Tuesday, September 14, 2004

This Deadly City

Poor Nashville. It cannot help but to suck.

Besides being the hub of The Devil (AKA the Christian Music Industry) it's just not a good place to be. AND IT COULD KILL YOU. So I am posting this plea in hopes that all of my Nashville friends will read it and we will all pool our resources together and buy a mansion in Palos Verdes CA and all live together like one big happy cult.

"OK, so you don't like Nashville, but it's not KILLING you," you may say. "You're just being overdramatic."

Well let me tell you, each month as I receive my new issue of Men's Health magazine, I am further convinced that Nashville is just not the place to be.

Each year they do an article on the 101 best (and worst) places to live. And there's science that goes into it, not just personal opinion. Their rankings are based on mortality stats from the Centers for Disease Control, the CDC's "Sexually Transmitted Disease Report", "Crime in the U.S." from the FBI, the EPA's Air Quality Report, CDC Behavioral Risk factor surveillance Report, the Urban Mobility Study, fitness data from Claritis research, park and recreation data, and physician data from Health Market Science.

Last year, Nashville ranked 99 out of 101 with a grade of an "F." This last time around our Fitness Grade, Quality of Life grade, and Health grade were all "D's." Needless to say, moving up from an F to a D isn't exactly comforting.

Shortly after that, MH began releasing monthly reports on the 101 largest cities in America on a variety of topics. Again, I wasn't comforted.

In "The United States of Anxiety" where they rated cities according to stress, Nashville got a B-. Not too bad. The next month, they graded cities according to the divorce rate. An awesome D that time around. The month after that was "Is Your Town Toxic?" where they rated the industrial toxicity. A C for us. "Is Your City Sloshed" was the next month's report. As if you couldn't tell from the title, they did research to determine the drunkest cities. Hooray for us! D again!And this month they researched cities according to STDs. Nashville ranked 80 out of 101 with a final grade of D- .

Now, I personally don't really have to concern myself with the STD reports or the drunk reports. But it's awesome to know who I'm rubbing elbows with at Wal-Mart.

What was very surprising to me was the number of West Coast cities that consistently do well. All this time we're told how horrible California is for you when actually where we are ain't exactly Eden either.

So pack your bags friends. We got to get the heck outta Dodge!

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