What it all boils down to is City vs. Country. Everyone comes down on one side or the other because no one loves the suburbs unless they have access to large amounts of prescription pharmaceuticals, in which case I would argue that they still don't love it. Beige acceptance is a better term, I think.
"I Heart New York"
"I Beigely Accept Gilbert, AZ"
There's a t-shirt to be made from that phrase as soon as I can figure out a picture that succinctly embodies beige acceptance. I would imagine it looks somewhat like a Ford Taurus.
But, as I so often do, I digress. There are many a point and counter-point to the great City/Country debate. Convenient location or wide open space? More in touch with the world or more in touch with nature? Easy access to arts and culture or easy access to woodland print bib overalls? The back and forth has been a at a cultural stalemate since this country came into existence.
Until now.
The BBC reports that a group of British scientists have declared that city life is putting modern urbanites on the fast track to immunity from a variety of diseases. This new finding represents a paradigm shift in the British medical establishment, whose previous recommendation for effective disease control had been to supplement a spoonful of sugar with each dose of medicine. While this strategy had been deemed ineffectual in the past, the Brits stuck by it, claiming that while it might be ineffectual, it was ineffectual "in the most delightful way".
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| Avoidance of singing chimney sweeps is also recommended. |
The study claims that, by living in constant contact with all the other filthy, dirty people who make up a large percentage of every city's population, we are making ourselves genetically resistant to many forms of illnesses that have historically plagued humanity. What has basically happened is that, over the last couple thousand years that people have been living in cities, there have been widespread epidemics ranging from leprosy to the black plague to the flu. As each wave of disease has washed over a population, there are people who are less resistant to disease that are killed and there are more resistant people who survive. The survivors pass their tough-ass genes on to their children and so on and so on. Then, all these disease-hardened post-humans go and live really close to each other and get exposed to infectious diseases an a much higher basis than their country cousins, which is essentially like getting free immunization shots every day of your life. Remember how everyone was terrified of H1N1 last year?
"So dis flu show's up in New Yawk, right? An' it's all like, 'Hey, fawkin check me out", right? An' we was like, Jimmy was dere, ask 'im. We was like, 'Not for nuttin' but, ah, why don' yooze go an FAWK yuh self', am I right?"
That's not to say that city folks don't get sick. They do, just like anyone else, but they are also successfully fighting off a much higher number of bugs than one would have to out in the sticks. This is why you probably won't get sick when you eat a brown-water hot dog before washing your hands when you get off the subway and your visiting relatives from Louisiana get explosive diarrhea. Every generation is gradually getting closer to being a group of people who are naturally more resistant to disease and infections on one hand and a bunch of sickly, evolution-denying inbreds on the other. Guess who lives where.
While Mom Nature is doing her best to transform us into walking bottles of Purell, we are actively trying our damnedest to undo all of her hard work. See, that same evolutionary theory that's making us more disease resistant? Works the same way every time you wash some anti-bacterial soap down the drain. Right now, diseases are living in their very own Dark Ages with antibiotics standing in for the bubonic plague. You know how every hand sanitizer commercial claims to kill %99.9 of germs? Well that last %0.01 is going to be a real bitch to deal with someday.
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| I'ma gonna kick yer ass, boy! |
Scientists have discovered an array of antibiotic resistant bacteria ranging from relatively benign to... oh wait, antibiotic resistant bacteria are working together now. Well, we were a nice species while we lasted, I suppose.
But all is not roses in the big city. We suffer from terrorist threats, high crime and an often ridiculous housing market. Here's a quick example of just how bad it's getting in NYC. Yes it's true. Someone in Brooklyn is renting out a 8x10 Rubbermaid tool shed in their backyard for $500/month. Indeed, you would have to be quite the tool to rent this place out. Oh, is it really "probably" best only to use it as a studio during the winter months? Yeah I guess $500 a month is a totally reasonable amount to pay for an unheated fucking shack in the middle of the fucking winter. I'm sure frostbite will "probably" only take a couple of fingers and toes, so what's your problem? People in West Virgina do all the time! It's the new trend! Ironic shack dwelling, soon to be followed by ironic coal mining, ironic toothlessness and ironic banjo playing. Oh, I'm sorry. Ironic banjo playing is already a trend. I just...I mean... Here. Have a picture.
See, it's perfect for ironically playing your toy dual-necked banjo while idly wondering why everything good in life seems to keep passing you by and all the people you bring home for the night never return your phone calls. Come January, someone will "probably" have committed suicide in that thing and the rent will go up to $550 because it comes standard with the angry ghost of some hipster chick. This is what we've boiled ourselves down to: we can withstand the ravages of whatever the bacterial world can throw at us but voluntarily give them a hand in destroying us because we think dirt is icky BUT we're OK with paying out the ass to live like a hobo.
OK, Country. You win.
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