[Closed] What's annoying you currently? II

If you wanna have a laugh at a right wing loony go to the FSM OT board and check out Eric Padden's Osama Bin Laden no RIP thread.

Yes I did, his kind of patriotism makes me feel queasy, I posted my own NP which was John Barry's AMERICANS which, I'll point out was purely coincidental.

p.s. I CAN'T STAND SOUSA MARCHES!

Screw them. Just come here alone, where we love each other and make love, not war.

Aw.
It was actually a rather fun jazz rendition of the Stars And Stripes Forever.

A small minority of thick-heads does not make FSM a bad place, HERE at MT is my home but I have to get "out and about" now and again

Thor, I think a lot of that has to do with how Europeans (in general) and Americans (in general) express patriotism. For a lot of Europeans like you and I and several others who post here, who grew up post WWII, and who still feel the effects of that, overt nationalism and patriotism is still associated with racism and xenophobia, and the lingering ghost of Nazism in Germany, fascism in Italy, the ultra-right wing nationalism that led to the breakup of Yugoslavia, etc. The USA doesn't have that - Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are the *ONLY* aggressive attacks on American soil by outside influences since the country declared independence in 1776, so the only thing they know is retaliation. They were never blitzed by the luftwaffe, they never had IRA bombs, they never had ETA bombs in Spain, they never had a city like Dresden flattened entirely, they never had massacres like Srebrenica so they don't have that legacy in their collective memory.

In England, at least until I left to come live in the USA, flying the Union Jack or the English St. George Cross on houses was generally considered a little weird, unless it was related to an international sporting event like the World Cup, or a matter of national civic celebration - the Last Night of the Proms, or last week's royal wedding for example. Seeing it at other times usually had skinhead/British Nazi Party connotations, and made people generally uncomfortable.

I'm not sure I agree with that sentiment; having pride in the achievements of your country and the good things your country does is a good thing, and I don't think people should be second-guessed or judged for flying their national flag. But in America it's VERY different. You see Stars and Stripes EVERYWHERE here, and overt displays of patriotism are very common, but I do find a lot of the "we're the best in the world" attitude very distateful. There's a song which plays on the radio from time to time here by a guy called Lee Greenwood with a chorus which goes:

"I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free/And I won't forget the men who died who gave that right to me/And I gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today/'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land/God Bless the U.S.A."

What I hate about this is that it seem to implicitly insinuate that no-one else is free, and that only Americans have a divine right to this as "God blesses the USA". I heard this song twice on my drive to work this morning, on two different stations. I changed the channel as soon as it started playing on one station, only for it to start playing on the other one 2 minutes later.

But, on the other hand, I just have to accept that this is simply how a lot of Americans think. They genuinely DO believe that theirs is the best system of government, the best country, the most just and fair and free society. Personally, I think it's impossible to quantify these things, but it is what it is.

I could agree with that analysis. I'd freak out though, when I hear such a song.

If the statements are true, it's a pity Gadaffi wasn't killed by accident yesterday, but instead his son and three grand children. Why does he get away with that?

Wasn't it one who wasn't into politics?

I think that Jon did explain the America point of view. He's able to view it having lived on both sides of the Atlantic.

Yeap, and Robert Mugabe is invited to the beautification of Pope Jean Paul II........or is that part of punishment?

Too early to tell for May yet. But April certainly was a drain. One bright light though is that I'm starting to get payment for various projects that I have been doing since I finished and I have a couple of invoices to put out also. It doesn't cover what I used to earn, but it's good to have something coming in as well as Anne's wage.

Though the money coming in from these projects is just sitting there at the moment. I need to speak to an accountant to see how best to use the money: things like whether it should just sit there and accumulate, should I be paying myself a salary out of it (probably minimum wage to start off with), etc.

Thor, you may want to start with the bottle of cognac and work your way back up your list?

Decided to slip in a "quick" backup of my hard drive and it has decided that all my music files are "newer". Grrrr! This is going to take ages and now I can't work...oh, wait a minute.

When I haven't even played the tracks or modified artwork, etc what is it that makes it newer? Does something like iTunes do some background think that is being picked up as a modification of the files' properties?

Oops!

I thought to try my son's phone which runs off the same network (T-Mobile) and it worked fine. Not the network then. My first, depressing, thought was that my phone had gone on the blink again. Then I thought to make sure that the SIM card was housed in its place properly. It wasn't obviously dislodged but giving it a bit of a push seems to have done the trick for now.

Luckily I didn't go back to the shop complaining.