Friday night, as Martha and I sat on the couch, tryin' to get reaquainted after bein' apart for almost a week, we heard the familiar BE-Dink of a text message notification. We didn't recognize the number or...
Damn!
Rather than call the police to warn them that the city of Jackson was in for serious trouble that night...we told 'em to rock it.
Where I drink beer, smoke cigarettes, try to catch up on promised posts...and fail.
Creeeeeepy.
Despite it all...it's still a great song. The point, which I'm not sure I ever really got around to was this...the cause orientation of the Clash seemed to fly in the face of what Punk might have been.
What we should have talked about was Mick Jones utter failure as a dancer.
Pretty Vacant is the money...although, I've recently been disappointed to discover that the line which I thought brilliantly read..."I don't believe in illusion/'cause too much ain't for real"...is actually "too much is for real." Boo. Still, I'd rather hear EMI.
Anyway...you can decide whether we're caught up or not.
REP. RANGEL (D-NY): New York is different and more progressive than a lot of areas in other states, and some of the Southern areas have cultures that we have to overcome.
Hey Chuck...we shoot Ducks, Deer, Turkey and people we know. We are not shooting up your malls, your movie theaters and we sure as hell aren't shooting little kids.
You people are different alright.
One of the very first school shootings, back in the mid-90s, was here in Jackson. It was stopped by an assistant principal with a pistol...one that he may or my not have been authorized to carry. Around this time, there was another schooting in Arkansas. Since then, in Mississippi and the surounding states there have been zero.
We don't do random killings in The Deep South. There are too many people we know that need killin' to go on targetless shooting sprees.
We don't, as general rule, do serial killers either. We are violent. Our murder rates have always been as relatively high as our suicide rates have been relatively low. We have some horrific killings...a man kidnaps his family and kills them because his wife left him, a man kills his brother's family over property, a black man that has been in the employ of a notorious White Supremacist (transplanted Yankee by the way) burns the whitey's trailer down...with him in it.
We are not innocent people. There's a kind of code that governs most violence. It's been noted. Thomas Sowell's Black Rednecks and White Liberals is last piece that comes to my mind. He explained violence in the Black community as an inherited cultural trait picked up from white Southerners...who had brought it with them from Northern England. To this point, how many black serial killers and spree shooters can you think of.
Then there's just plain crime...we have a lot of that too. We are, generally speaking rowdy, ungovernable, violent people but, when it comes to gunning down little children, we aren't your problem.
I know this has the potential to get as rude as rude talk can be. I have always tried keep this place open for various ideas...if you want to go off on guns GO OFF. The only thing that will cause me to lose my manners is on issues of Southern Culture (sadly we've lost a reader over this...I let down my upbringing and forgot my duties as a host). Having said that, if you want to blame The South...go for it. It'll be a more rowdy conversation than usual but, please feel free to express yourself here.
Y'all know I spend a lot of time on the road...and if you're a careful reader you know I do a lotta diggin' on the radio. I've got my i-tunes but, nothin' beats a pleasant surprise.
One of the great things about being in Mississippi is that more often than not, the best things to come across the airwaves are the local products.
It's been almost a complete shutout in last few days as I've crisscrossed the fish bowl that this part of the world has become.
Not just songs either...Jerry Clower will often get some air time, in a city with any traffic, around rush hour. An obvious attempt to curb people's nerves...which, when you consider the amount of traffic we're talking about, demonstrates just how low the tolerance for interference of any kind is around here.
They broke mold...lotta broke molds around here.
We end with an appropriate highlight...we are sleeping in Slidell, Louisiana after all.
"There is a class of people (in the South, among whom your author's kin were included), men women and children, who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order."Genral Sherman to Thomas Ewing (Order #11)
A curious pehnomenon occurs after and around every election in this country. Whether the Yankee Statist wins, loses or draws, he turns his attention to The South...to bitterly damn our existence or, rejoice in our immenent extiction.
"On a repeat viewing of Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” over the New Year’s holiday, a scene I had barely noticed the first time jumped out at me. Confederate vice-president Alexander Stephens (played with reptilian gentility by Jackie Earle Haley), in a secret meeting aboard a steamboat with Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward, faces up to the reality that the era of slavery has come to an end. Ratification of the 13th Amendment, Stephens muses, will destroy the basis of the Southern economy and the South’s traditional way of life. “We won’t know ourselves anymore,” he says.
