Stereotypes From Many Lands!
Well, Ed called me last week (of course, by the time I get this up, I am sure it will be much longer ago than that but who cares) and I forget what it was we were talking about, but he was saying something about what some Jewish friend of his said and I responded with,
"well, it doesn't matter, because she's going to Hell anyway, 'cos she's Jewish."
Of course I was JOKING but Ed did not realise this- - - he has heard, or I have told him that I am religious- and of course we are from the South- so he thought I was serious.
Ed did visit us when we were having the renovations done and although I have told him that yes, the bath is complete, with jetted tub and skylights and marble and all, and I put up pictures on my blog, I honestly don't think he believes me and still thinks that we have water coming out of an unadorned pipe in the shower and blow on light bulbs to get them to go out. I think he thinks that, deep down, when no one is looking, we eat possum stew and play "Turkey in the Straw" on banjos and try to get "Harry Potter" books banned from libraries.
Wait, true confession: we went to a monster truck thing once, which- it was more entertaining than you would think, and it was inexpensive. There were a lot of South Africans there. I have not seen so many white people in one place at once until I went to the Annie Lennox concert.
Either he doesn't know that people in the South are not still living like they did in "Deliverance" or refuses to believe this because it is more suited to his world view of being all sophisticated in Manhattan or whatever.
I am honestly astonished at this- Like my aunt came down from Michigan in '87 to interview for Medical School and when I said "y'all" she exclaimed, "That's the first Southernism I've heard that boy say!" So apparently she had the whole possum stew/Deliverance thing in her head- this was Atlanta in '87. O and when I went to Emory- eeek, was it THAT long ago- I would tell the students (of course, Emory students are remarkably dumb) that Stone Mountain was a cool place to go, especially at night. "Oh, they would say, isn't that where the Ku Klux Klan is? Aren't you afraid?" And I'm like, no, dumbass, that was a long time ago. I'm sure in Long Island 25 years ago they wouldn't let Negros move in either.
This stereotype of the South as some kind of racist backwater, Darwin's waiting room, a place where the gene pool started out as kiddie-shallow and got peed in- continues for no obviously good reason. Well, I can come up with stereotypes of my own; but that would be a lot of work so I will just write down everything I know about different states and let you come up with your own stereotypes.
Let's start with - - ooh, Hawai'i. There's an apostrophe in there somewhere. Anyway, Hawa'ii is closer to Japan than it is to the U.S. People there traditionally ate something called poi, which I believe is made from taro root, which is second only to yucca for sheer nastiness, or- having heard of what happened to the Red Indians on this continent, gave it to the visiting missionaries to make them go away. The visiting missionaries did not go away, because they feared being sent somewhere worse. Several of them got together and divided the land amongst themselves so that up until at least the mid 1970's, you could buy the building that stood on land, but only lease the land the building stood on. I think something happened in the mid '70's to break up the cartel. I do not believe that people wear leis and hula dance and play the ukelele. Pearl Harbour is in Haw'aii, and at least one awful movie has been made about it.
Alaska is cold, and I have seen a movie about Alaska; It was very serious and German and about some imbecile who believes he is a bear and goes and lives with the bears every summer for longer than you would think necessary to rid him of this idiotic delusion. Somehow along the way he manages to get a girlfriend- I thought girls had better sense- and he messes with the bears until one of them gets fed up and eats them both. Alaska is supposedly enormous, there are cruises and mosquitoes there and you can take a cruise there to go see whales and the mosquitoes. And there used to be gold there, and Jack London wrote about this. Now there is oil there.
Moving south: Washington State has Seattle, which is famous for being rainy, Starbucks, Microsoft, and "grunge rock," which is emo for men too poor to afford eyeliner and good clothes and so they have to wear fugly flannel shirts. This makes the men angry and they shout a lot above music that sounds like industrial accidents. "Grunge Rock" was made famous by the late Kurt Cobain who was also famous. His unlate and unlamented widow, Courtney Love, is still not famous despite her best efforts at bad behaviour because unlike him or Britney Spears she is not pretty enough for anyone to pay much attention to her antics. Notice that I have not said that any of these people were talented. I think there are a lot of hippie-type people in Washington State. A lady named Betty MacDonald lived in Washington on a chicken farm and hated it, although she said the food was good.
