Las Californias

Unlike most Californians, I was actually born here. There aren't a lot of perks that come along with this fact, unless you count the exhilarating lack of ironic detachment I get from wearing apparel themed after the California flag.

Well, there are a few more perks, but I'm really not supposed to talk about them in mixed company. I mean with non-Californios, obviously, not racially. In fact I'm pretty sure if all of us natives were going to get together and start excluding the less-represented racial minorities, the middle-class white men like myself would be the first ones cast out to try our luck amongst the Iowans and Wyomingites. Wyomingites? Wyomingans. Wyomingers? I have no idea. Either way, I clearly mean: other white people.

Honestly though, the ups-is-downs-ism of majority-minority demographics is just one of the weird-ass, vaguely threatening things that I love about not just living here, but being from here. Another: there aren't a lot of other places to live where the Number 1 threat to your long-term health and physical and financial well-being is the ground. Earthquakes before? Piece of cake, almost never give them a thought.* Earthquakes during? Pure unadulterated terror, at the rootsiest, primal-est, most existential of all levels. Earthquake just after? Totally fucking awesome. You get to go check out the Cal Tech seismology lab website with all your friends and exactly the same time, you get to catalogue the angle of deviation of pictures on the walls to fill in any and all gaps in smalltalk for the next five to seven days,** you get to go straight back to picking at your salad of uncooked chard and warm candy cane beets with the maximum amount of re-composed ennui while drinking in the lingering panic of all the expats from places where bedrock is never your enemy.

California is a maddening, unwieldy, dysfunctional, unsustainable conglomeration of antagonistic physical needs and world views. All those things are given. Worse, it's all overseen by the lamest of figurehead governments, all branches of which have been gelded by a massively under-thought system of direct representation by a series of cynical and contradictory statewide ballot initiatives, which is responsible for giving this supposedly liberal state the great tradition of targeting the minorities least able to defend themselves for persecution with measures like Prop. 187 or Prop. 8.

Man, there was going to be a "but" there at the end and I lost it...

Oh yes! Look, there are some great things about California as well. Beaches and mountains... palm trees I guess, blah blah. That's all chamber of commerce bullshit. The bonds that tie us together are deep. Really deep. Which is not hard because there are places where the mantle of the earth is exposed. I think seismic instability is what holds us together. If the Central Valley is the heart of the state, then the San Andreas Fault is our aorta. And by that I mean it operates constantly under tremendous amounts of stress and is guaranteed to one day kill us.

Not only will it one day, it and all it's little shithead brother and sister faults have tried to kill us already. Like thousands of times. North and south, the whole state. Northridge, Loma Prieta, Sylmar, San Francisco, too many others to name. But these are the things we SoCal people can share with the NoCal people. You know, the people we hate the most. More than Texans or Floridians even, and that is saying something. But we're locked together in this completely meaningless struggle against the great undefeatable foe, Plate Tectonics. And to steal water from anywhere and everywhere we can because human life is not sustainable in these densities with the weather patterns and watersheds as they are. But sometimes your best buddy is the guy you hate the most because the needs of the moment dictate it. Haven't you ever seen Tango and Cash? Everything you need to know about this state is in that movie. E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.

We've stuck it out this long. Since 1850 we've been one state. And before that we were all the Alta California province of Mexico and of Nueva Espana before that. And now some dickhead tech nerd wants to break us up so he doesn't have to share his money with schools and roads in places in the bumblefuck outback of our state like Los Angeles and San Diego? No sir. As a native, I object. If we're getting broken up, it's going to be physically. By an earthquake. Shaken right off the earth like hose-water off a dog's back. We've earned it.

Or, no, I guess we could be broken up by a violent revolution caused by the ever widening of the gap between the rich and the poor, which this idiotic six Californias plan would exacerbate, intensify and possible precipitate. Hang on, I've just changed my own mind, sir. Objection withdrawn. I'd like to get a shot at looting what I imagine are your very well appointed homes. Proceed.

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*Feel free to double-check the veracity of that statement with my homeowner's insurance carrier.

**Depending on the Richter scale magnitude. If you're still talking about anything under a 4.5 a week later, you might as well start slipping in some "y'all" and "you betcha" into your conversations.