Jump to content
IGNORED

Dillards 73: A Bitter Dill


Jellybean

Recommended Posts

30 minutes ago, Jilli said:

One thing that absolutely bothers me about my American education is if I were to just go after that I would know far more about the Rwanda Genocide than I do about the Holocaust. Now, I did a massive history day project on it in middle school so I ended up learning about it in depth. It’s quite annoying when you sit through several American History classes and their summary of WWII is Hitler and Nazis are bad, but let’s gloss over why so we can cheer on the allied forces and then take all the credit. Sorry weird random tangent over.

As for the confederate flag, it makes me so uncomfortable to see it. We had idiots in my high schools small town who loved to fly it over their pickup trucks. It was dumb too. I live in Minnesota. You can’t get more north than that in the lower 48. For anyone outside in the US or are just unfamiliar with the middle.

This is what it would look like if we were added to Canada. The joke that goes with this picture is “do you think anyone would notice?”

B78EFB7E-06E3-428C-88AD-83BA3EFDCA72.png

I'm in Iowa, that blob right below MinniCanada. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 584
  • Created
  • Last Reply
On 1/28/2019 at 8:47 AM, VelociRapture said:

I live in Connecticut - for our non- US based posters, it’s a small state in the Northeastern part of the country. My state sided with the Union during the Civil War, yet we still have idiots up here who proudly display the Confederate flag and we have our fair share of racists. A few examples:

- I was best friends with a woman I had known since Elementary School for about twenty years. There were many reasons the friendship ended, but one of them was due to her family’s racism. They were lovely people to me and I never saw them act in a racist way towards another human being... however, her father and brothers made racist jokes about President Obama and his family when the topic would come up - and it came up a lot with me because I was the token liberal. Her youngest brother also had the Confederate flag displayed on the back wind shield of his truck.*

- We’ve seen other trucks driven around with the Confederate flag on it as well. It always elicits a WTF look from my husband and I. 

- The final Klan gathering in the state occurred in the late 90s or early 2000s. The local paper ran stories about it after Charlottesville - I guess a nationally known white supremacist held a rally in the town due to something about Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The rally was scarcely attended, but tons of people from the area turned out in opposition. The opposition was so loud in their demonstrations that the people actually attending the rally couldn’t hear anything, so it ended pretty quickly. 

- There was something in my hometown about swatsikas at the golf course when I was a kid. I think someone spray painted them on the building or something. I was pretty young, but I was old enough to know about the Holocaust and I remember being upset and confused about it. 

- There was a homeowner in our town a few years back who spray painted racist imagery and words on his own house. I guess he was pissed off because he sold land to a developer who then started building on it. I clearly don’t remember the details, but the general idea was he was trying to scare off potential buyers. Fucking dumbass. 

>snipped>

The National Grand Wizard for the KKK in the mid 1980's was from Connecticut.  He used to stand on a street corner in East Windsor CT every Friday morning and wave at passing cars.  He was decked out in full KKK regalia - pointy hat and all.  (look up James Farads - KKK if you want to know more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, PennySycamore said:

Some years ago, my husband had an employee who was raised in IIRC, Argentina by missionary parents.  She thought South America was a country, not a continent.  This woman was a college graduate although from a college I don't associate with academic rigor.

This reminds me of a Buzzfeed article I read a few years ago about an undergrad student who wrote about Australia for a research paper about foreign governments or something, and the professor failed them because they were convinced that Australia wasn’t a country. The student had to go to the administration in the end I think. This professor had a PhD. ??‍♀️

This conversation about racism and ending friendships is interesting. I “dropped the rope”  (not for racism reasons, just for crappy friend reasons) on a friendship this year. She’s still coming to my baby shower, and I’m not sure she’s even noticed that I’ve stopped putting in effort. I was mad for a long time, but now I’ve deciced that it’s fine if I see her only onceevery couple of years. I thought we were closer than that, but her complete lack of effor to reach out to me for the past two+ years speaks volumes to me. 

