Wonkette
Good Lord. When Joe Biden talks about growing up in Scranton with all its hardscrabble charms, is he referring to its feces-scented apartments full of food-hoarding ex-cons or its large population of grifters who parasitize the child welfare system?
An EXPLOSIVE report by the, uh, Associated Press details the horrors that foreign exchange students witnessed and endured while living in the rancid toilet that is Scranton.
- “During his year as a foreign exchange student in the United States, 18-year-old Carlos Villarreal lived not with a welcoming family, but with two ex-convicts in a seedy house that smelled of dog feces and where the food was labeled “DO NOT TOUCH.” He left 14 pounds lighter.”
- “[Edna Burgette, a placement counselor] placed [a] 16-year-old student from Tonsberg, Norway, with a family that couldn’t afford to support her. A month later, Burgette sent her to a filthy three-room apartment already crowded with three other people. The floors were strewn with animal feces; the dog urinated on her bed and clothes.”
What terrible gaffe will Joe Biden make while explaining this disaster?
Thanks to SayItWithWookies for alerting us to the many dangers of Scranton.
Exchange student neglect leads to calls for reform [AP]
The Michelin Guide to Scranton:
Don’t.
The End
Well, I don’t see what the problem is. Those latte-sipping euro-elitists got to stay with /real Americans/
We LET them come to AMERICA, and all we get are COMPLAINTS! Send them to Wasilla to slave in the meth labs, that’ll larn ‘em.
Carlos,
The U.S. may be a good place, but you do not want to go back to Scranton…
These students sound bitter.
I always thought that if you combine foreigners with feces you get Paris.
Hey, that first place sounds like my apartment in law school, except that they don’t mention neo-Nazi neighbors upstairs, a group of homeless men sleeping in the living room, being assaulted by a crack-smoking, alcoholic roommate, or unexplained blood in the toilet.
These foreigners don’t know how good they have it.
They put Route 80 across Pennsylvania SOUTH of Scranton. Route 80 has no stoplights and no crosswalks. It has kept most of Scranton, in Scranton. Unfortunately, Joe Biden was in Delaware before Route 80 was completed in 1982.
SayItWithWookies, why do you hate US America?
yes, but did they put antifreeze in the wine?
OK, so? Sounds like typical off-campus housing from my college days. I had some roaches in one apartment that scared the cats.
Ah Scranton: a place I was forced to visit on a business trip once, and a place to which I hope never to return.
Formerly Preferred: The guy below me in law school rented out the basement, which had no windows, in the house where I had the first floor. He never left. I am serious. Maybe one time in the year he was there. And all he did was smoke and play thrash metal. I had to put layers of towels on the wood floors to keep the visibile cigarette smoke from drifting up through the floor boards. The guy on the second floor of the house, above me, hoarded food in green garbage bags that he left out on the outdoor stair landing. That was good for the local possums and raccoons. Then one day, an ambulance showed up and they took him away. Never heard from him again.
The law school rental was better than my college apartment. I actually wanted to move back into a tiny dorm room after a few weeks in that hovel.
“Exchange program” implies that American children will be hosted overseas as well. I’m sure dogshit encrusted accommodations could be arranged for them, too. Sounds like a fair exchange.
Mon Dieu! Welcome to Real ‘Murica Bitchez!
There is an episode of Bullwinkle in which Boris and Natasha bungle an assignment, and are standing before Fearless Leader awaiting their punishment. Fearless Leader tells Boris that his crime was so great, that he is to be sent to Wilkes Barre. Boris cries, tears streaming down his face, and gets on his knees and begs, “please, send me to Siberia, send me anywhere, but don’t send me to Wilkes Barre.” Scranton is the only place worse than Wilkes Barre.
Doglessliberal: Ah, I miss law school.
Prommie: As someone who grew up in Wilkes-Barre, I can only say, “Bravo. Well said.” My first memory is of sitting in my parents’ living room, counting the years ’til I could get the hell out, haina?
