[In our last installment, Lonewacko was describing the many beautiful women to be found in Asheville, North Carolina and how that city was truly a babe wonderland. However, his inner voice kept interupting him with something important to say...]

Lonewacko, have you checked the batteries in that thing?

What the hell are you talking about?

Here, let me do it... Just as I thought, you needed new batts. Is it working now?

Holy Gaia! You mean...

Yes, Lonewacko. All those babes aren't babes, they're womyn and don't you forget it. They are all to a man-jack lesbians.

But, that can't be true! Not all of them! We're in the middle of the Bible Belt! This is the home of the Billy Graham School of Evangelism, f'r gosh sake!

Lonewacko, according to the informative and authoritative guide book Underground Asheville, 40,000 lesbians live or work in Asheville. And, all of them are hardcore died-in-the-wool-flannel-shirt lesbian man-haters. The only reason they'd throw you one is so they could castrate you in your sleep and sacrifice your genitalia on their Wiccan New Age altar.

No, no, no! First, they can't all be lesbians. There are only 200,000 people in the entire Buncombe county which contains Asheville. That number is statistically improbable if not impossible. You mean even the cute girl at the cafe is one of them? She seemed so nice. She moved here because she had friends here. Hmm... Plus, I object to your intolerant characterization. Most lesbians are cool. Lesbians are certainly welcome on my Friendster blogroll. In fact, I briefly chatted with Phranc a few times and we seemed to get along as well as a straight male chauvinist pig goy and a lesbian Jewish folksinger could. She even sent Annie Sprinkle to my door one night after her show.

Annie Sprinkle rejected you at first sight.

No she didn't. She was just tired. I'd already seen up inside her womynsding anyway... Plus, maybe it's not as bad as you think it is. Maybe most of them aren't, you know, full-on lesbians. If'n you know what I mean. Phwoar! Plus, I'm pretty sure the foxy older lady who answered some of Lonewacko's questions wasn't one of Them. She was slim with a bit of a sway in her hips. She still had it. Plus, where did all of them come from? Where did all of the New Age Holistic Health Practitioners (500 at last count) come from too? I know not all of those holistic health practitioners are successful at it, and in fact some of them come there like starlets to Hollywood and end up busing tables or working in offices instead.

No one knows how this whole thing got started. Maybe the holistics came here because of the mountains. Maybe the lesbians came here because they put up a sign in San Francisco, suggesting people move here.

Good one, but it wasn't that funny the first time I heard it from one of my less-than-tolerant correspondents. You see, Asheville prides itself on its tolerance and its (somewhat limited) diversity. It appears to be a nice little city, in the same way that, for instance, Flagstaff AZ is a nice little city. They're both right off the freeway. And, Asheville isn't right next to anything else, although Asheville is a lot less isolated than Flag. However, after just a day there wandering around and pestering people with questions I felt a bit stifled and claustrophobic. If I had spent another day there I'm sure I would have started seeing the same people twice, and that I can't stand.

There are no less than four Arby's here, so, you could visit them on a cyclical basis together with the handful of McDonald's and Wendy's.

That's little comfort. I think it's time to move on to Dollywood.