New England
New England is a subregion of the Northeastern United States which includes the states of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Its name is derived from the fact that the limey/pommy Puritans settled here in the 1620s and established British colonies.
New York Is Not Part of New England[edit]
Learning that New York is not part of New England is essential for avoiding conflict with a current or former resident of the Northeast. Glance at the map to the top-right and note the absence of Long Island and Upstate New York, which border New England on the south and the west. While nobody else in the world really gives a shit, these people are obsessed with this trivial fact and delight in momentarily going insane over any geographical transgression uttered in their presence.
Why New England?[edit]
The first English settlers endured a difficult voyage to the new world, so it's understandable that after finally seeing dry land at Plymouth Rock, they decided to stay. If the Pilgrims were smarter they would have sailed another few days south, perhaps to the area now known as Roanoke, where they would have enjoyed much better weather for agriculture and general comfort. Perhaps living in this miserably cold and dreary area reminded them of jolly old England, who knows?
These Jokers Must Be Crazy[edit]
Seriously, these people are fucking crazy and it's a tradition that goes back centuries. In 1692, a couple of crazy little girls screamed and rolled around on the floor, claiming to be poked by unseen demons, and the result was the infamous Salem Witch Trials. Confused and superstitious colonists rounded up anyone with the slightest eccentricity, assuming that facial ticks and common abnormalities were obvious signs of praying to Satan and using witchcraft to afflict the community. Pretty soon, everyone was running to the authorities with spurious allegations of neighbors who were in allegiance with the Devil. Over the summer they managed to hang 20 people and imprisoned 150, not to mention everyone else that was accused and faced the impromptu inquisition.
Fast-forward 329 years to the present and you'll notice that not much has changed. In 2007, morning commuters in Boston saw these catchy, blinking promotional advertisements for Adult Swim's Aqua Teen Hunger Force and promptly went berzerk, thinking it was a terrorist attack. Who in the hell makes a bomb with attractive blinking lights and a Mooninite extending his middle finger on them? Why would you plant these bombs in highly visible places, eliminating the element of surprise? How come nobody got upset about the fact that nobody reported seeing them being placed in the first place? It's patently crazy if you think about it but people from New England don't know any better. It doesn't take much for the "pitchforks and torches" mentality to take over on a moment's notice, so always be careful when dealing with someone from New England.
Essential services[edit]
Unlike the more civilized areas of America with high population densities, New England retains the ancient system of Volunteer Fire Departments, which are staffed exclusively by people with day jobs in other professions. Local government operates the same way, with all the essential services that keep the citizenry safe in the hands of moonlighting employees who don't want to do their jobs. Buying or owning a piece of property in New England means that you'd better be a qualified Geologist, Building Inspector, Health Inspector and Fire Marshall because those people aren't going to lift a finger until you or someone else gets killed. Then, they'll conclude that you were negligent and totally responsible for anything that happened.
A perfect example is the 2003 Station Nightclub Fire in Rhode Island, where 100 people were killed and 200 injured when the band "Great White" managed to ignite the insulation above the stage on fire while using a pyrotechnic. Heaven forbid the Fire Marshall actually be able do his job and inspect such a venue on a regular basis, perhaps noticing the illegal materials being used to insulate the loud music from whining neighbors. Instead, a volunteer Fire Marshall's job is more focused on assigning blame and complaining about a lack of manpower and resources to do the job properly. If you live in New England, it's every man for himself.
Southern New England[edit]
The Rich Bastard Zone[edit]
The Southwestern corner of Connecticut, gateway to New York City, is mostly populated with New England's wealthiest people. If you collectively pried open the wallets of these people with a crowbar, the sun would likely be blotted out by the swarm of moths that escaped in the process. This is the land where wannabe Kennedy family member Michael Skakel beat a 15 year-old girl to death with a golf club and escaped justice for 25 years.
Anyone who has seen a comedy interview done on a New York City street with the general public is familiar with the requisite 50 year-old woman who refuses to stop for the camera and says "go fuck yourself" to the interviewer. Those women are not from New York, they're actually residents of the New England rich bastard zone who commute there by day and return to their gated communities in Connecticut by night. Most of the evil, pinched, bitter faces that you see in New York belong to these imports.
