#poor white trash

[televised-exorcism]

Take me thrifting daddy buy me a disconcerting porcelain doll, an obnoxious prom dress from the '80s and a reproduction french provincial hutch for my human bone collection pretty please I'll be so good I promise

[oldshowbiz]

it exists today

[veronicaleighauthor]

Loft Magazine – Cover Reveal

This morning I decided to submit a story called, “Poor White Trash” to Loft Magazine, a publication by Loft Books. Less than an hour later it was accepted! That was the quickest acceptance I have ever had in the course of my brilliant career.

Without further ado, here’s the gorgeous cover of the issue my story will be published in!

Isn’t it extraordinary? It’s by artist Annabelle Amory, who’s over on Instagram, if you want to follow her. I’m going to follow her!

Will keep you all posted.

Until next time!

[sohannabarberaesque]

And not just the physical sort: Concern needs to be expressed about psychological and emotional abuse directed at children, in particular such manifested by the likes of:

suggestions that children leave the house after breakfast and not return until suppertime "to give [the parents] some time for ourselves and ourselves alone", especially during school vacations;

reinforcing the preceding with carefully-scripted patsies to explain to police officers and similar the absence of their parents in case questions start being asked, the better to lay suspicion to sleep;

insisting that their children devote their evenings all the more to schoolwork rather than TV, films or music, hoping such devotion to study will translate into a place on the school's Honor Roll, with a suitable reward likely once achieved;

holding the children to blame for the parents being driven to alcohol, narcotic drugs, "sexual vices" (including addiction to pornography), substantial credit-card debt and General Debaucheries, fearing that the welfare officers could take the children away suddenly and without warning save for being called to the principal's office after school;

having a portion of weekly allowance held back, especially heading towards Christmas, to "help you buy a nice gift for Mom and Dad" without any sort of match, unaware that it's difficult to find that "nice gift" on a pittance, even from the Workshop for the Blind;

having the kids left with close and trusted friends when the parents have to be out of town (especially interstate) "on business," "looking for work" or some similar excuse, and being asked to keep quiet about the whole for fear of "reprisals" from the welfare or, worse still, the police;

arbitrarily placing the children on "Brownie Points" or some such "system of incentives" to earn assorted "privileges" as would supposedly come in due course, subject to the right amount of points being earned thereby;

constantly blaming the children in drunken shouting-matches for "driving [them] to ruin after all we've done for you," followed by their either being driven to the bus station with one-way tickets out of town or the parents leaving the kids in the house, and in shock privation as well; and

coming home one afternoon from school and not seeing at least the mother to welcome them home, instead being left a note saying something like "you drove us to this," with further details best seen as horrible dictu and the kids left to call 911.

Such being especially likely in older "industrial" (lower working-class) and rural or otherwise economically-challenged communities, especially where being seen as "poor white trash" is looked upon as a Badge of Honour--reinforced all too often by the Confederate travesty of the Cross of St. Andrew, Martyr, or (in rare instances) with the Nazi swastika "blood flag" or the apartheid South African tricolour serving as a complementary Badge of Honour for being thus arrogant.

The preceding is brought to you as a public service.

[sohannabarberaesque]

Explosion of Pedigreed Bull, Cattanooga Cheese (usual Appy Polly Loggies)

[Mise en scene: A somewhat slow moment during a Cattanooga Cats concert in some class of a culturally-depraved environment which finds Kitty Jo going into the audience to ask questions of same in the manner of certain variety show hosts back in the day. Beside one arrogantly-dressed specimen of otherwise "poor white trash," the scene is as follows--] KITTY JO: So what exactly attracted you to our concert, if I may ask? OVERDRESSED "POOR WHITE TRASH" MALE, rather arrogantly: I thought there was supposed to be a revival meeting here this evening-- [The audience laughs their disapproval at the comment] KITTY JO: Sometimes, I have to admit that we use clever disguises to guess the reactions of certain types like yourself Who Should Know Better, only to realise that it's just us in concert-- [Whereupon the overdressed "poor white trash" exemplar, and a few others like him, storm out of the "opry house" serving as the venue, blowing Bronx cheers as an insult--and leaving some Jack Chick Tracts as an insult, which Kitty Jo picks up wholesale] SCOOTS, back on stage with a Rather Brilliant Idea: How 'bout we just throw them into the recycling bin I'm producing with my Magic Crayon, endowed unto me by one Gaston Le Crayon? [Laughter from the audience; eventually, Kitty Jo takes the stash of such poor exemplars of Winning Hearts and Minds to Christ and dumps them in same, with a mix of laughter and applause]

