The Worst People in the World

Worst People in the World

Fever Dream

 

The Fight Between Carnival and Lent - Bruegel

 

This was supposed to be a post about the third season of American Horror Story. Set in New Orleans...the writers, for the first time, take great pleasure in slaughtering some of the locals. Locals in the surrounding area...not New Orleans. They all have a kind of shallow affection for New Orleans...generic shots of the Quarter and St. Louis cemetery, vague Jazz notes...but don't have any interest in actually writing a character that would exist there. They do take great care in reconstructing cliché's of Southerners and ripping them limb from limb.

I couldn't get it written...couldn't get a video made...so, there's this. One note...I do not let the Boy talk to me like this...unless I am goading him. Which I was without mercy. Ha.

  

 

We'll try it again tomorrow.

 

Warrior's Shadow

It doesn't come up much on here but, I was high-ish-ly trained in history...the work of it...the craft I reckon. My studies focused on the British Empire in the 19th century. It was just a good piece of luck that William Storey was at Millsaps College when I enrolled. Thanks to him and his encouragement I was able to turn my own interests into a legitimate pursuit.  One that eventually led and allowed me to study under people like Mridu Rai*, Jonathan Spence, Paul Kennedy, etc.

One of the biggest advantages I had though...was speaking English.

I don't speak Japanese. So another keen interest of mine, Sengoku era Japan, has gleefully remained a hobby. There comes a point where if you don't speak or read a language...you hit a ceiling. So instead of learning Japanese...I just watch samurai movies.

 

My historical interests are not particularly sophisticated. I have no interest in how people used to wash up after supper or how their traditions for washing up were actually invented by their oppressors and therefore aren't really Real traditions. I like battles. I want WAR!...not anthropology and political studies. Just as in the heyday of British Imperialism...Sengoku Japan's got plenty of that.

One of Lincoln's more enthusiastic thugs, who freely talked about the need to exterminate Southerners and then Indians, famously described war as Hell. Which, as Clyde Wilson points out, is a sly dodge of responsibility for burning people out of their homes. Wilson contrasts this with a quote from Nathan Bedford Forest..."war is fighting and fighting means killing." No dodge...no outside force that dictates or excuses the most extreme behavior.

Lee got closer to our looming point, when he said, after another fantastic victory at Fredricksburg, where he was outnumbered by 40,000 men, "it is well that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it." Lee, like so many of the Confederate generals, was a throwback, a true warrior...not a thug, a murderer, an annihilationist. Without losing sight of its cost, I think Lee did love aspects of war...and what it required...sacrifice, honour, courage...selflessness.

Of course there's also the spectacle. It's the masculine drama...the stakes are ultimate and you get to put your pecker on the table while waving a flag. 

Nobody's ever done it with more style than the Samurai.



There's an outstanding book by Joanna Bourke called an Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing in the Twentieth Century. One of the things she demonstrates through interviews, letters, diaries, etc is that combat veterans are often reluctant to talk about their experiences not because they are horrified by them but because they enjoyed it. They power was seductive but so was the aesthetic experience.**

 

The actual Battle of Nagashino was not directed by Kurosawa and was probably not so stylishly metaphorical. The Samurai rode these little pony's that could barely carry their weight...and they were surrounded by retainers jogging along with them in a charge. There would have been thousands of foot soldiers at the palisades with the hand gunners...who would have come out to finish it off by hand.

Still he hasn't made it up from whole cloth. If you've ever seen the old screens you know there were high style elements to the chaos. Perhaps more importantly it's closer to how these events persist in the imagination. In the film, the shadow warrior, the Kagemusha, demonstrates the highest qualities of a warrior. It's an act that is utterly futile...on every conceivable level. If only we could mount up and ride with him.

Who doesn't love Samurai movies...oh yeaaaaah.



*One of my favorite recurring scenes from graduate school was her pulling a pack of Marlboro Reds out of her sari. She's obviously razor sharp but, she was just a fun lady.

**I recently listened to a podcast on Greek Hoplites...the issue of post-traumatic-stress-disorder came up. I thought I was gonna eat my car keys. It's the worst kind of anachronism because you can see the legs on it. By the time they were done...it was probably on psychopaths that thrived in war.

Where Were You

Watch me sweat and complain.

It's like an oven out in that damn room this time of year. It's supposed to be fall but...the late August and early September are stupid hot around here. Don't fret for me though...I love it. It feels so good under the fan right now...beer's so cold. It's the one thing, between Sunday and Friday, that isn't on my nerves right now.



Watch it or don't. Up to you...but, miss it and you'll miss one of the greatest games ever played.