There are a few heavily populated sections of Southern New England, where the hired help live like rats and cockroaches, but most estates are built on numerous acres of land which are painstakingly manicured by armies of illegal immigrants. (Is that a well maintained public park or is that somebodies front lawn!?) These rich bastards are basically the "elitists" that Republicans talk about fighting against but the reality is that anyone with any political aspirations in America had better be prepared to assume the position with these rich fuckers or get crushed like a tiny bug.
The Fringes[edit]
The rest of Connecticut and Rhode Island is a tangled mess of ghettos and semi-wealthy neighborhoods. Properties are mostly strewn with used appliances and junked cars, discarded in plain sight. Don't let the postcards and magazine pictures fool you, it's an ugly place to live. Unseen in most scenic photos are the hidden landfills lurking behind every tree. The highway systems are a complete joke, with perpetual major construction projects clogging the downtown of every major city. A recent construction project just outside of Waterbury on Interstate 84, which lasted years and tested the nerves of many commuters, had to be completely ripped back open because nobody bothered to check and see if the storm drains were actually connected and working before completely paving the roadway. They made a nice concrete median with storm drains every 100 yards on each side of the highway but underneath the metal grates there's nothing but an unfinished hole in the ground which leads nowhere.
People from all areas of New England have a bad habit of moving to other parts of the country and insist that they "know how to drive in bad weather", unlike people in their new location, but the sad truth is they're absolutely full of shit and drive like sissies the minute a drop of water hits the road. Southern New England, however, happens to be the area where most of them have relocated from. I wonder why?
Despite the Puritan facade that a Southern New England resident likes to promote, their elected officials have more sex and money scandals than can possibly be documented in this space. Whether having sex with small children or getting their vacation homes decked out like disgraced Alaska Senator Ted "The Internet Is a Series of Tubes" Stevens, politicians in Connecticut and Rhode Island are far more deviant than their constituency, but not by much.
Southern New England is also a well-known baseball war zone where New York Yankees fans and Boston Red Sox fans territory overlaps. People from other parts of the country and world be forewarned, do not become entangled in the vicious egotistic battles between Yankee and Red Sox fans, no matter how hard they try to make you choose a side.
The areas surrounding and making up Cape Cod have been know since back in 'Nam to be bustling, overcrowded, tourist-infested rich people havens that contain an unusual abundance of wiccans and ice cream shops.
Central New England[edit]
The state of Massachusetts encompasses Central New England, with Boston being its sole major metropolis. Despite a few blighted areas, the state of Massachusetts if far more tidy than their unruly neighbors to the south. While used appliances and junked cars are mostly disposed of properly, Massachusetts is better known for its numerous, ugly, abandoned brick buildings and factories leftover from the 1800s. Out in the boondocks, Churches outnumber businesses by a margin of 2:1, another relic of a bygone era. As a state, Massachusetts is one of the more liberal areas of the country, recognizing gay marriage, and reducing minor possession of marijuana to a mere citation.
Boston[edit]
- The Accent
Have you ever wondered where that obnoxious Bostonian accent came from? Have you ever noticed how everyone in the Kennedy clan has a complete mastery of the accent? That's because the style of speech which is practiced by these people is genetic in origin. The Kennedy boys have been working like rabbits to spread their seed throughout Massachusetts for decades, is it any wonder that everyone talks funny?
The Bostonian accent has many flavors but the one underlying theme is the inability to pronounce the letter "R" at the end of any word. Examples:
A Bostonian can say the following words like everyone else who understands the English language:
- Rack
- Rock
- Rip
- Reach
A Bostonian is incapable of pronouncing the following words correctly:
- Car (sounds like "caah")
- Far (sounds like "faah")
- Par (sounds like "paah")
- Jar (sounds like "jaah")
Notice the obvious difference? A Bostonian is incapable of pronouncing the letter "R" at the end of a word but is perfectly capable of pronouncing the letter "R" in words that begin with it.
- The Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox are the only Major League Baseball team in New England. Unlike fans of the evil Yankee empire of bloated free-agent salaries, Red Sox fans have formed a solid yet dysfunctional bond with the team based on 100 years of mediocre baseball before recent successes. Red Sox fans are indoctrinated at an early age, learning how to extend their middle finger by age 3 and learning to use this gesture at appropriate times by age 5.
