Let’s talk about Westlake. Imagine you’re eating great bowl of pasta, but it needs just a little more salt. Your reach for the salt and instead grab a canister of Anthrax. Oops. And because it’s pasta, it’s not like you can just scrape off the Anthrax, like you could with a steak, and continue on as planned. No, sadly your meal has been spoiled and all you have to look forward to this evening is a lingering illness and possibly death.

Westlake is the pathogen that is killing my pleasant bowl of pasta that is Austin, but instead of a bio-weapon, some large entity with a large scoop went and gouged out some of Plano and dumped it in my backyard. I wouldn’t hate these people so much, except that for some ungodly reason, my office is out here, so I have to deal with them on regular basis. Every time I leave my building they try and kill me with their 2mpg hummers and general disregard for modern traffic laws and parking techniques. For god’s sake they don’t even build roads with sidewalks out here…its less than a quarter-mile to the grocery store from my desk, but you’re taking your life in your hands if you walk it. Not to mention that joe-blow-weslaker (see fig1 and fig2) assume that if you’re not driving, you’re most likely up to no good, probably an illegal immigrant to boot, and they will subsequently have you arrested by the speeding-ticket-Gestapo also knows as the Westlake/Rollingwood Police department (One mile over the limit? Really? I somehow doubt your radar gun is that accurate), or make you come clean their house.

Sufficed to say, like the Anthrax in your hypothetical pasta, it’s here and we can’t get rid of it. I’d liek say we could just blow the bridges over the lake and retreat north, but we’d lose Zilker park, Barton
Springs and all the South Austin stoners would be left defenseless in the coming hippie-cide (Condos and Mercedes being like kryptonite to your average hippie type). No, the best solution is to get one of those border fence things that are so stunningly effective and humane. We could just wall them off, and periodically drop in food, new SUV’s, botox supplies and Young College Republicans. It would be like a UN protected ethnic-enclaves, except with less K-rations and more plastic surgery options.

Just a note: They’re re-roofing my office today, using workers fromt he cast of the Biggest Loser, leading to some pretty impressive decible levels in my normally-silent workspace. Point being: I’m cranky.