The Slaughtered Lamb

[sam]

I'm not even sure how you'd get an ottoman through the turnstile.

Must not have been an issue at the stations we were using. The turnstiles would've been something like this



rather than this



or god forbid, this.



Therefore, an easy up-n-over and Bob's your uncle. New Yorkers have certainly seen stranger things.

(click to show/hide)

OK, Gdańskers

I have carried the following:
• A solid wood door two miles home.
• A standard [for the UK] size fridge up a stepladder into our loft.
• A bookcase, hanging from my arm (I'm a rightie), cycling from an antique shop in the village.
• A bouquet of roses while hitchhiking from Chicago to Toledo.
• My Langster, freshly bought from Wild Side Cycles in Tunbridge Wells, slung over my shoulder down the hill to the station.
• You get the idea. I really should’ve explored a career as a mover.

The only reason I wasn’t carrying the ottoman empire was because I was carrying the chair.

A friend of mine bought a gas station in Jersey City back when it was unpopular

Ever since the great gas station buyback (roughly similar to Thatcher's council house right to buy), demand has exploded. The aspiring middle classes dream of oil rigs.


"Fixer upper"

I always thought it would be pretty cool to acquire, say, a train station, as someone did along the Cuckoo Trail in East Sussex.

(click to show/hide)

He's just your garden variety trainspotter.

Imagine how bad it would have been if Jersey People were allowed to handle gasoline directly.

I’m reminded of the line in the song: "In Jersey anything’s legal, as long as you don’t get caught." Which gets the Sopranos crew off the hook

If they're going to do anything that might pass for socialism, they're doing it with a grudge.

You can say that again! Bernie, Bernie, Bernie…

[ian]

It's the egg-slicer turnstiles. They terrify me. I could emerge in twenty even slices. I don't like turnstiles in general, they always look ready to take a piece of me and generally I like to keep all my pieces.

That said, I don't like the slammy door London ones either or any kind of groin-level guillotine that might promise blunt instrument circumcision.

[rogerzilla]

We used to have perspex scissor-style ones at work (remember going to work?).  They tried to bisect fully half the people in our team.  Nasty bruises.

There are swinging barriers now, which are a bit more user-friendly if they decide to snap shut.

[ian]

I always have to run. When the machines rise against us, entry barriers will be one of the first places they turn.

[FifeingEejit]

I think FI meant “the fortnight” as in a 2 week period.

By golly you’re rite. My eyes clearly rushed too fast through the sentence. It was the capitalisation that threw me. FifeingEejit, do you by any chance read The Week?

I’m aware of fortnights, but the very fact I misconstrued that illustrates how I continue to live without them. 

It puzzled our colleagues from Minnesota recently. But then they don’t even use knives to cut their food, it’s all forks and fingers.

My wife, who was born in one of those pesky Commonwealth countries invaded by Jim Reeves, and also spent time in the UK as a girl, does indeed sensibly use a knife for the purpose it was invented (as well as her fingers, for the same reason). I only use one when preparing food for cooking. I'd rather hack away with the edge of my fork, thank you.


Includes what's sure to be the new hit single I Left My Heart In Anuradhapura

PeteB99, I’ll have to get back to you. Beardy too, re: Jenny Agutter.

I did consider asking about the concept of the time being "the back of" but realized faster than David Hume facing the lears of his English colleagues (but not French) that it was a Scoticism and that most posters might be confused.

How did you live without the concept of a Fortnight?

Every two weeks, I'd remind myself and then line up for something. The odd thing about America is that most people think, because of the language, that it's just a bigger, brasher UK, the blundering oversized cousin that make a racket when you have the family around. But what can you do? Ironically, we have a lot more in common with our recently divorced European neighbours that the land across the ocean.

I'm aware that many of the language concepts that the English hate and call Americanisms, are nicked just like Halloween (Hiberno/Scottish).
Gotten for example.

[sam]

I'm aware that many of the language concepts that the English hate and call Americanisms, are nicked… Gotten for example.

You’d got me intrigued. The Stroppy Editor (Minding other people's language. A lot.) to the rescue.

"As every loyal British subject knows, American English is bad and wrong and stupid and a threat to our way of life. So I guess that makes me a traitor...."

'Got' and 'gotten' in British and American English

[sam]

(remember going to work?)

Another day at the office

I haven't gone out to work for a long time.