I just had a conversation with a friend about American missionaries abroad who think that racism doesn’t exist in other countries. It honestly baffles me that anyone could think that, especially anyone living in France, but they do. The particular people we were talking about (old college friends of Mr. Blessed and some of our current friends) are the same people who said they didn’t understand why everyone was so mad about Tayvon Martin a few years ago too, so I guess I shouldn’t be too shocked. Thankfully we have no reason to ever run into them again, and if I have a say we never will. They’re awful.

Editing to add: I think everyone has a state they forget exists. Mine is Delaware. Where is it? What is it? Does anyone live there?? I’ve never met someone from Delaware. I think it might be fake.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

54 minutes ago, Meggo said:

I worked with a woman who was pursuing her masters degree - so she already had a university degree - who wondered if New Mexico would be considered an international flight (from another US state). (Side note - I don't expect EVERYONE to know that New Mexico is a US state - but I kind of expect that from Americans.) 

She wondered it out loud. She was a gem - she said all sorts of random and ridiculous things - we kept a list. 
 

Did anyone else read about the US College Professor who didn't realize that Australia was a country. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, allthegoodnamesrgone said:

Did anyone else read about the US College Professor who didn't realize that Australia was a country. 

This is the one! You read my mind.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

North Carolina is the pointy state about midway down the east coast, with the string of teeny islands hanging off the side. I'm guessing people in the UK might possibly have heard of us in history class, because of the lost colony here?

Now that I think about it, it is kind of strange (and wrong, frankly) how much my history classes in school focused on English history. We basically got the history of North America starting from when the first English people landed, skipping almost all native american history before that, and mostly ignoring France and Spain after Columbus. I did, however, at one point learn about English history back to the earliest Saxon kings. In English class, which despite it's name was really meant to be about literature and writing and such, not English-specific history.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, allthegoodnamesrgone said:

@singsingsing you know more US geography than most Americans.  Most would say Pennsylvania isn't in New England and are pretty sure Nebraska is the capital of Africa, and think this is the rest of the country.  

 1887_54eb9faf7a5895.02067909_idawahio_guys.folded_grande_adb58cbb-c1f9-486c-aff8-0087e6344520_600x.jpg.5a77f46b6162eeceb996383022840be5.jpg

I can’t tell if the bit about Pennsylvania is a joke or not. But for anyone reading who is confused: Pennsylvania is part of the Northeastern US, but is not part of New England. New England is made up of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and  Connecticut. I’ve shared this before, but I’ll do it again because it makes me laugh:

49934244-CF7C-4040-9155-DA0D0A36EC59.thumb.png.19871b29e79e06d4b7549e1267767e5c.png

The “Annexed Territory” is a part of Connecticut called Fairfield County and is where I grew up, though I haven’t lived there in over 5 years. It’s a running joke that it doesn’t count as part of New England because it’s so heavily influenced by the culture of New York City. 

56 minutes ago, Born Skeptic said:

The National Grand Wizard for the KKK in the mid 1980's was from Connecticut.  He used to stand on a street corner in East Windsor CT every Friday morning and wave at passing cars.  He was decked out in full KKK regalia - pointy hat and all.  (look up James Farads - KKK if you want to know more.

I was born in 1988, so I didn’t know about this. Thank you for letting me know!

