Not Angry Enough

Hey New Englanders, it's time for a wake-up call:

I've lived in New England most of my life, and we bring certain things to the table. We're stoic and unfriendly. We're wiseasses who keep to ourselves. And we're proud of it.

So you can imagine how incensed I was yesterday when I saw an article that ranked the angriest cities in America, and Boston ranked only 20th. That's right, Boston. The de facto capital of New England. Twentieth.

It gets worse. Of the 19 cities ahead of Boston, nine of them are in the Old South. This is bullshit. We can't even out-piss-off cities in a region of the country known for its hospitality.

As if that wasn't insulting enough, there's more salt in the wound.  The least angry city in America is Burlington, VT, which is also in New England.

Now, I'm not 100% sold on the criteria for this study -- aggravated assaults per capita, number of people with high blood pressure, amount of time spent in traffic during rush hour and anger-management specialists per capita. Seems a little like throwing spaghetti against the wall. Also, I find it hard to believe that New York City, where angry is a state of mind, ranked 43rd angriest -- one behind Manchester, N.H. (though as a New Englander I do take a certain amount of pride in that).

Still, we can do better. And we will do better. What the fuck, New England? We can do better. We can do angrier.