It would truly be a sartorial challenge.

Well, at least you managed trousers, sir.

Trouserless (don't worry, I'm decent) and definitely tieless, I'd just gotten to my desk two rooms over from the bedroom when a Boots receipt fluttered in from 9/01/2020.

As I was examining it I thought "Huh. I remember when I used to go to Boots," and "someone sure likes dental floss." That would be my wife, who now does all the shopping out in the world, the feeling being I'm at greater risk even despite her BAMEness (not her favourite acronym btw).

We haven't exactly placed me under house arrest. I still go for rides most days, and have actually met more new people this past year than years previous.


New acquaintance holding social distancer

News from my home state of Ohio is that curfew, timed to hinder night owls, could soon be lifted. The rules don't appear to be drastically different from here except they've actually been using the C-word – something I only heard as a child, but she experienced frequently in Sri Lanka during unstable times.

Anyway, I shall set this receipt on her desk, where it must've travelled from, taking care to weigh it down so the chompster doesn't get to it.


CORRECTION: I’ve just been informed that the receipt was for an electric toothbrush, not dental floss. I should've known this, as she sources it from across the pond, using me as a floss mule on my typically annual trips back. Fortunately a stash still remains from those halcyon days.

[sam]

...I don't like turnstiles in general, they always look ready to take a piece of me and generally I like to keep all my pieces. That said, I don't like the slammy door London ones either or any kind of groin-level guillotine that might promise blunt instrument circumcision.

Speaking of slammy doors, or in the case of the ones on my train into London more like slow crushing jaws, I miss the old rolling stock. On trial here now: the doors embracing the wheelchair accessible toilets.

I try to sit in that ample area, because bike, and often wind up being the talking toilet instruction manual. (Note that as an American well versed in the euphemisms, it took years for me to get comfortable saying "toilet" out loud. And yes, been there, done that.)


Spend a penny, sir?

First comes the uncertainty of how to open it, the big button not being an obvious clue for some. Then the slow unveiling of the seat of ease. Next comes the decision process of which button will set the doors in reverse motion. It will close on its own, but it must be locked or hilarity will ensue. Wait for the button to light up! This is a crucial bit of changed state information. Securing the portal is de rigueur unless one was born in a barn and has no notion of privacy.


You had one job.

The patrons are blameless. I do blame those responsible for the facilities. Good design, particularly in service of one’s basic needs, is the bare minimum requirement.


Like a cup of tea while you're in there?

[sam]

And speaking of bathrooms. From my "Everything is material" file:



Doesn't look so bad, right? Aside from the grout maybe needing a bit of clean, but that's not why we're here in my executive washroom today.

The problem started when I bought a shower cord last year which was slightly too short for the holster above. I must've thought they were all a standard size. Now it lives on that rack which always reminds me of an old-fashioned phone cradle.


"Hello? Can you dial up the water pressure please?"

After one complaint too many (admittedly most of them by me) that the cord kept getting in the way when the tap was used for other things, like bathing bunnies

(click to show/hide)

PETA photo of rabbit about to be given a new shower gel to test.
Seriously, don't bath bunnies.

I raided the bike cupboard and found a bungee cord which wasn't doing anything useful. Voilà!



Closeup showing fine detail of workmanship:

[ian]

Yes, those full-size loos on trains only at some point in their teenage years of development got a visual LOCK indicator. Before then it was a game of roulette as to whether it would do the slow reveal at the micturitional (or worse) mid-point. And tonight everyone, on the hot seat we have Jasmine from Reigate, so let's give her a big round of applause. The 'close' button is always strategically placed that's no way for any human who isn't configured as a stick-insect to reach without tearing their last vestige of modesty. It's rosy-faced shame all the way to Brighton. On the plus side, she could ask if anyone had a spare tissue. I figure it's all part of some psychological A/B experiment.

Slam doors had a certain reassurance. Technology can turn upon us at any time. I once nearly stepped off an electronic door train into the post-platform void at Brockley station, which Southern assured me couldn't happen, even though it had.

Of course, the US toilet. It's a land of strange toilets. The size disutility. If you're in a busy bar, there will be precisely one toilet, in a room the size of Liechtenstein. A small dentist's office? Three cubicles crammed into a broom cupboard. But what a cubicle, like atoms, comprised mostly of empty space. You know how a horse feels in the stable. Taking a shit, Jim? Nice trousers and love that jacket. Looking good Jim. Shame about the smell.

