TEHAM Interlude: Places We Can Do Without

Michigan is an amazing place. I didn't say "good," just amazing. There's a lot of variety here. From place to place, the people are different, the culture is different, the attitudes, the landscape, the economics, the weather, et cetera.

But let's be honest: while Michigan is shaped like a hand, many of these parts of Michigan are like extra fingers or knobby warts that should just be sliced off to avoid embarrassment. And I'm the surgeon who's enthusiastic for the job. Nurse, scalpel!

1. The Upper Peninsula. These fucking worthless freeloaders need to be cut loose. They take tons of our tax money, produce basically nothing, and root for the Packers. The Packers! No one who takes my tax money is going to root for Green Bay. Fuck you, Yoopers.
2. Western Michigan. Statistics show that 35% of people who live in western Michigan are named Kyle van der Sloot. With that many ultra-religious Dutch people floating around, you'd think that they'd have the decency to grow long beards and wear overalls. Alas. While I am a white person, to be around that many other white people is really terrifying. I did some work there recently, and I almost hugged the first black person I saw. Thank god for Benton Harbor, because western Michigan is a cesspool of Amway, Republicans, and Caucasianosity.
3. Traverse City. You may have been to Traverse City. It's a picturesque town that attracts lots of tourists. And those tourists have ruined it with their drunkenness, littering, and absolute intolerance of places that don't have corporate coffee shops on every corner. Next time you visit Traverse City, you should remind yourself once a day that the locals hate your fucking guts for destroying their once-beautiful town. Also: behind your backs, they call you "conesuckers" and "fudgies" and they throw rocks at your car.
   
4. Northeast Michigan. I don't even know what's up there in the Alpena area, except that it's probably one of those places where bowhunters like to hang out. So the decent thing to do would be to slice it off and set it adrift in Lake Huron. We would have done it already, but Lake Huron has sent us a letter stating, "Eat cock. I don't want your stinking Alpena."
   
5. The Thumb. From the fleshy part of the hand between the index finger and the thumb, draw a line that starts west of Saginaw and curves around to end south of New Baltimore. This part will be ceded to Canada, if they want it.
6. Everything along the I-96 corridor starting at Kent Lake and ending at Lansing. This corridor is like a cancer that needs to be excised and then set on fire. Many people who fled the Detroit area due to the threat of brown neighbors ended up here. They shit up the roads every single day and we are all tired of them. Rumor has it that the KKK is still active in Howell. Fuck Fowlerville, Webberville, Lansing, Howell, Brighton, fuck it all.
7. Southern Michigan. This place is known for its decrepit small towns, unemployment, and rest stops. I have been to Adrian, people, and it is awful. Hand it over to Ohio and get it over with.
8. Macomb County. Granted, much of this area qualifies as "The Thumb," but the entire county deserves a special mention nonetheless. We have put up with this place long enough, and now it's time to sell it for scrap. This county contains towns like Warren, Romeo, Fraser, Mt. Clemens, Sterling Heights, and Chesterfield. They're all simply terrible, and all in totally different ways. The true horror presented by this area, however, is Roseville. The guidos that line their modified hatchbacks up and down Gratiot to show off their Ed Hardy shirts and fake tans preset a threat to our way of life that is worse than communism and global warming combined.
9. Oakland County. Oakland County is a sight. It's truly impressive that a place with that much money and that much commerce would be so impossible to get around in. I think we can all recognize that without Oakland County, the rest of us would probably starve. But does everyone have to drive they way up there? And while we're talking about it, why do they have to act the way they do? I feel like every time I cross 8 Mile (headed north) I'm taking my life in my hands. Most places in the world, you'd be dragged from your car and beaten with a bat if you drove like that.
   
10. Downriver. I'm not saying anything here that hasn't already been said by anyone who's ever driven down roads like Fort St. or Dix-Toledo. Most of Michigan's inexplicable hillbilly population seems to have settled in this area, and it shows. If you came from Tennessee, and you moved to Michigan, you settled in Downriver. Thanks to the car and steel industries, this part of Michigan is an environmental disaster nearly as bad as the Saginaw River area. There are towns like Ecorse or Melvindale where grass has a hard time growing, due to the toxicity of the soil. Honestly, everything along Lake Erie, from River Rouge to Monroe, just needs to be covered in quicklime and buried, where the shells of its dollar stores and American Legion halls can be explored by future generations who have discovered an immunity to whatever it is that made Downriver Downriver.