Clean Old Fashioned Hate

The Heck with the Ramblin Wreck.

Now let me see if I got this right. First off the rivalry between Tech and Georgia is called clean, old fashioned hate. Okay I’m diggin it. Supposedly it dates back to 1893, to Techs first win which happened to be against us. Not only did we throw rocks at them after they beat us, we threw rocks at them while they were beating us. We also called them names it appears, do what? They were called the Blacksmiths back then and probably weren’t good at that either. It was after that game the Tech fight song was written and it contains the line, To H$ll with Georgia.
The southern gentry of the late eighteen hundreds were sending their sons to Georgia to learn to run plantations. Only problem, they needed to teach the average slow peanut farmer how to shoe a fast horse. Wala, Tech was born. You’d think that in over a hundred years they’d have at least learned how to shoe a fast Bulldawg. The horse era ended with Tech still developing its curriculum. The tractor era eased in, but it was a dozen years before they figured out a tractor couldn’t be shoed. At least the tractor would sit still long enough for them to have a go at it. The idea of a dozen nerds trying to shoe a John Deere is a pretty funny one, at least in my head.
In 1961 the only guy in the school who owned a car and it being a thirty year old wreck, arrived at a game after sampling some of North Georgia’s finest shine, then drove it onto the field. At other colleges that would have been called termination, at Tech it was called tradition. You’d think the Tech program could afford to bring this tradition into the current century, like drive a Corvette or maybe a Mustang. If not they should have at least left the car original and be driving it onto the field as the wreck it represents. The truth of it, they only need come up with one person who is smart enough to drive the thing, he drives onto the field with the team in tow. Secretly the driver is a Georgia graduate in drag as a light loafered nerd. I think it’s the only way they insure the players can find the field. What do you call the driver of the Ramblin Wreck, team captain, Valedictorian?
“Gee coach where is the field?”
“Good Lord Tevin, how long you been here?” The coach rolls his eyes.
“Didn’t your mother know the difference between a T and a D? Never mind, just follow that squeaking, smoking old car on Saturday and you’ll be fine.”
Some of this rivalry stems from our lobbying so hard to keep Tech from rejoining the SEC, but mostly it comes from our beating the pants off of them for years. Did you know they have little bulldawgs in their urinals in their locker rooms? Every time a Tech player uses the restroom, he does so, on a Bulldawg. The primary color red is permanently banned from the Nerd Herds campus. Ever wonder why Tech never comes to Athens to play? We set our standards high enough to keep that from happening and we can’t allow them to come here, even for one game.
Before the game Saturday many predicted Tech would win, I bet the college they attended had classes on shoeing a tractor and discussing building bridges too. With this win coach Richt has a better record in their stadium that all their coaches combined. That is a little too funny and it caused me to have to leave my office and clean the milk from my nose. Never laugh hysterically while drinking milk and eating toast, at least not in mixed company.
So now Georgia must spend the week getting ready for the SEC championship game against LSU, this year’s bullies of the SEC. Tech players must endeavor to learn how to build a bridge that will allow tractors to cross the creek from one peanut patch to the other. I believe they are secretly working on genetically altering peanuts so they can shoe tractors and beat Bulldawgs. At least the IQ average on the team will improve.
The season is winding down and soon I’ll have to come up with other things to make fun of, but I must admit, making fun of our neighbors has been a hoot. I’ve only gotten a few death threats, none to worry about seeing as the Ramblin Wreck won’t be Ramblin to my house like some sick, hick, laser pointer. I doubt any of them could find Athens without something to follow.
Larry would have sure been proud of the way we handled Tech Saturday, it’s a shame he wasn’t there and he is missed.
Larry Munson 09/28/22 – 11/20/11

