Bakersfield’s official motto is: “Life as it should be.”

While I’m weird enough to actually like living in Bakersfield, I’m also honest enough to admit — it ain’t San Diego. It’s one thing for SD to declare itself “America’s Finest City.” At worst, its unsupportable hyperbole, but at least San Diego is one hell of a fine town.

Bakersfield? It’s unbearably hot in the summer, sooted by filthy air and more than two-thirds of the city is either filled with oil derricks, or is blighted by urban rot — old, dilapidated buildings, graffiti, piles of trash and glassy-eyed homeless wrecks.

If this is life as it should be, I’d like to see what the city thinks is life as it shouldn’t’ be.

At any rate, its not just big media that gets skewered by citizen media — it’s city leaders, too. Here’s a song by a local musician that makes the point: “This Ain’t Life as it Should Be.” (via Matildakay).