Discomfort, Indeed.

As my wife likes to remind me, I am not really a Southerner; I am a Floridian.  Even though the latitude of my birthplace is 3 degrees south of hers, I am still an outsider, a sort of mongrel, even though a sizable portion of my higher education and all of my professional life has been spent squarely in the South.  I'm not sure I'll ever get to be a member of that club, in part because I don't drink sweet tea and sound like I was born closer to to the Iowa River than the Chattahoochee, where my wife was.

I do feel like I understand this place somewhat, though, and certainly felt more at home in Clemson, South Carolina than I did in Terre Haute, Indiana.  I was an outsider there, too, because the Midwesterners categorized me as one of those from the other side of the Line. College is a place where identity is both calcified and shattered, sometimes more than once.  I never got the impression that there was all that much that identified an Midwesterner, really, or an "Hoosier" in particular.  In fact, nobody even knew what a Hoosier is.

The same could not be said in the Upstate of South Carolina.  The people there had a distinct sound -- distinct from the other side of the state, distinct from the other Carolina and distinct from the other side of the Savannah River.  I could not tell an Ohioan from an Illinoisan in nearly the same way I can pick out an Upstater from a Low Countryman from an Alabaman or a Tennesseean.  The food is different in these places, the music, the dress (especially the colors -- Red is not welcome in the Upstate, and Orange is frowned upon in Athens, Georgia), the sense of place and the sense of story.

I think the story telling comes from the Scots-Irish stock that populates the region; I am convinced there is something inherent in the Celtic blood that makes words pour out like honey -- whether it be from the mouth or the pen.  Like any other people with a strong sense of identity, it's strange to have someone else try to tell your story for you, so I am not even sure I am qualified to write this now, but when I came across this New Yorker piece, my reservations about my credentials receded lazily like the tide over the dark, cakey pluff mud of the Charleston marsh.

After spending some half a dozen paragraphs talking about how Southerners are stubborn, xenophobic, backward, somewhat barbaric, greedy, racist, ignorant, out of touch while culturally dominant, football and Nascar obsessed, tribalist, and violent, he closes with a couple of throwaway sentences that make it seem he's really not judging (the phrase that's used down here is, of course, "Bless his heart"):

But there is a largely forgotten Southern history, beyond the well-known heroics of the civil-rights movement, of struggle against poverty and injustice, led by writers, preachers, farmers, rabble-rousers, and even politicians, speaking a rich language of indignation. The region is not entirely defined by Jim DeMint, Sam Walton, and the Tide’s A J McCarron. It would be better for America as well as for the South if Southerners rediscovered their hidden past and took up the painful task of refashioning an identity that no longer inspires their countrymen.

The implication is that the South we have now is an inferior facsimile of what the South should be that is popularly understood to be personified in a recalcitrant Senator, a dead business man, and a football star, after he describes the region in precisely those terms.  I don't know what sort of inspiration Packer expects the natives of my adopted home state and our neighbors to provide when the the picture he paints of Southerners is so grim.  None of the buildup to this terminus tells us how the positive qualities do indeed benefit society at large outside of a rather ambiguous listing of positive traits: "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.”  That sounds nice, until two sentences later, he extols vices to counter them.  He is treating my neighbors as either terrorists or children who ought to be mollified.

I am particularly sensitive to that sort of attitude because I chose to be among these people.  I picked Clemson University for graduate work.  I bought my first house in Augusta, Georgia.  I married one of the Peach State's daughters.  We decided together to move to Charleston.  And, in the next place we live, I am certain we will be greeted with y'alls, elongated vowels and an extremely dedicated knowledge of college football.  I like the polite conversation.  I like the weather.  I like the pace of life.  I like the sense of culture.  I like the emphasis on faith.

The task of refashioning the identity has been going on here for over 200 years.  Re-examinations of what it means to be born between Virginia Beach and El Paso came to a rather violent head in 1861, of course, and no one forgets it.  The benefit of losing, though, is being forced to have that conversation; the winner is spared from that kind of existential introspection.

