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

I have a MAC desktop, but I only use the laptop to write, so I can't see spending so much money for a MAC laptop. I am trying to figure this out.

 

Briannakin: Glad to see my history post was ignored...

While the United States indeed had no right to get off as well as they did in the War of 1812, we were never in any danger of being reabsorbed. Oh, and at that point in time we wouldn't have been converting cookies to biscuits and chips to crisps; at that point in history our dialects were still basically the same.

 

Yup. Even the accents were still nearly identical.

 

Sorry, I didn't ignore it. Truth is, I've never learned much of the American-British conflicts during the war, only what role canada played (Canadian history can be very self-adsorbed at times, even at the university level).

On a similar note, I found this video to be very informative. http://www.upworthy.com/one-look-at...-border-reveals-some-ridiculous-things?c=ufb2

You can actually see the no-touchy zone if you fly over it.

 

"MOM!!! Canada is touching me!"

 

I am happy to report that seeding the clouds produced the smallest sprinkle of an idea. Unfortunately, it's for an RP, and it's not much to work with. But. it's something! Something is better than nothing!

My brother went to a wedding today, and the wedding party had to dress in Union uniforms. He rented the uniform from a photography studio, and while most of it was altered, the back of the pants needed sewn, so I offered to do that. Just darned them enough to hold them together, so no doing splits.

After the uniform was figured out, he was fussing over directions to Little Round Top.

Dude, you were born here and lived here for most of your life, and you've been to Devil's Den recently. You should know where Little Round Top is.

 

So lemme get this straight, TrakNar. Your brother went to a wedding that took place where the 20th Maine took on the 15th Alabama and Colonel Chamberlain earned the Medal of Honor?

 

Part of it takes place there. The rest takes place at the Prince of Peace Church. Again, another landmark that I had to explain where it was.

YOU LIVED IN GETTYSBURG MOST OF YOUR LIFE AND WENT TO SCHOOL HERE, WHY DON'T YOU KNOW WHERE THESE PLACES ARE?!

 

Because he is not a kriff'n tourist! It is the same reason why I haven't seen half of the tourist attractions in my area. That's for tourists! "I ain't no Fudgie!" (That's what they call tourists here).

 

No excuse.

 

She's right. I guarantee you that every resident of Verdun of teenage years or older knows where all the battle sites are.

 

I know nothing about US or Canadian history. Well, next to nothing. I know the US had a Civil War, and fought the British, and there was the Confederacy and Washington and abolition and all that. There was a dude called Commodore Barry who fought for you guys, he was born down the road from where I live. There's a statue of him in town, on the quay. Yep. Aside from that, I know the Europeans came to America and were horrible to the natives, and there was a ton of fighting, most of which the natives lost. Tecumseh and Daniel Boone were knocking around at the time, I read a few books about them when I was a kid. After that everyone wore cowboy hats for a while and robbed trains, or tried to stop dudes from robbing trains.

A+, am I right?

I got nothing on Canada. As far as I know Canada was too busy dealing with all the snow to bother with fighting, although that's probably wrong.

Anyway, thanks for clearing up the tag/PM thing. I didn't realise tags went away after a while. I think I'll stick to PMs then.

 

I think all countries tend to be insular in their teachings.

I got detention in 8th grade for correcting the student teacher when she said Ireland was part of the UK. I never served it, my real teacher was like, "... She's right, and you're dumb" to the ST. Ha ha ha.

But overall, we just don't have room in the curriculum to accomodate the histories of all countries. And sadly, most of what IS taught tends to be skewed towards local/national relevance. Different povs passed down through the years cause distortions in collective perception.

Plus, there's no way men of old were going to admit they lost a war. Too much pride depended on it. So icky details got warped or glossed over. "Oh, uhhhh... Yeah, I totally kicked his butt! *nods*"

 

There is a way to make it look like regular Windows. There's also the free update to Win8.1 that helps with that. I'm not sure how to do that, mind, as I don't have a Win8 machine, but I am looking to get a new laptop that will have Win8 on it.

