I'm a bit behind on my blogging.  I've wanted to do this blog for a little while but now is as good a time as any.  Because apparently, February is the time to debut new redneck shows.  I don't know what it is about redneck reality TV stars, whether it's their, charm, or their wit, or perhaps it is watching grown men do for a living what junior high boys tend to draw in their notebooks.  "Look this is me fighting an alligator!"  "Look I'm cutting down trees with the giant chainsaw attached to a tractor!"  "This is a drawing of me catching catfish bigger than me with my bare hands!"  While some of the stars she shows seem like fun, interesting, otherwise reasonable human beings; the ones seem to make the best TV are the ones you wouldn't want to meet on a dare.  Hick TV is fascinating in the same way that an ant farm is fascinating.  I don't want to meet the ants, I don't want to get to know them, I just want to watch them do whatever they would do completely oblivious to my presence.  The vast majority of these shows scoop up a bunch of rednecks and mud and press them firmly between two plates of glass and bring them into your home nicely sealed and framed, ready for observation.

The ranks of these redneck gawk fests only continue to grow.  I have lost count of the number of Cajun and/or Southern themed reality TV shows there are on basic cable alone.  But two channels rise above their competitors as the king and queen of southern fried weirdness.  The History Channel and the Discovery Channel should really change their names.  Perhaps it could be called the Cajun history Channel and Discover the Deep South.  Where I must give them some credit, however, is the fact that they aim for the most part to invest much more in their characters… mostly.  They do tend to find out much more about the individuals and their story before trotting out the spectacle that is their weird job or obsession.  And I can't stop watching.

The tone of this blog may be somewhat judgmental.  But it is only judgmental in the way that smoker is judgmental about what ingredients may been put into his cigarettes while he buys another case.  In fact, I have to thank the History Channel.  They have done such an excellent job of turning life-and-death situations and weird cultures and values into entertainment with good production value that I don't feel like the piece of crap rubbernecking gawker that I am.  I really, really am.  Thank you history Channel for taking the horrible roadside accident and putting up tasteful stage lighting and velvet seats and handing me a little card that says no one died so that I can feel just fine staring until my eyeballs fall out.

                Have you ever noticed that people say “I read somewhere” when what they really mean is “at some point I heard someone say something interesting and I am about to lay claim to it myself without actually having done any of the research or fact checking.”  It’s just an abbreviation, I guess.  I say this with as little mockery as I can because, while I may not have invented this practice, I regularly pirate the intellectual property of whoever did.  It’s like I can’t stop myself.  It’s just so easy to say that I read something somewhere than to go into an actual explanation of what I heard on which quasi-educational channel (future blog topic by the way) or from which person and when.  I’ll be honest, if my brain were a computer, it would be a little shy of ram.  By the time I got through the complete introduction of where it is I got a given interesting tidbit, I’d forget the tidbit. Plus, who wants to sit through all that for a five second factoid about earwax or the psychology of honey bees.  It’s just easier to have a social convention that you can tell a lie if there’s intriguing trivia on the way.  It does make me feel bad for people who really do spend a lot of time reading so much interesting bits of informational flotsam that they can’t quite remember which one went where.  They utter that infamous phrase and their audience rolls their eyes as if to say “yeah right pants-o flame-o! just gimme the brain candy!”  and that is what those trivial facts are. Non-nutritious sweets.  No one was ever so impressed with party-trivia to change their vocation or goals in life.  “You’ll never guess what some guy at the church social told me about octopus eye-balls and their ratio to their body mass! I’m not wasting another second of my life on IT, I’m becoming a marine biologist!”  You see what I mean about losing my train of thought? Where was i?

                Dreams!  So I said all that to tell you this.  Someone told me they “read somewhere” that half of all people dream in black and white.  Then I realized that I’d never met anyone who dreamt in black and white.  Then I read somewhere (roll your eyes all you want I actually read it) that the study behind that piece of information was done at a time when we were transitioning from black and white to color TV as a nation and the ratio was about even.  So people dreamt what they saw.  That makes complete sense as most of my dreams have mouse pointers and consist of montages of guys getting kicked in the crotch, laughing babies, super cute kittens, and star wars fan films.  My normal dreams also have annoying banner ads for more pornish versions of those dreams.  I avoid those…mostly.  Give me a break. Every once in a while my id crawls out with the impulse control of a 3-year old peaking over the edge of the desk and grabbing the mouse CLICKCLICKCLICKETY.  Those are the days that I wish that my dreams had filtering software.  I’ve been having another series of dreams involving what I watch lately about rednecks, alligators, and space jesus.  More on that next time.