Is This Hell? No, It's Iowa

Iowahawk ^ | December 15, 2011 | David Burge

[2ndDivisionVet]

[ed note: Found! In a dumpster behind Hamburg Inn, the first draft of University of Iowa professor Stephen G. Bloom's anthropology dissertation for Atlantic magazine explaining the bizarre cultural mores of the primative Aborigines who pay his salary.]

IOWA CITY -- On January 3, Iowans will trudge through snow, sleet, sludge, mud, ice, corn, beans, pig feces, flaming lakes of ethanol, gale-force blizzards -- whatever it takes -- to join their neighbors that evening in 1,784 living rooms, barns, community halls, recreation barns, silos, wigwams, and public-school Corn God sacrifice altars in a kind of Norman Rockwell-meets-HR Geiger old timey bygone-era past-that-never-was town-hall folksy-regular-folks go-to-town-meeting at which they'll eat and debate, and then battle with corn hoes and pitchforks to choose their presidential candidates along party lines. The local tribal elders call this "Kaukkassqaatsi," the Iowa word for "run on sentences."

We now know these as the Iowa Caucuses, which create a seismic shift in the presidential nominating contests. In 2008, after Obama catapulted to the top of the Democrats' rain-dance card, the resultant seismic tremors swept him to victory at the Democratic Convention. The tremors were also thought to be the cause of the volcanic eruption of long-dormant Mount Pleasant, which tragically destroyed over half the final term papers of my students in C3101, Introduction to Communication Studies.

Since Obama is the presumed Democratic candidate in 2012, this year it's the Republican candidates who must now woo the sad, semiliterate populace of this benighted barren outpost beyond the frontier of rational civilization. They're falling over each other in front of grain elevators and cornfields, over biscuits and hogslop in breakfast cafes, in ghost-haunted tornado-ravaged baseball cornfields, and at potluck dinners (casseroles are the thing to bring), under the covered bridges of Madison County with lonely sex-starved Italian war widows...

[2ndDivisionVet]

Hilarious!

[brivette]

I’m from Iowa.

[2ndDivisionVet]

I lived there from 1974 to 2001, except for my time in the service.

[grey_whiskers]

I'm in Minneapolis, and I've known Iowans.

From what they've said, this article describes Iowa to a T.

Cheers!

[throwback]

Wow. That takes guts. Insult every living person around you for hundreds of miles, and a public emloyee no less. Is there an Intrade going on Bloom’s life span let alone the continuation of his livlihood?

[grey_whiskers]

You lived in Iowa for around 27 years...have you ever participated in, or watched, RAGBRAI?

Cheers!

[dog breath]

If I was from Iowa I would want Bloom to get run over by a tractor....repeatedly.

[El Cid]

Hah!
That was a very long read -- but thanks for posting it. You're right, it was hilarious. Iowahawk's material is usually excellent -- but this one was amongst his best works.

[throwback]

I get it. I didn’t think anybody was really that stupid.

[maineman]

Too funny, Thanks!

[marty60]

Another great piece by Iowahawk (David Burge)

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Iowegian in Minnesota for 16 years.

Lived well, raised our son in MN schools (Prior Lake) owned snowmobiles, learned to ice skate, sold bunkers to Great Lakes steamships while working for a major oil company.

After 30 days of 20 below or 20 days or 30 below, we took our Yankee money and moved south...

[2ndDivisionVet]

It has gone through town I lived in and I've seen sections of it. Anything sponsored by the Des Moines Register is something I have very little interest in.

[TheOldLady]

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