I see used traffic lights all the time in flea markets and not-so-much “antique” shops. They are huge, very heavy steel and generally $150-$250 bucks. Thought about installing one at the bottom of the driveway but then the delivery truck might never make it up the hill. And of course I would need to program it with sensors and a solar panel/battery combination for power. Would end up being $400-$500 real quick and might be target practice for the hunters.
Our driveway has a switchback at the county line. So it crosses the line twice within 150ft. The next useless project is to mount a couple 24" X 36" highway signs. When you come up the driveway the first sign will say “Entering Hampshire County” then only a half dozen car lengths later another will say “Entering Hardy County”. Haven’t decided if I will place similar signs going the other way.
Reminded me of this…we have one Chinese restaurant downtown ( town pop.under 10,000). On the sidewalk, going in one direction there is a sign that says Entering Chinatown…and after you pass the restaurant, a sign that says Leaving Chinatown.
I was downtown one day and I was using Yahoo! Weather which, of course, tells you which town you’re in. I kid you not, I wish I would have gotten a screenshot… It was listed as “The Gayborhood, PA.” Which is, of course, what that area of town is known as. Not as a knock, certainly, but as a matter of… understood local fact. It’s used by straight people, gay people, and everyone in between. I was meeting up with a few of my friends that night, many of which are gay, and showed them. And we all kind of had the same reaction… “It’s right! But it’s okay when we call it that, but it’s weird when Yahoo! does.”
It’s sort of like how all the best “Mexican” jokes were told to me by a green card carrying Mexican. The problem is because I’m not Mexican it’s politically incorrect for me to repeat them
Once I saw a video (I couldn’t find it) about a white male comedian talking about this, how hard it’s to be a white comedian, because usually Latinos can make black jokes or Asian jokes or vice versa but as a white male he can’t tell this kind of jokes because automatically he was racist.
I know as a Mexican some jokes can be very rude and mean but some are very funny not matter who tells them.
That is true about everyone. I’ve heard plenty of “white man” jokes that made me bust a gut as well as plenty that were just offensive. Truth be told, I think culturally we are loosing the ability to laugh at ourselves and that is causing far more pain in the long run.
FYI each of those jokes Pedro liked to tell began with an “Englishman, Frenchman, Mexican and Texan,” and ended with a “Remember the Alamo!” So you can guess how they went.
I think when we lose the ability to laugh at ourselves we become slaves to the stereotypes. When we are willing to acknowledge and mock our stereotypes we break the molds that try to bind us. – JMO.
So one day I made a “your mother” joke. There was a guy there I didn’t know well at all. And he said “Dude, that’s not funny. My Mom’s dead.” To which I said “Sorry your Mom’s dead. But you know that joke was funny.” He thought about it for a second… “Ya know, you’re actually right. It was really funny.” And laughed his ass off.
Think it really comes down to some folks being tone deaf.
A benign example: I play music with friends in the back hills of WV. I’m not originally from here, lived most of my life on the shores of the Chesapeake. Another “friend” who plays with us recently moved here from New Jersey. He constantly sends everyone Facebook Memes about hillbillies and rednecks. He’ll sit in on a jam and do the same. He thinks it’s funny, the locals laugh with him to keep peace, but most have talked to me about how he’s normally a nice guy but the stereotypes are something they have had to deal with all of their lives and it is demeaning. Telling everyone to just suck it up is easy when you are not the target of “good natured humor”.
Don’t get me wrong @rpegg, stereotyping can go to far and be hurtful, I’m not saying it can’t. And I’m not saying everyone just needs to buck up. But on the whole people’s tolerance, skin thickness, and ability to laugh at themselves seems to be diminishing. I’ve spent pretty much my whole life in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. I know redneck and have heard all the jokes. I would guess your “friend” from Jersey does it either because he has a rather juvenile sense of humor or, more likely, because he feels like an outsider and what he knows of rednecks comes from Jeff Foxworthy, which many rednecks love and quote themselves. Ok, maybe I am saying on the whole we do need to buck up just a little I don’t know, my Father taught me that if I was always willing to laugh at myself then all anybody else could do was laugh with me, not at me. And again, I’m talking about good natured humor (looking for the rediculous and ironic in life, not the mean sprinted approach of humor through destruction of others. )
I remember being about 10- 12 years old, and trying to tell my mom a blonde joke (which of course relied on a stereotype, and had nothing to do with hair color). She was slightly amused, but upset that I was stereotyping. She made a rule that I had to replace the word “blonde” or any “nationality” who was the butt of the joke to our own last name.
So “what did the blonde do when…” became "What did the (Last-Name-Here) Family Member do when…"
I think the idea was that if I found myself offended, I would realize how offensive it would be to others in my place, and to notice that so many of these jokes are essentially just calling a given group of people “stupid”. Instead she had unwittingly introduced me to self-deprecating humor, and the ability to offend any given group of people, not just the popularly besmirched.
I wouldn’t have really given it a second look. I mean really. It’s PA… Blue Ball and Intercourse top the list there. Also see: Jersey Shore, Mars, Pringle, Paint and just found this one Scalp Level.
They’re just a funny kind of people over the Delaware.
They used to publish Polish Joke books and Irish Joke books ( definately not politically correct now), but in the 70s you had more freedom of speech without worrying about offending someone. I am Polish and I love Polish jokes…
