I live in Maryland, named to honor the Queen consort Henrietta Maria (1609-1669), the wife of King Charles I, where the official state sport is...

Jousting!

This kind of jousting:

Not this kind of jousting:


It's our state sport...and I know absolutely no one who's ever done it or even gone to see it.
Last edited by emdot_ambient on Tue Jun 10, 2008 10:17 am; edited 2 times in total

do you get to keep the polo if you catch it?

Anyway, I thought polo had been irradicated with that vaccine.

**ahem**

The town I live in is Frederick, a town notable in history as the site of the (most likely ficticious) event that inspired the 1864 poem Barbara Frietchie by John Greenleaf Whittier. Winston Churchill recited the poem on his visit in 1943, and the Barbara Fritchie (that's how they spell it now) house is still preserved. I walk past it when I take my weekend constitutional strolls:

"Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country's flag," she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;
The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman's deed and word;
"Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on!" he said.

Like I said, the story's most likely a crock of shite (the Confederate troops marching through Frederick didn't pass her house, but rather came no closer than 1,000 feet from her door).

So...that's an interesting (or not) rumor, not fact.
Last edited by emdot_ambient on Tue Jun 10, 2008 10:33 am; edited 1 time in total

I think I've had a very bad influence on you

I don't know. I feel fine.

Houston "Firsts"

* "Houston" was the first word Astronaut Neil Armstrong spoke when he landed on the moon.
* It's home to the first major freeway in Texas.
* America's first public television station is located here.

I'm from Trondheim. There's a graffiti carving on this cathedral from about 1150 or something that says that 'Bishop Eystein likes little boys'. Nothing's new in the catholic church, in other words...

Apparantly Houston is first in people who can't cook, too:

"Houstonians eat out more than residents of any other city. Houston has more than 11,000 restaurants."

Slough. Birthplace of the worlds finest apple - the Cox's Orange Pippin.





Are we still allowed to write Cox's?

I've always wanted to go there and see the Trondheim Hammer Dance.

I'm close by in Hagerstown. I saw jousting as kid....was part of an elementary school field trip I believe. Can't remember where it was though.

Mmmm...scrumpy! (or is that an eating apple only? [edit] Oh, I see it's mainly a dessert apple)

You come from a poem town, too (I'm sure your townsfolk love this guy...not):

Slough by John Betjeman (1906 - 1984)

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

Yeah. Betjeman was a talentless c**t. A snobbish doggerel merchant of the worst f**king kind. The first stanza gets repeated by lazy journalists every time Slough is in the news. Ironically, it's the only reason the talentless c**t is remembered at all.

A few years back there was a slim volume of poems produced by the people of Slough in response. The only one I remember went:-

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough
And save a f**king great big one for the trading estate.


Except of course it didn't have ay f**king asterisks in it. The readers were considered grown up enough to take the word f**king in it's shocking entirety.

i live in a shitty suburb of chicago, about as close to the indiana border (10-15 min)...just some average illinois prairie land european immigrants stole from the indigenous people in the 1800's, they had small farms and homes...now i'm just part of the honkey minority...

You lie, that picture is of Rochdale Town Hall.