And finally, the American bath. A shallow elongated trough of no known bathing utility. Fully filled, a duck could touch the bottom with a brief extension of its leg.

[De Sisti]

For such a large country, why has the nfl only got 32 professional teams?
Is there a semi-professional/amatuer American football league?

[ian]

Good god, college sports. Horrifying!

[sam]

For such a large country, why has the nfl only got 32 professional teams?

32 is the smallest number n with exactly 7 solutions to the equation φ(x) = n. It is also the sum of the totient function for the first ten integers. Which is my way of saying I believe it's a maths problem.



I don't know a thing about the NFL, despite years of having it on in the background in the house because my father spectates from his bleacher in the living room; it turns out you can't always pick up knowledge through osmosis.

There have been 32 teams since the 2002 season, when the Houston Texans joined, it being felt that too many people knew that the state capital is liberal oasis Austin and this should be supressed. A *lot* of people watch football. I mean, what is considered over there to be football. That should do the trick, right?

This move had the side benefit of evening things up, as the clubs were then realigned into eight divisions, four teams in each, and four divisions in each conference. In creating the new divisions, the league tried to maintain the historical rivalries from the old alignment, while at the same time attempting to organize the teams geographically. At this point I'm just reading from Wikipedia, which while not infallible like the pope, can generally be trusted on matters of global importance.

You can continue where I'm leaving off here, under the heading Expansion and realignment. Scrolling down I see that the league "also introduced a new eight-year scheduling rotation designed so that all teams will play each other at least twice during those eight years, and play in every other team's stadium at least once."

It's all terribly complicated for my little brain, but it seems to me that it isn't as easy as adding more teams. Because history and maths.

Is there a semi-professional/amatuer American football league?

As ian has suggested, the college teams fulfill that role. This part of your question had the benefit of jogging my memory: there is a movie called Semi-Pro, a Will Ferrell vehicle that I'd never screened. It's on Netflix! Though I don't watch much sports (tennis on rare occasions, the Tour de France only when it's passing reasonably close by), I do enjoy it as filmic entertainment, e.g. Kingpin, Tin Cup, The Natural, Friday Night Lights, etc.


Clear eyes full hearts can't lose

Semi-Pro is in the Kingpin mould (it also stars 'White Men Can't Jump' Woody Harrelson), and attracted mostly negative reviews when it came out in 2008. Ducking any rotten tomatoes, I think it's hilarious.


Clicky

[ian]

College sports hadn't really impinged on my mind before I moved to the US*. I'd been the US before and had a conceptual understanding, but just not the epic size of the industry and that sports scholarships weren't just a thing to excuse jocks in 80s teen movies. It's all real and it's all a big deal (the university I worked had the winning basketball team, they went so mental they had to call out of the campus riot police – literally** – to quell the celebrations). Americans did struggle with the fact I wouldn't tell them much about the sports teams from my alma mater. I knew a girl on the fencing team once. Or so she claimed. She might just have liked stabbing people with any nearby sharp implement, it got worse the more she drank. Ow.

*it was basically a man plan. Follow the girl, figure out the rest. Anyway, the temporary trip turned into something more permanent while the girl turned into something temporary.

**if there's a more apt depiction of the militarization of US police forces, it's probably this. Then, as it is the US, and they were hitting rich white kids, they got sued a lot. Plus it was literally some drunk kids who set a mattress on fire. If they were called to respond to a Millwall post-defeat fracas, they'd use nuclear weapons.

[sam]

This following anecdote concerns my wife. I tire of calling her that here, yet would prefer not to use her name, so henceforth she may also go by 'TW'. This is an initialism of her own choosing. It stands for The Wife. Having spent nearly all her working life surrounded by men who often used that phrase, she's told me it doesn't bother her. I've never actually referred to her that way.


Our anniversary approacheth: decisions, decisions

When TW first alighted at the university in the States where I would later sweep her off her feet (details on application), she wasn't happy about one of the first things she saw: an armed policeman on campus as a matter of course. She tells me that the holstered gun hanging nonchalantly from his belt chilled her to the bone. Note that these were the days before mass shootings became commonplace.

