Natural Disasters and banjo-pickin'-farm-animal-porking rednecks make for a good time when picking on a regions inhabitants, especially those from the South. Thankfully, I'm from Montana, where we don't really have any Natural Disasters and, if we do, there's not enough people for it to kill any of them.

Mostly, people either yammer about how beautiful Montana is, or make some sort of joke about us Montanans doing nothing but drinking and having sex with all of the sheep, which is patently ridiculous.

There're plenty of cows too.

This morning I was watching City Slickers, thinking about my own days as a cowboy back home, and I noticed that the channel was Comedy Central, which always has fairly entertaining commercials. Though I rarely pay attention during commercial breaks, hell, I guess I rarely pay attention during the friggin' show, but I looked up to see a typical Daily Show correspondent interviewing on a crusty, blue-suited, old dude. My first thought was to wonder which politician they were going to pick on now until I realized why the old dude looked familiar. He's one of Montana's congressmen.

The questions went something like this:

ComedyCentralChick: So you've been enjoying your time here in our fair city (assuming she means D.C.)?

Congressman Hick(smiling intently): Oh yeah, yeah, been enjoying myself.

CCC: Have you noticed we have a lot of black people around here?

CH (smile doesn't falter one bit): Oh yeah, sure, sure.

CCC: Have you had your picture taken with any of them?

CH (bigger and sincere smile): No, no, but that's something I'd like to do, sure.

CCC: You don't have any of them in Montana do you?

CH (serious now, but still very earnest): No, we really don't, we really don't have any. You know, some of us grew up never even seeing one.

Laughter ensues.

Yeah, Daily Show people tend to ask questions that knock you off guard, and can sometimes throw off your context. Yes, they tongue-in-cheekingly make fun of our government leaders and other stuffy-type folks they interview. Sure, it's hardly fair for someone with a rapier-like wit to engage someone like a Congressman in any sort of conversation.

Thing is, he was serious.

He wasn't caught off guard, he wasn't thinking out of context, and no, he didn't know he was being made fun of. He was being as sincere as possible for a Congressman, which may be far less sincere than your average Montanan but is still light-years beyond your average D.C. politician. The only reason he speaks about those of the African-American persuasion as if they're an oddity or an attraction, unique to the D.C. area, is because he thinks they are.

Of course, Congressman Hick is wrong, Montana does have black people. I'm pretty sure they're all on the U of M Grizzlies football team though.

I joke wichoo.

Hell, I'd never seen a real-live black person until I was 14 and I flew to Dallas to visit the Mom, and now one of my better friends and teammates in Roller Hockey is a corn-rowed, Nike-wearing, gold-toothed, hooptie-drivin', Pimpjuice-drinkin', trash-talkin', muthafuckah named "Ant." I'm pretty sure his real name is Anthony and, at one point, his car used to be a Jetta before it got plastered with 2-foot square Nike and Broncos stickers, gold-trim, and those tires that improbably hold air even though they're 2 inches tall, but he's nothing if not colorful.

He's an intensely dark brown and quick to flash that gold-trimmed smile, with such stunning contrast to his skin, in the lockerroom and is as gracious as you can get, win or lose. He and I get along great, which is why it's always amusing to see the looks on the other guys' faces when, after Ant refers to himself as a "Puck-lovin' Niggah," I howl with laughter and repeat it to him with my own variations like, "GOAL-scorin', puck-lovin, Niggah."

The other guys look at me like I just shit in my own skates before putting them on.

It's the same look I get from my co-workers when I tell GayBoy that he'd be no good on the company Dodgeball team because every time a ball came at him he'd probably flail his arms around and shriek like a little girl and that he probably throws like one too.

They looked at me like I'd just told them that I routinely "tea-bag" my scrotum in the coffee pot every morning.

GayBoy laughed hysterically and agreed with me though, even doing an impersonation of himself with an imaginary Dodgeball hurtling towards his head. Folks, let me tell ya, few things are funnier than a flambouyantly homosexual man imitating an even MORE flambouyantly homosexual man. Comedy. Absolute comedy.

GayBoy is a friend of mine too. He doesn't mind when I hang out in his cube talking about how to brand a cow or shoot a hockey puck, and I don't mind when he sits in my cube and tells me about his upcoming trip to Miami to see Madonna for the 38th time, how his family is all from Spain where they are Cheese Barons, or when he tells me about his first blowjob.

