The Vent?!

[Robbyn Jonathan]

ummm... what's wrong with the French? Wine? Bagettes? French Fries?
Or are we talking about Quebequois? Celene Dion? (If it's about hating Celene, I'm all in).
Or it a language issue? Too many vowels? Offensive syllable emphasis? The fact that they sometimes don't speak English?
Perhaps it's a Canadian thing, but I can think of a ton of reasons for Canadians to dislike the French, but not Americanos...

[Vangelis]

robbyn said:

Perhaps it's a Canadian thing, but I can think of a ton of reasons for Canadians to dislike the French, but not Americanos...

It's because if it weren't for the French, they'd have invaded us by now ("us" being all that blank space between New England and Alaska). But Quebec is the poison pill.

[arvaitha]

Hahaha...Celera, I never thought of online dating quite in that fashion. Makes me wonder if how one types, is it how one speaks?? I mean, if their interests consist entirely of 3 and 4 letter words, then how interesting and intelligent are they in person? I cant say I have ever tried it, but if I should, I will keep this in mind!!!

Oh and Polly, I have been called an Amazon as well. And I cant understand the need for someone to take over when I 'think' I look more than capable to handle the situation. Im 5'10 and wear heals a lot!! I must say thought, its a great intimidation tactic I use at work with irate customers. Most are shorter than I or I come eye to eye with them. Anyway, unless I ask for assisstance (and I will if I need it) leave me be until I do!!

And as for the French....the only experience I have ever had was in Quebec. While purchasing a soda (I was like 10 at the time) the gentleman (and I use that term loosely) outright told me to learn how to speak French when I asked if he spoke English when he said something to me in French! 'shrugs'

[Annalira Delshannon]

For some reason, people don't usually do that with me, even when I was an intern at a primarily male advertising firm. I dunno. I've been called intimidating though, so maybe that's why? (hopefully "intimidating" is not a physical trait so much as a mental trait?). Either that or they were too busy to pay attention to me...

Anyway, my own rant...

The (damn) yard guys are here in my apartment complex this morning. There is really NOT that much yard here - a couple of sidewalks, maybe a little strip of grass... it's an apartment complex! And they started at 7am, and they're STILL OUT THERE MAKING NOISE (at 11:30!)! And I'm currently on a toss-and-turn-and-weird-dreams thing instead of sleeping. So now I"m overtired, have a massive headache, and I can't go back to sleep because someone outside is being seriously overzealous with the weedeater. <sighs>

I am *not* amused.

[Celera]

When you are young, being a taller woman who sometimes (without meaning to) intimidates people, can be very frustrating. In many ways. I know.

By the time you are 40, however, you will find that you learn how it is that you intimidate people, and how to stop when you want to. And how to own and use that power to kick ass when you want to. Because some people need to be intimidated. And it's great fun. Just use your power for good and not evil. Mostly.

(Of course, I'm only 30, according to Fech, so I don't know this yet. But it's something to look forward to.)

Re: the French. I will try to spare Emi another rant, and list some reasons why I think many Americans hate them. I don't, btw, agree with these things, I just offer them as clarification.

1. The French hate us. (See Arvaitha's example. In particular, the French hate people who don't speak French. I think this is actually more true in Quebec than in France.)

2. The French are generally grumpy and pretentious. (They do give you a pretty nasty look when you ask for catsup for your fries.)

3. The French are socialists, like most of the rest of Europe, and don't work hard. They work short days, take long lunches, take off the whole month of August, and expect to get paid even when they are unemployed.

4. (I suspect this is Emi's main issue.) The French surrendered readily in WWII, and the English and Americans had to come and throw the Nazi's out of their country, which they do not fully appreciate. Especially, in later years they have not helped or supported us when we want to invade Iraq or Afghanistan, they didn't stick around to help in Vietnam, and they generally have taken an antiwar stand most of the time, and been critical of us for going to these wars. (I'm sure this is not a complete list of examples.)

Anyway, to the best of my knowledge, this is America's general case against the French.

[Kielon]

I think it is mostly Parisians that hate Americans, as opposed to all of France. I have no experience with the people from Quebec, but any people who want to secede from Canada cannot be all right in the head, can they?

