecting her relative anonymity I'm not going to get into what she does for a living, but suffice to say that there's not a whole lot of job opportunities out there for someone in her particular field.  So finding a new job more than likely means picking up and moving on an epic cross-country adventure.  Where will that leave us?  We have no idea.  This week I'm going to give you the four states she has interviewed in, and a list of pros and cons for the move.

Washington, DC

The nation's capital is the home of such luminaries as the President and Congress and such national sports powerhouses such as the Washington Nationals and the Washington Insert Racist Term Here, so how can you go wrong?  If nothing else, you're in the one place in the world that doesn't have a chance of getting air-raided by B-2 Bombers.  Plus all the museums and parks and shit are free, so if Andrea and I ever get over our social phobia and complete disdain for all forms of humanity we'll be able to I guess hit up like the Smithsonian or the... uh... National... um... Park?  I'll be honest - I have no goddamned clue what museums are there, but I'm the sort of guy who would go to the motherfucking United States Museum of Salt and Postage Stamps if I thought I could get in for free.

Pros:

We'll be able to drive to Camden Yards in Baltimore and get Orioles-Red Sox seats front row behind home plate for roughly about a quarter of what it would cost us to sit in the nosebleed bleacher seats at Fenway.  Also I'll be able to take one of those pictures that makes it look like I have the Washington Monument for a dong.

Cons:

It's the first place that's going to be nuked in the event of World War III, and I don't think we're in a financially stable enough place right now to be able to afford one of those radiation-proof underground fallout shelters and a half-dozen M4A1s re-chambered to fire captured Soviet ammunition.  Plus Andrea's got an ex-boyfriend that lives there, and even though she hasn't spoken with any of her exes in like ten years I try to make it a habit of cultivating an irrational hatred of every guy she's ever dated.  Either way, moving to the same city as one of your mortal attack-and-kill-on-sight sorts of enemies is rarely a good idea.

North Carolina

Now I've heard that North Carolina has a lot of really nice places, and that the people there are very polite and kind and blah blah blah, but we're not talking about moving to Raleigh or Charlotte or whatever the fuck city the Carolina Panthers and Carolina Hurricanes are based out of -- I'm talking about moving right into the black heart of downtown Bumfuck, NC - where the population never breaks five hundred, where the city limits are home to more tractor supply stores than teeth, and where the hip places to hang out are the First Fire Holiness Ash and Brimstone Satan-Fisting Baptist Church of Bumfuck and Super Wal-Mart, which are both conveniently located at the intersection containing the only paved roads and traffic light in town.

Pros: 

Sure I'd probably crap my pants the first dozen times I heard some local yokel plucking a banjo, but eventually I think it would be really hilarious to go out and BUY a banjo of my own, learn the song from Deliverance and use it to freak out out-of-towners.  Like every time someone comes to stay with us, I can run out into the woods and start rocking the Dueling Banjos to give our guest nightmares.  But then again I'm a sick asshole.

Another bonus to moving down South is the food.  I'm talking about Goddamned Waffle House, the one place in the world you can get a double-order of cheese-covered grease at two in the morning for a buck ninety-nine and wash it down with a hot cup of coffee-flavored used cooking oil.  I also miss all-you-can-eat buffets, which Boston has a dire shortage of.  There's really nothing like a Chinese place that lets you eat until you hurl in the parking lot, and then return to the dining room to eat more.  I would also probably give up a kidney to live in a place with a twenty-four hour fried chicken shack again.  They don't do that up here either, which is a goddamned shame.

Also I'm pretty psyched about buying a pair of Confederate Flag boxer shorts.

Cons: 

Um, how about it's in the middle of fucking nowhere?  Or the fact that we're both going to be labeled "Yankees" or "city folk" the first time we open our mouths and use a sentence that doesn't include the words "truck", "dog", "shotgun", "rebel", "y'all" and/or "ain't", despite the fact that both of us are actually originally from the South?  Maybe it's the possible shortage in qualified dental practitioners or the fact that the entire town is going to have us burned at the stake as witches when they don't see us at Church on Sunday?  You tell me.

