Tales of Home [3]

Maryland is east coast isnt it? Isnt baltimore a port city?

Yep. DC was split out from Maryland back in the 1790s so they're right next to each other. Baltimore is on the Chesapeake Bay though, so it's a port (still fairly big) but not directly on the ocean.

Another question- when the US navy was based here they were simply known locally as Yanks.
Now as far as I know Yanks were the southern states in the civil war (maybe  ) but is it now an offensive term to call Americans?
As because of my past associations with 'the yanks' growing up I tend to think of it as an endearing term.
But I have a vague drunken recollection of using the term on here once before ad upsetting someone, I think it was here, probably... 

The term Yankee is most often associated with the Northeast United States, especially New England.  During the Civil War it was applied to Northerners, so calling someone from the South a Yankee has the potential to go over about as well as calling a Scotshobbit English.

Internationally, of course, the term is more just a synonym for "American".  Just like we use "English" and "British" interchangeably.

Ah got the ends of the country mixed up!  

So you Yanks dont mind being called Yanks then?

Good, as my solution to the US being to big and having far to many states and places for a sensible country, is to divide it into Yanks and not Yanks. Nice and simple (especially now I know where the Yanks are!)

I was going to try to give a quick summary of the major regions of the United States, but I realized that it's too complicated (and too many people disagree on the boundaries) to sum up in a sentence or two.

I don't think it's all that complicated. The most confusing thing is probably that "mid west" and "middle America" mean about the same thing.

If you just put the labels with no boundaries then the boundaries remain properly amorphous.

Well I suppose it's more the boundaries thing.  On the East Coast you have the Northeast, the mid-Atlantic, and the South, and no one really agrees on where one ends and the other begins.  Some don't even think the mid-Atlantic exists at all.  It gets harder out west, I think.  You have the Pacific Coast, sure, and you have the southwest, but where does that leave Montana and the like?

And even with midwest, that includes (in a broader sense) both the corn belt and the rust belt, and I'm not sure how useful it is to combine those two.  Though of course the rust belt (like Appalachia) is one of those regions that transcends the strictly geographical distinctions because it is more cultural and doesn't fit neatly into distinct spatial areas.  But some people will lump Ohio into the Northeast for this reason.

If you want to keep it really simple though, you can split the country into the Northeast, the South, the Midwest, and the West and that covers the entire Lower 48.  Except for the boundary disagreements.

Edit: this Wikipedia page shows a number of different regional systems used just by the federal government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_of_the_United_States

Oh hell, Eldo, you make things too complicated.


Yanks are considered slick fast talkers due to the cities of New York, Boston and Philadelphia, yet also are associated with the quaint characteristics of the New England farmers.

Southerners are considered genteel, take their time in courtly conversation, and are considered intellectual throwbacks to an earlier age in terms of morals. The bible belt encompasses most of the south and edges into the southwest.

Florida has more gray hair than any other part of the country.

Middle America is the heartland, with consensus values but no ability to get within 20 feet of anything resembling pepper.

West has more to do with mountains than cowboys.

Southwest has heavy influence from mexico in it's culture and cuisine, and is the genesis of the cowboy culture that did stretch up into the west.

Pacific Northwest is the headquarters of grunge and pot growing.  Also known for the sea and coffee.

Californians usually said if you pick up the US from the east side and shake it, all the loose nuts and flakes roll down into California.  It is it's own region, mainly southern California; much of Northern California should be grouped with the Pacific Northwest.

So there you have it.

i like it ^^ i remember i made one of those of norway too

*googling to try and find it*

hey.. everyone should try and google forumshire on google images  just.. just do it. it's such a great summary of this place. lots of norway-pictures, odo manipulations, reindeers, Benedict and Notp and hobbit shit and well.. just do it.


edit: BWAHAHAH!! OMG !! I TOTALLY FORGOT I DID THIS!

Thankfully only one sample of Dave's Produce made it on there.  

lots of horses there though

Actually it's mainly Bandersmack Crumperdinck!  

yeha.. that too..

hey how did you do the Dwarflet photo?

halfwise wrote:Oh hell, Eldo, you make things too complicated.

Poor Maryland and the mid-Atlantic gets left out again.

All in all I do think that's a very good map, though. I think "Middle America" is a little too broad, but maybe that's just me.

Out here we tend to refer to everything east of Idaho and Nevada as "Back East Somewhere". Keeps it simple.

Mrs Figg wrote:hey how did you do the Dwarflet photo?

it was a facebook app.

This is probably how I would do the same for the U.K.



Key:

Red - London and South East (The U.K economy)
Purple - South (Fisherman)
Yellow - West Country (farmers and tractors)
Dark Blue - Norfolk and Suffolk (more farmers and tractors)
Dark Green - Midlands (not sure what they do)
Light Blue - Wales (sheep and hills)
Orange - Liverpool [scoucers] and Manchester [mancs] (thieves and benefits scroungers)
Light Green - Newcastle [Geordies] (drinking and fighting)
Pink - The North (miners and Scots)
Dark Red - Northern Ireland (terrorists)

Hey! That country in the south that looks like Australia! What!?  No worse than anywhere else, boyo!

Whoops! I think I accidentally edited when I thought I was quoting! Sorry Ringo.  

'low budget roads made by drunk, incompetent people who dont know trolls exist"  

Is the little heart where you live, Norc? I now understand your dominant phraseology: it looks fucking cold and there's just no other way to say it.

haha.. yeah.. that's where i live .. all the way up north.. a little island of ice and rock... a barrow, icy wasteland... and endless tundra..and reindeers.. lots of them..

I would like to make a formal crabbit complaint about the world map- Scotland doesnt get a mention- should at least have 'home of crabbit', or 'anything useful ever invented'