Canderous and Cade's Crazy Cantina: a shiny new fanfiction social thread!

Sure and...umm...could you...ah...not read any of my fanfics, please."

 

LOL! I just mean, the characters are morons and completely detestable, the plot line is stupid with huge holes, etc. And these are published works! Presumably, an editor went over them. I don't get nearly as worked up over fanfiction, unless it's someone writing in an illegible block of text with no punctuation or something.

ETA: Still at the surgical centre with my sister-in-law. Her surgery was scheduled for 1:30. It's now almost 3:30, and the surgeon isn't here yet. He isn't expected to get here until 4. Then we're supposed to wait for the surgery and recovery. I haven't eaten since last night because I was sick this morning, and now I'm starving and nauseated. And I can't leave.

 

What's the traditional food? Like spuds and cabbage and stew and chips with salt and vinegar, sort of thing? I'm not a big fan of that stuff, I'll admit. We've gotten pretty good in terms of foreign food now, especially in Dublin, which is great.

And dude... I feel ya. I've come across some pretty ridiculous "Irish" talk in novels. YES we do sometimes say "sure weren't you the one who" and "don't be doing that" but it's not really the norm, I swear. The worst I ever came across was a romance set in Ireland in 1850. And there was NO mention of the Famine. Everyone was hanging out, eating potatoes and lamb stew and chowder. That was so bad. It's like if you wrote a novel set in Germany in 1944 with no mention of the war, and even went out of your way to mention how well they were all getting on with England these days.

 

Oh, geez, yes, it drives me bugnuts when people set things in Ireland in that time period and just conveniently forget the Famine. I just recently read one where everyone's running around wearing silks and having balls and feasts, and they live in Limerick in 1858. Not precisely the social epicentre of Ireland.

I read one that was published in 2003 or 2004, took place around then, and mentioned the characters going to the World Trade Center. I was like ". . . . . . . SERIOUSLY?"

 

Same here. I don't read a lot of romance, but I think I've only ever come across two or three where I didn't want to punch the guy and rant some sense into the woman. Or vice versa. But usually it's the guys who are complete macho jerks. I read one where the lad literally picks her up and carries her off somewhere, during a serious argument mind. If any boyfriend or potential boyfriend ever did that to me we would be SO over.

I hold fanfiction to lower standards than published works because, well, it's not published. It's for fun. And to be fair, I've never ever read a fanfic where Luke or Han or Jag or someone was a macho control freak or stalker. They tend to have more sense than that. (Although, don't get me started on COPL by Mr. Who-are-you-and-what-have-you-done-with-Han. That book annoys me still.)

I hope you get some food soon, Dantana! And that the doc shows up.

 

*LOL* Ah yes, Stab City, the social capital of Ireland, where everyone wears silk and drinks champagne. Just imagining that is hilarious.

I've also noticed that romance authors like to make up European countries. Small Mediterranean ones, usually. And Prince Philippe of Aristia, or whatever it's called, is always in New York on some kind of trip, either trying to find a wife, or trying to avoid finding a wife. I hate even thinking it, but it does make me wonder sometimes if people reading the story are aware that it's a made-up country.

There's a stereotype for you: Americans don't have a clue about the world outside of the US.

 

That may be true. I was playing a game of Outburst with a college student. The question was, "Things found in Rome". She yelled out, "The pyramids!" I thought I was going to die laughing. Especially when she said, "Why are you laughing at me? What's so funny?" I said, "You said the pyramids are in Rome." And she said, "Aren't they?"

I am pretty familiar as to where different countries are, but that is because I travel. I have been to 25 countries and have travelled all over the USA with the exception of the New England area, Alaska, Utah and Montana...and probably a few more states scattered about.

 

Yeah, seeing the stupidity of the majority of American college students is alarming, to say the least. I knew the pyramids most people talk about are in Egypt (though there are also some in other parts in the world such as Mexico, Peru, China and there are naturally formed pyramids in Bosnia... I never heard of the ones in Rome, except for perhaps the Pope's hat kind of looks like one ).

 

I am very well-acquainted with the educational shortcomings of Americans. For example, the number of times a day that someone argues with me that they can't send a box to Hawaii by Priority Mail International. Or my boss who didn't believe that Micronesia exists. She thought I was making it up for fun.

Oh, and Dana, don't forget the best word for Utah accents: FORK! American Fark, Spanish Fark, would you like to eat that with a fark er a spoon?

And the number of old people at work who use "I sez."

There's a great email that I got a while back about how to understand Boston vocabulary and terminology. I actually learned something from that one--every night, David Alan Boucher would talk about the time and what color the light on the Hancock Tower was and I never knew why until reading that blue means clear weather, red means snow and if it's summer and it's flashing red, it means the Red Sox game was rained out.

 

Hah, one of my friends worked in a tourist shop and told me this story of an American couple who came in. The woman kept asking her "do you have tartans?" Since it was an Irish tourist shop, it was big on Guinness merch and low on tartans, so she wasn't really finding what she wanted. Eventually, somewhat miffed, she said, "You call yourselves a Scottish tourist shop when you don't even have any tartans?"
My friend looked at her and said, "Uhm, you know you're in Dublin, right?"
"Yeah."
"Uhm... Dublin's in Ireland. Not Scotland."
Apparently the woman's expression transformed to amazement and she turned around and yelled to her husband, across the shop, "Billy! Did you know we're in Ireland?!"

