Chronicles of Wretched Excess, con't.

An incredible story in the Monday, January 5 Washington Post. I should have linked to it long before. It's a parody, I think, except it's written as a straight news story.

It's titled "Dream Homes Come with Rural Wake-Up Call: Lured by Large Va. Lots, Many Find Big Challenges." If you grew up in the country, even on a hobby farm, it's a hilarious, hilarious piece. And kind of sickening, too.

As best as I can make out, certain suburbanites are a little unhinged when they get out to the depths of Loudoun County. They discover that it's dark, for one thing. And there are lots of, you know, strange noises. It's hard to feel secure when it's dark and strangely noisy, especially when it costs so much money to install a security system for an 8,000 square foot house with a wraparound deck and fifty windows. The golf game suffers, because the landscapers for $20,000 left you eight acres of lawn, and it takes a while to mow. And those lawns just don't look right; they're all...crooked.

Really, you cannot make this stuff up. America! What a wonderful country! The human comedy never stops!

Note the picture, btw, of the spacious home of one of these uneasy denizens of the countryside. It's the same kind of hideous crap that they build in the inner suburbs. Sigh. I guess it was too much to expect that developers or their clients would get taste during their move to the outback. They could by checking out this splendid site, that of an architect who believes in beauty more than he does in square feet.

We should offer some sort of prize for the person that can think of the best name for these ten acre estates. David Brooks has come up with Bobo's for the Charlottesville or urban hipsters, Sprinkler City for the vast exurbs, and Patio Man for the conservative denizen of Sprinkler City. Who are these people? Rural Retreaters, perhaps? Naw, there's got to be something better than that...