Oh! And I believe we had white supremacists show up at the Coast Guard Academy when Trump was scheduled to give a graduation speech a few years back too. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

An ex-classmate of mine told me her daughter had a history teacher who was a Holocaust denier. How in the heck did this person get a job? A job teaching? I would have been all over that school board to oust her! 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I love geography and usually don't forget any states, but I can NEVER remember if it's New Hampshire or Vermont that borders Maine. Never! Thanks @VelociRapture for posting - I'll try to remember New Hampshire's cheap booze and fireworks is just north of Massachusetts heroin :pb_lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I live in New Mexico and I am constantly surprised that other American's don't realize we are a state. My daughter went to New York for a semester in college and everyone was surprise how good her English was. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, VelociRapture said:

I can’t tell if the bit about Pennsylvania is a joke or not. But for anyone reading who is confused: Pennsylvania is part of the Northeastern US, but is not part of New England. New England is made up of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and  Connecticut. I’ve shared this before, but I’ll do it again because it makes me laugh:

49934244-CF7C-4040-9155-DA0D0A36EC59.thumb.png.19871b29e79e06d4b7549e1267767e5c.png

The “Annexed Territory” is a part of Connecticut called Fairfield County and is where I grew up, though I haven’t lived there in over 5 years. It’s a running joke that it doesn’t count as part of New England because it’s so heavily influenced by the culture of New York City. 

I was born in 1988, so I didn’t know about this. Thank you for letting me know!

Oh! And I believe we had white supremacists show up at the Coast Guard Academy when Trump was scheduled to give a graduation speech a few years back too. 

Should I be offended that the State of my birth is simply called Criminals? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, metheglyn said:

I was reading amateur fiction recently that had someone meeting a person flying directly from New York to California and the greeter had to wait for the traveler to pass through customs. I'm *assuming* (and hoping really hard) that the author was not American and thus didn't realize that yes, you *can* fly that kind of distance within a single country and thus customs is not going to be involved, but it was rather jarring to read.

Sounds like it was written by Stephanie Meyer. I remember her writing about a valedictorian speech for a college graduation. She obviously thought that it was identical to a high school graduation. Those books were so awful. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Jilli said:

One thing that absolutely bothers me about my American education is if I were to just go after that I would know far more about the Rwanda Genocide than I do about the Holocaust. Now, I did a massive history day project on it in middle school so I ended up learning about it in depth. It’s quite annoying when you sit through several American History classes and their summary of WWII is Hitler and Nazis are bad, but let’s gloss over why so we can cheer on the allied forces and then take all the credit. Sorry weird random tangent over.

As for the confederate flag, it makes me so uncomfortable to see it. We had idiots in my high schools small town who loved to fly it over their pickup trucks. It was dumb too. I live in Minnesota. You can’t get more north than that in the lower 48. For anyone outside in the US or are just unfamiliar with the middle.

This is what it would look like if we were added to Canada. The joke that goes with this picture is “do you think anyone would notice?”

B78EFB7E-06E3-428C-88AD-83BA3EFDCA72.png

The vast majority of what I learned about the Holocaust was from Hebrew school. It’s no surprise that a frightenly high percentage of millenials think that only 2 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. And schools really don’t go into depth about the atrocities Nazis committed. It’s so much more than gas chambers. How can we expect people to recognize evil or hate that lurks in every day people if schools refuse to teach it and teach the same damn American history each year? “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” And schools are paving the way for that to happen.

1 hour ago, Alisamer said:

North Carolina is the pointy state about midway down the east coast, with the string of teeny islands hanging off the side. I'm guessing people in the UK might possibly have heard of us in history class, because of the lost colony here?

Now that I think about it, it is kind of strange (and wrong, frankly) how much my history classes in school focused on English history. We basically got the history of North America starting from when the first English people landed, skipping almost all native american history before that, and mostly ignoring France and Spain after Columbus. I did, however, at one point learn about English history back to the earliest Saxon kings. In English class, which despite it's name was really meant to be about literature and writing and such, not English-specific history.

My history classes were like that too. It’s weird. And I guess part of why so much Native American history gets skipped over because the colonists destroyed so much, so a lot of history was lost. And there was so much effort to forcibly assimilate Native Americans into English style culture. We did learn about the Trail of Tears and spreading disease, but not into too much depth. It was really from a colonialist perspective of conquering land and AMURICA, we didn’t delve into the amount of violence, devastation, and hurt that was caused. Hurt that still exists today.