Texas

There are a couple of jobs available for Andrea in Texas, the home of Mission Control, gunfighters, rodeos and the dudes who make those calculators that weigh like fifteen pounds, measure all numbers by their relation to the mass and density of the planet Earth and can successfully tabulate the square root of infinity out to two thousand decimal places.  It's also probably the only place in the world you can buy authentic Tex-Mex food.  All in all we're not too pumped about Texas because the jobs she's interviewing for all have really short-term contracts.

Pros:

Dallas is nice.  I wouldn't mind checking out the Alamo either.  Plus you can't discount the fact that we'll be able to get some kickass Mexican food and yell "Don't Mess with Texas" super-loud all the time to anybody who will listen to us.  We will also have a chance of getting arrested by Walker, Texas Ranger, which would be high in the running for the coolest thing ever.

Cons:

Dallas is also the home of the Dallas Cowboys, one of my top-three most-hated sports franchises of all time.  I wouldn't even go to their stupid fucking hole-in-the-ceiling stadium to see my Eagles play because then I'd have to sit next to Cowboys fans, who are high in the running for the biggest dickhead jackasses in sports.  Shitty TO-employing sub-par non-playoff NFL franchises aside I know that there's supposed to be "good football" in Texas, probably because every single person who has ever lived in the state won't shut the hell up about what a big deal it is, but while I love football it's sort of hard for me to get excited about it since I spent twenty years living in Florida, which unarguably has a universally-better football program than Texas.

The big con for Texas is blatantly obvious to anybody who's ever visited the state - it's fucking bigger than Ron Jeremy's libido and contains about as much substance as Tara Reid's cranial cavity.  You can seriously drive through the state for like five hours and not see anything.  And I don't mean like you won't see a landmark or a rest stop or a town or something - I mean you won't see anything other than grass and cow shit.  You don't even see the cows, but obviously they're out there because what the hell else could possibly produce cow shit.  Holy crap dude, I don't even know if Dallas was really that nice of a city, but after eight hours driving through the Texas countryside on a cross-country road trip we might as well have found fucking Shangri-La or El Dorado or some shit.  When the car finally stopped we all got out and kissed the ground like we were three Columbuses discovering America.

Also I don't own cowboy boots, a six-shooter or a ten gallon hat, and even if I did I don't have any confidence in my ability to pull that look off.

Is this the Texas countryside or the surface of the planet Mars?
You be the judge!

Oklahoma

Ah yes.  Oklahoma.  Where the wind comes sweeping down the plains, they tell me.  By some sick twist of fate, God has decided that it would be really fucking hilarious to move me to a state filled with people that hate me with the fire of a thousand barbecues for posting an update about how much their state sucks -- an update I didn't even write, mind you.  A state that has it's own theme song, which Andrea has been incessantly singing at the top of her lungs since she got the interview like two weeks ago.  It's like a broken record that's been possessed by Satan while he's on a shitty musical theater kick.

Aside from having now memorized the state's insufferable theme song, I have to say that I don't really know a damn thing about Oklahoma.  They've got Native Americans and buffalo, if we move there we will be living close to the Casa de Sexx, and in the two paragraphs I've written here I've almost misspelled it "Oklahomo" about five times.  I couldn't have even told you what part of the country it was in until about a week ago... I just sort of figured it was in the Southwest somewhere with like Arizona, not in the middle of the damn country.  Word is still out as to what that means in terms of getting a good quesadilla.

Pros:

Ironically, this is our first choice.  The job she's applying for is great, it pays well, and the cost of living there is so cheap that we'll be out of debt and hopefully house-shopping within maybe a year or two.  Plus we'll be pretty close to a big city so I should be able to find work or at least buy an ammunition tin shaped like Dale Junior's NASCAR without too much trouble.  Seeing a buffalo in real life would be totally sweet, and I bet you can gamble on the Indian Reservations.

Cons:

We'll be living in fucking Oklahoma.  There are tornadoes.  Andrea will never ever ever ever stop singing that goddamned song even if I paid her a million dollars and promised never to try and have sex with her again.  Beer maxes out at 3.2% alcohol.  The temptation to kill buffalo and drag it's carcass to a covered wagon Oregon Trail-style would be overwhelming and could potentially get me into a lot of trouble.  I will have to spend a good part of my time listening to people talk about how "not shitty" the shitty Big 12 Conference is, but then again I pretty much think that every conference that isn't the ACC or the SEC is shitty.