"If only it had been so." Andrew O'Hehir
Sorry about yer luck prick...but, we're still here and I'm raising one just like me. Of course, all I want, all he will want, all my fathers have wanted for generations is to be free of any and all connection with you....and your empire. We don't care how you live your life because we don't think about you...except to the extent that we are forced to continue in the political process of this ridiculous construct you call the United States. Sorry, Andy...as long as we have to be here we aren't just going to shut our mouths until you want to hear a story or a bit of song.
For Andy Southern culture isn't really a culture at all...it's just a corporate expression of racism and bigotry. What was actually done to the South was less than we deserved...
Look to the South and you who went with us through that land can best say if they have not been fearfully punished. Mourning is in every household, desolation written in broad characters across the whole face of their country, cities in ashes and fields laid waste, their commerce gone, their system of labor annihilated and destroyed. Ruin and poverty and distress everywhere, and now pestilence adding to the very cap sheaf of their stack of misery.
Sherman
Take heart Andy, according to George Parker we are once again on the verge of extinction...but, beware
Northern liberals should not be too quick to cheer, though. At the end of “The Mind of the South,” Cash has this description of “the South at its best”: “proud, brave, honorable by its lights, courteous, personally generous, loyal.” These remain qualities that the rest of the country needs and often calls on. The South’s vices—“violence, intolerance, aversion and suspicion toward new ideas”—grow particularly acute during periods when it is marginalized and left behind. An estrangement between the South and the rest of the country would bring out the worst in both—dangerous insularity in the first, smug self-deception in the second.*
Again...as long as they smile and dance for you they're fine but, they are still under the delusion that they have some say in the affairs of the country.
Let me put this as clearly and as literally as I can (the only way to be understood among these, rootless, block headed, bell ends). We have tried to separate ourselves from you before and you responded by trying to exterminate Us. You failed. You have failed repeatedly. Why do you persist in this failed endevour when all we want is to be shed of you...and your absurd, greedy, warmonger, self-rightous, culturless, loud, obnoxious country?
*Interesting that the auther relies so heavily on Cash. If he had written "The Mind of India" rather than the "Southern Mind," Cash would already and rightly have been thrown on the trash heap of Orientilists but, because he wrote it for the U.S. Empire...he's still lauded.
If you doubt me read the contemporary critique of his work by Donald Davidson...where he rips Cash a brand new, two story, brick, two-car garage, asshole....decades before Edward Said picked up his first rock for the cameras.
The Alabama Crimson Tide v. The Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
ND wins the toss..defers. Alabama will start on offense.
Huge gain for Bama...Norwood picks up 30 on the pass.
It's early but, it's already looking bad for ND...Lacey just bull rushed for 10 and a first down. Topped off with a facemask penalty.
Off sides Notre Dame...they better settle down or this could get ugly in about 10 minutes.
If you're wondering where the Gators have been...we will discuss their vile performance in the Sugar Bowl at half-time.
Oh by the way, Alabama just bulldozed their way into the endzone! If this is any indication of where ND is...they are cooked.
ND comes out throwing. If there's a weakness, weakness being relative, in the Bama defense it's the secondary.
That's a close one but, ND shouldn't have had to call a time out to have it reviewed. It'll be a first down or a punt for Notre Dame.
It's a yard rule Irish...stop whining. You can't be all up in his grill.
Alabama is rumbling all over the Notre Dame D.
That was a good play for ND secondary but, he was wide open...and McCarron had all night to throw the ball.
First Down Alabama.
Shoestring tackle on Lacey...or it would be 14 ...Wait a minute IT IS 14 - NIL.
It's still early but, this is ugly.
He was down. It'll be ND ball.
ND's ball. No fumble.
Notre Dame punts the ball.
Notre Dame has given up, on average, 11 points a game...Alabama has run 18 plays and has 14 points. right now they're moving the ball at will.
Notre Dame finally get's Alabama in a 3rd and long-ish...they just drop a 20 yard pass on 'em. Second and goal from the two yard line.
Notre Dame has brought a football team to a Tank Battle...Alabama Crimson Tide 21 effortless points...notre dame Nothin'.
This is silly.
Two good stops by the Irish but...how long can Alabama maintain an edge?
Alabama might actually have to punt. They will.
One good run for ND...then boom.
ND punts.
Now we just watch and see how long Alabama can maintain the pace.
It just took about 6 ND defenders to tackle Lacey and he threw the first one down WWF style.