True story.

That said, admittedly, I don't know where all the different countries are either. I know Europe and North America, and I can make a decent stab at the rest, but if you asked me to pick out Uzbekistan on a map I'd probably hit Russia. But I'm pretty sure that if I was going to travel there, I'd know what it's called and where it is.

 

He finally showed up, though it was almost five before she went in for surgery. She's out and in recovery now. There's a girl here in Recovery who is hilariously loopy. Some gems she's suddenly blurted:

This is my ankle, did you know that?

I want children.

I love you, Mom! I wanna throw up.

I have sooooo many drugs in me! I love drugs!

ETA: And just now, when they put the railing back up on her bed after she used the bathroom: "Don't lock me in! I'm a person!"

 

Maybe they were on a cruise. A lot of booze is drank on a cruise. Sometimes you don't know where in the world you are...literally. I used to do bus tours around Europe. One month I went with my teenage nephew. We would leave at midnight and the bus would get to the designation in the morning. I woke up when the bus stopped for a pitstop. I turned to my nephew and said, "What country are we in?" He laughed. "I don't know but bet you never thought you would ever wake up and have to ask that question."

 

Loopy!Girl just left, with the parting "Look, I have toes! I love you all!"

 

Watching "Tooth and Claw" from Doctor Who and Rose's attempts to speak in Scottish brogue remind me of our conversations here.

 

I say "crick" sometimes, and "warsh." I do things "awhile," and I turn the lights out. I'm big on clausal reversals. I can't stand it when my niece and nephews won't "quitcher kibbitzin'," and they're always "rutschin" around. For "brekfist," I like to eat dippy "ecks." But, I can't have any if they're "all."

My area has a large German population, and until the 20s, Lutheran services were conducted in German. Nowadays, it's just a lingering dialect marked by the occasional usage of German and the clausal reversals.

 

My accent is sometimes fairly non-descript, generally "Northeastern." But get me watching the Red Sox and all the consonants go wacky.

 

Warsh! My grandmother says warsh- they live in the Lancaster area of PA now, but originally come from Baltimore. Speaking of which- they're all headed 'downy ocean, hon!'
Happily, my mother lost the Baltimore accent before I learned to talk.

 

Oh, I sometimes threaten to "smack ya one," but that's only if I'm irritated. I never thought I had an accent, just a dialect. Though, people have pointed out that they can't quite place my accent, as it doesn't sound Pennsylvanian, whatever they mean by that.

 

I never even considered myself to have a dialect (pop/soda issues aside, haha). The only other thing that I see anyone mention as being an 'Ohio thing' is the tendency to end sentences with prepositions. 'Where are you going to?' 'Where's that book at?' *cringe* Happily, my father is a newspaper editor, he heckled the bad grammatical tendencies out of us.
My experience is that people don't quite know what to make of Ohio. We get lumped in with Kentucky stereotypes, West Virginia stereotypes. Others can't decide if we're all farms or Rust Belt.

 

The ending of sentences with prepositions is a Pennsylvania thing, too. Oh, the joys of being hard to pin down.

...wow, I just thought about that in terms of insect collecting and suddenly my Zuckuss avatar just makes it punny.

 

We don't even when picking tulips or plugging dikes.
We are still grateful for the Americans who helped after the big flood in Zeeland with their jeeps. That flood led us to constructing Delta works and helping New Orleans.

Holland has a flower parade coming in april.

 

Everyone has an accent and a dialect though. You can't really get around it. Some people say cupboard, others say cabinet, we say press. One very common Irish thing is to say "I'm after" instead of "I have just", like "I'm after going to the shop". They also like to really screw up grammar and say things like "I loves him" or "I be's working" or "I amn't" or "get them ones".

One thing we don't say is "lass". I've only been called lass once in my life, and that was by a Scottish guy. Usually it's "hun" or "love" or "pet".

 

Yes, many people get the Scottish and Irish mixed up (also, Japanese and Chinese), especially we ignorant Americans. I think there is a large Irish contingent here in Ohio... I've picked up calling people "hun" (or perhaps I'm just getting old because I remember the only people who called people "hun" were old people ).

I just love all the cultural diversity... accents, dialects, etc. It's what makes life interesting. If we were all the same, then it would be rather dull, wouldn't it?

 

Oh, it'd definitely be dull!

Yes, DarthIshtar, I definitely considered mentioning "fark", but it bugs me so much, I couldn't bring myself to do it.

I feel really woozy today. I think I'm anemic, but I can't eat red meat to fix it and iron supplements upset my already irritated digestive system. I'm reeeeeaalllyyy tired of not being able to eat protein.

 

I had a weird experience at Best Buy with a guy calling me sweetie. I was at least twenty years older than the guy so I don't think he was hitting on me. Then I had a horrific thought that he was calling me by a pet name because he thought I was a little old lady. Please tell me that his common somewhere in America. I just thought it was so odd.