Locks Are For Honest Folk

I’ve heard it said most of my life and I kind of understand it, or I thought I did. I live in a gated community, who’d have thunk it. I guess gates and locks are related in some way. Maybe, like so many of us down south, they share ole uncle Fred who only shows up in the middle of the night, who is the only person we know that can still find moonshine and does find it on a regular basis. If he’d have gone to work for the revenuers all those years ago, instead of the dog pound, he’d have single handedly eradicated illegal liquor from the mountains. Alas poor ole Fred was a consumer and is to this day.
Anyway back to those gates, you know they don’t keep the bad guys out right? Bad guys, not being employed have all the time in the world to sit and wait or to circle the drive until someone else punches in the code, then simply slip in behind them. Pizza delivery people and we know all of them are stellar individuals, do it on a regular basis. UPS and Fedex guys have it down too. In most cases you simply hit buttons until someone in an apartment lets you in. It’s my experience that gates are only there to harass the residents of such places. Well they do serve one other purpose; they are targets for moving vans and other idiots.
Gates actually work less often than they do. Most of the time they have been hit by someone who is too stupid to drive or be a respectable criminal. They stand open for weeks at a time, it’s the only time residents get a break and can come and go without getting knots in their stomachs. I have this unnatural fear they will close on my ole ugly car as I pass through. I’ve seen it happen. My wife actually has gate anxiety. Her van is much prettier than my car, guess she has the right. She will visibly flinch when we pass through them if they make the slightest little bit of noise. I’ve seen her recoil when the wind moved them a little while we were trying to escape our neighborhood. Don’t worry she’s in counseling.
So gates are there, like so many things today, to harass, intimidate and otherwise annoy the average American. Oh let us not forget, to elevate the cost of living, rent is higher in a gated community. I’m overjoyed when I don’t have to punch in a code to get to my house, a code which only works about half the time, by the way. My wife is mortified and can barely sleep until they are repaired. She is firing off e-mails to management and trying to fortify the house. She is sleeping with a butcher knife on the bedside table and casting a suspicious eye on all those walking around for exercise at night.
There is a well worn path through the woods from the shopping center next door, actually two. Some people with fancy cars will walk rather than play gate roulette. In the last few months I’ve seen them folded, spindled and mutilated. What exactly is spindled and how could it happen to a government check? Never the less it’s happened to our gates. I think the gates on gated communities are much like the Federal Government. They stoically stand there; cost us money, annoy us every time they have the chance and all the while give us a false sense of security.
I expect to come out one morning and find the thieves have taken the gates. Think about it, they are probably the most expensive thing about their respective neighborhood. Just imagine how much rent could decrease if they didn’t need repairing three times a month. Holy cow, a pool is just a hole in the ground to pour money into, but I never knew it about gates. The pool and gates account for half out rent, I bet.
So someday soon the gates will take up residence on a solitary piece of country road. They will stand next to a mailbox sitting on top of a beer keg. The driveway behind them will stretch back into the darkness of the woods, for far too long and will end at and old camper that wants to be an old trailer when it grows up. It will be surrounded by a bunch of old cars that want to star in Wrong Turn 15 when they grow up. The little cylinders that open and close them will be replaced by a redneck girl, with tight jeans and no teeth, who’ll jump from the truck to open them when needed. Okay that’s their dream, the reality is, they will end up at Billie bobs scrap metal and package store.

The March of the Morons

You know, I try to be careful and not alienate those who might help in the fight against child abuse. Sometimes I just can’t sit still. This idiot at Penn State, just keeps on dancing and those around and above him are his doe-see-doe buddies. If I had it my way, some if not all of them would dance on the end of a rope, it might not stop it, but it would slow it down.
It’s bad enough that Sandusky has been running around sexually abusing boys for decades. It’s worse that he started a national charity, Second Mile, as some sick farm team for his perverted pleasures. It’s bad that head coach Paterno danced around this issue, it’s worse that those above him danced even longer. These allegations started back in 1998, Sandusky retired in 1999, but continued to use his power and privilege at Penn State to molest boys for at least ten more years.
Dancing with pedophiles is a dangerous business and not just for innocent children. This has already ruined the careers and good names of the head coach, the president of the university, the athletic director and the senior vice president of finance. Not to mention the CEO of Second Mile has resigned. Oh and we must not forget the problems this is causing poor old Sandusky, sticking him in a cell with a bunch of prisoners who are survivors of sexual abuse, gets my vote.
It’s bad that so many ignored what was happening for so long. It’s worse that the more they dig the more they find, it’s always that way when you’re dealing with pedophiles. It’s bad that when I speak on child abuse, people get upset, thinking I’m about to tell them how to discipline their children. It’s worse that people don’t know the difference between discipline and beating a five year old to death. I really don’t think it’s that tough to tell the difference between the two and I shouldn’t have to keep trying to explain it go good caring citizens.
It’s bad what has happened to all these innocent children, do you think the fact that their abuser was famous will make a difference, it will not? It’s worse that when the announcement was made that the president and head coach of Penn, State would be terminated immediately, the students rioted. Penn State is a shining example of the problem and perfectly mirrors what is going on in our society today. Abuse the elderly and the young, but you best not get caught abusing a dog. The morons are marching, the parade is headed to Hell and the country is following along behind waving little banners and American flags.

