That's a onesie. For babies. With a wang joke on the front. Of a onesie. For an infant.

Dear Dallas,

We have been together for over twenty years now. Sure, we’ve taken a break from each other those times I moved to London and New York. But you have taken me back when I get sad and lonely and want to come back “home” to you. I appreciate that. I have defended you to the death in the face of the great criticism hurled your way by those who live in “cooler” cities. I defend your low cost of living. I defend you because you are where my friends live. I defend your artistic core that is hidden deep within a hard shell of suburbs and beltways and Hummers and straight ticket Republicans. The others say you’re bad and that you’re greedy and superficial and that you will give refuge to George W. Bush when he is finally relieved of his presidential duties. To them, I still defend you and claim that they don’t see what I see in you. That they don’t know the real you. That all that is just riff raff from outside the 635 loop tainting your image. Sure, I’ve got a permanent chip in my shin bone from when one of your city’s finest decided to haul me into jail for an expired registration sticker only to be kicked in the shin by a drunken lesbian in steel toed Doc Martens who swore I bore a striking resemblance to the girlfriend who had just broken up with her. But I chalked that whole thing up to a big misunderstanding and besides, the shin thing only bothers me in extremely cold weather.

Speaking of weather…..I know you didn’t ask to be settled and populated in the middle of tornado alley AND directly under the sun like a buffet spread under a warming lamp. But here’s the thing, I don’t wear tank tops. I don’t wear wife beaters. I don’t wear shirts without sleeves. Rarely do I enjoy wearing t-shirts without some sort of blazer or jacket over them. I enjoy wearing jeans and sleeves and maybe a light little jacket. Or a dress with tights. But I can’t do that. And furthermore, I have to deal with an insufferable barrage of questions when I refuse to wear seemingly mandatory weather-appropriate clothing. As if I walked into my local bar wearing diapers made of Laffy Taffy. Because of all of this, you make me lazy because I don’t like sweating so I just end up sitting around in air conditioning until the point in time where I have to bravely walk from my office to my car. Once in my car, I again pray to Air Conditioning Jesus to relieve me of my discomfort. Which makes me the lazy, fat American that everyone outside of Blue Collar Comedy fans love to ridicule. Now when I cheated on you with New York, I remember the horrors of trudging through the endless cold rain of October wearing an ill-advised “vintage” wool jacket (read: “wool jacket someone died in and then I subsequently bought second-hand and failed to have dry cleaned”) and thinking of how you were probably back home in Texas all temperate and affordable. But now I think back and other than the overwhelming smell of death that trailed behind me thanks to the secondhandedness of that coat, I do remember that jacket looking pretty nice. Let’s put it this way: you know me and you know I am not a summertime clothes sort of gal. I don’t like cutoff shorts and tank tops and shirts that desperately try to convey my love of surfing or something. I am not a very sporty girl. I like watching sports. At bars. Dark bars. With pints of beer in front of me. So stop trying to heat-stroke me into wearing all cotton and knit and being one of those people who wear flip flops to things other than pool parties and barbeques. It’s not going to work. I can’t move you further from the equator and you can’t make me enjoy tank tops.

Now that we’re on the topic of manner of dress, let me go ahead and delve into the truly irritating side of you. The biggest complaint about you that I hear is that you are a superficial and materialistic city that only values surgically-enhanced looks and working-for-daddy’s-law-firm money. I can’t rebuke that any longer because, well, it’s completely 100% true. You are basically a breeding ground for beauty pageant also-rans and liquor ambassadors. There’s a reason Tony Romo signed such a long contract. He must feel so comfortable in the Zoom Laser Whitened embrace of your unending quest to legally change your name to HottiezBurg. Your nightlife establishments are filled not with likeminded people looking to tie one on and talk trash about whatever current event really boils their blood. They instead are filled with men in expensive distressed denim all intellectually capable of nothing more than a few “hell yeah, bros!” desperately seeking to win the attentions (or drunken sexual favors) of a third year Marketing co-ed who earnestly talks about things like “visions” and “dreams” and “sincerity”. I wish you could just make them all go somewhere else where I don’t have to deal with them and their faux-machismo/earnest and humorless dance of retardation. I’m just trying to have a drink. Clear out.

Normally at this point in a scathing criticism like this one, I would offer some counterpoints about some of the good things you have to offer your citizens. But I’ve spent years doing that only to stop and ask myself if maybe I was wrong about you after all. You are cheap to live in because you insist on knocking down anything more than 40 years old like some sort of demented architectural Logan’s Run and building something cheap and trashy and consumer-driven in its’ place. Then in a final kick to the man vegetables, you intentionally make the new crappy building look old to diffuse the silliness of knocking down a perfectly good old building. You are cheap to live in because there’s always plenty of people who will work somewhere in your borders but choose to live in a town called Promise Ring or Chastity Cove somewhere 50 miles out of the city so that every day they will clog up the roads in their big Suburbans with their big tankards of coffee. All for the luxury of living near a Super Wal-Mart and not having to deal with brown people when not absolutely necessary.

In a horrific deluge of truth and facts and realizations, I have come to see that your sports franchises will never provide me, as a fan, the satisfaction of a championship title. So now on top of having to shield my passport and pretend to be Canadian when boarding an international flight, I now also have to distract the clerk when making a purchase with my Mavs check card. I have to try to muster the unconditional team love that it takes to root for a team featuring the World’s Douchiest Bimbo Afficianado (that’s you, Tones!) and a man whose outside interests include paralyzing fellow strip club patrons, humiliating women who are already so beaten down by life that they’ve taken to lapdancing and making light of all this behavior with self-aggrandizing appearances on World Wrestling showdowns. Neat! Your terrain is flat and ugly, your buildings and roads are wastefully built and horribly maintained, your weather is appalling. And you insist on putting cheese on or in all my food when I don’t want it and didn’t ask for it.

I’ve realized I don’t care to defend you anymore. I don’t care where Greggo is. I don’t care where you want to put a toll road. I don’t care about the super cell with hooked rotation that is bearing down on a town I have never heard of and never intend to visit but for some reason Pete Delkus thinks is more important than me seeing my stories. I don’t care to wade into the unending battle of Denton music scene v. Dallas music scene. Wake me when there’s a full-on Warriors-style battle in the Vista Ridge Mall parking lot. I don’t care enough to get up in arms about where you want to build a new condo. I don’t care about checking out yet another ridiculously pretentious restaurant that serves food on plates that could double as manhole covers where patrons can dine al fresco to better enjoy the breathtaking view of a bank drive through and the rear dumpster area of a 7-11.

You’re trying to be some sort of cultured international city with lofty aspirations of becoming a destination for something other than layovers and telecom conferences. But you should just be yourself. Throw on one of those hard hats that holds a beer can on each side and slip into that “No Fat Chicks” t-shirt and drop the act. No one’s buying it.

Hey, at least you still offer your citizens the exciting and unparalleled probability of being a victim of a violent crime. Keeps us on our toes. WE’RE NUMBER ONE!!! WE’RE NUMBER ONE!!!! CASTLE DOCTORINE FOR EVA!!!!!

Friends with benefits?

Love,
Amanda (von) Cobra

PS – Seriously? 95 degrees today? You're a dick.