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Joe Manfre
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2004 5:48 pm
Post subject: Foreigners' takes on your home culture. |
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Found this article in the Daily Telegraph about some of the challenges
of being an expat working in the U.S., and I figured that the USAians
on AUE might find it kind of entertaining to see the choices of
perspective and focus in this article (in what is perhaps the most
pro-U.S. paper in Britain):
http://shopping.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2004/10/25/exp292.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/10/29/ixportal.html
On the other hand, perhaps the best job any Brit online has done in
explaining small-town USAia from a Hiberno-Britic perspective is John
Cletheroe, of Norwich, who maintains this staggeringly enormous
personal Web page about visiting the U.S. and Canada:
http://freespace.virgin.net/john.cletheroe/usa_can/
JM
p.s. By the way, Fonzie, what did you think of "I Wanna Get Your
Cal-Dal"? You know, there's a computer-animation video for it now. |
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Jess Askin
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2004 6:25 pm
Post subject: Re: Foreigners' takes on your home culture. |
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"Joe Manfre" <manfre@world.std.com> wrote in message
news:slrncp1ik0.oib7.manfre@shell01.TheWorld.com...
Another cause for initial confusion is that apart from being governed by
federal law, each state also has different local laws on a whole range of
issues from education standards to levels of state tax (some have none) to
the age of applying for a driver's permit - 14 in some states, 16 in
others - to the legal age for sexual consent as some states have different
ages of consent for heterosexuals than for homosexuals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent
[New Hampshire and Nevada (now there's an odd couple); 18 for homosexuals,
16 for heterosexuals. I would have thought it would be the other way round
for some reason.]
Counties and towns might also throw in some extra legislation or taxes. They
are only unified on alcohol consumption, for which 21 is the minimum age
throughout the country, regardless that teens can drive, vote, get married
and join the army before this time. This is rigorously enforced; my
18-year-old was astounded to have a brandy flavoured ice-cream snatched mid
spoonful when her server discovered she was only 18.
[Yeah, but she probably wouldn't have any trouble getting a fake ID or being
served beer at a fraternity kegger.]
Much emphasis is placed, in theory, on the equality of individuals in the
United States. Law guarantees personal equality but ethnic and social bias
certainly exist. Women are still battling for equality in pay and positions
of authority; a case in point only 14 per cent of the Senate are female and
there has never been a female or minority president or vice-President in the
White House.
[As opposed to 18% in the House of Commons? Big deal.]
Affluence has a dark side and the richest nation on earth boasts 34.6
million Americans below the poverty line with around 12 million reportedly
living on the edge of starvation.
[I'd like to know where she got that ludicrous statistic.]
What she ought to have added: use some common sense -- if you're used to
London, don't move to Arkansas. If you're used to Yorkshire, don't move to
Manhattan. If you only speak French, move to Quebec.
Also, don't they copy edit at the Telegraph? I haven't seen so many dangling
participles since the last time I was in a locker room. |
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Areff
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2004 6:25 pm
Post subject: Re: Foreigners' takes on your home culture. |
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Joe Manfre wrote:
| Quote: | p.s. By the way, Fonzie, what did you think of "I Wanna Get Your
Cal-Dal"?
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"I Wanna Get Your Cal-Dal" is a superb opus, oeuvre, composition, piece,
_Stueck_ (as we Bavarians say). It is probably one of the greatest works
of art ever to have been inspired by a somnial dream.
Having said all that, I have to confess that there is a part of me that
sort of *likes* Gary Puckett (or, to be more precise, the two Gary Puckett
songs I'm familiar with, which sound strikingly similar to one
another, musically speaking: the perverted "Young Girl (Get Out Of My
Mind)" and the sanctimonious "Woman, Woman (Have You Got Cheating On Your
Mind)". It's the way you can like something even though you sort of hate
it at the same time and think it's very stupid.
I would also note that as great as "I Wanna Get Your Cal-Dal" is, it
deviates to some degree from the true Gary Puckett style. The singing
seems to me to show some post-Bicentennial influences (in contrast to the
.... well, I don't exactly know how to describe the faux-soul
melodramatic Puckett singing style).But I think my only real criticism
was that there was none of the stereotypical Puckett strings-and-brass
sound in there. That whole sound really is an important part of what makes
Gary Puckett and the Union Gap sound so magnificently ridiculous.
One of the catchiest parts, as I recall it (it's been a month or two since
I listened to the song), is this sort of little transition thing
featuring a sort of carillon sound. In general, the recording seems to be
a good example of what can be done with Garage Band, which AIUI is
strictly a Mac OS product. I can tell you that it's made me think
seriously about purchasing a Macintosh, though the high prices of those
products have thus far caused me to balk (= SparkE "bock") at doing such a
thing. I have Adobe Audition, which can probably do some similar things
but probably not all (I've only used it so far for transcribing stuff).
For the limited things I use it for, Adobe Audition seems better to me
(from a user interface POV at least) than the various similar audio
editing things I've used for the Windoze platform, such as the "free"
GoldWave (which Sparky Cunningham turned me on to). I'm unaware of
anything of similar quality for Linux.
--
Steny '08! |
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Joe Manfre
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2004 8:59 pm
Post subject: Re: Foreigners' takes on your home culture. |
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Areff (me@privacy.net) wrote:
| Quote: | But I think my only real criticism was that there was none of the
stereotypical Puckett strings-and-brass sound in there. That whole
sound really is an important part of what makes Gary Puckett and the
Union Gap sound so magnificently ridiculous.