Recent successes of the Red Sox, combined with the recent failures of the Yankees, has created a more bold fanatic, ready for violence at the slightest provocation. Even the Red Sox players have suddenly become prone to eruptions of violence, especially when it's directed at helplessly old and fat Yankee coaches. The sight of a muscular athlete hurling a pasty white senior to the turf is what Yankees versus Red Sox baseball is all about.
Cape Cod[edit]
For six months a year, Cape Cod is the destination for hordes of rich bastards who prance exclusively on the most pristine beaches in all of New England. In the springtime, spoiled white-collar Napoleons spend most of their time at the office bragging to each other about how extravagant their summer vacation in Cape Cod will be. As soon as warmer temperatures return to New England, roadways are packed with wealthy pilgrims headed to the Cape. Road rage incidents are common as these highly competitive sociopaths flex their sense of entitlement while hurling insults and lobsters at each other on gridlocked roads and highways.
Tips For The Poor: If you can't afford to stay multiple weeks in astronomically priced vacation homes, don't bother attempting to visit Cape Cod in the summer. During the winter months, you are free to explore the natural beauty of Cape Cod as the area is mostly abandoned. If you sit in your car and crank the heat up, you can even pretend that it's summertime and you're ready to enjoy a leisurely swim on your own private beach.
Foxboro[edit]
Foxboro is the home of New England's only National Football League team, the Patriots. Before recently dominating the NFL, the Patriots sported a logo showing a bent-over Minuteman grimacing, which also serves as a fair assessment of the franchises level of success before the year 2000. The only previous highlight for the team was a 1985 Super Bowl appearance where they were completely humiliated by the Chicago Bears. In 2007, the Patriots recorded only the second undefeated regular season record in NFL history but failed to win their Super Bowl appearance against the New York Giants, forever leaving the Miami Dolphins alone in the history books as the only team to complete an undefeated season. Unable to accept 2nd place in the history books, Patriot fans have consumed themselves with a messianic victimization complex that constitutes either blasphemy or idolatry but comprehension of religious and philosophical contradictions has never been popular in New England.
Northern New England[edit]
Every Autumn in Northern New England, the leaves on the many deciduous trees change into unnecessarily vibrant colors and proceed to have sex with everyone's cone cells. Oh no, it's not rape, because you enjoy it. You know you do.
Oh, and 85% of the population has a serious addiction to maple syrup, but only 4% of them actually go to rehabilitation. It really shows the respectability of the people, doesn't it?
Vermont and New Hampshire[edit]
Life in the rural north can pretty much be summed up by watching reruns of the Newhart show on television, which depicts the daily life of a Vermont Innkeeper. Bob Newhart plays the little rich bastard from out-of-state who's living his dream of moving to Vermont and running a bed and breakfast. Naturally, he has a spouse that is way too sexy to make for a believable couple and the thought of them having sex with each other brings horrible images to one's mind. Native northerners are accurately represented by Tom Poston as the developmentally disabled handyman and William Sanderson as Larry, with his inbred pair of brothers who both happen to be named Darrell. One expects that Dudley Do-Right of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police should be bursting through the door at any minute, perhaps serving an arrest warrant on one of the brothers.
Vermont and New Hampshire are popular tourist attractions in the fall, as people who are too poor to vacation on Cape Cod drive up north to look at the leaves change color. These people are called "leafers" or "leafpeepers" by the local population, who are continuously torn between hating them as unwelcome intruders and making a living off their tourist dollars.Often, local residents choose to do both. These "leafers" park in the breakdown lane on the highway and leave their cars to get stolen or hit while they jump over the guard rail and stare at the trees for endless hours to watch the trees die. Local industry is fairly limited to bed and breakfast operations and the production of vast quantities of cheese and maple syrup.
The capital city of Vermont is Montpelier but nobody would be surprised if you didn't know that. Montpelier is unrecognizable as a capital city of the United States of America, looking more like a small town in the 1950s.
Maine[edit]
The caricature on the right pretty much tells you almost anything you really need to know about life in Maine: obscure politicians that nobody has ever heard of, lighthouses, and the occasional Moose. Well north of the normal border with Canada, residents of Maine should be considered Canadians. While natural beauty abounds in the state of Maine there's really not much else up there, so permanent residence in it's harsh climate and persistent man-eating black fly populations should only be attempted by hermits and survivalists. They also have a gross drink called Moxie. It's basically root beer, which is sweet and bitter, if you took out all the sweet and just replaced it with more bitter.
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