Here Kitty Kitty

I got a Tiger by the tail it’s plain to see!!!!! Whoa, it’s here where you should hear the zzzzzzziiiiiiiiiiiiipppppppp as the needle is dragged across the record. Goodgoogamooga what happened to Auburn? Didn’t they do something important last year, like win the national title or something? Our boys declawed, defanged, spayed, neutered, shampooed them and then wrapped them up with little pink bows around their necks. We expected Tony the Tiger on steroids, what we got, Garfield, Odie and friends on lasagna and beer. Was that the football team or the debate team in drag? Did they send the synchronized swimming team by accident?
I’ve never had a problem with the coach, but he could have done things a little different this time. He should have foregone the second, third and forth strings. He should have denied the custodians at Georgia the chance to play a few downs, he should have tried to stay awake during the second half and should have let the cheerleading squad get a little field time. It would have made the game a little closer and a lot more exciting. Not to mention the stories we could have written about it. It would have made history. The only thing more historic about New Mexico other than their recent lose to us was their having had a female field goal kicker who couldn’t kick field goals.
There will be Georgia alumni standing around with expensive dark beer in their hands, telling stories about this game for decades.
“I say, did you see that second quarter Lawrence?”
“Certainly, certainly Madison, that was my senior year, I was on the fifty, please prepare me another scotch and do you have any Gray Poupon?”
“Elementary my boy a glass of Glenroth’s and a little Gray Poupon, a Varsity chili dog and a ride in my Jaguar.”
“Precisely, precisely.
The papers reported fifty arrests after the game. They really needed to arrest all our boys for cruelty to animals, possibly even murder. P.E.D.A. is probably screaming somewhere today. We cannot place this disclaimer on footage of the game; No Cats were hurt during the making of this film. Okay so no one was physically abused, but the mental abuse might have lasting effects.
The Auburn players who are graduating this year will go on to be towel boys in the pros because of this game. The coaches probably woke up this morning with a hangover, drinking Alka Seltzer mixed with fake beer and tomato juice, trying to figure out where they were, how they got there and if they really played a football game on Saturday. Hopefully none of them woke up in red heels and a pink tutu, sorry, I guess its okay, if they like that sort of thing.
"The outcome is very disappointing and unacceptable, no question about that," said Coach Gene Chizik.
“My head hurts, where am I and who put me in this tutu?” Sorry that’s was a quote from a local politician not Coach Chizik. I got the stories confused for a moment.
"But when they're done dancing around and having a ball or whatever they're doing with the fans or in the locker room, when everybody settles down, then you've got to remind them of where we are, where we want to go and what we have to do to get there. I think we did a pretty good job of that in the locker room after the game." Now that really was a quote from coach Richt.
Now we must march on to Kaintucky, go ahead explain that Daniel Boone and I misspelled Kentucky. I see you with your hand thrust in the air, sit down and shut up. After what the Dawgs just did to auburn, don’t make me sick em on you. As far as I can ascertain from the internet, the team are descendants of Jethro Bodine who wandered into Kentucky after the Beverly Hillbillies was canceled, then couldn’t find his way back to Bugtussle. I hope the boys are better at cipherin than Jethro was.
Another team of Cats, what is it with cats and chickens? How can you take a coach named Joker serious? Now for some words of wisdom from the seat of simplicity, really what do you expect; he has a degree from Florida?
"I really thought before the season if you did go 6-2 and you beat Georgia, that would probably be good enough. But it ... doesn't look like it is."
"It looks like they're going to win the East now, so I congratulate them for winning seven in a row. You always hold out a little hope, but Georgia is playing awfully well now." Coach Spurrier
So here we go, time to dump out the Wildcats litter box and cat chow, see if they can figure out which is which and see what kind of trouble it causes them.

Guest blogger William G Jones

Kennesaw handed over the reigns of his blog to me today. I’m not quite sure why, but I figure I should make the most of it. I’m William G. Jones, and I wrote a little book called Driving to BelAir. It’s a story about brothers, an ex-fiance, and a poodle all on a road trip in a ’56 Chevy. People keep telling me it reads like a Lifetime movie. Is that a good thing? I don’t know. But they really seem to like it.

I’m a big car buff and drive a black ’57 Chevy quite often. I also have a toy poodle, a little dog hat’s become my little buddy. Both the car and the dog had a heavy influence on me writing my book.

A couple of days ago, I got my hands on a Kindle Fire, and I’m super excited about it. I’ve had a third-generation Kindle for nearly a year now, and I love it. I read more on the Kindle than I ever read traditional books. The Fire, though, isn’t about reading. It’s more of a tablet computer. I bought it hoping to take some of the wear and tear off my MacBook Pro, which I use extensively in my day job doing graphic design and video editing for various clients.

