And being anything but a democrat in a county where non-democrats are about as plentiful as are cures for cancer, while I’m kind of well-known, I am certainly far from popular. I may be the “blogfather” in this area, but I’m not getting many invites to weddings or any such thing. In this neck of the woods, you’d probably have to pay enormous sums of money to most of the other bloggers to get them to even link to anything I penned. If you visited blog after blog after blog written by the locals, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single link to, or a mention made of this site. You'd swear I have leprosy or something equally fun.
The thing I still fail to understand is why I get creamed via e-mail, yet, the comments left on this site are mostly positive. Downright nice at times. It must be that some are shying away from a very public scrap with this most-hated of authors. And as anyone even remotely familiar with my checkered past will tell you, I never shy away from a fight...penned, verbal or otherwise. Never.
And follow me very closely here, I wear that like an oversized internet badge of honor, being the pariah that I obviously am. I guess the long and short of it is, there aren’t many people I haven’t rubbed wrong at some point or another over the years. My bad, too bad. Eff them.
And since plenty of people have written unkind things about me on the many short-lived, now-defunct blogs over the years, I have one of those Google alert thingies set up that alerts me whenever any mention is made of my name on the dreaded internet. Mind you, this alert system is about as fast as a one-legged turtle on downers, but it does eventually accomplish what it’s supposed to. And I really enjoy reading all of those unkind words. In fact, it cracks me up. Fat, bald, bitter, stupid, unemployed…bring it on. I do love it.
So I awoke today to find an alert in the e-mail inbox. Rutro! Somebody got to hacking on Mark Cour again. What else is new? This ought to be fun. And lo-and-behold, one of these big time journalists, one of these Pulitzer Prize-winning types not only linked to my madness, he went and said kind things about, at least, part of it. Needless to say, I was stunned. And I think this is proof that even the big time journalists have an off-day from time to time.
So, somehow, my usual madness garnered a mention at Talking Politics with Tony Phyrillas.
Are you better off today than you were six months ago?
“It get [sic] much better. It's one of the best commentaries I've read anywhere about the current state of affairs in this country.”
Tony, Tony, Tony! What were you thinking, giving me kudos and all? Don’t you realize that you will now be vilified in this area much like George W. Bush was before you? You made mention of me, and you had the unmitigated audacity to not belittle me? Wow! That’s not going to go over very well in these electronic parts. You are mud, pal. Mud. Not only will your judgment be questioned, so will your sanity.
Anyway, off-day, drunk or otherwise, for one fleeting nanosecond, somebody out there liked me.
Good lord, I have tears in all four of my eyes right this second.
WILK’s Sue Henry had this e-mail contest going on in which the participants were supposed to submit to her their made-up country music song titles that would best exemplify the never-ending political corruption in this sad, sad county of ours. The winner, who she announced yesterday, won tickets to a big country music show. I think, tickets to a Toby Keith concert.Yikes!
Being the foolish bugger that I am, and being the only certifiably lonesome redneck in these here twisted parts, I figured I ought to take a stab at it.
From the e-mail outbox:
Trust me, the very last thing I want to do is take in a country music concert. I'd rather be sentenced to a subsidiary of hell for eternity and share a smallish cubicle in perpetuity with one of your morning hosts. I'd prefer to be legally blind and forward-deployed to Afghanistan than that. Give me pedal-distorted, whiz-bang guitars rumbling the neighborhood loose, or give me death!
After growing up with thought-provoking stuff such as Bowie's "Width of a Circle," Zappa's "Brown shirts don't make it" or Cooper's "Halo of Flies," I have absolutely no interest in listening to country bumpkins whining aloud about how some city-slicker stole the gun rack or the rebel flag from their pickup truck's cab, their lost love of a second cousin, or the night the local honky tonk burned down after the mechanical cow burst into flames on ladies night.
With that said, good or bad, award-winning or not, this is my country music song title that, I think, perfectly encapsulates most of the goings-on in Luzerne County...I'll hire yer kin, iffin' y'all hire mine.
Later
Markie in Nord End
And now, it’s world premiere time:
Ever since Junior got run over by a John Deere
He’s been as fickle in the brain as a neutered steer
And since the old sawmill closed back in 1999
Ain’t nobody gonna hire this useless chucklehead of mine
So I called me up the local gentry
I says, ya’ll gotta hire Junior as a courthouse sentry
And bein’ that I’m the local schoolhouse director
He said, just for appearances sake
I'll hire yer kin, iffin' y'all hire mine.
I dunno. I’m thinking an acoustic arpeggio to kick things off, some annoying steel guitar as the lead, a three-chord progression (neck chords like B, A, G), some bearded guy wearing overalls blowing into an empty moonshine jug, a two-piece drum kit and a very pedestrian bass line. You know, so stripped-down simple, even a legendary country music star could do it.
Oh yeah, one more thing:
Opal, you hot lil’ bitch!!! Get me a goll danged beer, woman!!!
Sez me, y’all.
Buh-bye
PS--Since Sue Henry is leading the long-overdue crusade to reclaim our “lost language,” I offer the following:
Quit nekkin’ on me, you freakin’ fems!
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