Stuff Hillbillies Like: Middle Names

Hilbillies are rarely creative. They tend to celebrate destruction with all the passion of a crack-fueled chimpanzee does.

Hillbillies revel at videos of high-speed chases, although some of it is to catch an image of the relatives. They invented smash-up derby, which combines two of their favorite loves: self-mutilation and pulling down an item's intrinsic value.

Some hillbillies believe that the oldest profession is Professional Wrestling, which they follow with a religious fervor. Again, the notion of destruction enthralls the hillbilly.

Creative writing, it would seem, just wouldn't appeal to the hillbilly. And, you're right: prose and poetry are beyond the hillbilly. Except if it's the creation of middle names for their newly-born social pariah.


Here the hillbilly becomes a Be-bop jazz-fusion artist. A hillbilly mother will often insert several middle names into their male children: Billy Bob Joe-Joe, Joe Bob John-John, or Dale Earnhardt Bob... The list and variations go on like the riffs of a Miles Davis sonic soul exploration.

Why so many middle names? It's actually because the female hillbilly is trying to hedge her bets in actually using the name of the child's father in the middle-name string. She usually starts with all of her first cousins and works up the family tree, making careful notation to add the supposed names any traveling carnival workers.

This theory is further verified in the hillbilly approach to naming a female hill-baby. Names include Sue Ellen Bob, Billie Joe Bob, Bobbie Jo Billy, etc.

Stuff Hillbillies Like: Fleeting Religious Beliefs

You probably think that the stuff that hillbillies like are incompatible with religious obligations. After all, hillbillies busy schedule of drinking, drug abuse, monster truck competitions and marital infidelity give them little time to engage in religious practice.

But, that's where you're wrong. Hillbillies carve out a nook for religion when under duress or when plotting revenge.

For the hillbilly, Jesus is a sort of voodoo hitman, a threatening god of vengeance who exacts justice when a husband strays into the local strip joint or in-laws make unrequested assessments of parental skills during a child's birthday party that suddenly explode into boozy inter-familial brawls.

When those incidents occur, the hillbilly will immediately re-orient herself with the Christian religion and pray for God to make testicles whither or cause a fiery motorcycle to smash into the center window of the in-laws double-wide.

Religion is useful to the hillbilly as a auxiliary Welfare agency. The hillbillies devotion to religion is cyclical; it begins when local church food banks about three days before Thanksgiving and reaches a peak during the Salvation Army's holiday gift drive.

The devotion lasts until January 2. Or, maybe a quick visit to church for some Super Bowl Sunday snacks.

Stuff Hillbillies Like: Undiagnosable Medical Conditions

I cain't concentrate and all I got is a lousy banjo.

Hillbillies are very unsophisticated, scientifically speaking. They can't even pronounce the word, sophisticated.

But Hillbillies can suddenly recite strings of complex medical terminology when the need arises; and the need arises when they can receive money without any visible form of labor. Suddenly they speak, at length, of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and repetitive stress injuries (RSIs), along with a dizzying display of related acronyms. Why? The government offers them money for their children's fake maladies and for their own disabilities.

Hillbillies prefer conditions that are as undiagnosable as possible and that have easily-mimicked symptoms, especially symptoms their non-savvy, slack-jawed youngsters can fake. For instance, Hillbillies can make their children seem hyperactive by bolstering their already low-tolerance for concentrated mental activity with high amounts of caffeine.

Back injuries are the goal for most adult Hillbillies. The complexity of the spinal column, along with the natural abhorrence that medical professionals have with Hillbilly visits to their practices, make it easy for a doctor to diagnose a questionable back injury.

Hillbillies can easily fake a back injury by saying this: "Ow. My back." That simple phrase is worth about $800 a month and ushers in a lifelong commitment to shirking. A Hillbilly with the same injury can carry in multiple kegs of beer for his or her own personal use, but, when in public, let's say at a party with lots of able-bodied people around to do the toting, he can suddenly suffer a relapse. The conversation generally goes like this:

Non-injured Hillbilly: Say, Billy Ray can ya's tote in the beer from da
truck?
Pretend-injured Hillbilly: Ow. My back.
Non-injured Hillbilly: Oh, no. D'dit give out on ya agin? Maybe grandma can
fetch the keg.
Pretend-injured: Can she bring over the rack of ribs for me, too?

