ITT: Central Avenue offends every American person

Princess Alice

*walks in in an American flag dress, carrying a bag full of Big Macs*

Howdy, y'all! Let's write the date with the month first while remaining oblivious to the fact that that makes no sense! Isn't football a great sport? But not "football" like what the rest of the world calls football, but an unrelated sport that largely involves handling the ball with your hands! I sure do love how when it comes to making positive changes like marriage equality, we have to do it state-by-state instead of the whole country at once! That's not a terrible system at all! #secondamendment #dontmesswithtexas

Obā-san

Let's write the date with the month first while remaining oblivious to the fact that that makes no sense!

i still don't get why people care about this at all

Anonus

Because Europe is ALWAYS better

Obā-san

Anonus said:

Because Europe is ALWAYS better

well yeah duh i mean they have new york and everything

Imipolex G

WALMART

Tachyon

seems more barbed than the brit thread somehow

Obā-san

well yeah america is much more loathsome because we don't have awesome politicians like in other parts of the world

thatcher.png

Obā-san

now im wondering

who is worse, Reagan or Thatcher?

Tachyon

true, you must be envious of Nigel Farage

and George Osborne, what a legend

Obā-san

or was rather as they are both dead now

Princess Alice

Yon Assassin said:

Let's write the date with the month first while remaining oblivious to the fact that that makes no sense!

i still don't get why people care about this at all

days < months < years

i don't care if you write them in order of smallest to largest or largest to smallest, but going back and forth like that is idiotic

it wouldn't be a big deal except it's the perfect example of how people are stubborn even when their way of doing things is inferior

Tachyon said:

seems more barbed than the brit thread somehow

yeah, i tried to avoid turning it into a rant, but i failed

Tachyon

Yon Assassin said:

now im wondering

who is worse, Reagan or Thatcher?

i don't know as much about Reagan, but people don't seem to loathe him with the intensity that Thatcher is hated

Obā-san

INFERIOR

Calica

it's in order of how much they matter

months matter the most because they relate to seasons, then the day matters for day-to-day stuff but not quite as much as things that matter, and then the year doesn't matter at all

whereas in any other system, the most important data point is nestled in the middle.

Yarrun XIX

Yon Assassin said:

now im wondering

who is worse, Reagan or Thatcher?

Doesn't matter.

Let's make 'em kiss.

Obā-san

Yarrun XIX said:

Yon Assassin said:

now im wondering

who is worse, Reagan or Thatcher?

Doesn't matter.

Let's make 'em kiss.

wait wait wait

now i need to find erotic Thatcher/Reagan fanfic

Calica

Yon Assassin said:

Yarrun XIX said:

Yon Assassin said:

now im wondering

who is worse, Reagan or Thatcher?

Doesn't matter.

Let's make 'em kiss.

wait wait wait

now i need to find erotic Thatcher/Reagan fanfic

music video for genesis's "land of confusion"

Tachyon

Lilly said:

it's in order of how much they matter

months matter the most because they relate to seasons, then the day matters for day-to-day stuff but not quite as much as things that matter, and then the year doesn't matter at all

whereas in any other system, the most important data point is nestled in the middle.

Is that right?  It sounds like rationalizing an idiosyncratic system to me.

I do kind of wish we had an international standard so that I wouldn't keep getting tripped up when I parse dates in the wrong order.

glennmagusharvey

sometimes when i drive to Washington National Airport, which is not named Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, i flip off the statue of Ronald Reagan right before the entrance to Terminal B's departures level

Obā-san

it just seems kinda weird to me to have "writing the date out funny" on par with "marriage equality decided on a state-by-state basis"

and tbh i don't even see what the big deal is about that second one, we'll all be getting it fairly soon.

Obā-san

glennmagusharvey said:

sometimes when i drive to Washington National Airport, which is not named Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, i flip off the statue of Ronald Reagan right before the entrance to Terminal B's departures level

why u linking to tvtropes tho

Odradek

xxxxxx

You met the Iron Lady in 1981, on the day riots broke out in Brixton. Ten minutes of tea and biscuits, perched on an overstuffed chair in a floral-print room, letting Crouch do all the talking - and it was the single best moment of your life. You still remember the way her hand felt in yours when you shook it, so light it was almost weightless, thin fingers laying limply in line with your own. You knew then as you know now, that those hands could take the life out of someone much larger and physically stronger than her. That contradiction fascinated you.

