Loyal readers may remember me mentioning once, twice or four hundred times that I hail from the great state of Missouri. Aside from the humidity, tornadoes and a complete lack of reliable sushi, it's a fine state. We even gets us some book learnin' from time to time while we is a waitin' for ol' Bessy to come back round the barn.

Or that's what the Department of Energy would have you think.

I like baseball. A lot. It makes summer worth living for me, and the off-season a dreary and unsatisfying experience. I'm quite fond of minor league baseball as well and just discovered I can listen to streaming Kansas City T-Bones games online.

They make you sit through commercials for the privilege, of course, and one of those commercials was from the Department of Energy pimping energy conservation. I'm all for energy conservation. What I am not for is the butt monkey at the ad agency who decided to target their message to us simple folk by hiring voice actors to mimic Deliverance characters, so we could - you know - relate.

Let's get a few things straight, Mr. Department of Energy ad guy. Missourians and Kansans, for that matter, do not sound like that. We especially don't sound like that around Kansas City, which is the headquarters for a number of call centers specifically because we have virtually no accent whatsoever and are therefore most easily understood. We do not all live in double-wide trailers. We do not drink Pabst Blue Ribbon for breakfast. We have schools and universities, and we attend them. We can do long division and everything.

We also know when we're being insulted, and we don't like it.

If there was a way for me to boycott the Department of Energy, I would. In the meantime, I'm taking my Kansas City BBQ, and I'm going home. And you, Mr. Department of Energy ad guy, cannot have any. So there.