This will continue until grandma learns to say, "Ow. My back."

Stuff Hillbillies Like: Bouts of Holiday Domestic Violence

Ah. There's nothing like being home for the holidays.

In the lifeways of the hillbilly, there's nothing like being home for the holidays, being excessively whiskey drunk for the holidays and exaggerating your aggressive tendencies for the holidays.

The period between Christmas and New Years sees an uptick in hillbilly-on-hillbilly violence. Frying pan assaults skyrocket. Brother hits brother. Sister hits brother punching brother holding down father who was beating mother.

Usually, these incidents, while fueled by liquor with the same alcohol content as jet fuel, are actually started because one member of the family expressed his/her distaste for another member of the family's pasta salad at a holiday get-together. Or, alternatively, the male head of the household spent all the Christmas money on liquoring up some bar skank he met at the local bar/IHop/hardware store/high school parking lot (please choose one).

All of this leads to the hillbilly holiday trifecta: the festive assault-murder-suicide.

Why do the holidays bring out the worst in the hillbilly? After all, how often are cops called in to break up the Jewish family's Hanukkah party?

I believe that it's just a cheap way for hillbillies to see the festive, pretty red and blue lights of a police cruiser.

Stuff Hillbillies Like: Flags That Signal Seasonal Allegiances

Yay! I support turkey

Many people raise flags that salute the United States or the country of their ancestry.
In Hillbilly land, these fleeting allegiances change over the months.
Besides the potential re-emergence of the Confederacy, hillbillies raise their flags to support climatic changes.
Hillbillies say: I support Autumn.
Or, I'm glad it's summer and there are flowers.
It's winter ! Salute!
The only time you'll see an American flag on Hillbilly property is around the Fourth of July, but it is not a symbol of national independence, rather its meaning is "Yay! One more reason to get drunk and engage in spousal abuse!"

Stuff Hillibillies Like: Lands-crapping

Landscaping is when you take a piece of property and through use of care and design make the place more pleasing aesthetically.

Landscrapping is when you make a piece of land worse and drive down property values. It is honored and admired by hillbillies everywhere.

Like Dante's inferno, the hillbilly envisions the space as a series of concentric circles of hell. The general design rules are as follows:

• The border space is defined by lines of crap. Half complete fence projects and over-sized satellite television dishes add to the drama.
  
• The second ring is the ring of crap. This lawn space contains everything the hillbilly doesn't have the heart or brains to throw away. It can include deer carcasses, dolls and mannequins, and even automobiles.
  
• At the center, the hillbilly always has a collection of garbage cans and dumpsters, sometimes filled, more than often not. These can be symbols of irony and defiance. Also, laziness.

Stuff Hillbillies Like: Weird, Christmas Iconic Juxtapositions

Tigger dances the "Yay Jesus, It's Your Birthday" dance.

One things hillbillies love: Christmas juxtapositions that would make Salvador Dali scratch his head.

Recently I saw a manger scene overshadowed by a menacing 7-foot tall inflatable penguin with a Santa hat. Perhaps the penguin was an angelic spirit sent to protect the little baby Jesus; but, the menacing smile appeared he was of a malicious bent.

In another yard, Frosty the Snowman stands perilously close to a raging torch, perhaps lit by ashes from his corn cob pipe, a major health hazard for snowmen and women.

Jesus, I was led to believe, was born in Bethlehem. According to hillbillies, he was born in the North Pole, on Candy Cane Lane.

Wire-framed reindeer share yard space with polar bears in the hillbilly iconography, even though in the natural environs, the reindeer is food for the polar bear.

Interesting and ironic holiday yard art is merely a visual representation of the bizarro world of the hillbilly where abled-bodied people use scooters, cars sit on blocks and homes ride on wheels.

Check out Tacky Christmas Yards to explore more about our surrealist holiday hillbillies.