Category: Culture

Camille’s Back

There is the endless drone of the mainstream press serving up bland portions of the same o’ same o’, and then there is Camille Paglia.

I have a confession: I dig a lot (but certainly not all) of her stuff. Yeah, I know, I know, she’s a gay-atheist-feminist with a fetish for homoeroticism, but nobody’s perfect, right? Still, apparently beholden to no one, she writes things that others are too wimpish to even think, and does so with a vim and verve that are a rare sight in today’s media landscape.

She’s taken some time off, but Camille’s back. And just in the nick of time to make things interesting.… Read the rest

Eat Fresh

The door to the late model Buick swung open and the first thing I saw was his feet.

And then, like a telescope unfolding and revealing it’s hidden length, he stood in segments; first the lower legs, next his thick thighs, followed by the elongated trunk, one arm and then the other. He was wearing an Auburn ball cap, its bill pushed back a little revealing rivulets of sweat forming on his forehead in response to the rising heat of an early Alabama summer. He was six foot seven if he was an inch. But as he pivoted toward the door of the Subway Sandwich Shop on Governors Drive, I saw that his height wasn’t his only prodigious proportion.… Read the rest

The Cure Is Worse Than The Disease

Having just attended a somewhat (okay very) rowdy high school graduation ceremony, this one caught my eye and made me glad that I live in Huntsville, Alabama rather than Galesburg, Illinois.

Which one do you think is worse, someone not hearing their kid’s name called when she walks across the stage, or someone walking across the stage and holding out her hand to receive her diploma only to have it taken back later? What a nice graduation picture (and memory) that last one would make.

Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.… Read the rest

Forrest Knows Best

gumpbamacoach.jpgSome of us will be headed down to Tuscaloosa later today so that Number One can attend Bama Bound, the student orientation at the University of Alabama. Needless to say, he’ll be facing some very tough decisions.

Nah, I’m not talking about classes. I figure that there’ll be plenty of sections of “N’Yuck, N’Yuck, N’Yuk–The Three Stooges in the 21st Century” and “Careers in Guitar Hero–You Too Can Be Ronnie Van Zant” to choose from.

I’m talking about more important stuff like football.

You see, since the resurgence of interest in Crimson Tide football following the hiring of multimillion dollar messiah Nick Saban, the student government moved last spring to only allow entering freshman to attend part of the scheduled home games so that more tickets could be spread around and more students could attend.… Read the rest

Pretty Grads All in a Robe

Yesterday was Senior Sunday at our church. That’s “senior” as in high school, not the over-the-hill, AARP type. There were 26 seniors this year, which, as we say in the South, is a whole big mess of ’em.

They marched down the center aisle of the church, clad in their graduations robes–brown, burgundy, white, red, purple, power blue. This was the start of a new tradition this year. But just barely. It was announced last week that they would wear their robes, and as one might expect, there was a great hue and cry and a week’s worth of high drama.… Read the rest

Grave Dancing

grave-dancing.PNGI wasn’t a fan of his, but I didn’t really think he was a monster either. What ever happened to “you don’t tug on Superman’s cape, spit into the wind, pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger, mess around with Jim, or dance on someone’s grave?”

I’d like to think that when I die, no one will dance on my grave. But there’s probably someone out there who will.

“No more stinky glasses, no more stinky glasses!” they’ll joyfully bleat as they stomp and strut around my grave like a barnyard animal, stirring up a cloud of dust from the freshly dug dirt.… Read the rest

Evrathang is RAY-low-tif

The Explainer at Slate does it again. I commented on this the other day, but little did I know then that I was actually a “code shifter” when I’m hangin’ with the clan back in Vah-GIN-ya and talking mountainspeak.

Hillary’s not the only one trying to convince us of her Southern bona fides. In Full Professor Elrod’s case, the more hard-core secessionists among his rowdy and far-flung boiled peanut gallery may have finally disabused him of the notion. I think it was the part about lapsing into Delawarespeak that did him in.

Huntsville is about as cosmopolitan as you can get in Alabama with so many transplants from all over the country and world.… Read the rest

On Speaking Southern

If this keeps up, I’m going to start feeling sorry for her.

Seriously, she may not be faking it. My accent is pretty neutral for the most part (comes from marrying a Missouri “Show Me”), but I’ve been told that when I’m around my uncles and cousins back home, that I lapse back into a Southwest Virginia lilt.

Yes Vah-GIN-ya, it is possible for an accent to change depending on the circumstances and it not be a campaign trick.… Read the rest

PowerPointless in Huntsville

PowerPoint also conditions worshipers to act and react in visceral ways, so that the character of their bodily actions and emotional responses are at times downright Pavlovian. The screen, not the altar or cross, becomes the all-consuming center of attention, an object of intense fixation which triggers predictable reflexes and behaviors. When PowerPoint malfunctions, for instance, people become nervous and lost; they become conditioned to worry that it will malfunction. They find themselves thinking more about the screen and the technician at the soundboard than about the God whom they’ve come to worship and the larger worshiping body of which they are a part.

… Read the rest