The Fiesta of Five Flags
In fairness I should mention that Pensacola’s Fiesta of Five Flags has also started. Next year marks the 450th anniversary of the first attempt by the Spanish to settle in the area that has become the US. That attempt was interrupted by a hurricane, which is why St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied city [founded by Europeans] in the US.
They still use the wrong flags, but they have gotten better. I did notice that they use the wrong British flag at their Fiesta site, but the correct one on the city’s flag poles. At least Earl Bowden got them to use the proper flag for the Confederate year.
35 comments
(Ahem…) Here in Texas, we have one more flag than that… 😈
Well, Pensacola is a bit too far to the east to be included in the Republic of West Florida or they could have matched you.
Actually, the Florida Troops initially used the Republic of Texas naval ensign until they got their “stunning” pink-bordered flag made.
yeah, well, i downsized when i moved to florida. 🙂
It took me a minute to figure out you were responding to the Relief thread. 😉
I imagine part of the problem is simply finding the proper flag. Granted, all these flags are custom-made, but they’re made from a template or pattern, and how many French naval flags will you find in a typical flag catalog? Meaning you’d need to fork over beaucoup dollars for a custom pattern to be created. Awe geez, it’s just a flag and the rubes won’t notice it’s the wrong one, eh?!
Actually, thanks to the large influx of Asians following the “unpleasantness” in Southeast Asia, custom embroidery is the least of the many problems this area has.
It’s not quite as prevalent as it was outside the gate to Kadena AB on Okinawa, but a French naval flag could be had in a day.
If you didn’t mind a printed/screened version two days at any of the tourist T-shirt places, but the nylon embroidered versions are much nicer and the computerizes places already make a similar flag for the New Orleans Saints fans.
The Spanish flag is the tougher, if you want the period correct. They keep changing the coat of arms and the placement on the flag, as well as the color of the lion.
that too is true, but i really was responding to steve’s # of flags remark, since i’m originally from his part of the world [everything really is bigger there].
[Time to insult Texas]- No, really, Hipparchia, but there is so little worth seeing, that is seems that way. [rimshot, and hide as Steve just arrived according to Feedjit].
😛
Errrrm… well, Texas (well, Austin) being the only part of the USA myself and my two companions had any trouble in (and we didn’t start in any way), I would like to address the comment you made hipparchia… ‘[everything really is bigger there]’ I agree that many material things are bigger, and the stetsons are bigger, and the ego’s are most definitely bigger, and the BS is bigger… but I found that the brains were generally smaller in proportion to the size of the stetson and ego. 🙂 I guess it’s natures way of finding balance! LOL Ahem… no offense to anyone, just saying what I saw in my brief and troubled stay there. I must say, that other parts of Texas I saw were an improvement. 🙂
I can also comment that the bragging rights don’t hold water as 3 Aussies cleaned up a bar of 14 ‘big stetsons’ with no problems. 😉 Mind you… we had received intensive training over a couple years and had survived Cambodia, so it was hardly a fair fight, and we did try to warn them, which just made it worse apparently. *shrug* LOL
So, shoot me! 😀
bang!
[although i’m deadlier with a pool cue]
That’s funny! LOL No… really! PMSL
Sorry h (I really am! And NOT laughing at you). It’s just that that’s almost verbatim what one of the ‘big stetsons’ said as he grabbed a pool cue to try to scare us off! LOL
Aussies don’t scare, and a cue is no match for an accurately and forcefully propelled chair! 😉
And… I did say that other parts of Texas were OK, even almost normal! 😉 LOL
Actually, in all honesty… I found NYC at night to be a much scarier and dangerous place! We were actually warned NOT to go out alone after 10PM, or, if we did, to try to look crazier than everyone else and we’d be OK! *shaking head* Reminded me of parts of Sydney! LOL
The most dangerous major city I think I visited was Sao Paulo (Brazil)! Very high crime and death rate there against visitors, even higher than Washington DC (which takes some beating!)
