Pessimism, Thy Name is Freckles (Also, Sky Diving)

(Yes, that is a picture of a beach. Yes, those are my gorgeous, gorgeous shoes. Please stop staring. You'll cause self-esteem issues. The ocean is already pretty self conscious about her size.)

LEARN: Originally, I was going to say that people shouldn't worry about leisure when they can just go to the beautiful beach front and enjoy the surf and sand and, maybe, put a little shrimp on the barbie. Unfortunately, this was around the time my failing mark in Geography came back to bite me in several rather uncomfortable and embarrassing places. Apparently, and I'm not sure if you knew this about Modesto, it's landlocked. Yep, that means land to the left and right. And...the other left and right. Er, no wait. North, south, east and west. Also, down. Technically there isn't land up of Modesto, but that's mostly air and there isn't much to do in the air other than sky diving. Then again...

IMAGINE: I think I'm seriously onto something with this whole skydiving thing. Come on, Modesto has an airport, I think. Unless its just a poverty stricken region called Airport just for kicks. No, Modesto's got an airport and it should do something with it I think. Instead of saying something complacent like "Dur hur, well Modesto is within driving distance of all these other BETTER places", we should be highlighting that which makes Modesto a pretty rad place to live and, from what I've seen, inevitably die in.

Thus, sky diving and other air related sports. On an unrelated note, can it really be called a sport if gravity does most of the work? Just saying. Anyway, think of it this way. Instead of being a defeatist and sending people out of the city, sending upwards but still withing the city limits. PLus, its a win-win for most people invested. If the person falls and dies, the beauty of Modesto will be the last thing they see. Unless we can actually figure out a way to gently ease those falling to their deaths towards our rival cities so that they'll be known as That City where all those poor skydivers fell to their deaths. It'll be a PR nightmare for them. Not for us though. Modesto will be the city where in defiance of nature, skydivers all live. They'll land on Modesto's only mildly dirty land and after breathing in its exponentially more toxic air, will be infinitely more greatful. Plus, come on, its fun. It really puts things in perspective. I'm sure someone much better at analogies than I would even go so far as to compare it to going to the moon with the Beatles in a legit yellow submarine WITH sub sandwhiches.

(If you don't think skydiving with a sub sandwich is amazing...well you're just dead to me at this point aren't you? )

ACT: Why is nothing in real life as amazing as it is in my fantasy? That's a total buzz kill. I'm just saying. In reality, I don't know if you've been to Modesto,it's a pretyt boring town. But that's kind of the norm. Most towns are boring. I mean, save for the big cities. Modesto is a big city only in terms of gross people and crime. The problem is the people. Look around most people in Modesto. They've got the energy of sloths. They don't want to bother setting up anything fun to do, so there you go, there's just no fun. Tell you what, first fix the other problems plaguing the city, get the fat residents off their ever expanding rears and go bowl. Or take up marksmanship at the range.
 
The people of Modesto lack as much passion for leisure as they do for everything else. Apathy has set in and for the most part, the people don't care for group leisure. They do their own personal thing, even if that just might be staying at home, eating artery clogging crap food and watching old reruns of Wheel of Fortune. Am I unduly harsh? No, this is how I see the world.

If the people of Modesto don't want to do anything together, you can't make them. This isn't preschool. If they want to be alone and have fun, let them. I don't even care. I've got my own thing of relaxing and that's good enough for me. I don't care if fat bobby down the street doesn't want play air guitar with me. Forget him. I'll put on the sickest reenactment of every Pink Floyd concert ever. By myself.