As Seen On The Bathroom Wall

I love Hawai'i. As a locale, it's beautiful. The diverse cultural spectrum of people that live here is rare elsewhere and it's something that, as someone from multiple heritages, with children from multiple heritages, I find priceless. Yes, it's expensive to live here. Yes, the diaspora has diluted the heart of what once was a wonderful and precious culture, but the essence remains the same...for the most part.

But when it comes to the people here...sometimes I have to wonder why we all don't just sink into the ocean with the suffocating weight of the stupidity that resides amongst them.

Today's gripe stems from the Superferry debacle. It's been almost a year since the Superferry was voted off the island by a small group of NIMBYs whose self-interest made them blind to their own hypocrisy and double standards. And now that so many of them have set their sights on the rail, I have to ask myself how do these people remember to breathe, let alone string more than two words together to form an opinion?

You see, these people complain about the aesthetics of the rail, saying that any rail - both street level and raised - will be an eyesore. I mean hey, why do we want to block the pristine views of all the industrial and retail businesses in Pearl City, or the condominiums in Salt Lake? And let's not dare try to block anyone from being able to see the new Trump Tower from their thrice-mortgaged studio apartment in Makiki, because that would be an eyesore.

Perhaps I should also mention that, while arguing that the rail isn't necessary to the people of Hawai'i, they also argue about traffic here, and how there are too many cars on the island, too large a carbon footprint, too much pollution. Their solution to the problem? WIDEN THE FREEWAY.

Yes. That's right. There are too many cars on the road so to alleviate that, let's make the road BIGGER.

When the Superferry was in operation, the complaints against it were numerous, mainly in favor of the whales because, as we all know, the only ones that can hit the whales are the whale preservationists! It didn't matter that the Superferry, in its short time operating in the state, had no accidents when it came to whales, but the PWF (Pacific Whale Foundation) did. It didn't matter that the screening system to keep foreign, inter-island transfer of plants and rocks succeeded in stopping people from bringing things that weren't allowed but the coqui frog was transferred from the big island to Oahu via a Hawaiian Airlines cargo flight.

The excuses were, of course, numerous. Grandfathered companies, familiarity with brand, my uncle's aunty's sister's brother's husband's nephew's girlfriend's baby daddy's new girlfriend works there... And not a single one of them pertained to the Superferry. Because of the Superferry going out of business, over 100 people lost their jobs, businesses had to raise costs, cut jobs, and so on. Reaganites love using the term "trickle-down effect"...well, there was a "trickle-down effect" here, only it wasn't Reaganites who had implemented it.

And now that the rail is so close to the start of construction, those very same NIMBYs are going to cost this state time, money, and jobs. So that they can keep their view of the Honolulu skyline free of anything that doesn't look like a foreign owned condominium. And as they do so, their neighbors leave, unable to afford the transportation and living costs anymore. $5 a gallon of milk? $3 for a loaf of bread? $3.80 for a gallon of gas? $590k for a house on a 3200sqf piece of property that's so close to your neighbor's house you can feel them flush the toilet?

Cultural melting pot or not, before you know it this state is going to smell of only one thing: ASS. Because if we keep this up, that's how we'll look and how we'll end up.