Having grown up playing "guns" (I don’t recall if there were good guy/bad guys; we were all just armed & ready), I wouldn't have thought twice about it, but she had never seen a gun up close in her life. Somehow it didn't jibe with the ad copy in the brochure describing 1200 acres of peaceful campus. It's fair to say she doesn’t miss that part of American culture.


Mr. Justified

One of the childhood friends I used to shoot and companionably be shot by grew up to become a lawyer and a very firm guns rights advocate. He took full advantage of the fact that Ohio is an open carry state, even bringing it along when shopping in places like Walmart.

I hesitate to add that he was also extremely religious, and Republican, lest I hit a trifecta. In his defense, by all accounts he was a very decent man, serving with distinction as a guardian ad litem and mitigating the wild west image I've just painted by running a gun safety course so people would at least develop a healthy respect for the shooty end. If you noted the past tense, it's because one evening he was digging in his yard, hit a live wire, and died with his boots on.

[ian]

I suppose campus police being a thing is unusual for Brits, but the US have police for everything, presumably otherwise many film plots wouldn't make any sense. Don't be giving me any of that jurisdictional nonsense.

I did once write about my experiences with guns at a crawfish boil but the search fails me. As you slide down I-95 the east coast becomes more gun-toty, but given you'll end up in Florida, that's probably not unreasonable.

[Kim]

In the UK campus police means an office in the bowels of the Stupid Union building where they deploy PCSOs at the start of term to security-mark laptops and hand out bike locks and/or rape alarms.

Campus *security* are standard private rent-a-guard types, and can be found wandering campus responding to fire alarms, unconfirming reports of suspicious behaviour and interfering with miscellaneous student hijinks.

Neither are armed, or particularly intimidating.

[sam]

The next post is about TV, so I went looking for a commercial break and found this. Should I make it clear that’s satire? Guess I just did.

[sam]

The first episode of my tour of British TV was Minder. Up next: Only Fools and Horses.

This was chosen after I bailed on a request for ‘Allo ‘Allo! for technical reasons. The episodes on YouTube kept jumping backwards slightly, which was doing my head in.

It also didn’t help that the pilot, The British Are Coming, started thus: "Your wife is a wonderful cook, René. She makes rabbit taste like chicken." "That was chicken, Herr Colonel. Rabbit, as you will well know, does not have a wishbone." "Wishbone, ha. Good, we can make a wish!"

(click to show/hide)

"Don't mess with me."

I've only ever seen bits and pieces of Fools and Horses over the years, usually slumped on a friend's couch over the Christmas holiday, having laid claim to the bowl of mixed nuts. It helps that it's on Netflix, who keep jacking up the subscription fee, so I need to get my money's worth.


Notes from Big Brother, Season 1: Ep. 1

"Stick a pony in me pocket" – what does that mean? I don’t have to know to enjoy the opening credits showing street scenes, one of my favourite types of intro ever since The Streets of San Francisco, Hill Street Blues (which used an innovative cold open before taking the viewer on its weekly ride-along), and NYPD Blue. I’ve watched so many police procedurals I’m practically an honorary member of the force.

Is the cladding on that tower block safe?

Although I like things relatively tidy, I'm warmed by the cluttered sitting room showing Rodney on the couch, where I have spent so much of my life. There's a spare car tyre; it stands to reason they've got bicycles stashed somewhere.

First joke is Rodney arguing with Grandad over whether it's Sidney Potter or Poitier. "You know him. Always plays the black fella." I had an immediate flashback to Archie Bunker planted in his chair, though Archie is a lot harder to watch without earphones. Racial slur alert.

Del Boy’s punchline,



delivered while a topless calendar girl looks on, makes me wonder if John Logie Baird realised he was inventing a time machine. The live studio audience's laugher reminds me that I'm now used to comedies without laugh tracks, and don't want to go back.

Rodney is multitasking, keeping an ear on Grandad whilst keeping accounts, provoking Del Boy's ire: "You dozy little twonk." Detective Sipowicz never called anybody that, but I have a feeling he came close.

"You’ve been nothing but an embarrassment to me since the moment you was born!" Del is unhappy that his parents took 13 years between innings, landing him with unwanted babysitting gigs. "I had Ostermilk stains on my Ben Shermans!" Guess I'll have to look up Ostermilk now.


How many dads came home from the shop with otter's milk?

"For the first three months of her pregnancy you were treated as an ulcer. To this day I think the original diagnosis was correct." Some people think milk helps with that, but you're advised to use a proton pump inhibitor and a course of antibiotics to kill the heliocobacter pylori.

