But do you still pronounce the final 'e' in apocope these days?
But Santa Claws is REAL!
My mormor, who was a down to earth old lady, explained to us that you started dinner with the rice pudding to take the edge off everybody's hunger so there would be enough goose to go round.
JVP - No one person can have any idea what "the rest of the world" thinks about anything. But you can make some informed guesses.
First off, while no other nation engages with the USA on a level playing field, most of them are so far downslope that they quite literally couldn't tell the difference btween Bush and Kerry. The more informed among them may have noticed that Edwards is a rabid protectionist, which wouldn't have recommended him to, for the sake of argument, Indian cotton growers.
In Western Europe and its outlyiers in the Pacific, many people feel desperately sorry for you (*all* of you - the crap isn't going to ask how you voted before it lands), but we question how much difference it would actually have made to us if Kerry had won. He was set up. What could he have done different in international affairs?
Obviously, there are special cases. Iraqi Kurds are generally pro-Bush, because they fear that if the US pulled out of Iraq they would be massacred in a pincer movement between the Sunni Arabs and some proxy for Turkey. They're probably right.
Likud supporters in Israel are no doubt pro-Bush. Anti-Likud Israelis are probably anti. And so on.
The number of bone headed anti-Americans who are offended by a Starbucks opening in their town or some loudmouth tourist who can't say "please" or "thank you" will be unaffected by anything you may say or do. You may continue to ignore them.
The small intellectual elite will be cheering you on all the way to 2006. Like you need it.
As a European, who can't do anything except cheer for the good guys, can I just say how unspeakably sad it makes me that a significant number of intelligent Americans feel it necessary to monitor an election in the United States as if it were the sort of show that gets staged by some kleptocratic general in the third world to impress naive aid donors.
Best of luck.
I attended an English boarding school in the 60s and we still had personal fagging. When my cohort reached the age of privilege we actually had a debate over whether to continue with it, and the arguments were exactly as laid out here: pro - the little sods will never have to do a dirty job again in their lives, so they ought to learn what it's like; anti - you're just saying that because you had to do it, and now you fancy having your turn ordering people about.
In the event, the vote split 50/50. There was an electric bell by which the fags were summoned, so I and another anti took it off the wall and threw it in a convenient builders' skip. Interestingly this fait accompli was never challenged either by our contemporaries or by the authorities, who privately expressed relief.
We unanimously agreed in favour of keeping "public service" fagging, such as helping serve meals and drawing up washroom rotas (he who baths first baths fast). For all I know this continues to this day.
Ah, yes, Beorhtnoth and the crossing of the causeway. Or as we say nowadays, "Bring 'em on!"
May I say in passing that any thread which cites both the Battle of Maldon and Bored of the Rings on topic has either achieved greatness or had greatness thrust upon it,
Nancy, Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic, where the aliens have screwed up the world without either noticing or caring, because they just came by, did their thing and went away again. What it might feel like to be an Iraqi in a few years time.
Damn, there goes my opening sentence: "It was a dark and stormy night..."
Superkuh: that's weird - I find exactly the opposite (but if I start with my foot going anti-clockwise and draw the 6 inside out it works... Oh God, I'm so sad)
Haven't heard that song for a quarter of a century...
Ugly American to Hotel desk clerk in Portugal, 1998, on being quoted a room rate in Escudos:
"What's that in REAL money?"
(Squirm)
Desk clerk, without missing a beat, offers immediate conversions in Euros (at that date a business currency only), Sterling and Swiss Francs...
Robert - Sadly, you're right. It's not just a scenario. So far church looting is on a fairly small scale (most robbers are still more interested in the lead off the roofs), but fewer and fewer churches are left unlocked.
A lot of the stuff you see around will come from stately homes which were pulled down in the middle of the 20th century when the families that owned them were couldn't afford them and there was no market for that kind of property. Literally hundreds of houses were demolished over about 50 years and the contents, including architectural features, disposed of on the open market.
It's hard to find too much sympathy for the incompetent old aristocrats who inherited fortunes they'd never done anything to earn and then couln't even manage them, but it's a shame about the houses, even so.
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| 2005 | 2 |
| 2004 | 11 |
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