Not Even the Ducati Can Save You From My Wrath

I'm a girl who likes her eye candy. So, I'm was inclined to like absent canadian from the get-go, because he has the kind of eyecandy I like right on top of his blog. I think there's nothing sexier than a guy on a nice bike.

And the template...it's clean, it's nice, it's lovely compared to some of the crap I've had to look at lately. Smooches for that. But the text is twice as big as it needs to be. Unless you're trying for the over-70 crowd, text that large really isn't necessary. However, I suspect that the larger type face may just be a disguise for the fact that the content is rather sparse.

And that gets me to....Ugh...the content.

The Absent Canadian is absent from Canada because he was transplanted to the south. He's a Gen Xer, has a rather pleasant photo on his blog, and I'd like to like him...I really would.

But I don't.

He got on my last good nerve. It's a shame one of the yankees didn't review you, Mike, because they might have been less inclined to beat your ass. But instead, you got the girl who lives south of the Mason Dixon line, and loves it. Poor you.

You know one thing I hate? I hate a transplanted northerner who doesn't take the time get past his superficial stereotypes of folks down here, and see the subtle pleasures of the South, the beauty, tranquility, grace, warmth, and slow easiness down here. One of the joys of moving to another country, or for that matter, moving from one region to another, as I've done twice (first from the midwest to the west, and then from the west to the deep South 7 years ago), is the chance to immerse yourself in an entirely different culture, and ENJOY IT. To occasionally laugh at it, but to more often become part of it. To let a place sink into your bones and change you, for the better. To lose that sense of superiority you direct towards your current neighbors, and realize that every place, every person, has something to offer you.

The post currently at the top of this blog (redneck license plate on a truck from Georgia) serves as a case in point. Condescension, condescension, condescension. And from a Canadian, to boot. Do you even understand what a redneck is? The term can be a disparaging one, but in the South, more often than not, it's a person who is saying he came from common, rural parentage, a working class joe, a man or woman who works hard for his/her money. One of my favorite authors, Edward Abbey, once wrote:

I am a redneck myself, born and bred on a submarginal farm in Appalachia, descended from an endless line of dark-complected, lug-eared, beetle-browed, insolent barbarian peasants, a line reaching back to the dark forests of central Europe and the alpine caves of my Neanderthal primogenitors.

I'm descended from a long line of rednecks and see nothing about that as shameful. My dad grew up on a submarginal farm in the Ozark mountains with almost nothing to his name, descended in an unbreaking line from poor white farm folks who broke their backs tilling rocky red soil. There are two uses of the term redneck. One is perjorative, used by outsiders to mock and demean people they assume are their lessers, much like ignorant racists use the n-word. And then there is an internal use of the word bypeople who consider themselves nothing more than plain working class folks. You fail to grasp that distinction, dude, and it's offensive.

Are parts of Georgia backwoods? Oh hell yes. But some parts of it (Atlanta) are as cosmopolitan as any place you're going to find in the world, with fine dining, a rich cultural life, and opportunities to enjoy good living. Other parts, like Savannah or Athens, are rich in history and tradition, and are beautiful, to boot.

The American South is/was home to some of the most famous and prolific writers in Western literature. Think Flannery O'Connor, James Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Alice Walker, Mark Twain, Pat Conroy, Erskine Caldwell, Sidney Lanier, and Harper Lee, to name a few. The South was also the birthplace of jazz and blues, and later, the cradle of rock & roll. The South is home to great eating, from the spice of N'awlins to the low country cooking of South Carolina and soul food. Not to mention that there are at least half a dozen distinct types of barbecue in the South alone.

So tell me...what the hell of cultural value has Canada produced lately, aside from curling and Celine Dion? As a general rule, I don't demean the places other people live. I'm the girl who can even find something nice to say about Cleveland (frankly, I like Cleveland). But it gets on my last good nerve when some jumped up yankee moves to the south and then can find nothing good to say about anything that happens here. My last. damn. good. nerve.

Your condescension is unwarranted. And while your blog looks great, the content is dull and supercilious. Did I mention characterless, insipid, drab, tedious, plebian, prosaic and vapid?

Eh. I don't know if it's part of your anthropology background to sit back and presumptiously observe others without taking the time to appreciate their culture, or if you're just an ass. Either way, you can step off, hoser.

I give you a and a .

Spending money on a template when your content is this lame is a huge waste of cash.

p.s. So, speaking from the perspective of someone who wasn't born in the South, but has come to love it here: Don't like the way things are done down here? Think they were better in the frigid wasteland you came from? Don't let the door hit you on your canuckistani ass on the way back north.

xoxoxo,

Love Bites