The furners can simply kneel on a rug facing Mecca and find themselves in one of our luxurious federal prisons. Three squares, cable tv, a fitness center, and lotsa reading time.
I’d be happy to welcome a nice Norwegian girl into my home. Anytime.
When I was an undergrad living off campus in Chicago, I slept on the floor in a sleeping bag and at night the roaches would run over me. They even came out during the day and waved their little tentacles in Chicago “fuck you” tenement style. I got a 4.0 that year. Suck off foreigners.
This has to be caused by ACORN.
I’ll just wait for the part about how it meant that the election was stolen. Must be coming in the next installment.
Osama bin Laden reportedly spent a week in Indianapolis in the 1970s. We should remember this when speaking about the causes of the US-Norwegian War of 2035.
Formerly Preferred: Of law school, I remember only savage drinking bouts, puking, utterly shameful drunken hookups that would be the gossip du jour the next day, and getting high and playing along with jeapardy every night, jeering at Alex for his terminal geekiness.
Anita Cocktail: The Pine Barrens of New Jersey are little better, I suspect. Remember, the old theory of “degeneracy,” the idea that criminality and immorality can be genetic and produce generations of syphillitic incestuous cretins, was based on a study of some folks from the area of my birth, the Kallikaks. The good thing is that at least we are near the ocean. Everywhere you go, you are surrounded by assholes, we say, except when you go to the beach, then you are only surrounded on three sides.
WadISay: Well, after the way things were left after the Great Chinese Moon War, what did you expect to happen?
It was inevitable, especially after the assination of German Supreme leader Hasslehoff by radical extreme Norwegian Unitarians.
Damn sweater wearing caribou riding Norgies!
Hey it’s better than the old days when foreign exchange students were brought here by governments and United Nations and Ford Foundation kinds of places. Why should we be making government bigger and bigger for da damned foreign kids when we can get private businesses to hold their hands and help them read the menus? Welcome to McForeign Exchange! Would you like some dog feces with your stale mayonnaise crusted buns?
I lived in an old chicken house in southern Pa one summer.
Prommie: W-B was the home of George Banks, Dan Flood, The Forever Family, the judges who were bribed to send kids to juvie, the Knox Mine disaster, Hurricane Agnes flooding, Dr. Wolsieffer the murdering dentist… although it was the birthplace of Mr. Peanut. Now it’s all old people, the morbidly obese, and crunchy bangs.
I have twelve “exchange students” from the Ukraine living in a three-bedroom apartment in my locked basement. They host a lot of older gentlemen who “tutor” them and even give them a few bucks (which I hold onto for them). Such nice girls.
Hey, Michelle Obama lived in fire ant infested slave quarters and look where she ended up. Suck it up forreners. It’s character building.
Little pink houses for you and me. With feces.
Prommie: Au contraire! The line was:
Boris: Send me to Siberia, send me to Wilkes-Barre, but NOT Moosesylvania!!!!!!!
I interpret “Moosesylvania” in Palinic as “Scranton.”
Prommie: Shameful drunken hookups? Youth was truly wasted on the young in my case. I spent half my college years married.
cue Chris Farley-esque head slapping and internally-aimed shouts of “idiot”
Maybe now they’ll stop kvetching about Camp X-Ray and The Room Of Doom. Poosies.
Wow, I thought the conditions in the article were deplorable. After reading some of these comments, though, it turns out that was just regular housing. I had a few friends who lived in utter squalor, but that was mostly because they were slowly going insane on all-night pot, alcohol and speed benders. One night they were whacked out of their heads, chasing each other around their apartment with knives and throwing empty vodka bottles at the wall. One of their neighbors, a little old lady, knocked on the door and one of my friends opened it. He was dripping wet, with microscopic pupils and holding a meat cleaver. They got an eviction notice the next morning.
