Rube History

American Rubes: A Brief History, A Present Danger
by Dr. Montgomery Phalange, taken from the introduction to his book “Rubes – The New Terror” 2002 Kentucky Press

Although rubery, or rubism, has always been a worldwide phenomenon, recent research has shown that many “Rubes” are concentrated in the Southern United States (See Jimmy Wax, Trey Wheeler & Slitzy et al 2003). How has the Rube come to flourish in this particular area, and what does this mean for the rest of the Regular world? Read more...

Dear Rube Watchers...

Unsure how to spot a rube out of his element? Work in the business world and can't spot the rubes in their pin-striped overalls?

Have no fear. Just listen carefully.

Rube Watch Reads Its Mail

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this Rube Watch thing is getting out of hand. What began as a small forum to exchange rube-ish ideas is sweeping the land like some dark cumulo nimbus. The response has been overwhelming.

Jerry, from San Francisco, writes: "I used to have problems with this total fuckin' rube. He's ignorant and verbally abusive and kept me constantly on edge. It got so bad I donned war paint and stalked his family, hiding for three days in the hedges along his driveway with a megaphone and three buckets of dead minnows. On the fourth morning I overheard his neighbors discussing something called Rube Watch and thought, 'Hey, this might be for me.' Thanks to you, Rube Watch, I didn't commit three counts of felony assault!"

And the letters keep pouring in!

Irina, from Belarus, writes: "When the Iron Curtain lifted, I finally saw the sun. When Rube Watch came, I finally saw the light."

Aswan, from Amman, Jordan, tells us: "There's an old Arabic proverb that says, 'Thou shalt not stare at the camel's toe if thou cannot look the beast in the eye.' What does this mean?, you're probably asking. You must find this meaning within yourself."

Thanks for the tip, Aswan!

Boy, let me tell ya, we never thought we'd get such a response to our rube-ish dialogues. We never expected to be..."e-celebrities", I think, is the term Newsweek used. But we're taking it all in stride. We're not letting it go to our heads. Because, in the end, none of the fame and adulation matters. No, at the end of the day, when we shut down our computers and head home to dive into a delicious Iowa Steak from Rube's Meat Company (1-800-84-RUBES), proudly serving meat to working folks like you and me since 1973, what matters is that we're still Trey and Jimmy and Slitzy and "Chains" from the block.

Rube Watch Red Alert

I bring to your attention an urgent humanitarian disaster. It is unfolding in the Rube Watch Forum as I type. It appears that there are at least two females out there who have been engaged in sexual congress with our patriarch. This is a foul notion for several reasons, but the most insidious of all is that the Uber Rube is attempting to breed, create a little master-of-fuck-all race if you will. Ladies, I urge you, keep 'em zipped around this nefarious joker, those are spray on pheromones. The forum is open to our sisters who feel the need to absolve themselves of the memory of such an approach.

Rube Catalogue: Workplace Essentials

Ever feel you’re just not doing enough? Ever think “Gee whiz alla those poor fellers over there in eye-raq, a-fightin fer freedom, and what’m I doin” ?

Download your FREE Wallpaper and show you support democracy. You don’t want a co-worker calling you pinko do you?


OH, say can you see…

When Rubes get Creative

This song is number one on the playlist of stations arcoss the bible belt. We print the lyrics in full, but for all of you budding Country singers, imagine your average country riff in D, and sing along. YEEHAW

An Iraqi In Kentucky
by Skeeter Mays

An Iraqi in Kentucky
I say, Ma, now idn't that lucky
I gone and done catched me Saddam

Ahm goin' learn that boy a lesson
With mah brand new Smith & Wesson
And show 'im things ah learned in Vietnam

Now when ah wave mah rifle up in the air
And that Freebird solo starts to blare
Don't go reachin' for none uh your chemical bomb

Cos if there's one thing ah cain't stand
Iss sharin' mah fields with the Arab man
And don't you hippies go on tellin' me I'm wrong

Ah can drink too much and lose mah head
Hit mah wife before goin' to bed
But don't you commies go on tellin' me ahm wrong

Ah scream real loud and scare the kids
Shoot the dog when he takes a piss
But goddammit dontchew go callin' me Saddam

Cos ah just drank a sixer and ahm feelin' lucky
And somewhere there's an Iraqi in Kentucky
And ahll keep on shootin' til he tells me 'oo he is

Rube Catalogue: Rube Shoes

You can sell anything to a rube provided you attach the word "technology". Take for instance these shoes which I've seen paraded around in my workplace. Good for your back they say. How the fuck could this be good for the body? If the design of the human race required additional cushioning or springs in your feet then we'd have evolved them. Early man spent several hundred millenia walking around in his bare feet developing an incredible cushioning system for the back. I've watched fools walking around in these things and I can tell you that it don't look healthy: you look like you have a broken pelvis.

