Cultural Drive-By

I've got the blues. Cross-cultural blues induced from my hyper-sensitivity to being too much of a freakish cultural hybrid. I'm some kind of foreign communications stringer in my own backyard. It's just plain darn hard to keep a strong sense of self when the cultural weirdness blues come a callin'.

I've been immersed, once again, in the hyper-networked urban Atlanta landscape of ideas and techies and bloggers and start-ups and investors and too many futurists and RSS overload in my head. So I decide to get away from it all for a weekend, and I end up driving through my own home state, where the side of the road continues to look like this:


Even if that's kinda pretty in that desolate kinda way to you, it sure ain't no Wiki-world 'round those parts! Talk about getting away from it all. It's only getting away to la-la land, folks. Don't over-romanticize what don't need over-romanticizing. In other words, do as I say, not as I tend to do.

Personally, I think I could use a little mercy now. I ain't likely to make it to the big-ass blogger conference, ConvergeSouth, in Greensboro this coming weekend.

I'm the Hank Williams of the bloggersphere, and Lordy wasn't he a pathetic little culture-freak when all gets said and done? About all I'm likely to converge with is a six of Stella and a pack of those "liberal cigarettes", as my dearest righty friend, Jenny K, calls my favorite poison. She on the other hand is still a Marlboro Light kinda gal, God Bless her Bush-lovin' heart. Jenny K's just that ever-lovin' force of friendship that's kept me from drifting too hard in many a direction lately -- and it's all beyond the political at this point...

Even Ashley Smith is getting nowhere faster than me. Talk about the ultimate Fake Christian; Ashley the (former) meth freak, says in her book of Utter Blather that she won't visit Brian Nichols in jail, even though he asked her to. Now that just ain't right, and it sure ain't Christian-like. And ain't it just like an idiot Southerner to start hollerin' for Jesus to get them out of the shit-hole they've managed to dig their own stupid self into yet again?

Ahhhh... sometimes a good whine is just what you need to get up and get out the door.