What a World.
go ahead and laugh, bub. you’re safely out of range. 😀
texas?! normal?! are we talking about the same place?
you must have been in nyc back in the bad old days. or at least not in manhattan. i was there just a couple of years ago, carousing with friends till all hours, and walked everywhere, alone or with with some of my buddies. never had a problem. but then, i wasn’t in queens so there is that.
back before dc wrested the title of ‘most murderous city’ away from it, atlanta was probably the most dangerous u.s. city i’ve been in. and i was in philadelphia not too long ago, its nickname being ‘killadelphia’ at present. i drove around all parts of town; parts f it did make me glad i was in a car. overall i think i’d rather brave the mean streets of most of our cities, rather than take the chance of stumbling over somebody’s booby-trapped cash crop out in the woods.
i did once get caught in the middle of some kind of riot/uprising somehwere in mexico, and got swept away from the group i was with by the general force of the mob. they were an angry bunch, and there were lots of them, and they were yelling and waving their signs and banners and placards around with great abandon. that’s probably the scaredest i’ve been, but they were an otherwise orderly mob.
i’ve been told that too, about looking crazier than everybody else. seems to be working for me so far. 😉
LOL I did say ‘almost normal’ 😉 😀
And yeah… NYC was early 80’s, and was somewhere on the edge of Queens (Glendale I think). We were also warned not to let the cab driver put our luggage in the trunk at JFK, or if we did, not to pay until it was offloaded! If they didn’t like the size of the tip, they would drive off with the luggage! LOL Also warned to make damned sure we knew how to get to the destination, or we would go the long, expensive, route! 😉 Basically… we were warned ‘NOT to be tourists!’ LOL
After Queens, we had to take a flight from La Guardia to LA (The less said about that the better), spent time in San Fran (and discovered that if you made jokes about New Yorkers in bar’s there, they loved you and would buy drinks to keep you going, ESPECIALLY when they found out I was an Aussie!) LOL And BTW… what is it with New Yorkers making words sound like they are 10 times longer than they are?? Like Coke! Simple… c-o-k-e, coke! Not in NY! No! There it’s coooooooooooke! I almost brained a guy in a cafe who kept asking me what kind of caaaake I wanted when I asked for a coke! Hmmph! Anyway… Then I discovered Santa Cruz, and loved it! 😀
And… I am not sure now if I am happy or really sad that I got to see and experience New Orleans! I loved it there… almost everyone warned me it was a dangerous place… but I never had any trouble! I loved the food, the music and the people! I was soooooo angry at what happened to it! I always wanted to go back and experience Le Carnival (and Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday)! Oh well…
I met a pickpocket in Washington DC (wonder if his hand ever healed?) LOL
I’ve traveled fairly extensively, and common sense goes a long way. 🙂 I rarely ever had any trouble (not counting war zones or Texas!) 😉 😀 It can be dangerous here or anywhere in the World for the naive and foolish. Several backpackers were killed here between the 60’s and 90’s because they took stupid risks (and the sad thing is, they wouldn’t do it at home!) *sigh*
I made some good friends in the USA, and even… a Texan! 😉 LOL
The good and bad are everywhere, and the land sharks are every bit the unpredictable predator their ocean cousins are. Always on the lookout for the weak, the slow, and the unwary.
Still, the World can be an amazing place! And I wouldn’t have missed any of it! 🙂 Believe it or not, even in the Cambodian war torn hell I was in, we managed to find some moments of peace and even beauty. You know… I used to envy the Air Force and the Navy. I discovered that the thing that stays with you the most, even decades later, is the smell. You can’t forget it. They don’t have that problem (usually).
Anyway… sorry to get morbid there! LOL
Traveling the World is a very good thing! I highly recommend it to everyone. 🙂
I prefer pool balls to sticks – there are generally more of them and you don’t have to close to use them.
I’ve never had a problem in any city I’ve lived in, but then, I was usually armed as part of the job, so that’s not a fair assessment.
The smell is the thing, Kryten. If they ever figure out how to introduce how it smells after a battle, people would stop being so damn eager to get into them. You don’t need a dog to find dead bodies – the relatively inadequate human nose is more than enough if you have ever smelled death before.