So a magazine entitled the New Yorker is an odd place indeed to read about an explanation on what's going on inside of the cultural mind of the South, especially when, upon completing this story, I was offered a suggested reading link of this story. 

Like I said, I'm not actually a Southerner and I don't know if Packer is either..  I don't know why it feels like politics are dramatically different now than just two election cycles ago.  But I do know that Packer's infantile reduction of the region to the Republican Party, Wal-Mart and the SEC is not productive or accurate.  I am skeptical that you couldn't go to a small town in Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Oregon and find similar evidence of the low-brow to which Packer objects.  And so what?  What exactly is he trying to argue?

Loyalties

As you can tell by my icon, I follow the Clemson Tigers.  (Woo! Big wins over Wake and UVa this week!)  I am emotionally invested in their performance (for better or for worse...) for a couple of reasons: I attended the institution, so their performance academically and athletically reflect on me, whether that's fair or not, and my performance reflects on them as well; awareness and support is good for the school; it is fun.  I get something out of it, and when I give/spend money on their stuff, so does Clemson.  It also lets us talk about stuff other than work at work.

That relationship gets further away when you look at professional sports, because I didn't attend anything to do with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers; I was simply born near where they play.  A lot of people at work have brand loyalties to their cars like sports teams, and that's kind of fun, too, because cars are so oddly personal while the corporations themselves are still quite distant.  If you dislike a design decision with Ford or a racing team hire they make, it is not easy to voice that opinion to someone who cares.  So the give and take is a little further removed from university teams (which is one of the reasons I prefer college to professional, and why I think it's ok to use "we" in reference to college but less so for professional teams).

One brand loyalty that makes even less sense to me is the political party.  I understand why candidates and elected officials show loyalty: the parties give them money.  But why should I, as a voter, give money to a party rather than a candidate?  What about either the Republican or Democratic Party is constant enough to foster such a relationship?  Aside from getting their people in power, what vision do they serve?

I think they are obsolete, and the evidence to support this really started in 2004 when Howard Dean revolutionized the way that political candidates raised money.  Ron Paul and Barack Obama pursued that tack as well, and other movements, notably the Tea Party, has also shown that a group of people can focus their political interests without the structure of existing political parties.  There will be future ad hoc coalitions like the Tea Party, and I think they are a more appropriate representation of popular will than something entrenched, precisely because they are not entrenched.  If they lose the pulse of the interested participants, it fades away.  There is clearly a large minority (or possibly plurality) of disaffected voters for whom the mainline Republican and Democratic platform is not adequate.  Part of the problem is the arbitrary restriction of the growth of the size of the House of Representatives to an insufficient 435 members.  Making the seats more accessible (which was the Constitutional intent) would allow for those coalitions to be able to participate.

Even still, there are those people who will refuse to vote for another party because they are in the other party, much like people who refuse to buy Ford because Dale Earnhardt drove a Chevy, even when the candidate of the other party could (conceivably) represent his or her (let's be honest, probably his) values better.  Ever heard of a yellow dog Democrat?  Why should that concept even exist?

So stop.  Forget them.  Pick the guy you like best.  Start locally, because they aren't partisan.  Defy the arbitrary strictures of platforms.  Why are pro-labor, secularism and pro-abortion lumped together?  Why are free trade, conservative social values and strong defense?  Any of those could be separated from any other, but they are not because the political parties and their platforms require them to be, due to the binary nature of partisan politics.  That's silliness.

I need to go change into my orange shirt and make fun of a Tarheel.  It's a big game this Saturday.

Moves Like Dabo*

Did you know that there is a phrase in the college football consciousness "pull a Clemson"?  (Search for that, or typical Clemson, or something along those lines...)  Basically, it means that your goal is yours for the taking as long as you do what you're supposed to do and don't screw up -- but you do anyway.  For as long as I can remember, that's been emblematic of the Clemson football team, because I'm not old enough for the big days of the 80s when Clemson was busy being awesome on the gridiron.  This year, though, actually looks different.