Okay, I minded that last one a little bit and no, I don't know whether it was giving or receiving. I tuned out right after the statement about how some people, "just have really nice looking dicks".

*shudders involuntarily*

The thing is, I'm from Montana, where our state motto should be "There aren't enough of us to say any different, so we just don't know any better." Seriously, sheep can't talk (thank God for that) and Cows... well... I'm pretty sure Cows just don't talk out of spite for that whole hot-iron-to-the-ass thing. Either way, nobody told us that you're not supposed to say certain things in the interests of Political Correctness.

In Montana, being Politically Correct is left to the Politicians, and, as you can see, even they aren't very good at it.

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I was raised to believe that there are no "bad" words, just bad feelings and, if a "bad" word is used, you have to look at the context it was used in before you can judge it as "bad" or "not-so-bad."

Adopted Brother's 2-year old was playing out in the yard one day, when he noticed he was standing on an ant hill and they were crawling all over his chubby little feet. He stomped and wiped them off and then said, "Fu-King Ants."

What were we going to say? The kid used it correctly, you can hardly get upset with him for that, can you?

One of the Girl's best friends, and our 9-ball pool teammate, is a girly-girl we call CuteTits. She's Vietnamese but the given nickname for her came from her artificial endowments and not her heritage. She's fond of screaming "get in there, you Hooker!" at the ball, then muttering in Vietnamese, and not telling us what she just said. The only thing she'll teach me is "How are you doing?" and I can now say it perfectly, like I'm a foot shorter and grow rice in a patty. I got the guy at the local liquor store to teach me "You know, you're cute, but a little too old for me," but she told me I was literally saying, "You're pretty like a monster."

When she missed a shot and I slapped her on the ass and called her a "Pretty Monster" in Vietnamese, an older Asian fellow came over and asked me if I knew I was being such a fuckhead because if I did, he'd happily kick my ass Jet-Li style and then he assured me he could. I explained that she's a friend of mine and that if I meant offense, even in Vietnamese, I could've come up with something better than what I had said. He explained that, for his generation, saying that kind of thing about a woman's looks IS pretty goddam offensive, and anything contemporary like say, "Rubber-tittied CumC@tcher" would just be lost on him in it's translation (I offered up the "CumC@tcher" thing as I knew he didn't have a clue what I was saying). Plus, I don't even know how to say that in Vietnamese and I doubt the guy at the liquor store would teach me. The old guy softened quite a bit though, when CuteTits came over and gave me a hug while flashing him her copious amounts of cleavage, then he shook his head, shook my hand, and left.

We had a buddy in High School, a Crow Indian, straight of the Res, that we called "GutEater." GutEater's home was literally several miles from where Chief Plenty Coups was born, and about a half-hour from where a certain General Yellow Hair and his unmatched arrogance met their demise, which made for many jokes at GutEater's expense about his people and their famous victory. Testament to how funny we thought we were, as well as how much we all liked him, we gave him the most offensive nickname we could think of, and it never bothered him. He's still fond of saying that the only derogatory name he hates is "apple."

"Apple? Why do you hate being called an 'apple'?"

"Red Skin, you stupid (unintelligible Crow word meaning literally, 'White Demon')! Because I've got red skin."

"I don't get it, you're only slightly browner than me."

This is how it works in my head. "GutEater" isn't a "bad" word, but "Apple" can be. "Niggah" isn't a bad word, but I absolutely detest it's root word, mostly because of the types of people that use it and the context they use it in. "SissyMary" isn't really even a word, but it's context wasn't "bad," it was funny, made even more funny with an impersonation and the fact that GayBoy turned out to be one of the best Dodgeball players on the entire team (and doesn't throw like a girl at all, dammit).

"CumC@tcher" can't really be construed as anything but "bad," I guess, but it's not a word either, and "Pretty Monster" is classic when it's a 6'2", 240-pound, white guy saying it, in Vietnamese, to a beautiful young Asian girl with great tits.

It's not about the "bad" words, just the "bad" context.

That shit ain't gonna fly though, the next time I ask the Park County Police if the P.C.P. on their badges stands for "Poland China Porkers".

"Because, you know, that breed has stripes... and you're wearing stripes... and they're pigs... and you're� c'mon that's FUNNY."

I had no idea they could fine you $212 for rolling through a "STOP" sign.