Stories of a short, fat bastard.

LOL... cept Cirque du Soleil is Canadian *grins*

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Yep, from Malibu, California, Canada, and Las Vegas, Nevada, Canada. ];-)

And operating too in Dallas, Canada; Washington, Canada; New York, Canada; and Philadelphia, Canada.

Oh, and Madrid, new home of al-Ansar, and Toronto which is somewhere else. ];-)

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Concieved, Created, Trained, near .. Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. ..
Head Office.... Montreal, Quebec, Canada....

http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/CirqueDuSoleil/en/company/behind/history.htm

I win! Þ

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And "reinvented", as they say, in California -- where I have driven past their headquarters daily for the past few weeks. Now, a reinvention might get the patent rights, who knows? But of course, one may as well argue that Panama hats aren't from Panama. ];-)

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A Canadian Sauvigion Blanc... imported and served in a fine LA bistro... is still a Canadian Sauvigion Blanc

*grins*

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and grown and bottled in LA? ];-)

You know, I'm pulling your leg a bit -- but CdS does indeed have a large operation here near Malibu.

But I'm sure they all speak French, and none of them say "Dude!". ];-)

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Oh I do know.... when they first accepted the offer of a permanent home at Circus Circus Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas... many Canadians (including for a moment myself....) were kinda.... "ouch sell outs!!", but it was a logical desision to have a permanent training camp, and performance venue to test new material, that would be year round, and paid.

*grins* Disney is still Disney, even in Paris.
And Cirque du Soliel no less wonderful for sharing it with the rest of the world. In fact I'm told that because of the nature of the Casino venue, they're able to do a much more erotic and adult show than their regular tour is. That would be something I would love to see..... the regular show is so incredibly sexy :)

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Disney in Paris! Oho!

Okay, a music post. But it is memory, not original material.

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hafoc.livejournal.com

I give a fuck, for one.

The idea of the whole world toeing the American line, no matter which of the recent series of incompetent buffoons happens to be ruling in Washington... the idea of nothing but American fast food in all the great capitals of the World... the idea of nothing but American television, movies, and music, pasturized megacorporation style... makes me feel unutterably weary and sad.

And by the way, I'm American.

I think I need to go get drunk now. I don't know WHY I should get drunk exactly.. just why this little comment of yours made me feel like such a pile of dogshit, when I'm not even the President from Exxon or the Senator from McDonalds, when nobody I know is either of those things.. but I think I need to go get drunk.

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I didn't want to make you feel that way, but I think you feel like that for the same reason I feel like that when the Australian Government talks about its policy on Refugees. Sorry... "Illegal Immigrants."

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hafoc.livejournal.com

I know you didn't, especially when you made that point that the world doesn't hate America. Although certainly enough people do; sometimes we earn that hate, sometimes we don't. Gods help us, we're on top of Things As They Are just now, and that means anybody who wants Things As They Could Be sees us as the perfect symbol of what they hate.

Did you know that in the 60s, in one African nation, they attacked the American Embassy because of BAD WEATHER? S'truth. That shows rather touching faith in American power, but as the guy said at his own lynching, all the attention is flattering but I'd just as soon decline the honor.

I think your comment drove me to the bottle (it's a very good bottle by the way) because of the political spew you pointed to. That is how you see us now. And I don't even have the luxury of saying that isn't us. It isn't, actually; that spew you pointed to is just the gibberings of a bunch of dung-flinging monkeys on the extreme right. Problem being that even though most of the people in the country are like me, somewhere in the middle, those dung-flinging monkeys are going to end up running the country again. And if it's not them, it will be the dung-flinging monkeys on the left, who are every bit as screechy, every bit as brainless, every bit guilty of the ultimate intellectual crime: Allowing your preconceptions to blind you to any fact you don't want to acknowledge.

These two bunches of shit-flinging extremists have, between them, got the whole political system sewn up. Anybody with a brain or a sense of decency gets shouted down. There's nobody for the people in the middle to vote for. Worse, THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO TO STOP IT. And THAT, and the fact that this is how you see my country, and the fact that the ugly image might as well be true, since the effect is going to be as if it WERE true, is why I'm getting drunk. Rapidly.

