Adds new meaning to the term "bushwhacked"

LOL What?



Anyone who knows me well enough knows that things like this displease meh. Unless it looks like you are smuggling Don King in your BVD's, this sort of thing is entirely unnecessary, in my opinion. I like my men with some man-fur. Look like a man, not a child, dammit!

Khal Drogo is unimpressed by your Nancy-boy primping.

Follow up to the last post

Just to expound a little on the "What are America's quirks?" thing...

"American flags everywhere."

AND IT'S NOT RACIST! Or even a sign that someone's politically on the right! That's taken a long time to get used to.

Yep. We are a patriotic lot.

I was startled to find out that "God Save the Queen" has alternate lyrics.

LOL And I was startled as a small child to learn that "My Country Tis of Thee" was originally "God Save the Queen."

some places you can turn right on red -- wait what YOU CAN DRIVE THROUGH A RED LIGHT if you're turning. WHAT THE HELL PEOPLE

Yes. It is perfectly legal to make a right on a red in Florida, although this varies by state/municipality. I've actualy had friends from "up north" freak out on me because they thought I ran a red light.

Also, in general, the scale of things is boggling to Europeans for a while and continues to be boggling in small ways for a long time. Fridges are HUGE compared to upright or under-the-counter European fridges. The default size for milk is the gallon, not the pint. Endless agonizing choices in the supermarket -- which of these 30 types of canned beans do I want now? Roads that feel twice as wide as they should be. Bank lobbies the size of railway stations.

Hey, we got a big country here. Everything is just to scale. :P

The ignorance of Americans about the rest of the world

I guess I'm one of the exceptions. I am the Great Xul, and The Great Xul knows about most everything! ;P

Everyone eats with one hand and keeps the other hand on their lap all through the meal. Also, sometimes they go through an elaborate switch-fork-to-left-hand-pick-up-knife-in-right-cut-up-food-then-switch-fork-back-to-right-hand dance.

This sort of thing really disgusts me. I was raised with manners and etiquette so it displeases me that there are so many cretins in this country. I know it's not everyone, just WAY too many.

Dutch guy who's been to SF and NY. And knows US americans through mefi:
1. cities where streets follow a grid. And almost all streets allow cars. As a European I'm accustomed to look for the city center; a place where there are no cars, where streets are meandering, where there are terraces to sit outside and have a coffee. A place that's amenable to walking, to hanging out and enjoying the atmosphere. I did not find such a space in the american cities I've been to. And it prevented me from enjoying the place.
2. people in shops say things that in Europe would be privvy to personal conversation. To a dutchman like me that felt inappropriate and a little creepy.
3. you don't need to drive far from a major city like SF to reach endless expanse of nature. Amazing.
4. riding a bike is dangerous and an enterprise, not a mindless means of transport.
5. people are not that tall
6. working people are afraid of medical bills.
7. social customs seem to involve more euphemisms and things you're not supposed to talk about.
and yes
8. socialism is a dirty word, no working class that assert their interests, the nationalism
posted by joost de vries at 11:09 PM on November 5, 2011

LOL This guy pretty much sums it up. (I hope he's not Petrichor's old friend, Joost!) The country is soooo big that it had to be divided up by latitude and longitude.

That you can post your stuff in your own mail box. That's pretty nifty.

It is nifty, isn't it?

a very good chance of seeing guns in cars or purses or wherever -- I was blown away by it, the casual attitude toward it.

My next-door neighbor had a friend from the Netherlands visiting, for a fun field trip we took her to a gun show, here in Austin. We walked in the door, she immediately stalked out -- she was absolutely furious. Outraged. She couldn't believe it. We calmed her some, we went back in, ended up she had a lot of fun, handled tons of guns, asked zillions of questions of everyone. Of course everyone there loved her, wanted to show her guns and about gun culture. You may not know this but you can buy a single-shot .22 rifle, cut real short, for your grandkids or whatever, and you can get it in a regular wood-colored wood stock or with a pink stock, if it's a girl you're buying for...

LOL We certainly like our guns. I have Canadian friends who were shocked that you can buy guns in Walmart.

Everyone complains bitterly about the suckitude of government and is suspicious of it but they all follow the rules anyway even if nobody is watching.

How supermarkets not just let you wander off with carts into the wild blue yonder but will set up displays of firewood, plants, pumpkins, etc., out front with nobody watching and trust you'll bring it indoors to pay for it. (see also rule-following above)

LOL We have what you would cal a "high trust" society in many areas.

That Americans are generally a lot more comfortable with talking to strangers
Absolutely. And very friendly as well. I'd be fumbling with my map of SF on a corner and get startled that somebody would address me with friendly advice on directions.