Formerly Preferred:
Oooh, in grad school, I lived in a four-plex in the upper right apartment. Below me were a nice elderly couple. The other two apartments…OMG. Directly beside me was an undergrad who was so filthy you could smell his apartment through the closed door and storm door on our shared porch. He also had naked manniquins in there that he had set to fall on and scare the land lady should she try to look around. Beneath him was a guy who was a welder down at the local shipyard. He suspected the government of many conspiracies and liked to share this thoughts on the matter. He also used to pick cans from ditches and trash cans for side money. He’d bring home bags and bags of cans and didn’t think it was a good idea to take them for recycling until he had filled his apartment. I can’t adequately describe the kind of bugs in those two apartments. This was in the deep South. The elderly lady and I used to coordinate bug bombing. We’d get those big canisters, double the suggested amount, then set them off in our apartments at the same time to drive the bugs to the other side of the building. Probably shaved some time off my life using so much of the stuff.
“A woman in Anderson, Ind., pleaded guilty to having sex with her 17-year-old exchange student. Police said she threatened to send the teen away if he ended the relationship.”
Such scenarios were often the main reason I considered becoming an exchange student.
What the fuck are these foriegns complaining about? They have access to all the baconaisse and high fructose corn syrup they can consume and a socialized health system back in the old country to handle their diabetes when the finally go home.
PUhlezze- for years after I lived in dc- I had those big roaches- like with wings- and I paid good money to live on Connecticut Avenue. I didn’t mind until the mice moved in.
suchsweetthunder: I stand corrected.
hobospacejunkie: And this situation you were somehow altered the college experience? Curious.
So foreign exchange students were surprised that urban America smells of animal excrement? Elitists.
Prommie: I hate Wilkes-Barr. I’ve never been, but it’s where i send my monies to Sallie Mae every month.
Terry: Oh, I have seen those bugs. I had mega-roaches, but my sister, who lived in Savannah during college, well, her large German-shepherd-sized dog was scared of those roaches. You slept with one eye open in her hovel for fear they’d eat you in your sleep. Oh yea, they are called “Palmetto bugs” down there. Gee, maybe people will not realize they are roaches that can fly if we call them that! Hahahahahahaha
SayItWithWookies: When I was an undergrad, I lived in a house with 3 roommates who would not do dishes, the entire kitchen gradually filled with dirty pots, pans, and dishes, over the course of a semester. Every flat surface was covered with bongs, McDonalds bags and wrappers, and dirty bowls from which they ate cornflakes, at all hours of the day and night, while watching cartoons. One night, while I tried to sleep because I had an exam the next day, they had a bunch of friends over and they all did acid. They all giggled all night long, even during the incident when someone got out his 22 pistol and started shooting at a poster on the wall of the living room, it was a “Mickies Big Mouth” Malt Liquor poster, a big bee, and he said he didn’t like the bee, was afraid it would sting him. Fortunately, my room was not behind the wall that poster was located on. The bullets passed through into the kitchen where the stockpile of dirty dishes was, then on out through the side of the house.
Anita Cocktail: You should return. Wilkes-Barre has a Wegmans and an old skating rink converted into a porn superstore.
Everybody stop bitchin; these guys had it tuuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
Prommie: Fortunately I avoided gunplay through college, but otherwise that sounds eerily familiar. We once had a mouse drown in our dirty dishes in the sink. That was gross.
@ Anita Cocktail: I always thought “Haina” was spelled “Heyna”.
@ Prommie: I grew up in the Pittston area and used to dream of being so cool as to live in either Wilkes-Barre or Scranton. There are actually a lot of architecturally cool houses in places like the Hill section in Scranton or even the crappy areas south of the Square in W-B, but sadly they’ve suffered years of drunken college kids and feces-dwelling ex-cons and just general NEPA alky/druggie/crazies. It’s really a shame.
I now live on the other side of the country but was visiting relatives in NEPA recently and commented that every time I read crazy headlines in the news, I always expect it to be Texas and it always ends up being NEPA. They asked for an example and I reminded them about the dude who was in the news for having a police standoff while swinging a chainsaw in front of the Ousterhout library. However, I think traumatized exchange students is another fine example. Keep up the good work, Scranton.