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Extreme Left/Extreme Right. Liberal/Labor. New Labour/Tories. Democrats/Republicans. Coke/Pepsi. Macdonalds/Burger King.

Different labels, same product.

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hopeforyou.livejournal.com

Time for some Oporto chook and a bottle of Bundy.

I've had enough, too. Can't we form the Sensible Party?

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targaff.livejournal.com

The thing that drives me nuts about the sort of person posting on that thing is that they genuinely think jealousy and envy are the driving forces behind the hatred and alleged "lack of understanding" from other countries, when really it's the refusal to try and understand where other people are coming from - precisely the same lack of understanding that causes someone to write something as ignorant as that piece - that causes others to hate.

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hawkeye7.livejournal.com

i heard that there were many young Americans (backpackers and the like) who would put a maple-leaf emblem on their backpacks and pretend to be Canadian. some were ashamed of how America looks to the rest of the world, and others were just afraid of being badly treated by those who hate Americans. and apparently there are still a fair number of my fellow citizens pretending to be Canadians.

This is true. I've met them in many countries. Never in Australia though. I remember challenging some and they gave all the reasons you say. My response was: "What are you going to do about it when you get home?"

I think that you can do a lot more that just vote for The Other Guy (although actually voting at all is a start).

American TV is not crowding out ours just because of quantity. It is an economic thing. What causes bitching here is that they would rather not watch American shows. American shows are sold overseas for much less than they cost to make. This makes it hard for local productions to compete so most countries enforce quotas on non-local product in consequence.

The US, as you probably know all too well, has the lowest quantity of foreign product on the air in the world, although it was encouraging to see that the BBC finally wrangled their way onto cable in the US and you are getting more British shows. How about lobbying for more foreign TV in the US? It might help educate your countrymen about the rest of the world.

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jenny_evergreen

Unless they were from the upper north of the US (i.e. near the border), I can't imagine they'd be able to fool anyone for a second once they opened their mouths. Such an attempt at impersonation would never occur to me. (I'm from the Midwest. I do not in any way sound Canadian.)

In my house, when I watch TV, about 80% of the time, it's BBC America. Before that, we had PBS, which tends to air British stuff.

In addition to voting, we can write our senators, but that's about it, and that's generally viewed (with good reason) as largely an exercise in futility, little more than a gesture at best.

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jenny_evergreen

Good point.

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A friend of mine moved from Paris to Montreal last year. I asked her if there was much of a difference between the two versions of French. She said it was like listening to Australians speak English.

I suppose that's good.

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hawkeye7.livejournal.com

When I was in the US last (last year), it seemed that everybody was watching BBC America. For some reason, nobody seems to trust Fox anymore... PBS had British stuff I admit but more is getting through now.

In Russia I caught a couple of Americans pretending to be Australians. In Greece, we swapped packs with a group of Canadians and they pretended to be Australians while we pretended to be Canadians. I assure you that you sound much more Canadian than we do. None of the locals could tell...

(I just wish our stupid flag didn't have the British flag on it.)

As for what can be done, let me give you a big hint. It is not the actions of the American government that create resentment around the world anywhere near as much much as the actions of American people.

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That's a bit harsh.

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jenny_evergreen

I do the best I can with my actions (though I can't afford to travel, so any impression I can make is of the virtual sort.) I can't control (though sometimes I wish I could) the actions of other people who live in the USA.

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That's what you get for reading articles written by Nationalists.

Though our current administration is run by Nationalists, the majority of the United States citizenry is not. Not at this moment, anyway. Sure, we've been hearing much more from them lately, but that's not because there are more of them. It's because Nationalists thrive on international conflict, and love nothing more than to add fuel to the fire by (for example) denigrating the deaths of 15,000 people.

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You know, I had this conversation before with BattyDen. The author is not denigrating the deaths of the 55 thousand people (the actual number; it's about 15,000 more than "average"). Instead, he is lamenting the French government's attitude toward it.