The website goes on to proclaim "the shocking truth" of impact on your feet where walking is described as destructive impact. Well again I refer you to the stone age, when I'm quite sure that there were no Chevy Suburbans available to prevent you having to fuck up your feet and back though an arduous walk down to Krispy Kreme. This of course brings us to the real application of these shoes. All this tech talk is merely skirting the issue. It stands to reason that your feet and back are sore if you weigh 300 pounds.

Rube Update!

Rube Catalogue: Essential Purchase

“If a tree falls in the woods and no-one is around to hear it, does it really make a sound?” See, even Confucius was a bit of a Rube, but hey, little did he know that in our post-9/11 society where danger and evil are rife, he’d have a point. If you’re getting murdered or are the unwitting victim of terror and you scream for help and no-one is around to hear, do you really make a sound? Make your cry for help heard by the underpaid telephonist at the other end of The Emergency Cell Phone. (As seen on TV)

Just $99.95 for instant security.

LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!

Rube Headlines

On March 17th I had the misfortune to be tuned into CNN for an update on the tumultuous events of that day, when I witnessed some idiotic news coverage. The two anchors Carol Costello and Aaron Brown, were waiting for the Rube in Chief to make his ultimatum to the other butcher of Baghdad. I'm pretty sure Brown was jerking off under the table at the prospect of a war. At around the same time, Hans Blix was talking in the UN about the latest findings and plans for inspections (that's right, the inspections Bush called for in the first place). The CNN reporters introduced coverage of Blix at the UN, but in pictures only. We weren't allowed to hear what he said, the coverage then cut back to the glamorous pair whereupon she said "well, I suppose what he has to say is... moot. At least as far as Americans are concerned." What a load of shit. You can hear the production crew, "Hey, we'd better not broadcast what he's saying in case it undermines the case for war. I mean, we've spent a fortune on all these graphics, better make sure we get to use them." The news is the news. You present it, we make up our minds.

You Carol Costello, are a Rube.

The War on Terror: Rubed

You’ll probably have noticed something about us here at Rube Watch. We don’t seem to tackle the big issues. OK, I can see that from a certain point of view, but that only comes from a deep misunderstanding of the threat that Rubery poses to our world. You see, this is the big issue, this is the only issue that we should be worrying our little heads about. War, famine, poverty, Yates Network, murder, rape, Bush Country, talent contests. Why? Assholes, that’s why. Rubes.

“Imagine there’re no assholes, it’s easy if you try” In fact, try hard enough and you can imagine John Lennon never existed and that song fades away like the distant painful memory of so much half baked pap.

However, in the interests of appealing to a larger audience and mentioning something, anything, you people might have previously heard of, I’m putting The War on Terrorism into the Hall of Rubes. No, no, hang on. Yes I am. Shut up, yes I am. If some bunch of fucking Rubes can declare war on, carpet bomb and send armies after an abstract noun then I can certainly rube a proper one. Am I’m damn well going to, is that OK with you? Yeah, yeah, fuck you too pal.

It’s not like the US haven’t tried this stunt before. They declared War on Drugs a few years back. Heroin was shitting itself, which made a change from making some skinny addict leak sour brown muck down a pant-leg. Coke fled back to Columbia, where it was hacked to pieces by guerrillas and shoved up hairy nostrils, and marijuana got burned like the witches of old, and everyone giggled. Whereas Codeine, Nicotine, Dramamine, Valium, Novocaine, Paracetamol, Aspirin, Morphine and Glue escaped the onslaught, Alcohol was installed as drug-ruler, but a pawn of the state. A liquid Noriega, if you will.

So how is this one going to pan out? Well, I see it like this. Terrorism is quaking in its boots around about now (if you can imagine a tiny boot on the end of the T and M ). It’s looking for a hiding place somewhere in between “Urinal” and “Uzbekistan” in the Oxford English, not wanting to stray too far from the “S,T,U” region, but “U.S.; see United States” just keeps rearing its ugly head. Stuck between a toilet and a shit hole, Terrorism will have to let go of the word it annexed in the 1960s, “terror”, and seek exile in “C”, possibly “Q”. With Terrorism on the retreat we can install our own word to fill the gap. A good word, a Christian word, a word to unite the nations and to bring peace and love in our time.

I was thinking…”Testicle”

Rube-A-Rama

Here is a collection of rube variants courtesy of our comrade over at sciatica.

