Flying in the face of the age-old adage "Two negatives can sometimes make a positive", the lowly and amazingly still-kicking Town of Lamont realized late Tuesday that the current state of the Town is actually what ultimately and quite necessarily happens if a group of individuals either willingly chooses or is forced to consistently pick between one of several decidedly unappealing or downright cruddy options, any of which are manifestly unsuitable for any number of reasons, although at least one of these options is somehow 'less bad' than all the rest - thus making it superior and somehow enticing. Although known in sociology circles as "The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" syndrome, this phenomenon normally affects dysfunctional families and/or really crappy 3rd world countries, so finding such a prime example in the Great State of Washington has got all those academic eggheads beside themselves with excitement and glee."Well, being the mayor and all, I can pretty much attest that the collective municipal decision making largely consists of deciding which option is less likely to finally be the straw that broke the camel's back in the short to intermediate term" said the jaded and cynical elected official who realized long ago that trying for a higher, more moral, long term approach to town management was a recipe for personal scorn and ridicule and who thus has gradually been worn down to a nub by the all-powerful voter block of people who fear success and even view success as some sort of failure itself - especially if anyone else succeeds besides them! (Oh, maybe you have to live in the Greater Lamont Metropolitan Area to understand that whole concept! Whoa! But its true!) "Anyway, I have to face this sort of thing on almost a daily basis, but being short-sighted and selfish, I never took the time to contemplate the cumulative effect of 100 years of this quite depressing situation. What a perpetually compounding hole we have dug ourselves in! I just assumed that things got this way fairly recently, but given that we do not have a public toilet and our fire station went unpainted for 60+ years, I guess this sort of underachieving decision making has been going on since our humble little town was founded in 1910! Wow, somehow that makes me feel better! If I thought that it was just a recent development, that might be profoundly unsettling for me personally. Knowing that it has been going on for 100 years, although outrageous and dysfunctional to the extreme, somehow makes me feel happier inside! See, it is happening again! Wow, maybe this ain't such a frustrating town after all!" he gushed, displaying a look of madness which, although quite common in these parts, would more than likely cause the typical 'outsider' to call for a dadburn exorcist or witch doctor or whatever! "But hey, what is so doggone hard about thinking in a 'win-win' sort of way, anyway? Why does that run so counter to our very natures out here in this wind-swept, cattle-scented and largely isolated and reclusive corner of the Palouse?" he rambled on philosophically! (Editorial Note: For the last 5 years or so, the town of Lamont has gratefully allowed Century West Engineering to play a major role in selecting our options for us, (which, in fact, was a darn good decision on our part, come to think of it!) and all things considered that has worked out swimmingly - all the way around. (for us, anyway!) True, they cannot be brought in on every minute decision matrix that we face, but for the big stuff they really seem to have all the bases covered from a positive, pro-growth, infrastructure-enhancement perspective (something we could never quite pull off on our own)- as will be obvious to anyone who has not seen this little town in, say, the last 5 years or so and wants to drop by to say "Howdy"! Needless to say we would like to keep Century West around! The closer the better! Maybe open up a branch office in Lamont or something. Yeah, that would be great, for us, anyway! We've got plenty of open land to build upon! Oh, do we ever have open land! Whoa! Acres of the stuff!)
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