Classes also glossed over the fact that our founding fathers were slave owners. There’s this weird worship of our founding fathers in our schools/society that doesn’t allow any room for them to be human beings. Humans who did great things but also terrible things. Slavery is bad, so slave owners are bad. But we can’t ascribe anythjg negative to our founding fathers. Like trying convince everyone that Washington was a nice slave owner, not like the rest of those bad people. And Jefferson and his mistress were in love, even though she had no choice in the matter.

We can’t learn about the atrocities our founding fathers committed because we are supposed to venerate them and hold them up as mythical figures.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, VelociRapture said:

 New England is made up of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and  Connecticut. I’ve shared this before, but I’ll do it again because it makes me laugh:

49934244-CF7C-4040-9155-DA0D0A36EC59.thumb.png.19871b29e79e06d4b7549e1267767e5c.png

 

Of course Boston, as the center of the universe, sees CT differently.

lMmNRAp4RnqpoqmroWE4S-ptrln1glpeTgxopiXF

And I am squinting at that map because I think they have me in Dragon Territory

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@onekidanddone, thanks for clarifying the Rhode Island has criminals written on it.  I could not read it, because, man, do I need new glasses!

@VelociRapture,  I love that map of New England!  My daughter used to be one of those hippie college students and I thought about it at one time.  The college of my dreams was Goddard.  I read this morning that wicked cold Caribou Maine may set a record for snowfall in a month.  My cousin used to live in Caribou, but now she and her husband live in balmy Hershey, PA -which is not in New England.

@Hashtag Blessed, former Vice President Joe Biden is from Delaware though he was born in Scranton, PA (which is still not in New England).  It's also the home of Dupont, a lot of insurance companies, and the Murderkill River.  

When Biden served in Congress, he took the train back and forth to Capitol Hill.   I love that about him.  

 

@Palimpsest and @VelociRapture, I will have to show those maps to my daughter.  She spent 4 years in Vermont and a couple more in Connecticut.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, VelociRapture said:

I can’t tell if the bit about Pennsylvania is a joke or not. But for anyone reading who is confused: Pennsylvania is part of the Northeastern US, but is not part of New England. New England is made up of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and  Connecticut. I’ve shared this before, but I’ll do it again because it makes me laugh:

49934244-CF7C-4040-9155-DA0D0A36EC59.thumb.png.19871b29e79e06d4b7549e1267767e5c.png

The “Annexed Territory” is a part of Connecticut called Fairfield County and is where I grew up, though I haven’t lived there in over 5 years. It’s a running joke that it doesn’t count as part of New England because it’s so heavily influenced by the culture of New York City. 

I was born in 1988, so I didn’t know about this. Thank you for letting me know!

Oh! And I believe we had white supremacists show up at the Coast Guard Academy when Trump was scheduled to give a graduation speech a few years back too. 

As a Canadian, I can confirm that the Canadian parts of this map are 100% accurate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, AreYouThereGothard? said:

We were at a family wedding in New York when I was a kid. Dad mentioned that we were from Ohio. Reply: “where’s that” ?

I should probably back this up and say that I’m a first generation American and my family’s not from these parts, but I think she was young enough to have a general understanding of the states. I think most of my family has at least heard of Ohio, lol.

Non-American pals interested in geography: Ohio is on the eastern edge of the Midwest and we're kind of shaped like a heart. We’re known for our cornfields, Amish people, 8 presidents, and few astronauts, and LeBron James. Politically, we’re a “swing state” meaning we can go either way between Democrats and Republicans, but I’d say we lean conservative-moderate because Jesus and corn. If you want to be an emotional wreck during your visit in the US, come to Ohio during election season and we can lament over Jeni’s ice cream

 

Also, the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Cedar Point, with the awesome roller coasters. (Kings Island, another amusement park, is close to Cincinnati.)

