FOLIO OLIO: BEING SOUTHERN: A Tutorial

When most people hear the word "Southerner", this is the image that pops into their head. Unless you are one of those families that want to create a race of super morons, we don't inbreed. Now...we will fuck our sisters, but only if she asked for it.

And we all don't live in homes with wheels. The reason there are so many mobile homes in the South is that they are cheap and we are poor. So let that one rest.

We do fish a lot and we do drink a lot...which probably explains the image below....

We have the market cornered on religious nutcases. There are a whole bunch of us who handle snakes and talk in tongues. My sister does that. I think it has to do with Southerners respecting tradition, and no matter how ridiculously fucked up something is, if it's a tradition then count us in....most of us.

We don't eat the same foods as other Americans. We will, for instance, pickle any damn thing that will fit in a Mason Jar.
Here is Southern sushi.

It's made with macaroni and cheese, ground beef and hot sauce.

We have a lot of dirt in the South. We can grow just about anything. One thing we grow well are weeds. And this is one of our favorites.

People in cities often go their whole lives without seeing any dirt, therefore they are forced to grow their weed in pots.....POTS!?!? (oh, my, I made a little pun)
That ought to be against the law.

But that's not the only plant that grows well around here.

That is kudzu. TRUE: It grows one foot a day.
I have had friends who laid down for a nap and after an hour we had to cut him free. My brother said it can out run a grown man and all but the fleetest small game.

Being poor, you learn to use what's at hand. Turning old tires into planters is just one of the clever ideas we Southerners have come up with.

These two magnificent creatures are my great-nieces and they are as smart as they are beautiful. Their daddy sent me this photo. He asked the man why he used Clorox jugs for life preservers and the man said, "They are cheap and nobody will steal them." BRILLIANT!

White Southerners don't hate black Southerners any more than northern whites hate northern blacks.
(you might want to read that again and let it sink in)

Sometimes stereo-types must be used to make something more funny.

Had the men in the image been Wall Street investors in three piece suits, I think you would agree that it would have lost it's edge.

I agree 100% with this cartoon...

You will never see a sign like this upnorth. I have actually sealed a multi-thousand dollar mural deal with a shake of the hand...and that is the truth.

But there are limit to just about anything, of course...

When my wife and I were in Paris, the guide book warned us about smiling at people on the sidewalk, because....get this..."the only people who would dare smile at strangers are insane".

It also warned us against public displays of affection. Well, challenge accepted. I would give my wife a long passionate kiss on the sidewalk, grab her ass and then smile like a banshee at every ogling passersby....but that might just me.

Southerners elide a lot. To elide means that you leave off part of a word for no apparent reason; like saying sayin' instead of saying.

Well, here's what I say. If one third of the people in a country decide to leave off the G, then who's to decide it's wrong? Do we vote on our own language or what? I had this talk with a guy over the words hang/hanged, drag/dragged and sneak/sneaked. He declared...DECLARED...that you are forbidden to use hung, drug and snuck as past-tense verbs. I told him that if his type had won the argument, then we would all be using "Thee" and "Thou".
I am even in favor of using U and R for You and Are, but, of course, I'm a very lazy person.

I can guarantee you that the guy who had this lighter engraved is Southern.

SECURITE?!? It looked good to him and I will bet you a dollar to a pecan nut that you knew his exact meaning. Remember, the purpose of language is communication, not simply following some arcane rule made up by some dead people no one never heard of.

Southerners don't always explain what they mean. I had an uncle who used to say shit like this all the time. When I would ask him what it meant, he would say, "Exactly!" or "Every damn time!" or "You'll know when you grow up and get that naked clown out from under your bed."

We revere our old people...and I mean that.

We don't like people telling us what we can and what we can't joke about.

We love our children. This proud daddy knows that his daughter makes more money waiting on tables half naked than he did in the welding shop fully clothed....now that's pride. Anyway, she bought him the car.

A Southerner would find this T-shirt very funny...

We love children only slightly more than we love our dogs...

Stories like these next two will bring a tear to a Southerner's eye...

But loving dogs and making fun of them are horses of a whole nother color...

Southerners like war. We start wars. We enlist more. We stay in longer. And we like to make things blow up...the noise is just a bonus.

And then we joke about it.

One of my very own...

Homosexuality confuses most Southerners. I've gotten over my loathing of the whole affair lately and have joined their fight for equality....but they still confuse me.

WOMEN WHO LOOK LIKE SLUTS,
AND YOU BE THE JUDGE...
I have a Southern friend who said to me the other day, "You've got to admit, girls with tattoos just seem slutty."
I do not think so, but it got me to thinking about finding pictures of naked girls with tattoos...