As Edith said “I want to go to Scranton”. I mean it look pretty cool with such a fox as Pam Beesly.
My college years were spent in the Army so I’m weeping for you poor edumucated types. Really, brutal, beyond the pale, each of you are now my hero, though imagine the bone numbing despair of the people who live in those conditions for forty years instead of four (or two) but perhaps they just get used to it and after all this is America so…fuck ‘em.
As for the nice Norwegian girl, apparently nobody explained the USA is a third world country and this kind of crap is not generally notable and I only mention that because I didn’t note it.
Teeny: I’ve always spelled it “heyna” myself. Also, I think Anita Cocktail’s usage of the nonsense word is slightly off. As this video explains — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sMI2jb16eo — you say “heyna” to ask for affirmation for a statement you have made. Example: A lot of f’d up shit happens in NEPA, heyna?
As someone who grew up in NEPA, it does make me sad to see the rep it now has. Despite the freaks that make the news, most of the people up there are decent folks. As much as they were painted as blue-collar racists during the election, they ended up voting 2 to 1 in favor of Obama. That made me proud, not that they got much credit for it.
I think I want to market the Ex-Con/Feces Scent Diet. LOSE 14 POUNDS IN 6 WEEKS. Just don’t touch the fucking food. Any venture capitalists reading this?
Dog urination- happens in the best of homes. I was at the home of a former newspaper editor for a party(I no longer get invited to those things- they cost $250,000 now- right, Katie? )and his large dog( I am not sure if it was a mastiff or what) suddenly just peed in the foyer when I came in. The editor’s wife took it in stride- she did not call a maid - she got some paper towels and wiped it up(by this statement, you know it is not Ben Bradlee- because Sally Quinn doesn’t do floors!).
Scranton is the only city I’ve been too that is like being in an actual strip mine. Steamtown Mall Reprazentin’.
The first place my (2nd) wife & I lived in had roaches flying down from an opening created by a poorly-placed cross beam. No problem, Shop-Vac with a long extension sucked up most of ‘em. Good sport, good times.
When Joe Biden talks about growing up in Scranton with all its hardscrabble charms, is he referring to its feces-scented apartments full of food-hoarding ex-cons or its large population of grifters who parasitize the child welfare system?
Yes.
Prommie: i grew up in Savannah. The “Palmetto bugs” are everywhere. they will show up in the house, but really live outside, the flying is just an extra added attraction — they don’t usually do it. Not fond of them, but they are all over the coastal south. i think the pythons will get rid of them as they move up from the everglades.
My friend from Italy went on an exchange as a teenager to Buttfuck, OH and hoo boy did she have some adventures. Her fundamentalist hosts rationed her portions of craptastic scurvy-inducing food and told her she was bankrupting them, told her she was going to Hell for her Papist worship and general sluttiness, and locked her in her room in the mobile home they all shared for days on end. She was eventually rescued by the neighbours (there were calls to the assholically unhelpful exchange agency and even the police). She was then transferred to another family in another town who were almost as bad.
qwerty42: I don’t think ANYthing eats roaches. Pythons probably run in the other direction.
qwerty42: Having spent some time in a place sometimes called “hogtown,” down where the boys are the squarest and girls are the fairest of any old school down our way, I roomed with several hundred of them for some time.
People here in the north are absolutely unaware of one aspect of Southern Living, the mandatory contract one has with an exterminator for regular applications of poison throughout one’s home. Its just completely unneccessary up here.
The constant presence of toxic nerve agents in the household, though, does this perhaps explain some of the salient attributes of southern politics and culture?
My dad was a Rotarian, so we pretty much always had an exchange student all the time I was a kid (In addition to my six siblings).
Our visitors had it pretty rough; big old craftsman style house in one of the best ‘old money’ neighborhoods in town, a place on the lake in summertime, snow skiing at the little local ski area in winter.