 

I only did history for one year in secondary school, so that might be why I'm not really up to speed. We learned a bit of European history, but mostly just the history of Ireland, and we pretty much stopped at the start of the Renaissance. Everything I know after that is mostly art history, or bits and pieces I picked up from various books I read. I don't really know any specific dates of anything. I think if I'd kept it on at school, I would've learned more about European history and all the wars and stuff, and some American history, and colonisation of Africa and Apartheid and all that. I think for the final exam you basically specialised in a couple of areas, but I have no idea what exactly they learned. It'd be hard to keep it Ireland-centric though. Not that much happened, and it's basically impossible to talk about Irish history without at least touching on European and American history. All the really interesting, world-changing stuff happened somewhere else.

Lots of national pride here as well though. But you'd be hard-pressed to argue that the 1798 rebellion was a success, just as an example. They don't try; they take a different approach. We may have lost to the British, but it was a moral victory because we stood up to our oppressors. We lost, but we lost bravely, damn it. I guess that's a different kind of national pride, the kind you have when you're always outnumbered and outgunned and downtrodden but refuse to give up anyway.

 

The only Irish history I know comes from my husband's family who are "Irish". Which means somewhere two hundred years in their past somebody came from Ireland to the United States and set down roots. Irish-American people are crazy when it comes to this. I went with his family to some Irish Festival and they were singing Irish songs about unicorns and drinking a lot of beer and wearing stupid pins that say, "Kiss me I'm Irish." Damn, my grandparents are from Spain. I don't walk around doing Spaniard things (I am not sure what those things would be…but I am sure I'm not doing them).

 

For what it's worth, when you mention "Irish" Americans and their Irish customs, most actual Irish people just roll their eyes. I mean yeah, Irish people do drink a lot. But the "drinkin', fightin' Irish" is an American thing. And I guess it'd be kind of stupid to walk around here with a shirt or a pin saying "Kiss me, I'm Irish" because... yeah, you and the entire rest of the country, it's not exactly anything special.

I'm German. I guess by rights I ought to be walking around in lederhosen or a dirndl, drinking beer and eating sausages and talking in a ridiculous accent. That's if I pick the more flattering stereotype. But I don't. I don't go around wearing Aran jumpers or listening to Enya, either, and I've never "riverdanced" in my life.

 

Irish step dancing is haaaaard! I learned how to do it in high school, and I'm clumsy.

I think it's okay to not know everything about the history of the country one is living in. Usually, there's a lot of it, and it doesn't really have a whole lot of bearing on everyday life. Being aware of the big things is somewhat important, mostly so you know what certain holidays are commemorating, but do I really need to know the names of the dang ships that Columbus came over in? No! And I highly doubt someone is going to come up to me on the street with a gun and demand to know what day Paul Revere made his infamous "The British are coming!" ride, or they'll shoot me. (Incidentally, he didn't do the ride. He made, like, one stop and got arrested. A bunch of other people did the rest of the notifications, something I didn't learn in school.)

 

I thought he used his cell phone? I guess I shouldn't take history lessons from Geico commercials.

 

18 April, in case you're curious.

 

I saw plenty of Irish people in Dublin wearing those "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" shirts. Granted, I was there about a week after St Patrick's Day.

 

I irritate my husband's family by calling them Canadians. They came from Ireland to Canada and lived about three generations in Canada before coming to Michigan. I think that's fair. I call my grandparents Spanish, but I think only two or three generations lived in Spain prior to my grandparents leaving. My family came to Spain in the late 1700s from Belgium. I don't call myself Belgium, so why should they call themselves Irish? Well, I know why. They think being Irish is much cooler than being Canadian.

 

Although, as I understand it, being Canadian is very cool.

Ba dum tsh.

 

Pennsylvania German, here. Nothing special.

I am very slowly getting over this damn cold. It's now mostly an annoying cough that gets worse at night.