What happens when rubes get access to computers (apart from The Yates Report of course)? Well I'll show you what...

Read the fucking manual Rube.

Rube classifieds.

Online Diary. The content smells like a hoax, but the photograph has to be real. Its a textbook rubeface. Use it to help identify rubes in your area. Picture this guy with kitchen implements stuck in his floppy drive trying to work out why no-one will buy his TV.

Happy St. Patrick's day to all...

...except the total fucking rubes at O'Neill's pub in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Who refused to accept our Irish driver's licences as valid ID last night resulting in the St. Paddy's celebrations out here in the desert taking place exclusive of real Irish people. We went to a Hawaiian bar instead. The rules are the rules. Well, the rubes are the rubes too, I suppose.

Rube Catalogue: Paddy's Day Special

Irish-American Rube Watch

This beautiful and imaginative Irish-American Rube Watch is an ideal gift for any Rube looking to declare their membership of the Irish genepool. Representing the Rubic attachment of Irish Americans to that tiny island they've never been to and their bizarre ignorance of its history, people and politics, the Irish-American Rube Watch brands your Rube a Rube every second of the day and allows them with a flick of the wrist to say, "Kiss me I'm an asshole".

A steal at $49.

Quick Quick, GET IT

Rubes of the World: Northern Ireland

Much of the discussion (and criticism) on this page is directed at Rubes of North American lineage. In the spirit of equality, and also to establish that there is no "anti-Americanism" lest there be an Ulster Fry boycott, it is necessary that we put on display some of the worlds most accomplished Rubes.

I refer you to the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party). For our American readers we must clarify that in Northern Ireland there are also 2 sides to the political landscape. The difference is that Northern Irish Democrats are the right wing bible thumping lunatics and the Republicans are the left wing socialists. Apologies for the confusion, we've been struggling with the whole thing since the 1700s. So, feast your eyes on the ugliest, most bigoted bunch of politicians anywhere on the globe, read the speeches, check out the mugshots, and understand why we need them off our TV screens for ever.

Of course we must elevate at least one member of this hideous band to the Hall of Rubes. That man is Sammy Wilson. Sammy, get your clothes on and come on down you useless sack of poop.

Rube Humour

In my tireless mission to unearth Rubists the world over I came across this during a particularly stultifying search through Bushcountry. I am absolutely in favour of the use of humour to advance political argument as it provides a unique perspective outside the realm of traditional debate. Much like mathematics or science where an idea or a equation is taken to extremes in order to test its validity. The content of this rightwing strip is not the thrust of my argument today. Instead there's a subtlety here that I need to bring to the attention of the Rubewatch community which underlines many of the characteristics of the typical rube.

What I find interesting, no, enlightening, is the design of the main protagonists in this strip. Take the father for instance. Note the goatee and the earring in the right ear. The mother's minimalist glasses and lack of a perm. Note again the piercings and unconventional hairstyles of the children (please suppress your frustration at the naming of the son's character). A picture is building. Given that US liberal politics are 180 degrees out of phase with those of the cartoonist and his target audience, one must conclude that these characters are reversals of US conservatives. Lets take a moment to imagine the appearance of the audience...

Dad: Is it a wig or could it be real? Its got a deep parting on the left which is the product of aggressive and repeated brushing throughout childhood by a woman who looked like his wife. There's a styling substance in there, but not to create this shape and hold the parting, rather to enforce control on any unruly hairs which might stray from the vinyl curves. This is a man who wears a tie on Saturdays.

Mom: The hair may be permed or sprayed to the extent where it appears to be entirely removable creating a Velcro-like sound. Whatever it is its BIG. The glasses are large and self-tinting.

Kids: These poor bastards don't know any better. They are clones of the above. Blank canvasses on which the parents paint an image of themselves. They are bullied at school.

Recognise them. Save the kids, but expose the adults here at Rubewatch.

Rube Correspondence

Yeah, yeah, we hear ya.

“What’s all this got to do with me?” you say. “These rubes haven’t invaded my personal bubble. It’s not like they’ve bombed my Twin Towers, dragging me into a war on Rubism”, you continue.

Fine, but you wait until some rubey fucknut lands some of this kinda bullshit all up in your piece and we’ll discuss the matter further. Here we have the email of a Rube shopped in to Rube Watch by a friend. It stands as a testament to just what can happen when rubes are allowed to run about the place unchecked, and indeed, to hold positions of authority. In very un-Rube Watch style, the Rube involved will remain anonymous, to protect our friend rather than to save him from any embarrassment, because as you should be well aware, rubes are incapable of embarrassment. (This is not a personality trait. They actually lack an enzyme that eats wanky egocentrism, thereby preventing any introspection regarding their rubey behaviour)

Anyway, read and learn people. Assholes are everywhere. It’s just a matter of time before some Rube crashes into your Twin Towers. Then you’ll see.