Oregon: I don't know anything about Oregon, except there is a lot of nature there, like redwood trees maybe? And that kind of fruit I buy for putting in beer- the can says Oregon on it.
The capital of California is Sacramento, which no one cares about. San Francisco has a bridge, and used to be famous for gays except now they're pretty much everywhere. Los Angeles STILL makes movies starring Robin Williams, which is why God is always sending California things like mudslides and earthquakes and fires and Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi. Houses are very expensive in California, even the ones that are on fire. California has a place called the Silicon Valley, named for a computer chip that causes people to have accents which are funny for about 5 minutes but then makes you want to kill them, which is another reason God does not like California. California has outlawed smoking cigarettes in a whole bunch of places, but you can legally smoke pot, as long as you have a doctor's note. This would account for a lot of the Christmas movies that you see that are supposed to be "heartwarming" or whatever and feature grown adults falling off roofs while stringing Christmas lights. Or movies like The Game Plan.
Arizona: is technically part of New Mexico.
New Mexico: is actually part of the U.S. although I bet you can fool some people into thinking it's a foreign country. Try it at the next party you go to! Be like, yeah, I spent a summer as an exchange student in New Mexico. It was a really eye-opening experience.
There are Red Indians here, because the U.S. government was looking for a place so awful and desolate they would NEVER want to go there, so they put the Red Indians here, and in Oklahoma. They would have put them in Utah but the Mormons were already there. If you go to New Mexico, be prepared to hear a lot about the Anasazi, which means ancient ones, people who built high rises out of mud inside cliffs and disappeared because they of a combination of a lack of good building codes and rents got too high.
There is a lot of desert here, and par consequent, a lot of German and Japanese tourists. There are a lot of rock formations for the German and Japanese tourists to take pictures of, and signs and Red Indians drinking Aqua Net.
Well, we did not actually SEE the Red Indians drinking Aqua Net during the day when we went there; but there were an awful lot of Aqua Net cans around, and unless the German and Japanese tourists drink Aqua Net, or there were hidden hordes of Republican Women with hairdos that could be mistaken for weather balloons, the Red Indians were drinking the Aqua Net.
In one of these states you can visit a road sign which says, "this stretch of highway sponsored by Enchanted Women's Club." A U.F.O is supposed to have crashed here.
Nevada is north of one of these states, and is famous for Las Vegas and Reno and desert and Hoover Dam and I don't know what else. I have never been there. You can gamble in Las Vegas, which is appealing to the sort of people who are fascinated by laundromats and like putting money into machines to no apparent avail. London Bridge was allegedly taken apart brick by brick and reconstructed on Lake Havasu? The Brits were apparently desperate for foreign exchange. I have no idea when this happened, or honestly, whether to believe it.
Idaho I think is north of Nevada, and it is famous (right now) for being the state Larry Craig is from. I have been to Idaho; it used to be primarily famous for potatoes, which are nutritious and delicious provided you slather a whole lot of fat (butter, sour cream, cheese) and salt on them, or deep fry them.
Ted Turner owns large tracts of Montana, or used to, no one cares about this state enough to take it away from him, not even Jane Fonda.
Utah is up there somewhere, I have been there. It is full of Mormons, and is called the "beehive" state, although when we were there in '96, I did not see a single beehive hairdo. Mormons were kicked out of Missouri in the 1840's for having a bunch of wives at once and then went to settle on the edge- well- at a fair distance upwind- from the Great Salt Lake. This is because the lake stinks to high heaven like a dumpster full of rotting garbage. Or this could be a trick played by the Mormons to keep people away. The Great Salt Lake has round sand. I think Donny and Marie Osmond are Mormons? Mormons are kinda creepy in that pod -people way; they are all clean and freshly scrubbed like department store mannequins come to life, and they all look the same. They seem like ideal tenants or employees maybe but you wouldn't want anyone in your family to marry one.
