Light and hearty observations from a fat and ugly guy. Home of hackneyed drivel and ersatz-existentialist effluence. Choleric biliousness a specialty, since 1958.

Clan meeting in Georgia. Scottish clan, that is.

Oh, yes. I forgot to tell you about this past weekend's "Highland Festival". This annual event features people claiming Scottish heritage wandering around in kilts, vainly attempting to look like extras from the movie Braveheart. Unfortunately there was no one there remotely resembling Sophie Marceau, who played the lovely Princess Isabelle in that movie. Rather, most of the women at this event resembled Sophie Tucker. The way Sophie Tucker looks, today....Sophie Tucker died in 1966, see, and what with the worms and everything....well, you get the idea. Suffice it to say that this wasn't a hot chick "must-do" destination event.

There was haggis to eat (or throw up, depending on your taste), "music", dancing, and other assorted Caledonian crapola. Festival-goers swarmed their ancestral clan tents: over here the Montgomeries, over there the Lachlans and the Stuarts and on and on. For me, the fun part was listening to these people whose families have been here for three or four hundred years prattle on about just how authentically Scottish they were. IMHO, after this amount of time has passed, you're about as Scottish as my left hemmorhoid. Listen up, Sparky: you're American. Dressing in all the Celtic clobber available whilst cabering the caber, hauling the heavy hammer, or shoving the sheaf doesn't change this basic fact.

One other bizarre thing. This event took place in Stone Mountain, Georgia. A suburb of Atlanta, Stone Mountain is notorious as the birthplace of the Georgia Ku Klux Klan. Dipshit robed racists used to hold cross burnings here every Friday night up till about 1970 or so, no kidding. But with my attending this Highland Games gathering, I can actually say I was at a "clan meeting in Stone Mountain", and not mean it in a bad way. Weird, eh?

posted by Nigel St.John Regina Smegmatica Howle-Raines @ 12:55 PM