The Opioid Epidemic - A.K.A The Crisis of Addiction

More surgery for Christmas

I miss US... (How ghey did that read? One a scale of Paul Lynde to the Acceptable Gay Couple required in every corporate ad blitz.

Hard to - new job makes me work and all

Angel Dust is my bet. That's some shit you smoke when you want to see scary shit.

 

Soooo... not ready for the Ghoul Pool.
BTW, y'all's new logo is ass

 

Actually, if I could get my fat toe inside the trigger guard, I'd score someone some winning points. Trying to kill myself with diabetes is just taking too ********ing long

Concentrated Ass

 

I know absolutely nothing about that part of the state.

 

That story could have been written about every small town in southern Ohio east of Cincinnati.

Not much to the town, just a collection of run-down buildings. I wasn't far from there today, drove to Athens, Marrietta and then up to Dresden.

Probably drove through 3 dozen towns exactly like it.

 

I am in the SE quadrant of the state quite a bit and it really is all the same. Now, there are some really, really nice places in Zanesville, Marrietta, Athens and the occasional castle in the countryside, but it is mostly trailers, run down or abandoned buildings, and not much else.

 

Ah, for some reason, I thought it was in west-central Ohio. It's actually near Lucasville (state death house), and not far from Piketon (where the US enriched uranium for 50+ years). That's the extent of what I know about the area. Both locations made big national news when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s.

All good news, of course.

 

My wife interviewed for a job at Shawnee State maybe ten years ago. I didn't go, but she found it pretty depressing. I can't remember any other job search where she took herself out of the running after the campus visit.

 

I was in Industrial Cape Breton (it was formerly very industrialized) over the summer and like this area and similar areas in PA, it has been losing industrial jobs for decades. Unlike the US, there the national and provincial governments have made efforts to help the economy and you don't see the level of depression there. Our economy fails areas like southern Ohio and Western PA.

 

laughs in SUNY

 

When I was traveling in Western PA with a work colleague who grew up there he joked "if you give me any trouble I'll drop your ass off in Monessen and speed away." So I'm guessing it's some kinda dump.

 

Yes. But . . . . There are worse.

 

I have driven between Marion and Mansfield a few times in the last few months and there is a guy with a 50ft long Trump sign in his yard. On warm days he even sits next to it and waves to passing cars.

I just don’t get it.

 

For some his election is the greatest achievement in their lives & Obama's was the greatest outrage. I remember driving to my sister's house down the shore in 2016 and seeing a MAGAnut with a full size metal cage in his front yard with a Hillary mannequin inside. Yard had all the MAGA and Lock Her Up signs on it. The effort to create that insanity was pretty impressive.

 

Nova Scotia has been a lot better than many post-industrial areas when it comes to moving on from the occupations that once made the economy thrive. The fishing industry bottomed out due to over-fishing. They could have let people continue to fish until there were none left, but instead they shut it down, which hurt in the short run, but forced the economy to diversify.

The running joke about call centers in India is becoming passe because a lot of those places have set up in Nova Scotia, where there are lots of native English speakers, similar time zones so people can work fairly normal hours, and they are willing to work for lower than US wages, but still a decent standard of living, since the cost of living isn't all that high there.

And I used to work for a company that had a plant in Marietta Ohio, where they made ultra low temperature freezers (-86 degrees C) for labs and blood banks. There were a lot of good paying manufacturing jobs in the $25-$30/hr range. They got some state money to upgrade the facility and all that. About a year later they closed the plant and moved it to friggin Chiner. Instead of $30/hour they could pay the workers $30/week.

 

It was more than that though. The east end of Cape Breton had extensive coal mines which have shut down and Syndey had I believe at one time the biggest steel plant in North America. I toured Louisburg and many of the carpenters who did the restoration work were retrained coal miners.

 

I don't know if they look at it as a personal achievement, although sitting under a 50 ft sign in your yard advertising a politician certainly escapes my understanding, IMO these people thought Trump was going to change things for the better for them so they were happy. Not entirely different from the people that were relieved Obama was elected, hoping he would change things for them personally.

Now they are justifying the lack of progress in their personal world by blaming whomever Trump says to blame. At least the uneducated are doing that.

 

Whitelandians, even if they're complete trash, love punching down at someone. Messican immigrants, scary Mooslims, our old standby - The Blacks. I believe the Obama love was that he was a fresh face that we needed after the Bush debacle. Just imagine how bad the recession would've been under a Trump administration. Barry doesn't get enough credit for not crying hysterically on Twitter daily about what a mess Dubya left for him.

 

Because of what I do for a living, I am in 15-20 different private homes a day, mostly lower income. I see shrines to Obama in more than a few of the AA homes I visit, no different from the Trump shrines.

I completely understand the significance for AA's to have Obama elected, but to say all the love he was/is getting is because he was just a fresh face is not telling the story.

 

But in Canada, there is a generally progressive, generally compassionate, and vaguely socialist government. You're not going to get that in most US states.