I have never been to Wyoming and never intend to go there. Dick Cheney is supposed to be from Wyoming. I can't think of a single other thing to say about Wyoming.
Colorado is next to Utah and is famous for Jen and skiing. Skiing is one of those white-powder related activities which serve as signals to tell you you have too much money and too little sense. I mean, you spend thousands of dollars to get there, hotel, rental car, unbelievably expensive equipment- to go out in the cold snow- go hurtling down a mountain strapped to expensive fiberglass sticks at the not insignificant risk of life and limb- and then go up in the air on a spindly looking chair lift to HAVE to do it again?
I think almost everyone I know who has gone skiing has hurt themselves, quite often grievously. They probably deserve it.
Texas is a big state, or people keep saying that, sure, why not? But just because you get a whole pile of something doesn't mean that it is good. A lot of Texas (at least the part we saw) is flat, dry, scrubland and unattractive, and then there are the nasty border towns, so -. Dubya and Laura are from Texas, Midland to be precise. I have been there. There is an oil museum; to see the oil museum, you have to go fetch the proprietor from some adjacent "business" like a petrol station or hotel or something. A lot of Texas that we went through had that abandoned "Twilight Zone" feeling.
North of Texas is Oklahoma, shaped like a hand pointing westward which is to say, get the hell on! In Oklahoma, there are piles of something called "chat" which contain lead and there are expensive research projects funded by the NIH to prevent children from playing in the "chat;" apparently ordinary toys are not sufficient for the demanding tykes of Oklahoma. We own a car built in Oklahoma City, and I seem to recall something about tunnels underneath the city?
Oh and there is a place in Oklahoma called, improbably, Oologah, which has banned employers from hiring undocumented Mexicans. But there aren't any Mexicans in Oologah anyhow, because having come from a place where many words are spelt Huixaticangoctol, or something like that, they have all headed for places that are easier to pronounce.
Then there are a whole bunch of Midwestern states which are basically the same for anyone who lives in a town where "Chinese restaurant" does not equate to violently red glop over rice. States like Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Indiana, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Based on the movie "Fargo," I can confidently tell you that a lot of these people have comical accents. Based on the movie "the Wizard of Oz," I can also tell you that the people there seem to be stunningly lame-brained, if Dorothy was a fair example; why wouldn't you want to stay in the Emerald City and be princess or Queen or whatever instead of going back to dusty Kansas with tornadoes and farm life and old hags who want to kill your dog?
Also I have "cousins" in a place called Ypsilanti, Michigan, (no Mexicans there either) and they, including my aunt and uncle, are very very fat, so I am thinking a lot of Midwesterners are like that. This view was not dispelled at all by the time I had a layover in Missouri.
I am sure the people who live there are very nice and all and these states are very important; but I prefer to think of them as being like the neighbour who seemed perfectly nice and never bothered anyone until she went and axe-murdered nineteen people in a fit of pique.
I have been to Arkansas, although I can't remember why, I do remember that at the welcome centre there was a prominent display on lynching. Yes! Really! Welcome to Arkansas, also home of former President Bill Clinton, in accordance with Megan's law the aforementioned is also a sex offender!
Ohio is too rust-belty to be considered part of the flat, bland midwest; Ohio contains a place called Cleveland, famous for people not wanting to go there. Cleveland, I understand, boasts some sort of sports franchise called, menacingly, the "Browns."
States which are not technically states:
Washington DC, which re-elected Marion Barry after he got convicted for crack cocaine possession and was shown lighting up on tape. In a city full of politicians, you REALLY can't do any better?
Guam is owned by the United States, I think, but is infested by some kind of tree snake, so you KNOW I'm not going there.
Puerto Rico is owned by the United States. I have met a lot of Puerto Rican women, well, actually three, and they were all very scary like hyper aggressive drag queens. They have that thing. Why is that?
Canada keeps claiming it's a separate country but no one really believes them. They have their own flag, and all. Quebec is different as in they speak French and eat french fries with Gravy and cheese on them, called "poutine." Large cars that you think are made in America are actually made in Canada, most often in Ontario, because of CAFE or something. So Chevy Impalas and Chrysler's LX series are all made in Ontario.