She wasn't beautiful, just a bland sort of pretty, but her eyes were vicious and she had lines around her mouth that were screaming blatant evidence of her power and stature, her ruthlessness. Permed hair propping up party lines and bomb shelter signs, pearl necklace like a choke cord.

And didn't you wish that you could be like her.

xxx

You work with Dumbledore like you think she would. Him and his would-be-Labour politics, his long hair and his goddamned earnestness. His weak socialism. It's nothing that a sweet smile and a back-hand deal or two can't solve.

(But sometimes...)

Words and actions that seem honourable coming from Maggie's lips and fingers just seem petty in yours. You know that this has something to do with levels of power: the fact that she could set fire to whole countries at a time, and all you can do is make children afraid.

Still, you don't even pretend not to enjoy it when they cringe.

xxx

You still carry around a battered copy of the 1983 Conservative Manifesto and a pearl necklace, broken in two places. And the quill, the quill you made for her, that moves something deep inside you (in the places you long since consigned to history) with every drop of blood that is spilled. You learned this first-hand, in front of a child, and you're lucky that your face doesn't quite remember the right expressions; that lust comes out as a sickly-sweet smile and love is a snarl, and that resentment is just part of the job description.

And rarely, very rarely, on those nights when your smile is wilting and the voice that comes out of your mouth isn't quite yours, you find the quill in your hand and the nib on paper, writing over and over: I will not be weak. I will not be weak. I will not be weak.

There is borrowed iron in the blood that wells.

xxxxxx the end, etc xxx

Calica

it's probably wrong, tbh, but apparently it was actually traditional in the uk too

Princess Alice

Yon Assassin said:

it just seems kinda weird to me to have "writing the date out funny" on par with "marriage equality decided on a state-by-state basis"

That was supposed to be the joke

I started out with minor shit and worked my way up to serious shit

I guess I failed at this particular attempt at humor

and tbh i don't even see what the big deal is about that second one, we'll all be getting it fairly soon.

I just sorta consider this "important laws are left up to the states" thing to be a flaw of the way this country's government functions

Marriage equality was the first example that came to mind, but it could be anything...marijuana, death penalty, I dunno

Calica

Yon Assassin said:

it just seems kinda weird to me to have "writing the date out funny" on par with "marriage equality decided on a state-by-state basis"

and tbh i don't even see what the big deal is about that second one, we'll all be getting it fairly soon.

frankly, the "laboratory of democracy" is the main reason we have it anywhere, or a cap-and-trade system anywhere, or a lot of things anywhere.  a fully centralized system would mean that, for instance, Vermont's attempt to go to a single-payer system would be dead on arrival.

Obā-san

i think the degree of centralization we have is fairly close to ideal given the size of the country.

^ A very good point!

Calica

and Canada wouldn't have it either but for their federal system, since it started as a province-wide thing

Princess Alice

I dunno, I just don't understand how we as a nation are supposed to make any positive change when individual states are given the power to dig their feet in and say "nuh-uh!"

Morven

But under a unified system that one state might be enough to make EVERYONE not get it.  And that would suck even worse.

Calica

Central Avenue said:

I dunno, I just don't understand how we as a nation are supposed to make any positive change when individual states are given the power to dig their feet in and say "nuh-uh!"

you know that gay marriage is gonna go up against the supreme court probably next year, and it's gonna get torn down, right?

Calica

Like, at this point, I'd say the biggest challenge for the LGBT movement is really getting ENDA passed, which won't happen until Democrats take the house, which means lol gerrymandering lol.

glennmagusharvey

Yon Assassin said:

glennmagusharvey said:

sometimes when i drive to Washington National Airport, which is not named Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, i flip off the statue of Ronald Reagan right before the entrance to Terminal B's departures level

why u linking to tvtropes tho

i just needed some way to indicate that i'm not delusional but simply don't like the name.

Obā-san

try emphasising the not

like bold or italics

we're smart enough to get what you mean

Calica

Morven said:

But under a unified system that one state might be enough to make EVERYONE not get it.  And that would suck even worse.

