The Sorensen Monologues

This Week’s Cartoon: “Let’s Get Ugly”

Whenever I travel by highway, I am struck by how determined we seem to destroy the country with ugliness. The drive from Seattle to Portland is not especially ugly compared to others, but it has its moments (I’m looking at you, Tacoma-area sprawl). This  grotesque lack of attention to aesthetics really, really bothers me. We’re letting commercial developers ruin everything that’s not within an urban core. Opposing this stuff doesn’t make me a snob; it makes me patriotic. The song is “America the Beautiful,” not “America the Sh!thole,” dammit.

My parents recently reported that their neighbors, who have a deep affinity for crap (among other things, they bought their children an actual golf cart to drive in circles around the neighborhood), just installed a hideous above-ground pool in their backyard. That’s where the pool reference in the comic came from. [UPDATE: The pool has apparently developed a case of mustard fungus! Schadenfreude? Yes.]