Louisiana...the blue face state
Consider this:
Louisiana is usally 49th-50th out of 50 for all of the good things and 1st-3rd out of 50 for all of the bad things. It's one of the best-kept geopolitical secrects, but we make up the westernmost border of "Marginalia," that unsavory area of the country made up of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and the satellite territory of West Virginia. We are light years worse than the Greater Borderline Marginalia Archepelago of Tennessee, Idaho, New Mexico, both Dakotas, a few counties of Florida, and all of Mexico west of Cancun. The whole rest of the world, of course, represents life as we know it.
Is there any way for a state
to escape the tawdry and stigmatizing citizenship of Marginalia?
Before you turn to every other Louisiana citizen and say, "Last one out,
turn off the lights," rejoice that there really is hope.
The Solution to the "Louisiana Problem":
ANNEXATION WITH TEXAS!
Now I have no romantic notions
that Texas is the best place in the whole, wide, world...but it certainly
belongs to that
part of the Earth living life in a somewhat reasonable
way. So I say pave over the Red River, drop the border, and make
the very last legislative act of the Louisiana Legislature and the very
last bill signed by the governor be our "Declaration of Interdependence...with
Texas." Then, disband the entire La. government and use the money
saved for a "reunification" of sorts, which will probably prove to be more
painful than the reunification of Germany after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Then, we just use Texas' laws--plagiarize them. What are they going
to do, sue us? They can't, because at that point WE'RE THEM!
We'll just do what the Texans legislate.
We've just got to come out
ahead on this deal, right? Think about it. Then THEIR money becomes
OUR money. There are more taxpayers in just suburban Houston than
in all of Louisiana. Plus we can parasitize off of the wealth of
Dallas/Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin, and the rest of a state that's
got so much goddamn money that they don't even have property tax.
O.K., so we'll have to be Texans. That doesn't mean we'll have to
stop eating crawfish or give up Mardi Gras--we just take all of the good
stuff. We can still have our French Quarter, five-star restaurants,
Walton & Johnson, and other fun stuff, but we'll also get to use the
Texas school system, legislature, tax base, business-friendly regulations,
and...on and on and on. And FOR GOD'S SAKE don't allow us to vote
in any Texas constituencies, because we're not qualified (look what we
did with our state). I say taxation without representation. Hell,
most of us don't have to pay any taxes anyway. And the average IQ
of the new Texas will drop by only about 4 points,
because they have about ten times as many people. In fact, with that
many people, hell, they can fund us with hardly a noticeable blip on the
state spreadsheet. If they bitch, we can always offer to divert the Mississippi
River slightly westward, say, to Odessa.
I mean--we can't stay the state
we are--something's got to give. And since our only other abutting
annexation possibilities are Mississippi and Arkansas, Texas is the only
contiguous choice to get us out of the geopolitical region of Marginalia.
It would be like like changing from a caterpillar into a butterfly, like
having a Rolls push our Studebaker to the next gas station, like winning
the lottery, like volunteering to be an organ donor and then marrying Anna
Kournakova all of whose organs are just fine so she doesn't need any organs
but the one you're willing to give her, like the IRS actually buying that
sack of crap about the mileage on your "business" car, like starting up
a dot-com company that gets gobbled up by MicroSoft, like taking the Red
Line to Toontown, like crossing over from Kansas to Oz, like--DARE
I SAY IT!--like crossing over from Louisana into Texas. Interstates
become real interstates, laws make sense, no one sounds like Buddy Diliberto,
and we'll get to
keep the Saints when they move.
And what shall we call this new amalgam state? Forget "Texiana," don't even consider "LaTexas..." ...just Texas. That's good enough. Why complicate matters? New Orleans, Texas, right? Baton Rouge, Texas. Lafayette, Texas. I like it. Shreveport, Texas? Let's not get carried away. Shreveport can be claimed by Arkansas and stay in Marginalia.
We can make Cancun a state so we don't have to mess up the US flag. And all of those former Louisianans who won't like the new state order can move east into Mississippi, the NEW westernmost state of Marginalia.
In summary, there are worse things than yippie-I-O-kI-Aye. Better to hear "Remember the Alamo!" than "Know where you got your shoes." Better to have spurs that jingle-jangle-jingle than to have officials that plead "no contest."
It's all too perfect. And on top of everything else, there will finally be Texans we can actually like.
That the way it is...and you can't change it...Sunday, January 28, 2001.
Sumus Cacoonus