Guilty as charged!

there is police everywhere in the US and they are not friendly or helpful, yet they display slogans like "protect and serve" without a hint of irony on their cars. also: they drive like complete idiots.

Correct. They are complete dicks and should never be called...only as a last resort.

Striking up conversation with strangers, smiling at strangers, sharing stories and knowing/ empathizing looks with strangers. This also throws me for a loop, especially all the smiles and random hellos. Cheerfulness is an indefeasible social onus. On the other hand, people in the U.S. are in my experience very polite when it comes to staring (i.e. not doing it).

This is something I remember being taught as a small child: to be friendly with others and staring is rude.

I went to the grocery store and remembered a story told to me by a Dutch man. He was amazed about how the grocery cart system worked. At least in Houston, you pick up a cart at the store entrance, and leave it in a designated area of the parking lot or just anywhere in the lot (assuming the sacker didn't take your groceries out to your car for you -- another difference he mentioned), and store employees collect all the carts from the lot and move them back to the store front. He felt it was wasteful to pay employees to do this for customers, and that left the store open to the possibility of cart theft.

In the Netherlands, they insert a coin into a machine that releases a cart. If you return the cart to the machine, it returns your coin. Apparently you could sometimes cheat the machine by using a coin of a similar shape but from a country where it is worth much less, and then receive the correct amount back when you returned (thus making a few cents). I think he and I both learned something about each other's culture and customs that day as we both blinked at each other in amazement.

We used to have a grocery store called Extra when I was a teenager that used to have little contraptions on the carts that you had to put 50 cents into to get the carts separated. At first, all the customers were outraged that a store would make customers "pay" for a cart. Well, if you returned the cart to it's corral and hooked it back up to the cart in front, you would get your 50 cents back. It was a totally ingenious way to keep the carts from being taken and to get lazy ass customers to return the carts to their corral and not just leave them all over the parking lot. I guess I thought this to be completely sensible because I am 1/4 Dutch. LOL

Selling guns in Walmart (not sure if this is done everywhere, but it's common here in the South). My German friends took pictures and emailed them back home.

LOL See above.

COLD beverages. Americans seriously have a love affair with ice.

Guilty again! Ice machines were a Southern invention. It gets HOT and HUMID here!

Don't forget "fanny". I'll never forget the time when a sales assistant and I were reduced to a heap of helpless, tears-running-down-our-faces-and-unable-to-speak mirth in a women's clothes shop in Guildford when my American friend said she didn't know what UK size she took, but she knew she had an enormous fanny.

That makes me think of Petrichor.

Eye contact! Americans make it.

That's because eye contact as seen as being confident. Someone who does not make eye contact is viewed as being deceitful.

peanut butter and jelly: uniquely American. Slight understatement there. The rest of the world finds it repulsive enough to function as America's answer to Vegemite.

PB&J is DEICIOUS! What's wrong with you people?

I can't believe this hasn't been mentioned already, but the way retail stores have their a/c set to sub-Arctic temperatures was baffling to me. I was visiting a Southern state in the summer and spent a fair amount of time in a B&N cafe, and the temperature would drop from the high 90s to what felt like 15C (60F) or colder when I entered. I don't know how the people working there could stand it; I was freezing, and I'm Scandinavian

Hello Winn Dixie! We are looking at YOU!

It's 1:45am...

...and I got nothin'. So go have a gander at this. I always get a kick out of it. I'm also up for a good Q&A. Laterz!

You put what in your mouth?

So what is the strangest thing you ever ate? I don't know that I've eaten anything particularly strange or unusual except for maybe alligator, but I would consider myself to be an adventurous eater. I just don't understand people who willfully limit the varieties of food they consume. How boring. My friend Lil, who is Colombian, used to say that I was a sophisticated eater. She liked that about me. I didn't freak out if asked to try organ meats or dishes that were very different from what Americans are used to eating.

I've eaten brains, kidneys, livers, pancreas, blood sausage, alligator, eel, quail, quails eggs(taste no different than a chicken's egg), wild boar, squid(the tentacles, fried crispy, are the best!), octopus, beluga caviar(probably the most expensive thing I've eaten), sturgeon, all sorts of fish, raw oysters, clams, mussels, crab, lobster. That's about it. I only mention the seafood because I have known people who refuse to eat any seafood.

Not all yerba mate sodas are created equal.

Unless you live in the Americas, you are hardly likely to ever be able to try yerba mate soda. Nevertheless, here's my two cents on the matter.

This

is vile and nasty.

This



is yummy and delicious.

The taste of the first one is almost indescribable. It's almost like a cross between banana, bubble gum, and just a hint of mate at the finish. It's so bad that I was unable to finish the bottle that I bought.