[schlock-luster-video]

On November 2, 2009, Bayou was screened at the Vienna International Film Festival.

[soadscrawl]

i was saying this to my best friend the other day but why are voltron aus making keith either rich or like a prince or something. why must you take his poor kid sparkle. that man knows a 7/11 slurpee he knows a walmart brand bottle of soda. he deserves to know the simple pleasure of an inflatable backyard pool. I know he got those fuckass black jeggings from a thrift store. and that fuckass mullet is from great clips. is keith kogane truly keith kogane if hes not taking his change to the coinstar at the grocery store. dont take this from my man!!!!!!

[sugarpucks]

I present my offering; Cigarette Mom Miku

She’ll let you buy candy with the change, if you go buy her a Diet Coke from the party store.

[tvrools]

Justified ramble: Something that has always intrigued me about justified and Dickie as a character is the cruelty of Raylan towards him. While Dickie is a criminal, a murder etc, the way Raylan treats him compared to the other convicts is...different. As viewers we are supposed to cheer on Raylan as he brings justice to criminals but often times his treatment of Dickie is much more cruel (especially compared to how he works with Boyd who is in many ways much worse than Dickie). From almost executing him in the woods to framing him for attempted murder, breaking and entering, threatning to take away disability accommodations in prison and finally shooting him in his leg (worsening his condition) Raylan really has it out for him. Theres always the debate on whether what Raylan did was "justified" (like every time he does anything) and thats what i love so much about the show. It follows this flawed character who does things that are very morally grey but does them in the name of justice. (i love raylan and boyd btw im not complaining about them!!). i watched this show literally 4 years ago but it sits in a part of my mind still. So have a Dickie drawing page, hes a fun character.

[weirdlookindog]

Scum of the Earth (1974)

AKA Poor White Trash Part II

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

if your conclusion after reading Hillbilly Elegy (and I don't think most people who say this did read it) is "J.D. Vance is from Ohio, he's not a real hillbilly and knows nothing about Appalachia," you missed the entire point of the book.

[leafened]

i literally cant think about microplastics bc my family would microwave food on styrofoam plates. like there were pieces of styrofoam stuck to my food and i know bc it would leave dents/thinner spots in the plates... also microwaved nissan cup noodle every day for years

macroplastics

[ausetkmt]

White Trash - Race and Class in America

This collection is devoted to exploring stereotypes about the social conditions of poor whites in the United States and comparing these stereotypes with the social reality.

WHITE TRASH The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America By Nancy Isenberg Illustrated. 460 pp. Viking. $28.

No line about class in the United States is more famous than the one written by the German sociologist Werner Sombart in 1906. Class consciousness in America, he contended, foundered “on the shoals of roast beef and apple pie.” Sombart was among the first scholars to ask the question, “Why is there no socialism in the United States?” His answer, now solidified into conventional wisdom about American exceptionalism, was simple: “America is a freer and more egalitarian society than Europe.” In the United States, he argued, “there is not the stigma of being the class apart that almost all European workers have about them. . . . The bowing and scraping before the ‘upper classes,’ which produces such an unpleasant impression in Europe, is completely unknown.”

In “White Trash,” Nancy Isenberg joins a long list of historians over the last century who have sent Sombart’s theory crashing on the shoals of history. The prolific Charles and Mary Beard, progressive historians in the first third of the 20th century, reinterpreted American history as a struggle for economic power between the haves and have-nots. W.E.B. Du Bois interpreted Reconstruction as a great class rebellion, as freed slaves fought to control their own working conditions and wages.