One of the things that people who study the history of these things commonly attribute the massive surge in public acceptance of gay marriage to is the fact that Massachusetts had it in 2004 and nothing went wrong, which basically destroyed the argument against it and let to it getting passed in more states and more people realizing that nothing was going to go wrong.

Princess Alice

Morven said:

But under a unified system that one state might be enough to make EVERYONE not get it.  And that would suck even worse.

Well obviously a system where the people in one state have enough political power to overrule the rest of the nation is a flawed one

Ideally the power would be distributed evenly enough by population that the only way to block something like that would be if a majority of the people disapprove of it

I mean, that's the point of having a democracy, right?

Calica

Central Avenue said:

Morven said:

But under a unified system that one state might be enough to make EVERYONE not get it.  And that would suck even worse.

Well obviously a system where the people in one state have enough political power to overrule the rest of the nation is a flawed one

Ideally the power would be distributed evenly enough by population that the only way to block something like that would be if a majority of the people disapprove of it

I mean, that's the point of having a democracy, right?

In 2004, the majority of people disapproved of gay marriage.

Calica

Lilly said:

In 2004, the majority of people disapproved of gay marriage.

Don't feel bad for not remembering; pretty much everyone seems to have forgotten.

Princess Alice

Lilly said:

In 2004, the majority of people disapproved of gay marriage.

And that's ok

My way would take longer to get everyone on board, sure, but it would ultimately be better because once you do have a majority, everyone would get to benefit from the change at once instead of rolling it out state-by-state

Tachyon

Yon Assassin said:

i think the degree of centralization we have is fairly close to ideal given the size of the country.

This makes a lot of sense to me.

glennmagusharvey said:

i just needed some way to indicate that i'm not delusional but simply don't like the name.

Not that there's any reason you shouldn't link TVT, but it was perfectly obvious what you meant.

Princess Alice

I'm not sure how gradually introducing a positive change state-by-state over the course of 20 years or so is preferable to arguing it on a national level for 20 years and then implementing it all at once

Tachyon

Central Avenue said:

Lilly said:

In 2004, the majority of people disapproved of gay marriage.

And that's ok

My way would take longer to get everyone on board, sure, but it would ultimately be better because once you do have a majority, everyone would get to benefit from the change at once instead of rolling it out state-by-state

Why is that better? I can see how the present system could lead to administrative issues (marriages recognized in some states but not others), but aside from that, I'm not sure what's gained from making people wait in cases where the majority in their state is all for it because Texas isn't on board.

Morven

Because it lets the less conservative parts of the country show everyone else that no scary consequences happen.

Calica

Central Avenue said:

I'm not sure how gradually introducing a positive change state-by-state over the course of 20 years or so is preferable to arguing it on a national level for 20 years and then implementing it all at once

to the people who live in states where it was introduced they get to enjoy up to twenty years of enjoying the change

glennmagusharvey

consider me doing it just in case some douchebag comes along from elsewhere on the internets and tries to use this quote out of context to paint me as a delusional liberal or something

Calica

glennmagusharvey said:

consider me doing it just in case some douchebag comes along from elsewhere on the internets and tries to use this quote out of context to paint me as a delusional liberal or something

now they'll just be able to paint you as a troper

which is probably worse, really

glennmagusharvey

...






fug

Obā-san

I DONT WANNA BE A TROPERIAN IDIOT

(*shitty pop-punk riff*)

Tachyon

what is wrong with that riff

glennmagusharvey

blah blah blah everyone's right to free speech and a roof over their head and human rights and medical care blah blah blah

blah blah blah taxes on the wealthy good blah blah blah government-sponsored services better than the private sector blah blah blah

Obā-san

i dont like green dayyyyy

Princess Alice

Thing is, barring SCOTUS intervention, what we're going to end up with 5 years or so down the line is that every state is on board with gay marriage except Texas and Arizona

Whereas, if we argued it on a national level, once we had a majority of the country on board, we could force those more conservative areas to get with the program

I'm extremely uncomfortable with the idea that allowing conservative-leaning states to continue to be 1950s-era embarrassments is acceptable