Well, I’ll be a son of a gun of a fact. Today’s fact is that The city slicker beats the country hick 99 times out of 100.

It’s a dangerous world to be ignorant in. And the yokel from out in the boonies has a monopoly on true ignorance. He doesn’t read books (all that highfalutin’ knowledge makes his head spin), he doesn’t listen to his elders (what do old folks know anyways?), and he doesn’t have an efficient sense of gut instincts to fall back upon (his gut hurts).

The city slicker may seem weaker, but he could have an iron backbone hammered into cold hardness by the mean streets he came from. The city is unforgiving. It is a Darwinistic competition for resources and women that cherishes the Fortune Favors the Bold crowd. The kingpin of the city is the antithesis of the good, honest, simple hick. The kingpin knows his place — on top of the heap. He knows his minions — on their knees before him. The hick just knows what time church is at on Sundays.

In any confrontation between slicker and hick, one must consciously and consistently bear in mind how smart the hick really is. My father came from Momici, Yugoslavia (today’s Momici, Croatia) and it was a small settlement. Yet he’s brilliant. But he’s also urbane, having transcended his hick beginnings to become a citizen-of-the-world, a full-on engineer, a man of leisure in his retirement days. If the city slicker had faced him, he might well have had his hat handed to him.

Yet most hicks aren’t alpha male gods like my dad. Most hicks can barely pull on their overalls in the morning. They’re not going to be working on nuclear reactors like my father.

If the hicks all get together — 10 of them — and they march in protest against the carpetbagging city slicker come to rip them off, they might get 10 meters before they run into the long arm of the law, bought and paid for by the slicker. He covers all the angles, you see. They don’t. And that’s what makes them the mouse in this cat-and-mouse game.

The city slicker is driven. He knows his next meal will come by his wits alone. The hick has the benefit of the largesse and bounty of the countryside. There’s game in those forests, and wild blueberries, and more. The city offers gritty concrete for you to chew on awhile.

The problem — and hope — of the city is that there’s a million more waiting where that one came from. If one falls flat on his face, another hundred will line up to pounce. Quantity is its own kind of quality, as the saying goes. And they have quality in the city, too… in spades. Oh yes, they do.

living beyond the pale

I dream of a future where harems of girls are collected by the cream of the crop of male society. I dream of eternal orgasm.