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, VelociRapture said:

I was born in 1988, so I didn’t know about this. Thank you for letting me know!

Oh! And I believe we had white supremacists show up at the Coast Guard Academy when Trump was scheduled to give a graduation speech a few years back too. 

My first job out of college was in South Windsor, CT.  I drove past that loon every Friday until we moved in 1989.  I was shocked the first time I saw him but sadly he had become so commonplace that my co-workers didn't even notice him anymore.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, AreYouThereGothard? said:

Non-American pals interested in geography: Ohio is on the eastern edge of the Midwest and we're kind of shaped like a heart. We’re known for our cornfields, Amish people, 8 presidents, and few astronauts, and LeBron James. Politically, we’re a “swing state” meaning we can go either way between Democrats and Republicans, but I’d say we lean conservative-moderate because Jesus and corn. If you want to be an emotional wreck during your visit in the US, come to Ohio during election season and we can lament over Jeni’s ice cream

You think it is bad in Ohio, come to Iowa right now, we are also a swing state, and truly lean both ways, much to Steve Kings disgust.  We have Presidential hopefuls in the state RIGHT NOW, and will until January of 2020. When our Caucus is over, we have the 1st in the country, causing the rest of the country to get butt hurt over having to remember Iowa exists every 4 years. You want to meet some, come to the Iowa State Fair in August, you can see them filacciate corn dogs and pork chops on a stick.   

Iowa is just outside the middle of nowhere in the Midwest, directly south of Minnesota, directly north of Missouri, the eastern boarder of the state is the Mississippi River, and the western boarder is the Missouri River. People often refer to us as the I Otta Went Around state, but then you realize you have to go through Missouri or Minnesota to do so. We are also known for Iowa Nice, our obsessive love of ranch dressing and pizza, we put EVERYTHING on pizza, even ranch dressing, the states best pizza comes from a gas station, and there are more pigs than people here. We love our college teams, The Cyclones (Iowa State Uni) and the Hawkeyes (Uni of Iowa) , some will say this is Haweye Nation, but I will say it is Cyclone Nation, since I'm a Cyclone Alum. 

 

 

 

800px-Iowa_in_United_States.svg.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Poor New Brunswick, I swear it's more forgotten then PEI and PEI is much smaller. I learned in a quite frightening manner, a news segment at Memorial University, that there were far too many people who had no idea who the PM of Canada was during the last federal election. 

I feel that we don't have enough provinces and territories to forget any, there's only 13. If one is to be forgotten, it's probably poor New Brunswick. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, PennySycamore said:

former Vice President Joe Biden is from Delaware though he was born in Scranton, PA (which is still not in New England).  It's also the home of Dupont, a lot of insurance companies, and the Murderkill River.  

When Biden served in Congress, he took the train back and forth to Capitol Hill.   I love that about him.  

 

Ha! Joe Biden is just a puppet of the Deep State Delaware Conspiracy! It's all fake!! Delaware is a lie!!! All photos and video of Delaware are doctored by NASA to conceal the TRUTH. Delaware is actually a government code name for the spaceship where all the lizard people make fluoride. Wake up, people!!!!!

For real though, I can still say I don't know anyone from Delaware because I've never met Joe Biden. Then again, I don't know anyone from Alaska either. Yet, for some reason, only Delaware feels fake to me. Weird how that works. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, Carm_88 said:

Poor New Brunswick, I swear it's more forgotten then PEI and PEI is much smaller. I learned in a quite frightening manner, a news segment at Memorial University, that there were far too many people who had no idea who the PM of Canada was during the last federal election. 

I feel that we don't have enough provinces and territories to forget any, there's only 13. If one is to be forgotten, it's probably poor New Brunswick. 

New Brunswick or Manitoba, for sure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, allthegoodnamesrgone said:

 

Filacciate porkchops and corn dogs on a stick must become a thread title somewhere on FJ

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • samurai_sarah locked this topic

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.



×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.