"well, it doesn't matter, because she's going to Hell anyway, 'cos she's Jewish."
Of course I was JOKING but Ed did not realise this- - - he has heard, or I have told him that I am religious- and of course we are from the South- so he thought I was serious.
Ed did visit us when we were having the renovations done and although I have told him that yes, the bath is complete, with jetted tub and skylights and marble and all, and I put up pictures on my blog, I honestly don't think he believes me and still thinks that we have water coming out of an unadorned pipe in the shower and blow on light bulbs to get them to go out. I think he thinks that, deep down, when no one is looking, we eat possum stew and play "Turkey in the Straw" on banjos and try to get "Harry Potter" books banned from libraries.
Wait, true confession: we went to a monster truck thing once, which- it was more entertaining than you would think, and it was inexpensive. There were a lot of South Africans there. I have not seen so many white people in one place at once until I went to the Annie Lennox concert.
Either he doesn't know that people in the South are not still living like they did in "Deliverance" or refuses to believe this because it is more suited to his world view of being all sophisticated in Manhattan or whatever.
I am honestly astonished at this- Like my aunt came down from Michigan in '87 to interview for Medical School and when I said "y'all" she exclaimed, "That's the first Southernism I've heard that boy say!" So apparently she had the whole possum stew/Deliverance thing in her head- this was Atlanta in '87. O and when I went to Emory- eeek, was it THAT long ago- I would tell the students (of course, Emory students are remarkably dumb) that Stone Mountain was a cool place to go, especially at night. "Oh, they would say, isn't that where the Ku Klux Klan is? Aren't you afraid?" And I'm like, no, dumbass, that was a long time ago. I'm sure in Long Island 25 years ago they wouldn't let Negros move in either.
This stereotype of the South as some kind of racist backwater, Darwin's waiting room, a place where the gene pool started out as kiddie-shallow and got peed in- continues for no obviously good reason. Well, I can come up with stereotypes of my own; but that would be a lot of work so I will just write down everything I know about different states and let you come up with your own stereotypes.
Let's start with - - ooh, Hawai'i. There's an apostrophe in there somewhere. Anyway, Hawa'ii is closer to Japan than it is to the U.S. People there traditionally ate something called poi, which I believe is made from taro root, which is second only to yucca for sheer nastiness, or- having heard of what happened to the Red Indians on this continent, gave it to the visiting missionaries to make them go away. The visiting missionaries did not go away, because they feared being sent somewhere worse. Several of them got together and divided the land amongst themselves so that up until at least the mid 1970's, you could buy the building that stood on land, but only lease the land the building stood on. I think something happened in the mid '70's to break up the cartel. I do not believe that people wear leis and hula dance and play the ukelele. Pearl Harbour is in Haw'aii, and at least one awful movie has been made about it.
Alaska is cold, and I have seen a movie about Alaska; It was very serious and German and about some imbecile who believes he is a bear and goes and lives with the bears every summer for longer than you would think necessary to rid him of this idiotic delusion. Somehow along the way he manages to get a girlfriend- I thought girls had better sense- and he messes with the bears until one of them gets fed up and eats them both. Alaska is supposedly enormous, there are cruises and mosquitoes there and you can take a cruise there to go see whales and the mosquitoes. And there used to be gold there, and Jack London wrote about this. Now there is oil there.
Moving south: Washington State has Seattle, which is famous for being rainy, Starbucks, Microsoft, and "grunge rock," which is emo for men too poor to afford eyeliner and good clothes and so they have to wear fugly flannel shirts. This makes the men angry and they shout a lot above music that sounds like industrial accidents. "Grunge Rock" was made famous by the late Kurt Cobain who was also famous. His unlate and unlamented widow, Courtney Love, is still not famous despite her best efforts at bad behaviour because unlike him or Britney Spears she is not pretty enough for anyone to pay much attention to her antics. Notice that I have not said that any of these people were talented. I think there are a lot of hippie-type people in Washington State. A lady named Betty MacDonald lived in Washington on a chicken farm and hated it, although she said the food was good.