Then you’ll see.

-----Original Message-----
From: My Pal
Sent: Tue 11/03/2003 17:28
To: Among others, a fucking Rube
Cc:
Subject: Revised SS Campaign Proposal
Hiya
Attached is the revised proposal. Please note I have added the engineers pilot that we talked about & have whacked £5k in the budget to cover additional materials /staff time etc.

You can see in here the DBTF events that we are proposing for the meeting on Monday.
Regards
(Good Ordinary non-Rube)

From: A Fucking Rube
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 8:58 AM
To: My Pal
Subject: RE: Revised SS Campaign Proposal
Morning,
I don't know if you meant to send me a copy of your report, but I read it quickly anyway and have a couple of small comments to make.
On page two, top line of the last paragraph I think the word 'wit' should be 'with'.
On page 5 (top line) you refer to 'brainstorm', I don't know how politically correct your target audience is but certainly, we don't use that word becuse[sic] that's what epileptics suffer from when they have a fit. The current thinking is 'thoughts shower'.
Cheers, speak soon

Asshole.

Fast Food Rube

Beware the flourishing of Rubism in our governments. Bob Ney, a Republican Representative in The US house of Representatives is hereby elevated to the Hall of Rubes. In his official House website, he and his cronies argue that they are making the change in support of the US military personnel who "are putting their lives on the line to ensure the freedom and security of others". But surely the French position is intended to prevent the deaths of those US soldiers (not to mention the hopeless Iraqis). How about this, nobody go to war and nobody has to put their life on the line? Only a sure-fire Rube would protest that his own people should be permitted to die and make that protest through fatty fast foods.

Rube Roustabout

Well holy shitballs, people, we may have found a rival to Brian. This super-rube, uncovered by Rube Watch today, displays the characteristics of each Rube to have already entered the Hall. Like Brian, he proclaims his turgid righteousness, puffing his chest like a red white and blue peacock on heat in that foggy world of theirs. Like Jeremy, he is older than the usual spotty pubescent rubes we discover, and should, by all manner of reason, know much, much better. And like each of them, he displays such ineptitude with the English language that his articles are used to make blind, retarded kids in Vietnam feel better about their short stories.

But how did we discover such a creature, such a hybrid of so many rube-skills? If ever you feel the need, but we urge you not to, lest you bite thine own lips off and swallow them in anger, visit the Young Conservatives website. There you will find all manner of rubic activity. Please be careful. It was at this chamber pot of rubey bullshit that we found “Peacenik Puffery” by Gene Koprowski. Now, we shan’t go into the depths of what is so very off with this article; the lack of fact, the misguided conclusions, the poor grammar and worse mathematics. Just sit forward and read, but no matter how much you squint, yes, he is saying that. Truly, although frightening and rather saddening really, making one tilt one’s head sideways and think “ah bless”, we present this example not only to further show you Rubes in action, but to make you feel just great about yourself.

Gene, on foot of what we’ve read so far, Gene, we say…Welcome…Gene.

Oh yeah, Gene? Hey…Gene? Yeah…e.g. means "for example".

Rube Catalogue: Rube Coin

Gift Item # 1

Space Shuttle Columbia Official U.S. Dollar with free Ohio State Quarter and Certificate of Authenticity. Only $19.95

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Rube Watch Welcomes You

Finally, Rube Watching is no longer merely an idea. No more does it exist in random insultory postings on rubey websites and joke emails to friends and colleagues of a similar bent. All of sudden we have direction, our efforts combined and condensed on one page, a portal to the rubes of this fair world, a portal to be used to mock and jeer our rubic enemies, a place where you, an Ordinary, can come to point a finger and to revel in your superiority.

Welcome to Rube Watch

So to begin…

It is only fair that we start with our muse, so to speak. The godfather of rube, Mr. Brian P. Yates, Chairman and CEO of Yates Media (A division of Yates Conglomerate), the self proclaimed “most influencial 19 year old in history”

Have a look through his website…no, please do, we want more traffic to rubey sites. Post on his message board, make an entry on his guest book, tell all your friends that he exists…spread the word, YES, YES, YES, scream it aloud, no matter what happens, no matter what you do, no matter how crap you feel, become or already are…you are not Brian P. Yates. You are not Brian P. Yates. You are not Brian P. Yates. And he is. What an asshole.

Ladies and gentlemen…

We give you…

Brian

Rube Update: Uber-Rube title challenged!