Things to Do in Mississippi

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Nah, if you're gonna make him do Arizona there's no reason to half-ass it. Gila Bend or nothing.

Gila Bend isn't really a shithole, it's more of a map dot.  The people are not as insular as you'd expect, but their main advantage is that they aren't Buckeye (the town that put up a 30' statue of a hobo as a joke, and then was depopulated by the 2007/2008 crash).

[East Coast Hustle]

I haven't been through there in many years, but I remember it being soul-crushingly awful in a slightly hard to pin-down way. I also remember parking my truck on the side of the highway just past Gila Bend and just wandering into the desert with wild eyes and a head full of absinthe, coffee brandy, hashish, and dayquil layered on top of a 3-day adderall-fueled nonstop drive through the sick black heart of America and that weird hormonal almost-hangover you get when you end up randomly hooking up with a girl you really like who's way out of your league and doesn't live anywhere near you. I remember wanting to check out this beautiful and fascinating rock formation that I could see about a mile or so from the highway. And I remember what I saw out there instead and I don't 100% trust my eye-brain connection at that particular moment in time but I'm pretty sure it was actually real and actually happened and maybe it was just a tangle of mesquite branch but mesquite trees don't wear wristwatches and it was holy fuck it was bad.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I haven't been through there in many years, but I remember it being soul-crushingly awful in a slightly hard to pin-down way. I also remember parking my truck on the side of the highway just past Gila Bend and just wandering into the desert with wild eyes and a head full of absinthe, coffee brandy, hashish, and dayquil layered on top of a 3-day adderall-fueled nonstop drive through the sick black heart of America and that weird hormonal almost-hangover you get when you end up randomly hooking up with a girl you really like who's way out of your league and doesn't live anywhere near you. And I remember what I saw out there and I don't 100% trust my eye-brain connection at that particular moment in time but I'm pretty sure it was actually real and actually happened and maybe it was just a tangle of mesquite branch but mesquite trees don't wear wristwatches and it was holy fuck it was bad.

Well, yeah, but that's not Gila Bend's fault.   

[East Coast Hustle]

Heh. I just realized that my mind had brought that back up as though it were a long-ago story but it was actually fall of 2010 I think. Might even have been 2011. Whenever I was supposed to stop by Tucson but ended up getting screwed on my timetable because of a disintegrated tensioner pulley followed by a blown tire valve core. All of that said, it's gonna be hard to out-awful Mississippi.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Heh. I just realized that my mind had brought that back up as though it were a long-ago story but it was actually fall of 2010 I think. Might even have been 2011. Whenever I was supposed to stop by Tucson but ended up getting screwed on my timetable because of a disintegrated tensioner pulley followed by a blown tire valve core. All of that said, it's gonna be hard to out-awful Mississippi.

I remember that.  It was 2009 or 2010, IIRC.  Your vehicle was trying to save you.  To "take one for the team", as it were.