I am rein­stat­ing my Soci­ety for the Preser­va­tion of South­ern Ver­nac­u­lar. [that’s not a link, okay, so don’t mouse over it hop­ing for a sur­prise or for clar­i­fi­ca­tion of any sort]

It’s time to pre­serve… and reflect.

The Kin­dle con­tri­bu­tion to my inter­nal knowl­edge base included last Sunday’s (02÷28÷10) arti­cle on Race in the South. Nat­u­rally, I thought the arti­cle was about NASCAR . [That’s a great joke, me, you should do more of that. Okay, I will.] Race has noth­ing to do with my hope to pre­serve the south­ern ver­nac­u­lar other than to pos­si­bly make com­ments about atti­tudes of rural v urban yard archi­tects and the urban pref­er­ence for fancy-​shmancy wrought iron antiq­ui­ties over ply­wood cut-​outs of bloomer clad butts and ceramic squirrels.

After rob­bing the Wag-​A-​Bag, Francine and the Boys went to the barn dance.

By read­ing the NY Times Kin­dle edi­tion on a daily basis, my intel­lect awakes and my mind pops with antic­i­pa­tion. Ya’ll must under­stand — last weekend’s arti­cle really has noth­ing to do with the con­tent direc­tion of this blog post — y’all –but it is a fas­ci­nat­ing bunch of infor­ma­tion and every­one should read the arti­cle if they are try­ing to draw a bead on what’s going on down here on God’s Lit­tle Acre… two miles from Tobacco Road… just south of Hog’s Scald Holler… east of the Great Dis­mal Swamp…

Now, let’s return to the real rea­son I brought you here today. It’s to re-​publish, for the gabil­lionth time, my Hegelian thoughts in this era of Col­lec­tivist Reju­ve­na­tion via Ayn and her objec­tivist buds. One must note that the “Glenn Beck” philo­soph­i­cal take on Ayn Rand is so far removed from the true Rand –> one would hope I had the for­ti­tude to defeat the right-​wing inter­pre­ta­tions of her writ­ing and philo­soph­i­cal trea­tise but to argue with unarmed oppo­nents hereto­fore would be futile. <– Study and reflect until Objec­tivism becomes more clear.

But to those Beck apol­o­gists out there, know this: Wikipedia notes that “Aris­to­tle scholar Allan Got­thel and other schol­ars have argued for more aca­d­e­mic study of Objec­tivism, view­ing Rand’s phi­los­o­phy as a unique and intel­lec­tu­ally inter­est­ing defense of clas­si­cal lib­er­al­ism that is worth debat­ing.” (as in not con­ser­v­a­tive at all)

Ooops, Artist and e-​Assemblagist MacE­wan makes a polit­i­cal state­ment. Hope it’s abstruce-​ively-​ing hid­den enough for no one to under­stand from whence I come to the philo­soph­i­cal debate, John Galt.

True love is found.

So, back to South­ern Ver­nac­u­lar which I mean to include Yard Art, Inte­rior Dec­o­rat­ing*, and Auto­mo­bile Arche­ol­ogy. (*not lim­ited to mobile homes)

The fol­low­ing mini-​article was orig­i­nally pub­lished on the old End­less Chain Pig Club site, back in its day when sar­casm and deri­sion ruled the content.

From there I posted it on the Dead Mule School of South­ern Literature,

again on Men­tal Kudzu, and even­tu­ally — even in a col­umn on Pop­mat­ters.

You’d think I’d get tired of it but hell… why hide genius under the Inter­net bar­rel? And damn, who knew I had so many blogs? So here, in its 2010 edited glory, I present:

The Sweet Impli­ca­tions of the Hegelian Dialec­tic and Polit­i­cal Dis­course Amid the Con­crete Struc­tures Once Held Sacred in Con­fines of the South­ern Yard

(a rejected the­sis proposal)

A Brief Yet Ade­quate Dis­course on Hegel’s Idea of The­sis, Antithe­sis, and Syn­the­sis When Applied to Con­crete Chickens

By apply­ing the Hegelian Dialec­ti­cal form of analy­sis to the sub­lim­i­nal and con­scious patho­log­i­cal urge to attain and promi­nently dis­play con­crete stat­u­ary within a pub­lic or pri­vate archi­tec­turally insignif­i­cant or pon­der­ously impor­tant land­scape motif, one can clearly com­pre­hend the South­ern love for yard art. The the­sis, ini­tially defined as any live, sen­tient meat-​producing ani­mal with its func­tional char­ac­ter­is­tics legit­imized by an abil­ity to sus­tain human life through which is pro­vides nour­ish­ment essen­tial for the sur­vival of the human species, is as valid today as it was in 1996.

The antithe­sis of the fully-​functional food source strata of yard ani­mal would there­fore be the lurk­ing of swine and poul­try within the “yard,” serv­ing as mere pets or for the crass enter­tain­ment of lower lev­els of soci­ety. A type of cul­tural trav­esty vis­ited upon both the rural and urban body politic, as it were. The syn­the­sis is then obvi­ous. And def­i­n­i­tions become concrete.

My sis­ter always will.

If, as Hegel explains, the com­bi­na­tion of the two (the­sis and antithe­sis) being resolved in a higher form of truth rep­re­sents syn­the­sis, syn­the­sis there­fore can only be proved by the exis­tence of the pop­u­lar­ity of cement barn­yard ani­mals. The pro­lif­er­a­tion of cement pigs, and the sis­ter sculp­tures sig­ni­fied by chick­ens, roost­ers, ducks, and tur­tles, rep­re­sent, and fur­ther solid­ify, the Southerner’s need to syn­the­size a wan­ton car­niv­o­rous­ness with a true appre­ci­a­tion for art.

***

That bit of philo­soph­i­cal debate came about in 1992 or 1995 or some­time in the decade 1990 – 2000. Phi­los­o­phy just trips my trig­ger. Hav­ing a mod­icum of knowl­edge on cer­tain philo­soph­i­cal top­ics cre­ates myr­iad oppor­tu­ni­ties for e-​assemblages.

e-​assemblages definition:

One who cre­ates assem­blage art from re-​purposed objects which are acquired over a lengthy time. In gen­eral, e-​assemblages cam­ou­flage the orig­i­nal intent of the object by uti­liz­ing faux fin­ishes, gels and other mediums.

Many e-​assemblagists employ medi­ums to inter­pret their work and sug­gest future projects.

Sis­ter Bonita’s hand appears just above my head on the right as she reads my aura.

I myself pur­chase the ser­vices of Sis­ter Bonita on a reg­u­lar basis.

She not only reads my palms; she inquires as to my muse. Also, the bumps on my head require con­stant inter­pre­ta­tion and inspi­ra­tional revision.

Are you still read­ing this? Wow. Go back to what­ever you were doing before you got here. Shoo! Skat!