In the South

I'm currently with Stella in Greensboro, NC, visiting with her family. Although this is technically "The South", it's not the southern experience one might imagine. Being near a University of NC campus, it's actually fairly liberal; walking around I see enough Obama signs and stickers, plus the occasional Grateful Dead sticker, that I don't feel too out of place coming from San Francisco. However, I just had a little encounter that reminded me that I am, in fact, in "The South." Of course, this actually could have happened anywhere, but I'd like the view it as a "southern experience."

I wanted to take a little walk to a nearby drugstore, and since it's quite cold out and my winter coat is in my still-missing luggage (that's a story for another blog post), I borrowed Stella's grandfather's army jacket. A real army-issued jacket. I'm guessing he served sometime around WWII, but I'm not sure.

On the way out of the store, I'm chatted up by a local. He's very blue-collar looking with some very noticeable silver teeth in his crooked smile, speaking with a thick southern drawl. We'll call him Blue-Collar Silver-Teeth Guy (BCSTG). I had two dialogs going with him, one in my head, the other spoken out loud. It went something like this:

[BCSTG]: It's a cluster-fuck out there, huh?
[Me, internal thought process]: I don't know what cluster-fuck you are speaking of; everything outside this store appears normal to me. I'll just politely agree.
[Me, spoken]: Yeah, man, it sure is.

[BCSTG] (Noticing my army jacket): Was you in the army?
[Me, internal thought process]: No, I'm part of the educated liberal elite in San Francisco. I wear this jacket as an ironic statement; a symbol of the imperialism and suffering our crypto-fascist government is spreading throughout the middle east specifically, and the world at large in general.
[Me, spoken]: No, man, it belonged to my grandfather.

[BCSTG]: I like the jacket anyway.
[Me, spoken]: Thanks, man. Later.

Bill O'Reilly on Our Fair City

We all know what a dirtbag Bill O'Reilly is. Recently, O'Reilly aired a brief "documentary" segment on San Francisco as a "warning" about what Obama's secular-progressive agenda could mean for America. Needless to say, it's highly sensationalized, focusing exclusively on the more "colorful" aspects of our city. It's amusing to watch, but of course it's not at all an accurate representation of what it's like to live here.

A World Transformed