They discuss the advantages of a cash business, collecting VAT but not paying it, etc. Remember that Al Capone got done for taxes, boys. "The government don't give us nothing, so we don’t give them nothing!" Do we have any volunteers to examine the logic? I could be persuaded either way.

They head down the pub, where Joyce the barmaid is likeable but "a bit of an old dog."



How about a leopard? She's already halfway there.



More banter. Del to Rodney: "Society has placed you in the corner of its deepest cellar to grow moss, be forgotten about." Make me laugh again like we used to.

They meet Trigger, who looks like a horse thanks mainly due to the power of suggestion. Carrie Bradshaw, on the other hand, is a natural. Note that I'm sex blind when it comes to people who look like animals. Hell, I was a spitting image of a wookie back in the day.


That's not going to get you out of jury duty

Trigger proceeds to sell Del a load of "old English vinyl" executive suitcases at £8 per, haggled down from £17. Maybe could've stayed at £17 if they were rich Corinthian leather. Rodney overrides Del Boy's dodgy calculator, which apparently would've been enough to bamboozle Trigger. He should take lessons from Nugget.

£200 seems like an awful lot of money for the time.

There's a joke about mispronunciation.


Definitely non-U English

Back at home there’s a long setup with Grandad involving Emperor Burgers (whazzat?) and cheeseburgers which must be to flesh out the character, as there’s not much of a payoff.


Del Boy speaks for all of us

Love Grandad's surround-TV action.

There's a joke about Millwall winning the cup that goes over my head.

The crisis in this episode is that Rodney is feeling worthless. He needs a bigger percentage of Del's respect. We take another detour through oldie tyme humour as Rodney is reminded that even his love life isn't so hot, seeing as he had to drug Shanghi Lil to get his leg over. Her precise ethnicity was in dispute in the pub: "Chinese Japenese it's all the same to me." Paging Archie Bunker again.

Rodney tries his best to storm out, but it's hard when you're skint. It later transpires he's left home.

Del Boy does the rounds trying to flog the useless briefcases, which are rejects because the combinations are inside. He's got one of those three wheeled cars which always look a bit dodgy to me. I could google their safety record, but it would be nicer to hear from someone who's driven one.

Grandad's trying to play noughts on a talking chess board when he gets home, which makes me wonder when those first came out. It has been put in the scene for punchlines like "Illegal move."

The prodigal brother returns, having gotten no further than Stoke Newington, which my train used to pass through when I lived in Enfield. Never got off there, I wonder what it's like. Given London property prices, likely well beyond my means.

There's a happy ending.



Must remember to put Til Death Due Us Part in the queue.
Archie vs Alf

[sam]

Having grown up with winters that were proper Fahrenheit cold (one anachronism clinging to another) and usually featured a generous helping of the white stuff – even a bonafide blizzard one year –


Pretty much this

the snowfall in Far East Sussex is rarely anything to write home about. The ice is another story. Took a tumble the other day and have seriously considered strapping on a helmet when walking down our very long drive. (#NotAStealthBoast: it’s also a bridleway. And here we are without any horses.) There’s one in storage…



Sweating the details: I spent about the same amount of time photoshopping those straps onto that helmet as I would fiddling with real ones.

[TheLurker]

What they haven't told you about, "only Fools..." is that it's a documentary.  The laughter track is all the rich people laughing at the poor people desperately trying not to be poor.

[ian]

I mostly avoided TV as a child because I was peculiar and in need of high prescription glasses, so my TV experience was mostly gleaned from me walking through the living room and trying not to be noticed (although when they had the sonic remote controller, I'd wait till I got to the door and then clap, which would change the channel, and flee from threats to 'brain me'). My parents haven't turned off their TV for six decades, even when they get a new one, the old one has to stay on so they maintain continuity. I mostly remember being sent to beg, borrow, and steal fifty-pence pieces because we needed a constant supply of them for both the electricity meter and the Radio Rentals TV. I'm not sure if they actually rented radios, but they didn't trust you to pay up for the TV, so there was a box and timer on the back that demanded you feed it fifty-pence pieces. Much like Skynet will, the machines even then were organizing against us, you could bet that if you fed the TV, the electricity would go off five minutes later or if you fed the TV, the electricity would go off. Then I'd hear my name being hollered which was my cue for a laodicean grand tour of the neighbourhood or I'd have to heft a sack of small change to the shop to try and get them to change it. Given that everyone in the neighbour also needed fifty-pences, they were rarer than Spanish doubloons. I once brought back a ferret, indelicately clamped to my finger. Well, we've missed Coronation Street now. This bloody mustelid is down to my second knuckle. My parents pretty much viewed having ten figures as the possession of a large collection of spares.