[Emizael]

See? Its not so hard to understand, it really isn't. We all see marvelous absurdities in our everyday lives, and we have to yell about them! We can't just contain these snippets of anger ( or amusement) and we have to expound on them. Railing indecently in public, though, that just makes you an ass, also. (( See any recent news story about the Paris riots, or the trouble with Quebec. ))

I vote that we make a world wide Ass-hat day, wherein when we find the worst of the worst, the greatest idiots or group of same, blabbering on about whatever stupidity they're blabbering about, we unite as one, and dub them all Ass hats. We could even have a little trophy or something, that could be mailed out. Nobody would be immune to such a thing, and they would have to carry thier Ass-hat Trophy openly, publicy, just to show the rest of the world that they have finally been called to account for thier Ass-hatted-ness. On Ass-hat Day, given just a couple of these oh so special holidays, you would probably find the entire world uniting together, just working together fine, to elect the next great Ass-Hat. Palestinians and Libyans, united as one, American and Russian, Chinese and Korean, all together, to continuously nominate the French.

Ohkay, so, maybe not so much, but, I still like the Ass-hat Day idea.

[Celera]

Obviously the trophy would have to be an actual hat.

I think it's a great idea. Although I'm not sure I have any quarrel with public demonstrations (we would never get a whole country to wear ass-hats for a day, anyhow) but surely there are possible nominees.

And, yes, I think we could start with those guys who use enormously noisy power tools to spend nine hours grooming a hundred square feet of landscape. What the hell are they doing all that time?

I thought this was just in California, and particularly in Orange County, where any plants that look like they might have grown in nature are considered indecent. Everything must be trimmed into perfect geometrical symmetry. Shrubs come in two shapes -- rectangle and round. It doesn't matter if you have trimmed away most of the actual foliage as long as the remaining sticks are in a perfect square or sphere.

[Gudran]

Oh good, you said squares and spheres. I was about to say, circle and square plants? I never knew LA was into 2-D foliage...

[Celera]

I suppose then I should say cubes and spheres -- although if some people found a way to make plants even less like God designed them -- say, 2 dimensional -- I'm sure that would be the new requirement around here. Because, God doesn't know anything about how plants should look. For how much people refer to God around here to validate their opinions, they don't give Him much credit, it seems.



Perhaps, though, one of you Canadians can explain exactly why Quebec wants to secede from Canada. It's a good question. What exactly do they want to do that they can't do as a province of Canada?

[Albured]

Anoying freinds

So I am on a little mini vacation it started out solo I got there spent a day in total relaxation no wife no kid nobody but me and my company cell phone that has a built in mp3 player so on the second day I am sitting listing to some O.A.R. getting some sun and someone kicks sand in my face. I am mad as a pack of wolves no one kicks sand in my face I get up to make somebody eat sand and my best freind/boss is standing there chuckling. first question how did you find me I didn't say where I was going which he answers your cellphone has a gps in it I just looked you up. wtf can't a guy get some alonetime I almost threw the phone at him but it did answer some interesting questions about how he manages to just appear at places I happen to be at so instaed of relaxing I spent the whole week babysitting because everyone has the freind who never grew up right well he is one of those I need to get some riddlin for him my relaxing vacation is now a club hopping drinking vacation which I could of done at home at a much cheaper price I might add and everytime I don't want to do something he keeps asking till I cave and I can't wait to get home now.

[Celera]

First off, I'm very glad that "Annoying Friends" is the title of that post, Al, and not a greeting like "Dear Sir" or "To Whom it May Concern." Because my first thought was that you were annoyed with us, and I was upset, at least momentarily.

As someone who requires a great deal of time alone -- I can't imagine anything my friends could do that would be more annoying than what your friend did to your time off.

I'm a pretty tolerant person, and I rarely get upset with anyone, especially my friends. (Except for about two days a month when people annoy me just by existing). But -- this would do it.

At least it gave you a reason to look forward to coming home. BTW, how is the baby doing? Is he sleeping through the night yet?

[Emizael]

Babies.

Babies are kinda like annoying friends. They're great really, fun to make, and fun to watch grow, until they start demanding things, like, all your time, energy, and money.

Or, so I've heard, me not actually ever having one. I mean, not that I could *have* one, not being female, or, you know, nice and such, but, hey! This is totally not the topic here.

What was the topic again?

Oh yeah! Hey Al! What's shakin' man! Long time no see! I hope the family is doing well, and that you are too!

