(no subject)

[titusnowl]

To all the Europeans out there going "Fuck you, shut up, you're not Irish, you're an American:"  Fuck YOU, shut up.  America is a traditionally semi-homogenous society made up almost wholly of immigrants who continue to strongly identify with their original country of origin despite taking part in the culture of their new home; this is how it has been and will continue to be, since 1603, so go suck it.  I'm celebrating St Patrick's Day whether you want to bitch about it or not.

Comments

[welfy.livejournal.com]

I bought Chad a poster last Christmas with that same Guinness toucan on it. :^)

[chikkiboo.livejournal.com]

I have one on the wall above my desk. :)

[emmycantbemeeko.livejournal.com]

Attending high school at a magnet school heavily attended by the children of expat Europeans and spending a long summer studying in Europe have convinced me that there are certain fundamental qualities of American culture and experience that you cannot convey to the average European, and this is one of them. The other is the sheer scale of the Americas.

The notion that the average American is a poorly traveled bumpkin afraid of the unknown for failing to have visited dozens of countries by a young age is deeply ingrained in the European pysche, and even the discovery that the American to whom they are speaking has covered, geographically, three or four times the distance they have internationally simply traveling by traveling in America does little to dislodge this idea. It's next to impossible to convey that getting anywhere aside from Canada, Mexico, or the Caribbean is a major, costly undertaking as far outside the command of the average American as visiting Asia is for the average European.

It's kind of depressing. I had the enormous urge after a few bar conversations in Paris to put everyone I talked to on a train in NYC and pick them up five days later in LA before we had another conversation.

[chikkiboo.livejournal.com]

When I moved to Texas, my mother sent me a link to a really neat aquarium down in San Antonio, with a note saying I should go to it. She didn't realize that San Antonio is over 300 miles (six hours of driving) away, because that's just so much bigger than her concept of the size of a state. Europeans have that sort of cognitive dissonance vis. the size of nations. Just driving across Texas from El Paso to Texarkana - crossing one state, not even leaving its boundaries - is 812 miles; if you started in Paris and drove that distance, you'd end up in Vienna, Austria. When I moved from New York to Texas, I drove a distance of about 1600 miles, which (again starting from Paris) would get you well into the Ukraine. But I guess none of that counts, because the place where I ended up spoke the same language as the place where I began (unless you count the Mexican immigrants).

And you'd think the fact that there's an ocean between us and them, instead of a small channel and some imaginary lines, would make them realize "hey it might be harder for them to go to Europe than it is for us" - and they think We're uneducated?

[geobabe1.livejournal.com]

When we lived in Miami, I felt like we lived at the end of the world, since Florida is so long. You drive all day, and you're in...Jacksonville. I just did a quick map check, and Florida is longer than England north-south--and it's just an average-sized state.

[chikkiboo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, when we drove to Disney World we got to Florida at the end of the first day and thought "Hey, this is taking less time than we thought." Of course, it took until dinnertime to make it from Pensacola to Orlando, and Orlando's not even the bottom of the state!

Virginia's like that too to an extent, at least on the interstate I usually take (I think it was 87?). You go through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, all two hours apiece, spend twenty minutes in Georgia and maybe an hour crossing Tennessee... or, from the opposite direction, you spend a couple hours in New York and another two or three in Pennsylvania, followed by about ten minutes in Maryland and West Virginia... and then Oh God going through Virginia takes four or five hours - you feel like you're going to be trapped in Virginia forever, by comparison.

[welfy.livejournal.com]

It takes a long time to go across PA as opposed to north and south...I've never even been further than Harrisburg! People who never drove through PA think that I can just go to Philly like it's nothing, when it's hours and hours away. I've never even been there. So I can understand how Texas is WAY bigger. My family drove across it when I was 15 and I remember it taking a couple days! Dad recited a poem saying, "The sun will rise and sun will set, and here we are in Texas yet." :^P

[chikkiboo.livejournal.com]

Another thing I find rather amusing about the "you're just a damn American" argument is that 90% of the time these are the same people who call those whose parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents came from the Indian subcontinent "Pakis." If I'm American because I was born here, shouldn't they be British because they were born there? Or does that only apply to people with white skin?