Thursday, October 26, 2006

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

15 comments:

  1. I'm Hawiian, and I guarantee I would rather be stuck in the humid, gross, nasty, and ass-backwards back woods of Atlanta than have to deal with this winter bullshit thing they have going up in the north.

    Candians! With their beady eyes, and their flapping heads.

    [What? Someone had to say it. It's too easy not to!]

    I'll have to force GNVP to comment on it, seeing as he's from New York and all.

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  2. Oh, but I will say that the fact you can study Canadian Native studies in university is HEEE-LAR-EEE-OUS!

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  3. Former Texan living in Idaho here...love this response. You'd be surprised how intolerant many liberal northerners are when it comes to their generalizations of the south.

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  4. You know usually you are right on when it comes to reviewing blogs, but I think you took way too much to heart what was meant to be a joke. I too live in NC, where anyone around would make a joke about that license plate. IT WAS A JOKE! If he had never mentioned that he was from Canada you may have overlooked it, but because he is, omg, Canadian, you jump on his ass and ride it like a cowgirl. Loosen up, a joke is still a joke.

    He has written MANY posts on how much he loves the South, and has has enlightened not just me but many others on the highlights of the South.

    I have seen you review a blog that is A LOT more offensive and laugh your ass off because it was funny, and you want to run down a man who is generally interested in informing people about where he lives and what his life was like in Canada?

    Whatever, but get a clue... it was a freakin joke - you know, ha ha, that was cute kind of joke... I guess you just don't have a sense of humor because as you posted many many times, you love the South. So do I, it doesn't mean I can't laugh at a person who would obviously laugh at himself when he ordered a plate that said Redneck. I don't think he was knocking the south when he got that plate, he was laughing at a phrase that incorporates many people in the south. Get a grip.

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  5. Wow. He's one for brevity, no?

    So you assume that I don't get crap for being from Hawaii all the time? I get asked about coconut bras, grass skirts, if I want to "lei" someone etc, constantly. It's the way it goes. Your Canadian "culture" is the route of the stereotype, just like my Hawaiian culture is the route of my stereotype.

    I'll forgo listing all of the wonderful things America has contributed to this lovely earth, including musical artists that rank insanely higher than Bryan Adams. I'll give you Rush, though.

    Anyway, if you want a non-partisan re-review from someone who doesn't take southern shit talk to heart, re-submit. Otherwise, I guess you just have to take it as a few bonus points for being naughty, and get in line to be spanked.

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  6. Anyway. Someone pass me a bison burger, I'm famished.

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  7. Is it too late to add "whiny" to the list?

    God, I knew Canuckistanis were boring, but who knew they were whiny, too?

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  8. p.s. By the way - the allusion to people who use the n-word was a low blow.

    No, darlin', it was an accurate blow because it works the same way. You just have a double standard for racial perjoratives directed at white southerners.

    Whereas I guarantee that you'll get the same response in each of the two scenarios:

    1) You take yo shiny white canuckistani ass down to da club on a Friday night to hang wit yo peeps. And, you walk up to a large group of da brothas, and you say, "yo, what up ma niggas!"

    You'll get your shiny white ass whupped from one side of your town to the next.

    2) You take your shiny white canuckistani ass out on a friday night to a backwoods shithole where they play the blues or maybe even some country music, serve some PBR, and where the guys still have a little bit of shit on their boots, and start calling the boys "rednecks."

    You'll get your shiny white ass whupped from one side of your town to the next.

    ----------------------------------
    It's kinda like family. I can make fun of my brother all the livelong day, but if you, an outsider, take it upon yourself to make fun of my brother, I'm gonna kick your ass.

    And yeah, I'm sure it works the same way, even up yonder in Canuckistaniland.

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  9. Can't we all just get a bong?

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  10. In IE the font within your posts is quite large, but your side bar is small. And my Mozilla keeps timing out and won't let me open your page, so I can't say for sure with that one.

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  11. My browser is set at 1024 by 768, and the font looks about 16 px in IE, which is all I can use on my work computer.

    This has been a shit storm of a week for many people.

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  12. depending on what kind of command you use for the font sizes, it looks a lot different in ie verse firefox...trust me, i know because i nearly killed myself trying to get my font to look smaller in ie without it looking microscopic in firefox.

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  13. Why or why did I not submit my blog to this site for a review instead of to those I Talk Too Much posers? Perhaps it's because I am an idiot? Or perhaps it's becasue I am Canadian? Anyway, love your site and your url -- iwillfuckingtearyouapart -- brilliant.

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  14. Charles,

    We have plenty of love to give, baby. All you have to do is ask. I don't hate all Canadians, in fact, there was this very hot french Canadian boy I met on Spring break one year, who was an artist and an outstanding kisser, and we had a few brief moments of passion before he headed back north to the frozen land of snow.

    He sent me e-mails in franglish for months.

    I lurved him. I might just lurve you, too. You never know.

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  15. Much as I think you've been a little harsh on Canada I do take issue with him claiming the telephone and time zones. The telephone was invented by an Italian and stolen by a Scot and time zones come from Britain - which is why they are all relative to Greenwich Mean Time.

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Grow a pair.