Oregon: I don't know anything about Oregon, except there is a lot of nature there, like redwood trees maybe? And that kind of fruit I buy for putting in beer- the can says Oregon on it.
The capital of California is Sacramento, which no one cares about. San Francisco has a bridge, and used to be famous for gays except now they're pretty much everywhere. Los Angeles STILL makes movies starring Robin Williams, which is why God is always sending California things like mudslides and earthquakes and fires and Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi. Houses are very expensive in California, even the ones that are on fire. California has a place called the Silicon Valley, named for a computer chip that causes people to have accents which are funny for about 5 minutes but then makes you want to kill them, which is another reason God does not like California. California has outlawed smoking cigarettes in a whole bunch of places, but you can legally smoke pot, as long as you have a doctor's note. This would account for a lot of the Christmas movies that you see that are supposed to be "heartwarming" or whatever and feature grown adults falling off roofs while stringing Christmas lights. Or movies like The Game Plan.
Arizona: is technically part of New Mexico.
New Mexico: is actually part of the U.S. although I bet you can fool some people into thinking it's a foreign country. Try it at the next party you go to! Be like, yeah, I spent a summer as an exchange student in New Mexico. It was a really eye-opening experience.
There are Red Indians here, because the U.S. government was looking for a place so awful and desolate they would NEVER want to go there, so they put the Red Indians here, and in Oklahoma. They would have put them in Utah but the Mormons were already there. If you go to New Mexico, be prepared to hear a lot about the Anasazi, which means ancient ones, people who built high rises out of mud inside cliffs and disappeared because they of a combination of a lack of good building codes and rents got too high.
There is a lot of desert here, and par consequent, a lot of German and Japanese tourists. There are a lot of rock formations for the German and Japanese tourists to take pictures of, and signs and Red Indians drinking Aqua Net.
Well, we did not actually SEE the Red Indians drinking Aqua Net during the day when we went there; but there were an awful lot of Aqua Net cans around, and unless the German and Japanese tourists drink Aqua Net, or there were hidden hordes of Republican Women with hairdos that could be mistaken for weather balloons, the Red Indians were drinking the Aqua Net.
In one of these states you can visit a road sign which says, "this stretch of highway sponsored by Enchanted Women's Club." A U.F.O is supposed to have crashed here.
Nevada is north of one of these states, and is famous for Las Vegas and Reno and desert and Hoover Dam and I don't know what else. I have never been there. You can gamble in Las Vegas, which is appealing to the sort of people who are fascinated by laundromats and like putting money into machines to no apparent avail. London Bridge was allegedly taken apart brick by brick and reconstructed on Lake Havasu? The Brits were apparently desperate for foreign exchange. I have no idea when this happened, or honestly, whether to believe it.
Idaho I think is north of Nevada, and it is famous (right now) for being the state Larry Craig is from. I have been to Idaho; it used to be primarily famous for potatoes, which are nutritious and delicious provided you slather a whole lot of fat (butter, sour cream, cheese) and salt on them, or deep fry them.
Ted Turner owns large tracts of Montana, or used to, no one cares about this state enough to take it away from him, not even Jane Fonda.
Utah is up there somewhere, I have been there. It is full of Mormons, and is called the "beehive" state, although when we were there in '96, I did not see a single beehive hairdo. Mormons were kicked out of Missouri in the 1840's for having a bunch of wives at once and then went to settle on the edge- well- at a fair distance upwind- from the Great Salt Lake. This is because the lake stinks to high heaven like a dumpster full of rotting garbage. Or this could be a trick played by the Mormons to keep people away. The Great Salt Lake has round sand. I think Donny and Marie Osmond are Mormons? Mormons are kinda creepy in that pod -people way; they are all clean and freshly scrubbed like department store mannequins come to life, and they all look the same. They seem like ideal tenants or employees maybe but you wouldn't want anyone in your family to marry one.
I have never been to Wyoming and never intend to go there. Dick Cheney is supposed to be from Wyoming. I can't think of a single other thing to say about Wyoming.
