redneck Archives - Page 7 of 8

Redneck Sustainability: Rodeo as Bloodsport

September 15, 2012March 21, 2011 by David Mark Brown

Thunderdome from Burning Man 2005

Bloodsport is such a nasty word these days. And who would disagree with such barbarisms as dog and cockfighting making the news? In the wilder rural arenas drunk misogynists strap on paintball guns and hunt bikini-clad (or totally nude!) women for sport. I’m aghast too, believe you me.

But there is one bloodsport in the U.S. doing its best to give the whole misdirected genre its good name back –Rodeo. And once again, rednecks are leading the way. According to most on-line dictionaries bloodsport can refer to either a game or sport designed to end in death, or one typically involving the shedding of blood. While both of these are indeed bloodsport, today I’m referring to the gentlemanly tradition of risking life and limb for glory and entertainment.

Redneck Sustainability: Eating your Pets

January 10, 2011 by David Mark Brown

Before you gag from the title of this blog, let me explain that my pets growing up included a pig, a few dozen rabbits, some ducks, a few hamsters, an occasional cat, a dog, a calf and a guinea pig. I’ll let your imagination tell you which ones I ate and witch ones I didn’t. But why should eating pets be such a bad thing?

If anything is out of whack, it’s that we’ve manipulated animal breeding, not that we eat them. What’s worse? Eating domesticated animals or breeding them to belch methane into old age and die a pointless life? There’s a chin scratcher.

Natives to North America, First Peoples if you will, knew that we should have a healthy connection with the food we eat, sometimes even asking the noble beasts permission to extinguish their souls. Now whacking a domesticated pet in the head as it stares up at you with trusting eyes might not be quite the same as hunting a noble beast, but none the less, it’s good to have an intimate connection with our food.

On that note, let’s take another lesson in sustainability from the redneck play book of life.

Hunting the Texas German-Redneck

January 3, 2011 by David Mark Brown

In Texas some necks are red. Some necks are German. And a select few necks are both. While my experience with German-Americans is limited, I am married to one and so feel entitled to make sweeping generalizations. The chief of which is that German-Americans are the practical, hardworking sort of folk that know a spade from a shovel.

Having originated from Middle America (or Germany itself) and transmogrified in the hill country of Texas, these mythic German settlers have become a sort of super redneck. Let’s just say that if Crawford Texas was a wee bit further south and west (that is to say a wee more German) then George W. would have figured out a way to increase military spending, bring world peace, cut taxes and balance the budget all while discovering a better-adapted wine grape, and all in his first term.

But alas, these super rednecks of German heritage (let’s call them ROGHs) prefer a behind the scenes sort of benevolence, and so few have heard of them.