We tended to designate a “puke zone” at bad crime scenes to prevent people from destroying evidence when their insides decide to come out. Vicks Vapo-Rub helps, but nothing masks it.
good point about the distance, but once you throw it at the enemy… all’s fine and dandy unless you miss your target, in which case you’ve just handed the other guy a weapon. they can pry my pool cue, baseball bat, walking stick, shepherd’s crook, ____, out of my cold dead hands, although hopefully it’ll never come to that.
i worked for veterinarians all through high school. i took a bad grade on the paper i was supposed to write on the red badge of courage because i was never able to finish reading the book. the battle scene description kept evoking the sights, but mostly the smell, from 4- or 5-hour-long operations on cats and dogs that had been hit by cars.
not quite the same thing as dead bodies, but it did occur to me at the time that requiring everybody to spend several hours amputating parts off of and stitching back together mangled bodies might dampen at least some people’s eagerness to go out and inflict fullscale carnage. then again, maybe not.
There are 16 balls in a rack, bending down and exposing the back of your skull is not a survival technique and a hand with pool ball in it is a very effective club. We had rocks before we had clubs.
The “blood smell” is not quite as bad as the “dead smell”, but it’s close enough.
There are always the crazies. I don’t know how you get rid of them.
Can you imagine the smell of an entire village of over 200 men, women & children, and even animals, butchered on a stinking hot & humid day and left to rot? Some were burned… Nothing can ever match that. I hope none of you can imagine it. I don’t have to imagine it.
Pool balls and bottles make great missiles in the hands of an expert. 😉 The trick is to use enough force and to aim well to disable temporarily. It’s a lot easier to kill someone than not. I’m sure you saw domestic disputes that got out of hand and one of them was killed Bryan. It’s tragic. People simply don’t understand how easy it really is to kill someone else. The just want to shove someone away and they fall badly and break their neck. Or try to slap them, the other person moves at the wrong time, and the slap becomes a hit to the nose at the right angle to drive it into the brain.
After our training, we always just walked away from confrontation, hell, we had to! You know what a military tribunal is like if we got into a fight against civilians, especially in the special forces! It made a civilian court look like a walk in the park. So, we didn’t do it. We were allowed to defend ourselves, but the words *reasonable means and force* have a whole new meaning for us. We had no choice in Texas. They wouldn’t back off and we were surrounded in a small, enclosed space. We didn’t kill anyone. And they don’t know how damned lucky they were! I spent 3 days in front of a tribunal with my two associates going over every detail. In the Military, we were trained to remember everything (on a scouting mission, there is no time or place to take photo’s and write things down usually. That’s only Hollywood). And if our stories differed by a millimeter… Luckily, they didn’t. 🙂
I just shake my head when I see these foolish kids picking fights to show how tough they are! One of them will probably end up dead, if not then, eventually.
I saw three teens harassing a woman at a train station here some years ago, I tripped one (Carefully), one ran off and I grabbed the other by the shoulder in a hard grip (nice cluster of nerves for a thumb there) and moved my face close and stared him in the eyes, and asked quietly if he wanted to die. He literally wet his pants and started crying. I told him that he was lucky. The next guy might not bother asking. The ignorant woman stated berating me for scaring the hood. *sigh* Some days, you wonder why you bother! 🙂 I told her that next time, I’ll just let her get mugged or gang raped.
Well… this turned into a cheery topic! LOL
A rocket follows the last person into a bunker, and someone has to package the parts for the families. That probably pretty close to the village, Kryten.
No one realizes how many dangerous implements are in an average American kitchen, and heaven help you in the kitchen of someone who is a serious chef.
A nightstick is an effective jabbing weapon, which the reason behind the PR-24 with its side handle. Using a nightstick as a club is the mark of an amateur, the same goes for a pool cue. You jab a nightstick with authority into any major muscle, and the individual in on the floor dealing with pain and the cramp.
The police review boards are just like the military review boards – guilty until proven innocent, and being innocent is often not enough.
People are clueless and don’t recognize threats. I have never been bothered by truly bad people, because we recognize each other and don’t start things we don’t want to finish. It’s the suburban idiots who think that fighting ends when someone gets knocked down, and they pick a fight with someone who only goes to the death.
It’s amazing how many people don’t understand that the “Vulcan Neck Pinch” works. That’s another good spot if you are going to swing a nightstick, because if you miss you’ll probably break the collarbone, which is also handy.