Contrary to the hype that’s been swirling around the media, the Kindle Fire is no real competition to the iPad, except in the sense that many people (including myself) lump all tablets into one big category the same way some people (not me) lump all laptops into one category. By way of comparison, the iPad 2 is like a powerful and complex DSLR camera compared to the Kindle Fire as a point-and-shoot. For most people, I’d imagine, the Kindle Fire is more than enough to get the job done.

It’s obvious to me that Amazon took a page out of the Steve Jobs book of design. The Kindle Fire looks incredibly smooth. It feels incredibly solid.

Because there’s only 6.5 GB of internal storage (1.5 GB is used for the operating system), managing content on the device will be a challenge for some users. The Kindle Fire is likely not a device you’ll load up with movies and music and take on vacation. You’ll be able to get some movies onto the device to watch on, say, an airplane, or while riding shotgun in the car, but mostly this is a device you’ll use at the hotel to check email and surf the web, or a device you’ll take to Starbucks or McDonalds or Panara Bread to use in-store wifi. I have the sense that most Kindle Fires will find a place on the coffee table in their users’ homes, ready to grab for a quick web browsing session or to look up prices on some need-it-now items and little more.

The worst that I can say about the Fire, aside from a few glitches with the touch screen not registering the touch I wanted, is that my dog is insanely jealous of the device. I love my dog, so I’m having to put it away more than I want just to make the pooch happy.

I do recommend the Fire for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that my book, Driving to BelAir, is available on it. It’s also available for nook, and at Smashwords for just about any eReader on the market.

Thanks for hosting me, Kennesaw, and I hope your readers will check out a sample of my book!
www.williamgjones.com

Eye Sea and Here What your Sayin

A few weeks ago I titled my little story, Tannin Fanny. I started getting e-mails immediately. “I don’t understand how the paper could allow such spelling mistakes to slip by. You misspelled the title and several other words in the body. You cannot use in instead of ing.” I’d address this to someone except it took about twenty e-mails to convey this simple message. I bet these people are a hoot at a party.
"It's a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word!" -- Andrew Jackson

Where are these people from? I bet it snows a lot there. I bet they don’t eat grits there. I bet their grandmother never sent them out to fetch their own switch and she never said, “when you get back I’m gonna be warmin your backside.”
I know gonna ain’t in the dictionary, but the last time I checked neither was I. Gonna is a word to everybody I know and since they didn’t have a hand in writing the dictionary, what do they care? How else is a poor unworthy word supposed to have its day? Ain’t finally got in, but it took a bunch of regular people refusing to give up on it.
"I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way." -- Mark Twain

I write like people speak, well I would if people wouldn’t send out hit men to dispose of me for breaking spelling and grammar rules. I must conform, but I try to keep my pieces as close to real as possible. I know I color outside the lines; it’s a poor pitiful world where the lines are more important than the colors. Maybe the civil war was fought to force us southerners to conform to spellin rules. It didn’t work.
“I hold that a man has as much right to spell a word as it is pronounced as he has to pronounce it the way it ain't spelled” Josh Billings
I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to those among you who have endeavored to eradicate the shear ignorance prevalent at this juncture in the history of mankind. Furthermore, I too am devastated by the total lack of respect given to the English language.
Bah humbug, come on we speak the way we are taught to speak. If you can’t figure out what I’m sayin, you might need a north bound bus ticket. If you understand spelling so well, certainly you must have been there the day they talked about colloquialisms.
A colloquialism is a word or phrase that is common in everyday, unconstrained conversation rather than in formal speech. There you have it; I’ve done my part for the civilized world, or my not so civilized part of it.
There is a nasty rumor that the printed word is on the way out, newspapers are in decline and the internet is causing it all. I suggest that if the papers would write for their audience instead of writing for a bunch of eighteenth century, old dudes wearing white wigs and living with too much starch in their drawers, they might survive. It’s like feeding the homeless and charging fifteen bucks to get in, like selling ice to Eskimos. Know your customers.
I got a letter back from a paper last week, “we will not be able to publish this piece as you are in it.”
Naw, really, I wrote it, who was supposed to be in it, Napoleon Bonaparte?
“A man occupied with public or other important business cannot and need not, attend to spelling.” Napoleon Bonaparte
“I would have spelled it correctly, but couldn’t look it up in the dictionary, because I couldn’t spell it.” Anonymous
So if you were offended before you are most assuredly offended now. I do try very hard to be the best at what I’m good at. You could move back to a place where they eat boiled pierogies instead of grits. Or if you’re a retired teacher, you could take that greeters job at Wall-Mart to give you something better to do. I will continue to write it like I see it or write it like we say it. Sure I make a few mistakes I don’t mean to make, but many are just true reflections of the American people.
“American English is a string of curse words tied together with idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms. The only people who speak it correctly are immigrants and English teachers and then only when others are listening.” Kennesaw Taylor
I too see the end of the printed word as we know it peeking around the corner, but doubt seriously my use of doubtin is runnin it into the ground.
I’m just sayin.

