Huh?

A friend has alerted me to a particularly confusing quote in this Fitchburg Pride article.

It's a pretty boring article about the opening of a supermarket. Not the sort of thing I'd normally even read. But get this:

"There are trees around, so it is not just a black wasteland," said Mayor Dan Mylott standing outside of the store. "The back is as nice as the front because the parking garage is back there, it is a beautiful place to be."

A black wasteland? What the fuck?

I had several thoughts when reading this particular quote. First I pictured a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a la Mad Max. Dan Mylott was a mohawked road warrior who found a tree in the middle of the vast desert and for one brief moment brought his deathmobile to a stop just so he could get out and gaze at it in awe.

However, it turns out that despite Fitchburg's woes, it isn't actually a Mad Max-ish post-apocalyptic wasteland...

Next, I thought that perhaps he actually said "a blank wasteland," meaning of course a wasteland without any trees in its parking lot. Which would mean Fitchburg Pride either made a typo (unheard of!) or misheard him.

Alternately, this could mean that perhaps he really wanted to say "a motherfucking wasteland" and replaced "motherfucking" with "blank" in order to appear more mayoral. Sort of a self-bleeping mechanism...

But when you look at the larger quote, it also appears our mayor thinks that a parking garage is "a beautiful place to be."

Now, I've been in a lot of parking garages. Not once have I looked around and thought "Gee, this sure is a beautiful place to be!" Usually I'm just trying to figure out where the fuck I parked so I can leave as quickly as possible.

The only conclusions one can really reach from this quote is that the mayor is either really easily impressed by strip malls and parking lots, lies (unheard of for a politician!), or is drunk all the time.

Yeah, he should do great in the next election...