Indeed, I've seen many articles about that incident that call for the French ministers involved to resign. The author seemed to get that right.

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From the article:

Or how about france, where 15,000 people die simply because the sun stays out a little longer than usual and the civil servants can't be arsed to get back from the beaches in time to help?

Sounds to me to be both denigrating the deaths ("simply because the sun stays out a little longer than usual") and lamenting the government's attitude towards it ("the civil servants can't be arsed to get back from the beaches in time to help").

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That civil service attitude toward it is exactly what the French new services were saying.

The deaths are peculiar in the sense that it gets much hotter near where I am than it did in France. And Las Vegas regularly hits 115. Also, France's purported death toll from the heat wave was many times higher than all of the rest of Europe combined. It IS hard to explain.

But it is clear that he has the same unhappiness with the civil servants that many others actually in the country do.

An attitude common in France is not fairly attributable as a mean-spirited attack by this US resident.

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All true.

But it doesn't alter the fact that "simply because the sun stays out a little longer than usual" is a pretty mean-spirited way of describing the situation.

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It may not be "fuzzy" -- and in fact is not even likely to be accurate in this case. But it was clear from the sentence that his annoyance was directed at the French government officials.

That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Perhaps he can stand accused of using speech not sufficiently "sensitive". I think that's fair -- but at the same time, the responses to it that misunderstood the intent look like they have exactly the same problem in my mind.

Not that either is evil -- but I approached this by reading about what happened in France in some detail. As I understood the background and the fact that he shares the affected population's own take on the matter, I understood the fellow's comment. The "outraged" attacks on him were not, ah, sensitive to this. ];-)

Now, I cannot say that it IS the French government's fault! In fact, I'd expect that this is largely unfair -- after all, they expected 40,000 people to die under "normal" circumstances. But I am intrigued at France's very peculiar results compared to its immediate neighbors, and wonder also at the manipulation of statistics I have seen in the various stories about it.

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*looks around*

Who are you talking to? I wasn't outraged, nor did I attack the author. I classified him as a Nationalist and that particular statement as denigrating.

And I still agree with you that the author is also lamenting the behavior of the French government. That's quite clear, once you pointed it out to me. But it doesn't alter my perception of the phrase "Or how about france, where 15,000 people die simply because the sun stays out a little longer."

Am I missing your point?

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It is hard to explain why the death rate in France jumped up so very much because of the increase in temperatures -- so very much more from neighboring countries with similar weather and populations.

I think that "the sun stays out a little longer" is not accurate, of course -- it is the same sort of trite response that "global warming" would be. It was an unusual weather pattern. But why a nearly 40% increase in the death rate?

And incidentally, how would you phrase it?

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How would I have phrased it? Well, if I were concentrating on criticising the French goverment, I would have written something like "Or how about France, where the civil servants can't be arsed to get back from the beaches to help their own people who are dying in a heat wave?"

If I were going to try and call attention to a reported death increase incongruous with that of neighboring countries, I would have said, "Or how about France, a country whose government reported 40% increase in deaths due to a heatwave, an increase that neighboring countries suffering the same heat didn't share." I sincerely doubt the author was trying to make that point, however, because nowhere does he mention it.

That phrase ("simply because the sun stays out a little longer than usual") is nothing but denigrating and mean-spirited. But that's not surprising; Nationalists often characterize the people of other nations as weak or their governments incompetent. In this case, the author was doing both because it fit the rhetorical question ("Why would anyone want to take orders from the French?") he was posing.

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So the French that agree with him are Nationalists? That sounds bad. ];-)

And the Europeans that express the same attitude toward the US are Nationalists?

What about Americans who express the opinion that Americans are weak and their government incompetent? I've heard that quite a bit recently, but "Nationalists" seems inappropriate for that sort of thing.

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Nationalism as a philosophy means exalting one's nation, and promoting its culture or interests above all others.

Bearing that definition in mind, your first and third questions are clearly absurd (which is why I defined Nationalism; those questions indicated to me that you don't know what it meant).

The answer to your second question is "maybe." It would depend on the context.

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