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"You may have heard recently about Maine governor Paul LePage\u2019s disparaging comments about poorly-named, imaginary black drug dealers and thought to yourself, \u201CWait a second, Maine is populated?\u201D IT IS!  As a matter of fact, I went to college in Maine for four years, and I can tell you that it is a legitimate state and that people live in it voluntarily.\n\nBut should they?  You people living in the other 49 states probably know Maine only from tales of your rich asshole neighbor, who wears whale pants and summers up in Bar Harbor and can afford to host an actual clambake.  But that\u2019s not the REAL Maine.  That Maine is temporary.  That Maine is a pop-up resort.  It has nothing to do with the harrowing occurrences going on INSIDE the boundaries of our weirdest state.  And I don\u2019t mean cool weird like Austin.  No, Maine is our most disturbing state.  It\u2019s hardly America, really.  Rather, it is a vast territorial wilderness of hill people, completely isolated from traditional American laws and customs.  You can shoot a dog in Lewiston and no one will bat an eyelash.  We should build a wall at its border to protect ourselves.\n\nIn fact, why even HAVE Maine?  I believe that a key 2016 election issue should be the planned expulsion of Maine from the United States.  Look at it up there, just sitting there in a ratty sweater, being all weird and staring at you with its glass eye.  As someone who has been in Maine and fled it as quickly as humanly possible after graduation, allow me to give you a short list of reasons FOR and AGAINST keeping Maine in the United States.  \n\nPRO:\n\nLobster, although every goddamn NARD (North American Rural Dweller) Mainer reminds you that lobster used to be prison food.  PRISONAHS WERE SAID TO HAVE GOTTEN SICK OF THE TASTE HERE-AH. Portland, which is Boston for people too broke to live in Boston Gorgeous two-week summers That one photo of Ali knocking out ListonAll the heroin you can eatBeaches!  Each one rockier than the last!\n\nCON:\n\nIt\u2019s too goddamn big. Towns are 600 miles apart.  Driving to Bar Harbor takes 64 hours, and that\u2019s not even the terminus of the state.  I don\u2019t know if Maine even has an end to it.  You just follow 95 North forever and then fall into a goddamn black hole.That accent.  Imagine an entire state that sat down and said, \u201CHey!  How can we make the Boston accent worse?\u201DThe weather.  Ever see the sky after a volcano erupts, and the sun has been snuffed out by gigantic plumes of blackness?  That\u2019s a Tuesday in Maine.  Also, it\u2019s fucking cold.  One time I drove to school through an ice storm that looked like the handiwork of a Marvel supervillain.RacismNo, seriously.  RACISM.  This isn\u2019t like the South, where black people actually live.  Maine has no minorities (so says LePage!), and so residents only know TALES of black people and are terrified of them strictly from secondhand folklore.  KENNY FROM BANGOR-AH SAW ONE A LONG TIME AGO.  ITS EYES COULD TURN A MAN INTO CLAM JUICE.Earthy-crunchy types who live there because it\u2019s so authentic.  These are people who sit in Crazy Creek chairs and brush their teeth with pure baking soda.  I do not trust them, and neither should you.\n\nSo there you have it.  Maine is a terrifying wasteland with little to offer us in the way of economic or intellectual resources, and we should sell it to Denmark for a tidy profit.\n\n\n\nUP NEXT\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/do-we-need-maine-paul-lepage>