Labor and political historians in the 1970s and 1980s recovered a forgotten history of blue-collar consciousness and grass-roots radicalism, from the Workingmen’s Party in Andrew Jackson’s America to the late-19th-century populists of upcountry Georgia to the Depression-era leftist unions of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Historians of public policy, like the influential Michael B. Katz, emphasized the persistence of notions of “the undeserving poor,” an ideology that blamed economic deprivation on the alleged pathological behavior of poor people themselves and eroded support for welfare programs.

[veronicaleighauthor]

Loft Issue VI

Wonderful news! Loft Issue VI has been released! It features my story, “Clean Green.” If you’d like to check the issue out, you can do so at Loft’s website. It is the issue at the bottom. You can even download it, if you want. Looks like a great issue!

Really ecstatic to see this story in print. Special thanks to the editors for including it in their publication.

I hope to do a Fun Facts post in a few days, which shares some tidbits about this story and what inspired it.

Until next time!

[angeleyeswide]

White Trash Christmas

Going over to my mother's is simply dreadful. It smells distinctly of Lysol... Masking the horrible amalgamated scent of rot, cats, apathy, shit, delusion, and piss, inherent to the very being of her trailer now. The scent will never come out of the softened particle board cabinets and floors under peeling vinyl squares - it looks like a wet, warped cardboard box inside. I have to shower as soon as I get home and immediately wash my clothes.

Now that I've been out in the world, interacting with other humans and slowly becoming acclimated to them, the entire experience is incredibly alien and overstimulating.

I remember when I would unknowingly sleep over black mold growing from the wall under my bed... And when I found it, I was amazed that it was protruding so far- at least two centimeters from the old paint.

Now the place that used to be my normal is so disgusting to me. I can't fucking stand it. It makes me so sick that I grew up in that.

And what's worse is the constant negativity. I developed severe hyper-vigilance. I always memorize footsteps now, so I know who's coming. I would wake up to my mother screaming or yelling for us to get up, ready to have another tirade of some kind.

I had a phone she didn't know about, too. So I could try to have some contact with the outside world. And unfortunately, that came with its own set of consequences... Like being sexually exploited online as a teenager.

All of these painful memories... They flood back into me when I visit as an adult and steel my body. The tension coils up inside me - a stifled breath, a held in scream, a trip outside for fresh air, a bare minimum reply to another one of my mother's repetitive rants.

This is how I feel every single holiday. I go to her house and it's always a shit show. Something small goes wrong and it's the end of the world - a screaming match ensues.

And the impending doom of the impossible burden sets in... ready to crush me like a piano, splattering me across the pavement - I will have to clean up this mess once day. I'm the only one of my siblings able to work or live a semi-normal life. I will have to care for them as well. All three. When I can barely take care of myself.

That's not even half of the shit, but... Well, that's what I think about during the holidays. I get pretty depressed this time of year. All this to say... I don't really like Christmas. I really wish I could. But I can't. Just like a food I've tried to like because everyone else swears it's so good, that's what Christmas is to me.

I look at my mother's dilapidated trailer, trash piled and strewn about the yard and I sometimes think to myself, "I guess it doesn't get anymore Southern Gothic than this, huh?" Dysfunctional family. Cyclical destruction. Unspoken secrets. Festering decay.

Anyway, I hope your Christmas/holiday is going a lot better than mine. Cheers.

[sohannabarberaesque]

Scenes from extremist political rallies targeting the Lower Classes we'd love to see

Some misguided "patriot" organisation hires a sound engineer who turns out to be so incompetent, he drives the mostly "poor white trash" audience (more than likely bussed in from rural areas with Walmart or Dollar General gift cards as inducement) into utter confusion when, for some reason, he winds up playing "The Tra-La-La Song" (otherwise familiar to many of you as The Banana Splits' theme) on the tannoy rather than some strident patriotic ballad aimed at stoking latent hatreds in service to God and Country on a par with the Horst Wessel back in Nazi Germany or "Die Stem van Suid-Afrika" in apartheid South Africa.