Does this mean I can say "bugger" now that I know people who do?

I was on the phone over the weekend with my Australian boyfriend (I've made it a goal to establish contacts on other continents in case, you know, I ever need to leave the country in a rush. I keep my passport in my purse already for this very reason) and we start playing what if. What if I ever made it to Australia-- what we would do, where we would go. What if he took an assignment in the States and was able to visit me, etc.

I say, without a doubt, he would have to see the most redneck thing I know of in Atlanta: Stone Mountain.

I sit down at the computer and send the link over to him.

"Good lord," he chokes. "What is wrong with you people?"

"What do you mean?" I didn't even get a chance to tell him about the sordid history of the mountain and the Klan. For instance how the KKK used to burn crosses on top of the mountain so everyone around could see.

"You see a mountain and you just start chiseling away at it! What is with your need to carve shit into things!?"

Mount Rushmore, Stone Mountain: he has a point.

"I mean if I ever showed this to an Australian, he would be outraged!"

"It's art?"

"You vandals!"

He zooms over to Wikipedia and begins reading its entry. There he learns how the KKK commissioned the carving of the "bloody horsemen" on the side.

"Those are Civil War heroes," I half-laugh.

"Bloody horsemen!" he repeats incredulously. "1972!? It was finished in 1972? You have no excuse for this!"

"Wait for it. Wait for it." And I send him this. I tell him how they play God Bless America while illustrating it with lasers on the side of the mountain.

He guffaws.

I never really thought about it, but there really aren't any huge carvings in other areas of the world. And I had never considered others' reactions to ours.

"Seriously, y'all should get into carving in mountains. You have some big rocks!"

"We have Uluru," he says. "I'm sure the local people would let us whities chisel a representation of Steve Irwin into it."