It's a funny thing how that "always been there" kind of attitude affects you.  I cannot believe I am going to reference the Sing Off two posts in a row, but when Vocal Point, a talented group of Mormon boys, sang Ain't Too Proud to Beg on the show, I looked up from my smartphone where I was doing something completely unrelated and manly like reading about football and monster trucks and said, "This sounds really white."  (In the interest of full disclosure: I am allowed to say that, because I am really white.)  It made me appreciate the Rolling Stones in a way I never really had before, because they had always been the Rolling Stones -- this icon of music in a way that you just don't understand unless you know that they were one of the pioneers that broke barriers by making it ok to listen to music that black people made by trying to sound like them, like Elvis and other white blues musicians.  While that may sound vaguely racist, it was a revolution in all the positive ways that art is supposed to be revolutionary by sharing white and black experiences (which ultimately, are the same experiences, which wasn't really universally accepted in 1966, when the Temptations first recorded that song).

This lack of perspective is why people think that politics are the ugliest they've ever been right now or that Justin Bieber is the greatest musician in the history of musicians.  (Clearly Rick Astley is ahead of him.  [Interesting note: Rick Astley also covered Ain't Too Proud to Beg.])  It also leads to the strange acceptance of the status quo that Christians feel about their faith and what it really means.

Just like I've never known a world where Clemson didn't choke away ACC title opportunities or an undiscovered Rolling Stones, I've always been exposed to the Christian message that by faith and faith alone we are forgiven.  There's never been a discovery kind of moment like the first time you see HDTV or taste real vinegar barbecue sauce and think, "This changes everything." 

That's how Christianity is supposed to feel: revolutionary and liberating.  Christ's arrival changed the way that men and God could relate and broke down barriers that separated men from one another.  Those are no small things and because we've been steeped in the culture it's really easy to look at church and see something stodgy and establishment, like seeing Sir Michael Jagger and Keith Richards, cultural icons, rather than two kids from Kent trying to sound like Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley.  Most of us probably have never even heard a song by Muddy Waters or Bo Diddley.

Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley are key parts of the Rolling Stones' story, as 1981 and Frank Howard (and the football wilderness of the 1990s and 2000s, for that matter) are to the Clemson story.  The inaccessibility to God before Christ (and God's desire to bridge that gap as explained by the prophets) and the Greco-Roman concept of class are parts of the Christian story, too.  And it makes the whole thing look bigger.

*Title from this edsbs.com blogpost
**I just had to.  Here's the actual link.  It's not bad, really.

Blow it up

This blog cut its teeth on criticizing commercials, and quite frankly, I think I ought to get back to my roots. I don't watch as much tv now as I did in school, so it's going to be harder to actually manage. Now that football has started, and Dr. Sighted is inconsolable because UGa is behind by 2 TDs right now to Boise, we are seeing and will continue to be seeing more commercials. She did a better job during the first half of the Clemson game when we looked like injured garbage. Adjusting to marriage is hard.

Dick's (the sporting goods store) has a fun campaign where they have professional athletes giving instruction to people buying apparel and explaining why they need it and how it will make them perform better. A few memorable ones were Darelle Revis selling shoes or shorts or whatever and talking about going to his island -- Revis Island -- only to find out that his protege is named Gilligan. There is another one involving Ndomakong Suh (best name ever) hunting quarterbacks selling whatever Revis wasn't There is a good one now with Steven Jackson (not the basketball player) moving in slow motion. There is one, however, that goes over dumber than Kris Humphries answer inevitably will the first time Kim Kardashian asks, "Does this make my butt look big?"

Clay Matthews is the go to guy after the Packers won the Super Bowl, because he looks like a mutant Midwestern wrestler with hair like the cute blonde in your sophomore biology class. He is selling shorts or shoes or whatever in this commercial and it's just him running into stuff in the store. No clever comment from the store, they try to be funny with the family blocking him, except there's nothing going on that they are blocking. There's nothing to blow up! There should have been cowboys robbing a train or a caped man with a handlebar mustache kidnapping Song Girls (Clay went to USC, you see [the real one in LA, not the fake one in Columbia, SC] and the Song Girls are the best thing about the school) that he could blow up. Right now, it just feels like build up with now release. No snap, no crackle, no pop!