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Actually, I built it largely out of string and brass sounds (plus
drums and bass guitar and those church bells, as used in Puckett's
'Lady Willpower'), although the string and brass patches in Garage
Band are maybe not as wonderful as they could be. I gave it a shot,
though. It might sound better on headphones?
Here's the video:
http://www.interrobangcartel.com/vid/caldal_sims.wmv
JM |
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Jim Ward
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2004 6:07 am
Post subject: Re: Foreigners' takes on your home culture. |
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On 9 Nov 2004 13:47:44 GMT, Joe Manfre <manfre@world.std.com> wrote:
| Quote: | http://shopping.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2004/10/25/exp292.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/10/29/ixportal.html
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says:
"Another form of socialising is represented by the shopping mall; a
mainstay of a consumer-driven society. Large malls have food outlets,
cinemas, skating rinks and bowling alleys where folks go to "hang out"
and meet their friends and spend, spend, spend on some of the items
seen on the average American householder's seven hours a day of
television."
which is quite true. Why shopping malls are so interesting? If you
don't have any money to spend, they can be quite dull and sterile.
Surely people could meet somewhere else? |
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Jess Askin
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2004 10:03 pm
Post subject: Re: Foreigners' takes on your home culture. |
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"Jim Ward" <tomcatpolka@NyOaShPoAoM.com> wrote in message
news:idq2p0tm4e1r6u8ii8293rihl8v00s8l6i@4ax.com...
| Quote: | On 9 Nov 2004 13:47:44 GMT, Joe Manfre <manfre@world.std.com> wrote:
http://shopping.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2004/10/25/ex
p292.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/10/29/ixportal.html
says:
"Another form of socialising is represented by the shopping mall; a
mainstay of a consumer-driven society. Large malls have food outlets,
cinemas, skating rinks and bowling alleys where folks go to "hang out"
and meet their friends and spend, spend, spend on some of the items
seen on the average American householder's seven hours a day of
television."
which is quite true. Why shopping malls are so interesting? If you
don't have any money to spend, they can be quite dull and sterile.
Surely people could meet somewhere else?
|
The only people who hang out at shopping malls are teenagers, who will do
anything to get out of the house. They choose that locale because it's where
they're most likely to run into their own kind. And they have tons of money
to spend.
In my day, the big hangout was the Dairy Queen. Now _that's_ boring. |
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Bill Bonde ( ``And the La
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Nov 11, 2004 6:04 am
Post subject: Re: Foreigners' takes on your home culture. |
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Peter Moylan wrote:
| Quote: |
Jess Askin biped:
In my day, the big hangout was the Dairy Queen. Now _that's_ boring.
In mine it was the All Nita, a petrol station out on the highway.
A long walk, but it was the only place in town that stayed open after
10 pm, and it also had the only juke box in town. Not the most
up-market place you could imagine, especially when the truckers and
bikies decided to have a go at each other, but there wasn't a lot
of choice.
There were also rumours about what certain young women were willing
to do in the bushes around the back, but I suspect that that was
more wishful thinking than reality. The reality was that we drank
coffee for a while, and then went home disappointed.
In the UK there's always the Yob meeting place, passed out in the |
gutter.
--
So I was feeding the hummingbirds but not changing the feeder sugar
water quickly enough and it fermented into something like that stuff
that Hunter S Thompson was drinking in the Rum Diary, anyway, so I had
these drunk birds flying everywhere just like mosquitoes in Minnesota,
dashing up one side of me, darting down the other, crashing into the
windows, falling off their perches, didn't even know they perched,
flying backwards, flying backwards, it was like something out of the
Exorcist. After a while though, I got bored with it all. Next Summer I'm
going to Alaska to feed french bread soaked in Wild Turkey to polar
bears. Wish me luck! |
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Peter Moylan
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Nov 11, 2004 6:05 am
Post subject: Re: Foreigners' takes on your home culture. |
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Jess Askin biped:
| Quote: | In my day, the big hangout was the Dairy Queen. Now _that's_ boring.
|
In mine it was the All Nita, a petrol station out on the highway.
A long walk, but it was the only place in town that stayed open after
10 pm, and it also had the only juke box in town. Not the most
up-market place you could imagine, especially when the truckers and
bikies decided to have a go at each other, but there wasn't a lot
of choice.
There were also rumours about what certain young women were willing
to do in the bushes around the back, but I suspect that that was
more wishful thinking than reality. The reality was that we drank
coffee for a while, and then went home disappointed.
--
Peter Moylan peter at ee dot newcastle dot edu dot au
http://eepjm.newcastle.edu.au (OS/2 and eCS information and software) |
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Glenn Knickerbocker
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2004 10:03 am
Post subject: Re: Foreigners' takes on your home culture. |
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On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 20:09:26 -0500, Jim Ward wrote:
| Quote: | which is quite true. Why shopping malls are so interesting? If you
don't have any money to spend, they can be quite dull and sterile.
Surely people could meet somewhere else?
|
Gathering places are usually supported by businesses that want people to
gather near them--retailers, restaurants, etc. Benches and open spaces
in downtown areas used to be maintained by associations of shop owners,
but now all the shops downtown have folded because they couldn't compete
with the perceived convenience of the mall shops and superstores. With
no retail businesses left there, the downtown areas turn into slums where
nobody who isn't stuck there ever wants to go. So the only gathering
place that's left is the mall.
¬R http://users.bestweb.net/~notr/cats "Would you like to watch a movie
about George Wendt while eating Chinese food with a cat?" --Andy Simmons |
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