Is it sick that my favorite game is a win that ruined the season of FSU and not one of the numerous SEC and National Championships they've won? :)

Next up...maybe we can get to the bottom of something that has always mystified me...how sports became separated from the higher pursuits like Art, Literature and Music, Dance.

Co'cola not Coke a Co-lahhhh

My Daddy's been up for the last week or so...always a pleasure. Last weekend him and Martha were out trimmin' the bushes (I was napping) when Daddy got tore up by some wasps. By that evening his hand was swolled up pretty bad. There was only one thing to be done for it...he'd have to go see my sister and milk some anti-venom from her fangs.

In exchange, she kept him there two nights...drastic circumstances call for drastic measures but, I'm not sure I would have been willing to pay that price.

He did come back with this clip though...



For those of you not in the U.S....try this Buford Calloway.

If you were humorless, there are some problems here...chief among them being the old Yankee adage that a man's not a man unless the snow falls on his back...but, we are not humorless here. This s*** is hilarious...and fairly accurate! We don't do snow and the best place for you to be in a dusting is at home...with the doors locked. We fear snow like a Lancastrian fears the Sun.

The Georgian shot at South Carolina was a nice touch.

One thing though...it's Co'cola...not coke a co-lahhhh. :)

Yer Biscuits

In the late summer of 2003, me and Martha loaded our possessions on a truck, said goodbye to family and friends and left the pleasant leafy neighborhood of Belhaven for a rickity townhouse, on a dingy street, in the wretched city of New Haven, Connecticut. I was enrolled at Yale for an MA in history.

I will always be grateful for the opportunity and to the people who made it possible but living in New Haven was worse than boot camp. It is a crowded, wind blown, broken down, boarded up, rusted out, trash strewn frozen dump...literally, it's a dump. I think most of New England's raw sewage eventually makes its way down to New Haven. New England raw sewage...let that simmer.



Among other things, it had a deleterious affect on the appetite...not such a problem really because, while the food may be fine as kinds of food (mostly Italian and seafood)...every place we went was dank and musty. Even cooking at home was problematic. After a comment by Martha's aunt, who is originally from Connecticut, I became disgusted by the thought of using the tap water.

At this point, I must admit, I had moved from a reasonable response to a dirty environment to a more pathological problem....shortly I would break out in hives and deal with them off and on for the rest of our time there.*

In fairness I have to point out that New Haven has great local rootbeer and the pizza is fantastic. Fair warning, if you're ever in New Haven, get the pizza to go...just so you don't end up sitting next to the tiny, thin-walled, unventilated toilet where shameless New Englanders will make themselves boisterously at home.

Still...a redneck's gotta eat. Fortunately...well sorta fortunately, fortunatishly...there is an option anywhere you go east of the Mississippi River...Cracker Barrel. It's a chain of country store/restaurants that have been selling Southern groceries to Yankees for decades (Atlanta was as far south as they went for years...what was the point?).

Cracker Barrels are like Waffle House in that there are good ones and bad ones. There is a Cracker Barrel in New Haven....Right.  Good or bad they all have grits and biscuits on the menu. So, one morning I decided to get up at 5am and drive to the other side of town for breakfast (it had to be 5am because of the mind boggling congestion...there was a point after 7am when it became impossible to get anywhere in under two hours). Cracker Barrel grits are quick grits...I could've bought some bottled water and made the grits myself. The biscuits are another story and they have a branded maple syrup that is delicious. That was my focus.

We got off to a bad start with the grits. It's nearly impossible to mess up quick grits but they managed...serving me a bowl of hot gritty water with a frown. Still I had my biscuits. All I needed was some syrup.

"Ma'am...could get some syrup please?"

"Whaaaadduhya want syee-rup for...ya' biscuits?" She was incredulous...and slightly disgusted.

"Yes ma'am...please."

"Ooooooooookay."

Most of y'all have heard me speak...no matter where I've gone in the English speaking world no one has ever had trouble placing me on the map.** I wanted to say to her..."listen Scout...you have your current job because people that sound (and look...but that's another story) like me eat a certain way...now **** off to the kitchen and get my syrup before I ask you to bring me some peanut butter too."

Of course, I didn't say any of that. I just left her with a "bless your heart" smile and never went back.



Then there was the episode with a sour old cow from Wisconsin at a Cracker Barrel around here in Pearl. 

We had a friend from Indiana down to visit (i.e. down to drink). Next to Waffle House, there's no better place to feed a hangover than Cracker Barrel....evidenced by the fact that, on this Sunday morning, we had to wait outside for a table. That's when we met the old heffer...Sittin in one of the rocking chairs with a scawl on her face. It was hard to tell whether her eyes were narrowed or just hidden behind lumps of flesh. Her most prominent feature was a bottom lip that stuck out much further than her broad flat nose...there was the last whispers of blonde on what was left of her hair. She was wearing like a tent...a moo moo or whatever you call it.

