All cultured out...

So, my culture project is done and done.

I was really worried about it for a number of reasons. For one, I've had a lot of people say to me "Redneck Culture? That's an interesting choice". They all say it rather non-chalantly and I'm never sure if they're actually thinking it's interesting, or actually thinking it's the most ridiculous topic they've ever heard of.

I think the thing is that a lot of people don't really think of the cultures they have right under their noses, and that's a main thing that this culture project has taught me. I had an Anthropology project earlier in the year, and I had to observe the cultural practices I saw in my own neighborhood. Since I am a country mouse and a city mouse, I chose the city as my neighborhood for that project.

And I decided to observe the drunken fools who meander about my streets late on Friday nights. Because that is part of the culture that we belong to here in the big city.

It always surprises me because after I gave that presentation, one person in the class raised his hand and had all kinds of problems with the presentation. This same FuckWhit is in my Culture class, and I'm scared that when the time comes for me to speak about being a redneck, he'll say something equally stupid. I can't do confrontations at the best of times: i doubt very much I can be confronted about something that means as much to me as life back at the Ranch in front of fifty strangers.

So, with all my fears about the possiblity of the stupidity of doing a project on North American Redneck Culture, I went to my professor.

I had a nice sit-down with him and explained that everything we do in the country is so much different from how we do things in the city. Take pants, for example. In the city, you always see these Coolio Ganzales types walking the streets with their many pocketed ass-hanging cargo pants in camo. In the country you see the same thing. The difference is in utility, because country cargo pants and city cargo pants have different meanings (and, they're typically worn high enough to cover, at the bare minimum, a large portion of one's ass). In the country, it's about duck-hunting and having enough pockets to put your hunting gear in, and in the city, it's some kind of status symbol.

I also explained to him how very, very much all of this means to me, and at the end of our chat, the Prof's eyes lit up and he said, "Very Well done. Very observant, it sounds like your project is just fine".

So, hopefully my mark reflects this just fine-ness and I can walk away from at least one class this semester with an A.

Wouldn't it be nice?

Toonses