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With their hokey way of talking and hillbilly ways, they annoy me. And, as Huned points out, Brother and Sister get along way too well to be remotely interesting.

Like in the episode “Out for the Team”:

Brother and Sister are good baseball players and both sign up to try out for the Bear Country Cardinals. The problem is, there’s only one position left on the team. Worried about the humiliating possibility of losing to his talented kid sister, Brother backs out of the competition. Sister has some encouraging words for Brother which inspire him to stick with it. The two cubs practice for the big tryout together.

I mean, COME ON! I don’t know about you, but growing up in my family, that episode would have gone something like this:

Brother and Sister are not terrible, but not great either baseball players and both sign up to try out for the Bear Country Cardinals. The problem is, there’s only one position left on the team. Worried about the humiliating possibility of losing to his talented kid sister, Brother beats the shit out of his Sister after she steals and destroys his baseball glove. Sister has some encouraging choice words for Brother which inspire him to stick with it just so he can show her that she is inferior. They forget their differences soon after the big tryout when they are immediately absorbed in their next big adventure: Who hid the Oreos?

Though my kids seem to like them, I think that is merely a byproduct of them just wanting to watch whatever is on. Since PBS Sprout is still their channel of choice, that means the Berenstain Bears is often what is on. Ugh.

At least they are better than Caillou (don’t get me started on that one). And I have, so far, completely avoided letting my kids watch Barney. At least that I know of.

I am the first to admit that I have horrible grammar and use lame Southern expressions, but something has been irking me about the recent evolution of American English. I can handle the pseudo gangsta talk (f’realz, yo) and the shortened haiku of IM and SMS speak (i <3 u, c ya). But, when words that aren’t verbs become one because of a fad (scrapbooking, journaling) or words that people have never heard and don’t know what mean are now being used daily thanks to technology like facebook’s scrabulous (qi, xis), I just can’t help but cringe.

Around the 6:23 minute mark of the 24:36 minute stump speech Obama made in Harrisburg, Pa that I have been listening to in the background while I do my work, I heard that remark (Kissing hundred of babies, eating hundreds of chicken dinners…) and had to rewind. I had to rewind again around the 9:28 mark when he said “some of you may have heard that Dick Cheney is my cousin…. Now that’s a shame.” And again at the 10:30 mark “You must use premiun huh? You should use regular unleaded. That premium will kill ya.”

So, he is smart AND funny (and cute) and better be our next President or we are a nation full of idiots.