Galveston
Galveston is a barrier island about an hours drive south of Houston. If you don't know
what a barrier island is, basically it's a pile of sand in shallow water. We have beaches,
but they're lousy. The sand is all brown, and it makes the water all muddy. Since the whole stupid
island is just a pile of sand, we have to take all these measures to keep it from being washed away,
like building piles of rocks, or pouring concrete into the sea. Whenever some jerks beachhouse
gets swept away and they ask for insurance money, the Insurance people sing that "The foolish
man built his house upon the sand" song they made me sing in Sunday school, and don't pay up.
Some people surf there. Not me. We have a lot of records, like:
the largest uncovered sulfur deposit
the third most polluted body of water in the U.S. (Galveston bay)
the highest teen pregnancy rate (so I hear)
And probably many more, but I'm too depressed already. One interesting thing about it is that
there are a whole lot of housing projects there, but also the medical branch of the University
of Texas. So as a result, the high school, Ball High is full of hundreds of uneducated fools,
but also all the doctors' kids. The school has the "GP" or "general preparation" classes and,
of course, the "honors" classes. It's like two different worlds, but then you have to take PE,
or some such, and there's no honors PE, as well there shouldn't be. So you sit on the bleachers,
and the coaches usually like you, since you haven't tried to stab anyone so far, and the rest
play basketball until they get tired, at which point they come up and ask "are you smart?" without a hint of irony.
(that was a "run-on" setence.) All this, of course, assumes that "you" are in honors.
If you don't want to spend all your time surfing or fishing, Galveston is pretty boring.
Getting drunk is a popular pastime, as is watching TV. Up until recently, we didn't even have a movie theater,
at least not one to which that old "they check in, but they don't check out" thing didn't apply.
(Yes, I'm talking about the Broadway theater, G-town natives) But now we have a new one, and
that nasty sticky layer has yet to make itself comfortable, and it still has most of the seats,
and the sound sucks, but most of all... IT'S REALLY REALLY UGLY. The color scheme is the sort: "Oh, look,
I found a free sample of electric yellow, we can use it to cover that spot, and, hey! someone
finished painting their house muave, and threw out a perfectly good half bucket, so we can paint
this area..." and so on. The word "planned" does not come to mind when you see how it was painted.
"Anything but planned" you'll say. This just in! The other theater, broadway, is no longer a theater! now it is one of those corpse depots, the "eternal rest homes" or whatever. That really freaked me out when I first saw it!
The fishing, however, is pretty good. We used to have a boat, so we could go offshore and catch mackerel and snapper, and so on. There's also flounder and trout and redfish closer in.
That's fine every now and then, but it's not enough to keep me amused. Galveston's boring-ness is really why Rethaoiate formed. We got bored and started making skits. They were really dumb, though. But we've gained experience, and leveled up, and now we are making movies, not just skits! and while they're still dumb, now they're also really funny! all right! Rethaoiate forever!
Oh, I forgot to mention the cephalopod research center. A cephalopod is an animal like an octopus or a squid,
soft and squishy, with tentacles. It means "head foot", but why, I don't know. Anyway, Galveston has the
cephalopod research center. I suppose this means there's a cehphalopod development center somewhere,
to complete the R+D duality, but I have yet to locate it. Maybe I should be looking for a cephalopod
relaxation center, which would complete the R+R duality. Anyway, Galveston has a large building with lots
of squids, and presumably they perform experiments on them.