Amongst The Hedges

I really intended to write a story about every Georgia game this year. Other than two of our players were eaten by hedges, there just isn’t much to tell. I don’t mean they played between the hedges, I mean they we all up in the hedges. They were amongst the hedges; it took several people to get them out. Turns out our hedges were the best players on their team. It was a win and that’s all Forrest and I got to say about that. Making fun of them would be like kicking sand in the face of a blind guy at the beach. There is no way to feel good about talking trash about this game.

How to make Gator Etoufee

Place 11- 20 Gators in a large pot, Jacksonville Municipal Stadium will do. They having big heads matters little, since most of them do. Add the right ingredients, to include one ex-Georgia player who can jump enthusiastically for three hours and whine for one. Add one sprig of a quarterback, John B IV, who proves one of two things, Florida women have no imagination when naming their children or Florida men aren’t smart enough to keep up with which generation they belong to. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat, drop in 11-20 Bulldawgs, the best meat tenderizer in the SEC and let simmer for four hours.
After beating the mess out of them for that time, they should be nice and tender, crying forever more, when watching True Blood or Twilight. However, I doubt you’ll have much left, everyone knows once you beat the mess out of a Gator, well, there just ain’t much left and it certainly can’t taste good.
I watched the game at one of my cousin’s homes in Athens Saturday. Due to some sick twist of fate, more specifically some sick football pick thingy or maybe a bet gone wrong, his wife had to pull for Florida. She appeared wearing orange, determined to live up to whatever tragedy had befallen her. I know she had to pull for Florida, but she screamed, yelled and paraded back and forth in front of the TV throughout the first three quarters. I don’t know about you, but I got a Florida heart, sorry I meant a weak heart. I was sitting on the edge of my seat; my cousin couldn’t sit down at all. His wife was being a little too enthusiastic; I think she was making sure the Bulldawg Nation knew everything Florida was doing. Trust me we knew.
She danced, cheered and yelled. She even had one of those orange highway cones which increased the size of her mouth by the power of ten. Boy when she loses a bet, she does it with gusto. I must give her credit; she appeared from the house at the beginning of the fourth quarter dressed appropriately in red and black and went on to cheer us to victory. It’s a good thing; I took a deep breath, reset the safety on my gun and saved her life without her even knowing it needed saving, that my friend is gun control. Her evening reaffirmed why I don’t bet on sports.
The game wasn’t pretty, we missed some opportunities, the score should have been 96-20, but it was a win. We have a habit of letting games slip away in the last quarter, but our boys held on. I personally enjoyed the game, it being one of the sweetest victories I’ve ever tasted. We had shrimp and grits in Athens and our boys went on to enjoy a bowl of alligator over rice in Jacksonville Florida.
We took em out behind the barn. We sent em out to pick their own switch, my grandmother’s favorite and my least. We took em out to the woodpile. We tanned their fannies, hides and britches. We blistered their bottoms. We spoiled the etouffee and didn’t spare the rod. We beat em like redheaded step-children. We opened a can of whoop Alligator tail on em. We beat the tar, fire and Hades out of em. We beat em so bad John B’s mom felt it, so did his dad John B I and his two brothers John B II and III. I heard when the stadium emptied out; he was still sitting at mid field with his arms draped over his knees. Poor guy, we could have brought him back with us, Uga’s little dawg house is empty at the moment.
We have a season going and it’s pretty sweet, what we really needed was for those pesky Gamecocks to lose to Tennessee, but it wasn’t meant to be. Will Stevie ever go away? Doesn’t one of those Yankee teams need a coach? I think he’d do well in Minnesota, Iowa or maybe Quebec. Hey do they have college football in Chihuahua, Mexico? He could be a soccer coach, anything really, just run him out of the SEC. I’m kidding, don’t get your panties in a wad; hold on while I set that safety again, whew just saved Stevie’s life, I’m a hero. I’ll probably get hate mail from Mexico, Canada and most of the soccer teams in the world.
Now it’s time to get ready for New Mexico State. I think that entails hangin around the grocery store for a week harassing organic fruits and vegetables, then doing tons of elbow reps or beer curls. As long as our players can spell football, we should win this one. As long as their players can spell bus or airplane they should, at least show up.