The wasted opportunity of the situation is what gets me most. Bad commercials are a dime a dozen -- just ask Taco Bell. But bad commercials with potential to be great? They are the ones that make us feel like we did when Utah State choked away the Auburn game today.

The Fall is Becoming My Favorite Season

I am watching my first Braves game of the season in HD. I've caught a little better than half a dozen, probably, and not a one of them has been in HD, because of the move and how my beloved tv (let's call her "Trudy") has been in storage. Dr Sighted's tv, a might 13 incher, made me pine for the apple of my tv watching eye. Baseball is fine, and the Braves are doing very well considering they are in the same division as the best team in baseball, but it just doesn't measure up to the fall sports, sadly. Fall is when the best tv events happen, namely, football season resumes (Go Clemson!), which, as far as television experience goes, is like soy sports.

Summer used to be my favorite of the seasons, because I like warm weather and there was no school. Now that I'm married and adult and what not, it's still good, since long days mean more time for barbecuing and warm water for beach going (I haven't been in so long, though, that I'm not sure it would recognize me anymore -- it's the one with the sand, right?), the school benefits don't really apply as much and my youthful resilience to the heat requires me to drink a lot more water and change my shirt a lot more often. Fortunately for me, my sweat smells like cinnamon, so it's more a comfort issue for me than a smell one.

Another thing that comes up in the fall is Psych. Dr. Sighted has turned me on to the this program, and it is the flagship of the USA shows, which, I'm pretty sure, are all exactly the same. They found their formula and they are sticking to it with Law & Order like consistency. Psych, White Collar, Burn Notice, Suits, Covert Affairs, and Royal Pains are all exactly the same show in different contexts. I've gotten in arguments with people in my life over this, so I feel like the guy in Mystery Men trying to convince William H Macy that Greg Kinnear really is Captain Amazing. Yes, I just reference Mystery Men.

Here's the premise: the main character has some sort of outlandish skill that is not quite superhuman although still wildly unrealistic, but just specialized enough to make him excellent in a specific niche but also has a somewhat (or very) troubled past that is probably not his fault that causes him to be an outsider in the community where that very skill would ordinarily permit him to excel. He has a loyal but confrontational cadre of friends who stick with him through thick and thin, lives in a place with an odd frequency of circumstances where his skill is useful, and there is a minor celebrity who somehow is part of the action (Psych - Corbin Bernson. White Collar - Tiffani Amber Thiessen (your Amber will always be in my heart, Tiffani. [Also, Dr. Sighted asked, "Is that Kelly Kapowski? Her face looks fat." when we watched an episode. Yes. Yes that is Kelly Kapowski and shut your mouth.] Covert Affairs - Piper Perabo. Burn Notice - Bruce Campbell, although it causes me actual physical pain to call him a minor celebrity.). There are, inevitably remarkable opportunities for witty quips, charming romantic plotlines, and temptations that try to push our hero off the straight and narrow but he (or she) always chooses the right path.

It's brilliant, really. Psych does feel a little bit different, but I can't quite tell how; it might be just that I like it better. I also don't know why I don't like them all with the same enthusiasm I do Psych and Burn Notice (or even the Mentalist, for that matter, which is basically the same show as Psych except less funny, two years later, and more Australian). So, if you like lawyer shows, there's Suits. If you like doctor shows, there's Royal Pains. If you like spy shows, you have a choice! Still no engineer show, so far. Closest thing is White Collar, with a suave, handsome gentleman using only his wits to solve interesting problems. Was that convincing? Oh well. By the way, did the find the pineapple?

No question prompting for a y/n ends well

You know what question bothers me a lot more than it should? It's not one of those cliches like paper or plastic, boxers or brief, or do you want fries with that. (Plastic, boxers and yes.) I know one of you clever jokesters is probably thinking something like, "Are you sure you're in the right restroom, ma'am? Oh, I'm sorry." Nor is it anything as scandalous as "Why on earth would you think she was over 18?" Sadly, both of those questions make better stories, but you will be enthralled by mine; a testament to my highly developed writing powers.