The second, however...there can be no mistake that you are drinking a yerba mate beverage. Quite delicious if you like the taste of yerba mate.

Now, the weird thing is if you do a web search for yerba mate soda you are only going to find nasty ass Materva and maybe Iron Beer, which both are of Cuban origin. I don't remember where Mate Beer is from. I could only find *1* picture of it on someone's Flickr page.

I've never had the Iron Beer brand one, but I've seen it described as fruity and sweet which to me means gross and disgusting. So from now on, I'm not going to bother with the other brands.

WTF?

The last thing I remember dreaming about before I woke up today was the Red Hot Chili Peppers with socks on their cocks. Although it wasn't quite like the poster. Everything was, erm...bigger. And sorta kaleidoscopic. And I was critiquing them. Why was I dreaming about that? Who knows. My friend Alex from Junior High had that poster but I was never much of a Chili Peppers fan. Just not into druggy weirdos.

In other news...I worked on painting the last side of the house--the side with all the windows that is a pain in the ass. I was at it for 7 hours and I'm still not finished. I have the 2 second floor windows to paint around and the bit near the roof. And I think I have maybe less than a liter of paint left. I really cut it close on my calcuations, methinks. Well, at least it was a beautiful day and the weather was quite perfect.

Something odd that I was thinking about.

When I was a wee lass, I thought it might be fun to be a special effects makeup artist, with sci-fi and horror type stuff being my forte. Well, I didn't grow up to do that. So it's just a bit irritating to see this show on TV, knowing full well that that's something I would have been quite capable of doing if I had had something resembling supportive parents.

Now about the odd thing. I wanted to be in the movie industry or at least doing something artsy, but guess who actually has been in the movies? The peeps who lived in the houses on either side of where I lived when I was growing up. The bratty little girls on the one side were in Cocoon 2 and my friend on the other side was in Armageddon and The Water Boy. Now isn't that odd?

I think my dick has been lost in the mail.

Like anything else, one tends to get into a routine with the internet. It has been said that up to 40% of the things that we do daily are habits. So in the spirit of trying new things, I have been participating in different contests on the internet.

Last year, I won a prize package from an Arctic/Antarctic exploration company which consisted of 3 books, a pair of binoculars, a carabiner and a ball cap with "Antarctica" embroidered on it. To be honest, it looked like a marketing display that the peeps at the corporate office were pawning off as a prize. This January, I entered into a dead pool. I won with Etta James. The prize was a spotted dick. Well, I don't doubt that the blogger who does this dead pool actually sent it out. She did say that it arrives by slow boat and usually looks like it was abused by gorillas. It's just that DAYUM! I know that things coming internationally take close to forever, just like my last winnings(which came from Canada), but WTF? I guess that the British mail isn't what it used to be.

And just as an aside, I know that a lot of people like to bitch about the USPS, but I have to say that our postal service does a pretty good job. I've gotten mail delivered that was sent by my senile relatives who put the wrong street address, no zip code, or even the wrong city and the post office still managed to get it to me. Much different than the Canadian mail service, which would be a whole post unto itself.

Meme de rigueur

Ugh.  Felt like hell all day.  Was fighting a terrible headache.  Spent two hours painting a small bit on the back of the house.  It was hot.  Cooked a chuck roast.  It was delicious.  Too tired for a decent post, so enjoy le chat Henri, s'il vous plait.

Stoked

I've been working on my little project that I mentioned in the last post.  Now, even though the hockey jersey thing would look awesome, I shifted direction a little and have been working on a version for a baseball jersey.  I think I finally got my creative mojo back after many years.  I am soooo totally beyond stoked!  I've been thinking about it constantly for two days now so I dug out some of my old calligraphy books and such trying to get some inspiration.  Well, I couldn't find anything that suited me so I just got a piece of paper and started free-handing an Evil Regals script design.  And I must say, for a first draft it looks fucking ace!  Of course, I still have to tweak the sizing and some design elements a bit, but I'm totally loving what I have so far.  And I banged it out in about 15 minutes, so hell yeah!

Sorry, but I'm not putting a pic up because there are too many little thieves out there who like to gank the original artwork of others. (Arekino, you're the exception.  Check your email.  I'd like you to critique it and give me your opinion.)

Once Upon A Time Demotivators

It's been raining all day.  Gives me a great excuse to screw around all day on the computer dorking out on my favorite TV show.  Too bad I don't have Photoshop or else I'd have made some really bitchin' OUAT propaganda posters and advertising campaigns.  Oh well, at least I'm getting the creative juices flowing.  It's been a very long time since I've felt truly motivated enough to actually create something, even if it's just some half-assed demotivators.  HA!  Motivated by demotivators!

(Click to embiggenify.)