Colorado is next to Utah and is famous for Jen and skiing. Skiing is one of those white-powder related activities which serve as signals to tell you you have too much money and too little sense. I mean, you spend thousands of dollars to get there, hotel, rental car, unbelievably expensive equipment- to go out in the cold snow- go hurtling down a mountain strapped to expensive fiberglass sticks at the not insignificant risk of life and limb- and then go up in the air on a spindly looking chair lift to HAVE to do it again?
I think almost everyone I know who has gone skiing has hurt themselves, quite often grievously. They probably deserve it.
Texas is a big state, or people keep saying that, sure, why not? But just because you get a whole pile of something doesn't mean that it is good. A lot of Texas (at least the part we saw) is flat, dry, scrubland and unattractive, and then there are the nasty border towns, so -. Dubya and Laura are from Texas, Midland to be precise. I have been there. There is an oil museum; to see the oil museum, you have to go fetch the proprietor from some adjacent "business" like a petrol station or hotel or something. A lot of Texas that we went through had that abandoned "Twilight Zone" feeling.
North of Texas is Oklahoma, shaped like a hand pointing westward which is to say, get the hell on! In Oklahoma, there are piles of something called "chat" which contain lead and there are expensive research projects funded by the NIH to prevent children from playing in the "chat;" apparently ordinary toys are not sufficient for the demanding tykes of Oklahoma. We own a car built in Oklahoma City, and I seem to recall something about tunnels underneath the city?
Oh and there is a place in Oklahoma called, improbably, Oologah, which has banned employers from hiring undocumented Mexicans. But there aren't any Mexicans in Oologah anyhow, because having come from a place where many words are spelt Huixaticangoctol, or something like that, they have all headed for places that are easier to pronounce.
Then there are a whole bunch of Midwestern states which are basically the same for anyone who lives in a town where "Chinese restaurant" does not equate to violently red glop over rice. States like Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Indiana, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Based on the movie "Fargo," I can confidently tell you that a lot of these people have comical accents. Based on the movie "the Wizard of Oz," I can also tell you that the people there seem to be stunningly lame-brained, if Dorothy was a fair example; why wouldn't you want to stay in the Emerald City and be princess or Queen or whatever instead of going back to dusty Kansas with tornadoes and farm life and old hags who want to kill your dog?
Also I have "cousins" in a place called Ypsilanti, Michigan, (no Mexicans there either) and they, including my aunt and uncle, are very very fat, so I am thinking a lot of Midwesterners are like that. This view was not dispelled at all by the time I had a layover in Missouri.
I am sure the people who live there are very nice and all and these states are very important; but I prefer to think of them as being like the neighbour who seemed perfectly nice and never bothered anyone until she went and axe-murdered nineteen people in a fit of pique.
I have been to Arkansas, although I can't remember why, I do remember that at the welcome centre there was a prominent display on lynching. Yes! Really! Welcome to Arkansas, also home of former President Bill Clinton, in accordance with Megan's law the aforementioned is also a sex offender!
Ohio is too rust-belty to be considered part of the flat, bland midwest; Ohio contains a place called Cleveland, famous for people not wanting to go there. Cleveland, I understand, boasts some sort of sports franchise called, menacingly, the "Browns."
States which are not technically states:
Washington DC, which re-elected Marion Barry after he got convicted for crack cocaine possession and was shown lighting up on tape. In a city full of politicians, you REALLY can't do any better?
Guam is owned by the United States, I think, but is infested by some kind of tree snake, so you KNOW I'm not going there.
Puerto Rico is owned by the United States. I have met a lot of Puerto Rican women, well, actually three, and they were all very scary like hyper aggressive drag queens. They have that thing. Why is that?
Canada keeps claiming it's a separate country but no one really believes them. They have their own flag, and all. Quebec is different as in they speak French and eat french fries with Gravy and cheese on them, called "poutine." Large cars that you think are made in America are actually made in Canada, most often in Ontario, because of CAFE or something. So Chevy Impalas and Chrysler's LX series are all made in Ontario.
posted by SavageATL at 6:37 PM
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