Family is cool, until they start demanding things...like, all your time, energy, and money. But, woo! Family!

Uh, wow, I have actually run out of funny things to say at this point, and I am really just killing time here, until I have to go to work, and ...like, be productive, PRODUCTIVE. I hate being productive.

If I didn't just absolutely have to pay the internet bill, and rent, and eat food and junk, I would totally not work. At anything. Yep. That would be the life.

I envy dogs, except for the whole " no thumbs" thing. I mean, life as a dog would be totally cool. Lay around all day, get fed at regular intervals, play catch and tug of war every now and again...

Yeah. It would be cool to be a dog.

Except, if I was a dog, I would *have* to have the internet. 'Cause then, I could take a picture of myself, playing WoW, and send a pic to Guds with a line underneath that says...

" Indecent Haxxposure"

He'll know what that means.

We now return you to your regularly sponsered reading.

[arvaitha]

Ya know....Im really sick of work. The workers complain about the management...."Oh Im gonna make some calls and sign grievances".....The management complains about the workers......"Any chimp can do their job and probably be better at it".........And I am complaining about them ALL....."Everyone single one of them are older than I, and I have NEVER acted like them. First of all the workers are a pretty decent crew....just a little spoiled if you ask me (the middle management) and the management over me are old grumpy catty women and obviously arent doing the job that the 'chimps' are doing so, can a chimp really do it?? And another thing...............keep me out of this tug of war the two have going on between them because as far as I see it.................they are both wrong and refuse to work any of these problems out!! This is sooooo NOT in my job description.......at I dont think babysitting is!!


Did I mention I work with ALLL women?!!

[Kielon]

Not my rant, but I am 100% behind it:


Can you trust your toaster?
You know what really bugs me? DVD players who think they know better than me. You know what I’m talking about. You put in a movie, you sit down, you press PLAY. Do you get your movie? No: you get long seconds, maybe minutes, of swirling menu graphics and copyright warnings. When you try to skip through this, up flashes up a little red circle with a cross through it, or the words “Operation Not Permitted,” or something similar.

“Not permitted”? Who is my DVD player to tell me what’s permitted? It’s my player, isn’t it? When I say “Skip,” it should say, “How far?” I mean, I’m not trying to break the law here. If I was, I could understand my DVD player having some moral qualms. But I just want to watch my movie.

(It’s the copyright notices that really annoy me. First, there’s something nuts about a legally purchased movie forcing you to sit through stern copyright lectures every single time you watch it, while a pirated version helpfully jumps straight to the action. Some DVDs even display copyright warnings in about two dozen different languages, giving you ample time to digest the, say, Swahili version, before leisurely moving on to Romanian. But even the full-motion copyright notices are bad. Australia has one with a pumping soundtrack and some crazy MTV-inspired camerawork—you know, so the kids will pay attention—while on-screen some naughty teenagers download movies. It takes them about four and a half seconds. I tell you what, if it took four seconds, I’d be doing it all the time. Especially if someone played a cool song while I did it.)

Apparently we are rushing toward a future in which control of technology is not handed over to us when we buy it, but retained by the companies that originally made it. Your DVD player, your computer, and your high-definition television seem to be on your side, but they’re really sleeper agents, with secret loyalties to their corporate masters.

There’s something called High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) sneaking in everywhere, and the plan is this: at first, it does nothing. But once it’s in enough homes, along come movies and television broadcasts that only play on HDCP-enabled equipment. Because that old non-HDCP television set can’t be trusted, you see—it might be doing what you want, instead of what the industry wants.

There seems to be no point at which an anti-piracy measure is deemed to cause more trouble to legitimate customers than it’s worth. For example, Australian commercial TV almost always run late, often by as much as ten or fifteen minutes, and the reason, according to one of the networks, is:

“Precise start times would allow people to burn DVDs of our programs like crazy and push them out over the internet.”

So millions of people are inconvenienced every day in order to make it slightly harder for eight guys with beards to burn copies of Battlestar Galactica.

I don’t have a DVD player any more. At least, not a typical one. I built a computer with MythTV and a DVD drive and hooked it up to my television. When I tell this puppy to skip, it skips. Loyalty. That’s the thing.

Find more at maxbarry.com/whatmaxreckons/

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