I know this makes it sound like I grew up in the 30s, but it was the late 70s/early 80s. My dad didn't think twice about sticking up the Sun page 3 calendar on the kitchen wall. He would have used page three as wallpapers. Possible we did. To this day I can still reel off the names of page 3 beauties. Strewth Linda, it's too hot for a blouse. I don't get invited to a lot of parties these days. Tell me about your childhood, say middle class people as they eye the exits, it sounds so much fun. I bet Ken Loach doesn't have to put up with this shit.

I did see the musical version of OF&H the other year, back in pre-plague times when we were allowed to do things that didn't involve a screen and feel faintly furtive like you might have to provide your credit card details for another ten minutes. Weirdly, despite never having sat down and watched an entire episode, there's been enough cultural seep that I totally understood it. I can tell you the bloke in Minder had a big, beige coat. I couldn't tell you what he did. Was it minding? I did sneakily never miss Airwolf and The Professionals at my grand. Whenever I see a Ford Capri, you know what I do. And if you ask to ask you're either young or Professor Wows.

What is this topic about?

Oh yeah. Americans. Flying over to the UK* with an American colleague (the same one that was a victim of sour cream/salad creme confusion), he somehow ended up watching The Bill. He genuinely thought it was a documentary. I've never seen The Bill but I suspect it's neither a documentary or The Wire. I've never seen The Wire for that matter, but I own the entire box set so, you know, cred.

I did persuade an American friend of mine to watch the paedogeddon episode of Brass Eye and that was pure VFM.

*I move to the US, and where the fuck is the big conference for the organism I work on, the one that hops between continents, the year before in Australia, the year after in Singapore? Norwich, that's where.

[Mr Larrington]

Ah yes, wandering conferences.  “Where shall we have our next conference?” asked the Viking Society.

“How about Svalbard?” suggested one comedian.

And then they made it so.  In January.  Professor Larrington had just returned from three months in Captain Cook's Mistake, though she did manage a few days of chilly Oxford drizzle as a halfway house from the 40+ degrees it was when she left Sydney.

[sam]

I know this makes it sound like I grew up in the 30s, but it was the late 70s/early 80s.

Way back in the mists of the 20th century, that’s for sure. It sounds like we’re roughly contemporaries. I think that ferret needs explaining, and a full accounting of your spares would be welcome, if that's not breaching data security.

How not to annoy a ferret in 2 easy steps:


As long as we’re time travelling, were I to mention party lines, would people know what I’m talking about? Don’t everyone raise your hand at once. We only suffered that when I was still in the earliest of single digits. Certainly made gossip a lot easier: even expected, all the better to keep up with the Joneses. Now you need to be part of the security services, or have a warrant, or maybe buy something on Amazon which does the trick.

The first phone we had that stands out in my memory was big and it was pink. My mother brought it home as a surprise for the family, and boy were we surprised. We were expecting, I don’t know, black and office-like. The family gathered around the new device, mouths agape at the outrageousness of it. My sisters were delighted; my father and I, perhaps still in thrall of gender norms, less so.

I don’t remember when you were actually able to own your own phone, and if it was truly ours, or leased from Ma. That would be Ma Bell, the great matriarchy which ruled all things telephonic for many decades and was finally broken up in the early 80s, when anti-trust laws still had teeth.


"Watson, do we have Prince Albert in a can?"

Professor Larrington had just returned from three months in Captain Cook's Mistake...

Show me the way to go home

[FifeingEejit]

I suppose campus police being a thing is unusual for Brits, but the US have police for everything, presumably otherwise many film plots wouldn't make any sense. Don't be giving me any of that jurisdictional nonsense.

I did once write about my experiences with guns at a crawfish boil but the search fails me. As you slide down I-95 the east coast becomes more gun-toty, but given you'll end up in Florida, that's probably not unreasonable.

This reminds me:

Who copied who, the French or the Americans?