Even when Alabama has to punt it ends up being a highlight.
It's kinda settled into ND trying to get something...anything going.
That was there best chance to convert a third down...Bama dropped 'em for about a five yard loss. Hopefully Alabama can get it going again...and put another seven on the board.
Alabama is just stoopid strong.
What a catch by Jones...pitch and catch.
This is an assault. The cops might show up and put a stop to this. Alabama 28 - ND Nothing.
McCarron to Jones...hand it to Lacey...hand it to Yeldon...whatever it's a massacre.
Sideline reporter asked the Notre Dame coach could be done to change this in the second half. He says, "get Alabama not to come out for the second half."
Notre Dame has come out throwing the ball...they've picked up a few first downs.
They tossed it around long enough for Bama to pick the ball off.
Lacey might as well be swinging a sledge hammer out there...he is punishing people. Literally.
Touchdown Alabama...they just drove the ball 97 yards like a Sunday stroll. Alabama 35..ND Nothing.
Words like "embarrassment" are being tossed around now...it's still the 3rd quarter. It's been on the tip of everybody's tongue since the first drive.
Some of what we were treated to leading up to the game, and make no mistake it was directed at all of us...
ND finally gets into the endzone...yawn.
This is just ridiculous...Alabama picks up a first down. It's called back because of hold. They just pick it right back up on the next play. It's academic at this point...the more Alabama runs the ball...the more tired the ND defense gets...the easier it is to run. This is not a football game it's a clinic.
End of the Third Quarter...Alabama Crimson Tsunami 35 (and moving)...Notre Dame 7.
McCarron to Cooper...Alabama 42 - ND 7.
Herb Herbstriet, one of the announcers was heard, as they cut away to commercial, "I can just hear those SEC fans around the country."
SEC SEC SEC SEC SEC...that's what he's hearing. Let's face...LSU dropped the ball in the Peach Bowl and Florida made absolute asses of themselves in the Sugar Bowl but, it's the SEC and and everybody else.
SEVEN NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS in a row...Georgia lost the SEC championship at the 6 yard line, Texas A&M beat Alabama at home. The National Championship is played in Atlanta.
Finally some action...the Alabama players are starting to fight with one another. They're up by 28 points but they're still so jacked up they're squabbling.
Put it in the books...Alabama 42 - notre dame 14. The score looks a lot closer than it actually was. One of the most lopsided games I've ever seen.
No, of course, you can't have it. Every time I take a box to the dumpster it gives me a new Hummel Figure for my collection.
"Sure."
"This is a really great box. I've gotta get my office organized and this box is perfect."
...
"What you got goin' today?"
"Yer lookin' at it....probably burn a cigarette." I didn't even raise my eyes from the computer screen, which at that moment was blank. A question like that is necessarily preceded by a series of unpleasant thoughts..."I want to accomplish X. X is a really big task. I need help with all that work. I wonder what Erik's doing."
"I think I'm gonna jump on that freezer...get it straightened out. Try to get some organization in there."
"It is a mess back there."
...
"What's happenin' man...what's really goin' on."
He took a long drag...sighed through the smoke..."Just tryin' to cross reference some products with users...tryin' to maximize my time so I'm not drivin' all over creation this year."
...
These people are always trying to get organized. They're constantly trying because they always fail...and I'm supposed to be the one that's crazy.
First of all it's unhealthy. At some point you gotta accept the world for what it is. Maybe the world is trying to organize you. Relax, accept it...take comfort in the fact that you will never express a thought so dreadful as.."That's a really great cardboard box."
Secondly, people that are actually doing their job, don't have time for that crap. My job is to walk into a kitchen...smile, crack some jokes, and wink on the way out...and I am very good at my job. People that talk in meetings, fill out reports, and organize are people that want you to think they're working. That's a Universal rule.
"Honey can you get that trash out?"
"Sugar men who have time to take out the trash...are men who aren't working hard enough at being a Father and Husband."
See?
My one and only New Year's Resolution...be an even better employee and an even better Father and Husband.
Look to the South and you who went with us through that land can best say if they have not been fearfully punished. Mourning is in every household, desolation written in broad characters across the whole face of their country, cities in ashes and fields laid waste, their commerce gone, their system of labor annihilated and destroyed. Ruin and poverty and distress everywhere, and now pestilence adding to the very cap sheaf of their stack of misery.
