[extropy-chat] Blog spam

Mike Lorrey mlorrey at yahoo.com
Fri Sep 30 17:03:18 UTC 2005



--- "J. Andrew Rogers" <andrew at ceruleansystems.com> wrote:

> On 9/28/05 11:09 PM, "Alejandro Dubrovsky" <alito at organicrobot.com>
> wrote:
> > Still no idea
> > about Rayner.
> 
> 
> It is a much beloved and long lost commercial reference.
> 
> The part that is probably throwing you is that spike wrote it out
> like it sounded as most people were exposed to it, not as it was
> actually spelled.  Hence the Google problem.
> 
> 
> One of the problems with this is that it exposes the extent to which
> the US
> is very much a collection of different cultures and economies (i.e.
> States).
> It is difficult to come up with things that are both universally
> recognizable to all Americans *and* not recognizable by foreigners
> who have been immersed in Americana. There are a lot of immensely
> popular regional
> phenomena that other Americans in different regions of the country
> would not recognize.  The troubling #8 is an example of this.

Well, I recognised it, but I've spent time in that area of the country.
Surprised Spike would come up with it. Funny, a proficient foreign
googler would even know pretty quickly that an offer of a "dick burger"
was not a proposition for fallatio, "dances with clams" would not refer
to a lesbian disco, that "rocky mountain oysters" were not seafood,
that a "Seattle tuxedo" is a clean flannel shirt, that the "rainbow
warrior" Chief Seattle quote is fake, "gooey ducks" are not waterfowl,
a town spelled Puyallup is not where all the cars crash or where the
dump is, "Point No Point" isn't much of one, "Hood Canal" isn't one, or
that the Tacoma Aroma isn't as bad as it used to be.

One of the problems of course is that the US is generally an
extroverted society, and being highly internetted, documents itself
extensively. The old esoteric/exoteric cultural dividing line is
becoming less so just as regional accents are dying out.

Of course, a lot of these facts are of recent cultural provenance.
Still, many could easily find out that the term "skid row" originated
in the 19th century in Seattle's Yesler Way, which once was the home of
a massive wood skid to run logs from the Capitol Hill ridgeline down to
the harbor for shipment.

> 
> It is easy to think of the United States as one country, but it is
> really an
> amalgam of 50 different countries with widely varying cultures,
> histories, and local conditions.

Quite so. Of course here in the northeast, triple deckers do not refer
to sandwiches, card games, sailing ships, tall buses, or boxing rules.
"Bang a Louie" doesnt refer to assaulting someone, while "hucking a
louie" doesn't mean to throw Lou off anything. Of course, everybody
knows "ya cain't git theyah from heyah". Fewer know its "hahd tellin,
not knowin", or "cut a pig in the ass", "...like shit through a tin
horn!", "milk her for what she gives", and of course, a "clickah"
controls your tv, while a "flickah" is a type of bird, a "bubblah" is a
public drinking fountain.

Now, Spike, I'm surprised you haven't mentioned that Utahans use
"fetch" instead of "fuck", and say "oh my heck!".

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
Founder, Constitution Park Foundation:
http://constitutionpark.blogspot.com
Personal/political blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
__________________________________ 
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 
http://mail.yahoo.com



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list