As soon as my friend opened his mouth...

"Where are you from?" She demanded.

"I'm from Indi-ana."

That was all it took...

"I'm traveling through here from Wiscaaaaansin. Did you see that jar of pickled pigs feet on the counter. God these people will eat anything."

Hold it right there Frau.

First of all...I'm one of "these people". Mind your manners...oh yeah. That's right...you don't have any.

Secondly, being from Wisconsin you might want to settle your ass a little considering that people in this state were forced, in large part by people from yours, to eat whatever they could get their hands on. Hopefully they'll keep closing your factories and sending them to Mexico and China...so you people can develop a taste for pig ears.

Lastly...and MOST OBVIOUSLY...you just pulled off the Interstate, with intent, to eat at a restaurant that specifically and loudly and exclusively....serves Southern groceries.

WTF....I ask you W...T...F?

All the disgust and fascination with...the desire for and repulsion by...sat in a rocking chair in Pearl.

What can you say...what can you do?



Just keep eatin' I reckon.

* This had more to do with the people than it did the grim surroundings. They started on the last day of a visit back to Mississippi...just before I was getting ready to head back.

** There was an episode at a bar in London...a man was actually kicked out because he wouldn't stop telling me how sexy he though my "Texas" accent was. That's a true story. Ha!

Slip It To The Andriod

Yet another week where I've worked more than 20 hours. Y'all I didn't make it back to the house until 9:30 on Thursday...then turned right around and worked for five hours on Friday. It's like I'm making Nike tennis shoes in China. There's nothing for a week like that but liquor, smoke and Chrome.

Our friend from Satellite of Love is back...only now, he loves her even more. So Sweet.

Beat yer head on that for a while.*


Mainly I've just been beating my head against this laptop and blogger...and idiots. Below is not a sketch as such...but, a material artifact of a conversation between me and Martha. Through a convoluted series of links I ended up on an article from, where else, Salon, that blamed all of America's wars on Southerners. Why? Because we are the dregs of Scotland, Ireland, Wales and North and West England. We like to scrap. The author had just read Albion's Seed. The last decade or so has been a real revelation for the Yankee. Through the publication of a few books and essays (see: See Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell or Better Off Without 'Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secesion, Albion's Seed, etc.) the Yankee has finally come to understand that flawed as we are...we aren't flawed versions of them. We are different from them. We are still, to a large extent, the same people that were too poor and rowdy to live in the poorest and rowdiest parts of Britain (or kidnapped from West Africa). New England, and the United States of God Almighty America and the whole of the Western Hemisphere was invented by the Puritans...the better sorts of England...the sober and industrious and, above all, the Pious. The example to all...they founded a shinning city on a hill. A beacon for the rest of us struggling in the dark. They will save the world...even if they have to burn it down to do so. From Calvinism through Transcendentalism to Statism...they haven't changed a lick. Some of these people were sent out to save the Great Lakes region (the Midwest)while others stayed back to get the minds of wave after wave after wave of immigrants right. They pulled that shit on the Italians and Poles...found ready allies in the Germans of 1848 but, we instinctively knew why they'd been kicked out of England in the first place. F***ing witch burners. We've never wanted any part of it...and that is our great and unpardonable Sin. We aren't just different than them...we don't want to be them. That's Cardinal. That is what they are finally coming to realize. One of the reasons we don't want to be them is that their Piety is literal minded and dull. They're not Righteous. They're busybodies.* Their industriousness, their solid work ethic, looks an awful lot like grasping, rapacious, greed. In short, they're the kind of people who would invade, conquer and occupy Sovereign States, slaughter indigenous peoples, go on rabbit hunts in the Philippine, send gunboats to South America, Vietnam, and on...all in the name of Abolition or Manifest Destiny or making the world safe for Democracy or etc. etc. etc. and BAAAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhhh. Now matter how dastardly...they can always come up with some cockeyed Moral Justification paper over their Imperial compulsions. We're the warmongers??? Pound sand dickh**ds. Anyway...the above is what you obviously see in those scribbles. We will revisit all this later. We gotta clear the air in here... Stay tuned...I didn't want to sully F-Word's efforts with all this nonsense but, next up...we will be examining a piece of his excellent work that purchased recently. *You may be asking yourself...Isn't the Bible Belt in the South...isn't the South hyper-religious. One, there's more than one religion (see the State). Two, much of what passes for religion in The South is not naturally Southern...fundamentalism, for instance, is a product of modernity and a Midwestern import. Three, we go to church because we, as individuals are Sinners, not to plot the salvation of the world. Jesus handled that...without any help from Cotton Mathers even. Again, we will be discussing all this in the future.