Using my clues, surely you have deduced that it is when automatic card readers say: "Credit or debit?" or "Debit? y/n." This offends my sensibilities for two reasons:

1. As you can see from my blogger name, I am an engineer. I work in a technological field, so that reflects on me personally, rightly or wrongly, in the same way that when my basketball team gets bounced in the first round by a team from *gasp* Michigan that's not Michigan State, it reflects poorly on the whole Clemson community. It's that personal.
2. I'm lazy.

I also noticed that you saw more colons in the previous paragraph than your average proctologist. I was going to apologize for that, but then I realized, colons (the punctuation) are great, while colons (the organ), that would demand an apology. I apologize for nothing.

The D or C question bothers me a lot. This card can hold a magnetic strip that contains my entire personal information and credit history* but they didn't think to add "Oh, by the way, this is a credit card"? How ludicrous is that? How different is the billing process anyway? What happens if I choose debit for my credit card? Will the pump take my gas back? Truthfully, that would almost be worth it.

I know there are probably other things I should worry more about. Like about AIDS in Africa and economic collapse and if we all be speaking Chinese in 20 years and what made Mike Myers stop being funny. You know what they say: I don't, I just wanted to throw in another colon.

*I have no idea what is on that magnetic strip, honestly.

Southernfolk talk different

Growing up, my dad used to use funny idioms that I'd never heard anywhere else, and since his mom is Southern and my mom is not, I just assumed that's where they came from. One I remember is "You better be over here in two shakes of the lammy's tail." This meant very quickly. Evidently, lammies shake their tails so quickly that they can shake them twice before whatever instant you need to deal with is at hand. I'm pretty sure there is another one, but I can't think of what it is. I have lived in the Real South (as my loyal readers know, I grew up in Florida, which is like the bicurious state) since 2004 now, and have yet to hear any of them come out of any other Southern mouths. So I can only conclude that my dad is an amazing idiomologist and made them up.

There are, however, a number of colloquialisms that I have come across that are worthy of sharing. You will, of course, find them listed and discussed below in my favorite and noblest of all lists: the numbered list.

1. Show [one's] tail - The first time I heard this one, I actually had to ask for an explanation. I have not heard this one outside of rural South Carolina yet, so it might be unique to there and not Southern at large. It has nothing to do with nudity or discovery of morphological changes in humans, to my disappointment. How great would it be if they discovered lizard people in the Upstate of South Carolina? Clemson's swim team would win all kinds of national championships. It actually means to misbehave, as in, "After eating several pixie sticks, the State Senators really showed their tails."
2. Cut on - This is the phrase that made me want to write this entry. This one bothers me for aesthetic purposes. It doesn't sound right. This is the opposite of (obviously) cut off, as in "Cut off the woodchipper, he's already dead." Cut off should be obnoxious too, since it doesn't really make sense either, but it gets a pass because cutting off and termination kind of make sense, even though cutting off a light switch is not really that permanent or serious of a change. I do feel strongly though that you should not be able to cut on anything.
3. Might could - These are two linking verbs. I know that because in seventh grade Mrs. Adair made us memorize all of the linking verbs in the English language via a cute little song that I will never forget ever. The thing about verbs like that, though, is that two of them can't follow each other in a sentence, with the exceptions of am/is/are/was/were and being. No other combinations are possible, including might could. This means might be able to, and I grit my teeth every time I hear someone say this. An example of this being used in a sentence is "I might could help you with your math homework, but you have to take off your shirt first." (In this example, the speaker is talking to a girl [who is over 18]. The speaker can be whichever gender you prefer.)
   
4. Stay - This one isn't so much a phrase as it is a word. That's ok, though. It means live. As in, "No, I don't stay in this refrigerator box. Thanks for asking." This one, though, isn't really quite as aggravating or funny as the others, but it's still unusual. Like a cat who barks or a complete sentence coming from Rep. Corrine Brown. I am also told that this is restricted to a subset of Southerners who are also black, which is consistent with my very scientific observations.

I really wish I could remember the other prolific one that my dad would say because it would really make the intro stronger and it's really weird. Feel free to share any regionalisms you have encountered, and point out the region. The stranger the better!