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Today, someone told me maybe the most depressing thing that I have ever heard in my life. I'm still young, and I'm sure that there are going to be moments of disappointment in life, but I don't see how any of them can compare to this.

Someone told me that I had a Southern accent.

Oh, I can understand how that might have come to be. After three years at a substandard university in the South, eventually, it will get to you, so I've been told. Well, I sound perfectly normal to myself, but I'm not the one who has to listen to myself all the time. It's other people who hear it.

So what's wrong with the South? You might be thinking that question. Honestly, the South has it's good points. Rock, jazz and blues (also known as the holy trinity of music) all had their roots in the South. Still, the South gave us country music as well, and that's a good enough reason for it to be blown of the face of the earth. Also, jazz and blues originated in New Orleans, and New Orleans is kind of an exception to the “South Sucks!” rule. Why's that? Well, in New Orleans… they have an accent of their own combined with a good deal of French heritage. It's the French that does it because most Southerners kind of see the French as queer/communist Formula-One fans, and that doesn't mesh well considering that many normal, non-Southern Americans just hate France anyway because it seems to be the cool thing to do.

The South also saw the birth of NASCAR. Don't get me wrong: NASCAR is great… if you like watching cars drive around in circles all day. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: NASCAR is pretty much rollerskating on steroids, or rollerskating is NASCAR on depressants. Contrast the NASCAR of the south to the ice hockey of the North. Now, ice hockey is a sport with action to it. Just to make things interesting, there's an average of a little less than one fight per game. Oh, people might call it violent and unsportsmanlike, but when you think about it, what's so unsportsmanlike about boxing? It's two guys hitting the teeth out of each other, and it's completely sportsmanlike. So, why is it bad to have a little of that in hockey?

Regardless of my musical or sport-viewing preferences, my accent has apparently taken on that of the remnants of the Confederacy. I know that there are several psychos in the South who would rather be spending the better part of a Saturday playing nineteenth-century dress up and reenacting the Battle of Shiloh or something. I am not one of them. My accent doesn't reflect that anymore. That's too bad because I like the fact that I don't drop y'all into my sentences. I like the fact that where I come from, we make fun of country music and square dancing. Still, I can't make too much fun of it, or else I'll end up the victim of a lynch mob kind of like those guys from Top Gear who drove through the South and almost died.