One particularly petulant Brazilian kid was outraged - OUTRAGED - that my mom made him eat his vegetables at dinnertime. I think that was the only time I ever sided with that spoiled, rich brat.
Oh, one further point. I deeply envy ex-convicts that can protect their food with the simple expedient of a sign saying “DO NOT TOUCH.” There was no chance of this working in any apartment/house I ever lived in, because a) few if any of the “houseguests” could read, and b) even if they could, they didn’t care, either because they were drunk/high/both or because they were just dicks. I was able to occasionally keep food in the freezer if I hid it underneath the glacier-like frost and unidentifiable frozen mammoth parts concealed in the snow drifts that almost completely blanketed the inside, but even that wouldn’t work reliably, so mostly I “ate” by smoking cigarettes and drinking (warm) beer that I kept locked in my room.
Did I mention the part about how I had to lock my door when I took a shower or else people would steal my shit?
Seriously, I’ve never been in prison, but I have to imagine it’s something like that house.
Formerly Preferred: I hope you’ve learned to make better friends/find a better class of human to live with in the intervening years.
Hey, isn’t Dunder Mifflin in Scranton? I tell everyone I am introduced to that I work there.
Enough raggin on PENNSYLVANIA! I am sure there are many places worse than Wilkes Barre and Scranton in every southern state and Oklahoma and Iowa- and those Dakota places- and Alaska. AND do not forget Mr Funny Franken was not the only way you got 60- Pennsylvania helped. That being said, I have never been to Scranton or Wilkes Barre despite being a bred and born Pennsylvanian.
Doglessliberal: Lizards do. We in Vegas loves us some roach eating lizards. But only call them lizards, who told you to call them liz?
I thought “Wilkes-Barre” was a disease…
Why is it that the article doesn’t mention Secretary of State, Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton is also “from Scranton?” She said that at least a billion times during the Pennsylvania Primary last year. WHY DO ALWAYS GIVE HILLARY A PASS, WONKETTE?!?!?
PS- I’m from Scranton, too. That gives me the ability to appreciate “The Office.” I’m better than you!
Dese exchange students got da wrong attitude. Somebody shoulda taken ‘em overtown, down da line to da Steamtown Mahl, maybe down to Ol’ Forge for some white pizza at Revello’s or Arcaro’s (I woulda said Gighiarelli’s but dat’s gahn), or mebbe up the Eynon or tour da world’s biggest junkyard right offa rude 81. I know a guy in Nannycoke (or is it T’roop?) who knows dee owner. Listen Swedish, just kick back wit a bah-ul a’ Yuengling and watch da Barons fer crissakes. Sounds like a pretty good trip ta me, heyna?
Prommie: Mi>…People here in the north are absolutely unaware of one aspect of Southern Living, the mandatory contract one has with an exterminator for regular applications of poison throughout one’s home.
termites. the gd things are everwhere. and I understand formosa termites are now established in parts of Louisana and Florida. regular termites:
– need a contact with the ground (formosa termites do not, they can just show up in the attic).
– formosa termites will attack if disturbed
– formosa termites will eat live trees
there is more. none of it good. maybe they will have it out with the fire ants.
qwerty42: Our One China Policy requires that you call them “Separatist Region of Mainland China Termites.”
Anyone who has ever attended an impromtu social gathering at mountain lake knows that the correct pronunciation of Scranton is ScranTONE as in “this is the ScranTONE police”.If anyone thinks Scranton or Wilkes-Barry is bad visit Conklin N.Y.Also people of Scranton would love to have a real Dunder Mifflin = real jobs.
These stories always have to be coming out of fucking NEPA, henna?
Formerly Preferred: so maybe we should unleash … uh … the fire ants? but they’re south american.
Least they didn’t make them live in the mines underneath the town. The buildings above have been known to collapse in on them.
Of course, the mines are mostly flooded from that time they got too close to the river, so there’s probably not much room.
Yes, Scranton is a shithole.