 Of course I've got a lot more where that came from, I just have to find the right pics for what I want to do.  I also have a Team Evil Regals hockey jersey in the works.  I've had a plain black hockey jersey loitering around my closet for some time.  I think it needs the Queen's standard on the front.  Now to figure out just what the hell the two little things at the bottom of the Queen's standard are.  They look like ducks.  Ducks?  Really, your Maj?

Public Service Announcement

Snakey

My yard has gotten very snakey lately.  First, there was a racer snake slithering up the front walkway a couple weeks ago when I went out to get the mail.  It freaked me the hell out at first because it was reared up like a cobra but when it saw me it turned tail and hauled ass into the shrubbery.  Then, a couple days ago when I was painting the house, a HUGE racer came slithering out of the bromeliads a couple feet from where I was standing.  I caught the motion out of the corner of my eye and turned to look and HOLY SHIT!  That's a big snake!  It must've been 4 feet long!  Then he turned and looked at me and was like, "HOLY SHIT!" then took off like a shot into the fish tail palms.

Then there have always been the little ring necks.  They only get to be around a foot long at most.  Not very intimidating.  I saw one yesterday when I went to go check over the paint job on the house.  He was very close to where I saw the big racer.

I've never been afraid of snakes but they do have a tendency of giving start when you're not expecting them.

Once Upon A Time

I'll readily admit that I like the television show Once Upon A Time.  A lot.  I get psycho if something threatens to make me miss it.  I get a kick out of the humor.  Like in the episode Hat Trick, where they named the Mad Hatter Jefferson and his daughter Grace.  LOL   Jefferson Airplane much?!  But the absolute best part is Lana Parrilla as the Queen/Regina.  She totally rules.  Puns intended.  She's the one who keeps me coming back week after week. That woman needs to win an Emmy for this show. She blows me away with her performance.

Anyway, after re-watching the Hat Trick episode, I'm convinced that the Queen of Hearts is Regina's mother because of the dialogue between Regina and Jefferson as they were standing before the entrance to the Queen of Hearts' labyrinth:

Regina:   What I want is a short walk through.

Jefferson:  Short walk?  You know who this belongs to.

R:  The Queen of Hearts.  She's not one for subtlety.

J:   This wasn't part of the deal.  You know what she does to anyone who crosses her?

R:  Indeed.  Better than most.

The "better than most" has me convinced because Regina has first-hand experience with her control-freak, NPD mother Cora who killed Regina's true love Daniel the stable boy when Regina and Daniel tried to run off in the middle of the night to get married in direct defiance of Cora's desire for Regina to marry King Leopold.

I'm also convinced that someone on the writing team has had first hand experience with a NPD parent because of the way the relationship of Regina and her mother is portrayed.  It's classic NPD abuse and that would definitely have made Regina into what she is.

So basically I called it weeks ago.  It's so glaringly obvious to someone who grew up with an NPD/controlling mother.  I love being right.  It's like they have my life on video like in the Truman Show to get it so accurate.  And Cora's line, "I'm only trying to help you!"  Gawd, if I haven't heard that one a thousand times!   So I guess it's also pretty obvious why I have such an affinity for Regina.

Auf wiedersehn, asshole! See ya on the flipside, motherfuckers!!!

Since I have absolutely no life, I spent all weekend watching free HBO and Starz. Oh, and because I was having hellacious period issues like I was being stabbed through the uterus with an ice pick.  But mostly because I have no life.  But seriously?  If you haven't seen the movie Bridesmaids you need to see it ASAP.  I usually NEVER laugh out loud at comedies but this one had me snarfing my polish sausage out my nose.  So be warned:  DO NOT eat polish sausage while watching this movie.  The title of this here blog post was also the line that initiated the snarfing.(So nobody infer anything by it, mmmkay?)

Painting

Okay, since it's now official that nobody reads this shit anymore, I can feel free to write the most boring shit that I can come up with. I hope you all are having fun buggered off on the other side of the Atlantic, passed out somewhere, or trapped in cubic hell.

I have been painting the damn house since last month. I think it's four weeks now. No, not every day for four weeks. I've had weather to contend with and physical issues(I'm terribly out of shape. I'm reminded of that every time I have to lug out all the damn bigass ladders to get to the second floor or the roof line. That and almost falling 10 feet because I missed a rung while holding a paint brush in one hand and a cup of paint in the other). Yeah, I'm starting to HATE painting. And too many fiddly bits on my house...from the mess of pipes, conduits and utility hook-ups at the back to all the damn hurricane panels and hardware around ALL 21 of the freakin' windows. I just. Can't. Fucking. Take it. I've all but finished except for the one side with the most windows then I have to go around and do a bit of touch up where the primer is showing through. Ugh.

Seriously, I think I have adult ADD, too.