You live in Atlanta, you know to expect that the news is not always going to be filled with human interest, heart-warming, gushy crap. The city’s too big, too wild for that. I try to write about the pluses, and there are many, but it’s not a proper metroblog to me-if I’m taking the metroblog reason-for-being seriously-if we don’t mention the bad stuff, too.

It doesn’t hurt if there’s something at least almost funny about it.

Like this story. I linked the Macon, GA, paper, just because I’m still pissed at the AJC. It’s about one of Atlanta’s finest, officer Stan Street. Officer Street, age 44, has been on the metro Atlanta police force for 17 years. Just lately he began moonlighting. As a bank robber.

Don’t misunderstand our good Officer Street. He did it for all the right reasons-he needed the money to make sure he could pay employees at Atlanta’s Finest Security, based in Decatur.

His altruism on behalf of the employees of this firm is, to say the least, stirring.

I’ve already written about poor Francis Brohm, the young guy from Cobb County who was hanging his head out of his friend’s truck, either from being jostled by movements of the car or because he was sick-drunk, and lost said head when his friend got too close to a telephone pole support wire. There’s nothing funny about that, but there is almost something awe-inspiring in the strangeness of the story. The sense of, damn, that really happened? Well, yeah. In Atlanta (and surrounding counties) just about anything is possible.

Then of course, there’s the recent horrible revelation that we have NO SLOGAN. Both Jessica and I have had something to say on that devastating bit of news. I still shudder when I think of it.

But you know, as bad as it may get around here, or as bad as it gets in other major southern cities, like Memphis, or Nashville, Birmingham, Mobile, Jacksonville or New Orleans, we can all take heart that we’ve still got little ole West Monroe, Louisiana, down here below the Mason-Dixon line to make the rest of us look like pristine, sin-free saints living in our own Holy Cities.

Because in West Monroe, they got stories like THIS going on.

A quote from the story-

…Deputies arrested Austin Gullette, 45, 4266 Jonesboro Road, West Monroe, for allegedly engaging in sexual intercourse with a pig.

Gullette’s sister, owner of the pig, said she caught her brother in the act. She said she walked outside because she heard squealing and discovered her brother with one of her three pigs…

The pig was unavailable for comment, by the way. According to Mr. Gullette’s sister, the “(…)pig, which she fondly refers to as “P-pie,” is hiding because she’s scared.” I don’t blame P-pie. I’m in Roswell, Georgia, and I’m scared.

There. If you have ever looked at the newspaper here, or in any of the other cities I mentioned, and thought, “My God, why am I living in a place where such things happen?”, you can now comfort yourself with the fact that you don’t live in West Monroe, Louisiana.

Ironically, I close with a quote from the movie Deliverance, which is set in North Georgia and involves a fateful canoeing trip made by urbanite Atlantans in the mountains…

Mountain Man : I’m gonna make you squeal like a pig. Weeeeeeee.