Yes, this is getting to be a bit off.
me, i’ve always felt like the best way to win a bar fight was to be the first one to sneak out the back door when nobody was looking. the other best way is to find the right excuse to not play against someone who’s going to turn out to be a sore loser [they’re usually not difficult to spot]. other useful skill: knowing how to lose without appearing to be throwing the game.
beyond that, i don’t have a good answer for what to with the crazy ones.
—————————————
on a lighter note [and with a lighter wallet too] all this talk of food finally got to me and i dashed off to the deli for a big greek salad just before they closed, which i am just about to dig into right now. mmmmmmm feta cheese.
I think we can agree that the World is full of evil, stupid, thoughtless, selfish, crazy people. And if we are really lucky, we get to meet or befriend someone who isn’t! LOL
On that note… 😉 And speaking of kitchens… I think I’ll just go hunt up some more recipes! LOL Ahem. 😉
Hmmm. I’ll post my family Minestrone recipe! My Gran would kill me if she were alive! LOL Big family secret! And you know how Italians get! It’s not just Mafiosi that have omerta! 😉 LOL
Sorry hipparchia, I missed you comment. 🙂
And you are quite right about bar fights! Stay near a handy exit is a very sage strategy! 😀 Even though I can take care of myself, I would much rather walk away. 🙂
And I love a good Greek salad! I find most places here don’t use the right dressing! 🙁
Cheers and enjoy! (now I’m hungry, and envious!) LOL
if we are really lucky, we get to meet or befriend someone who isn’t [evil, stupid, thoughtless, selfish, crazy] yep.
mmmmminestrone. i suppose you could always change one little tiny unimportant part of the recipe… 😉
We had rocks before we had clubs. i can’t help it if i’m more evolved, i’m sticking with my clubs. also, i think i’ll go check through my knife collection now to see if anything needs sharpening before kryten brings out a recipe for something that calls for an edge.
Personally, the chair through the window has worked for me on more than one occasion. I don’t feel like I have to “prove anything” to anyone, which is why I’m fond of stand off weapons and indirect fire.
Radios and fighter/bombers wouldn’t have been invented if we were meant to call in air strikes.
it was a superb salad, kryten. it’s possibly not entirely authentic, since it’s this deli’s signature version of greek salad, and it’s not quite like greek salads i’ve had everywhere42 else. [one of the cats stuck that 42 in there, i swear! i’m going to get a little bit nervous if it starts to look like they can read too.]
if there’s broken glass around it will rise up off the floor of its own accord and slice me open somewhere that’s richly supplied with veins. face, hands, something. my vision is not the bes in the world, never has been, and i’ve twice tried to run, run mind you] through what i thought were open sliding glass doors. uh uh. those puppies are tough. which is just as well, given my propensity for connecting with sharp objects.
Errmmmm… It could be just me, and granted I certainly don’t have your experience in the USA… but isn’t an air strike a tad extreme for a bar brawl? 😮 Granted though, you wouldn’t have to worry about who started it! LOL
Ahem. 😉
LOL @ hipparchia! The cat was correcting your *misspelling* of my honored nickname! Hummph! The liberties people take. I always said cat’s were my friends! 😉 LOL And cat’s can too read!! Well, minds anyway. 😉 Well known cat fact that. Everyone whose ever been owned by a cat knows it. 😀
Ouch! You are a danger to yourself! Maybe you should buy some personal body armor? 😮
Glad you enjoyed your salad. You made me sneak out to the local bakery and take little missy (the Jack Russel) for a walk! Now I got treats! Yummm…
Cheers. 😀
It has been my experience that few people actually remember how a bar fight starts, but if you make sure they remember how it ended, there are fewer of them.
Have you read this Bryan?
Will we see the end of the Electoral College?
Getting rid of the Electoral College would be good. But it’ll take a lot more than that, and I doubt it will happen anyway.
The Electoral College is no longer used as intended, which was to create a group of “experts” to select the President and Vice President, so it should be eliminated. The current iteration is a sop to states with small populations, just like the Senate is.
Few people understand that Bush was going to get Florida’s electors no matter what happened in the Supreme Court, because the state legislature was already planning to call a special session to appoint a slate of electors for Bush to replace those at dispute. If they had done it, it would have been totally legal. The method of elector selection for President is a law, not part of the Florida constitution, and as a law, the legislature can change the method with a majority vote.
I doubt it will go anywhere, because too many states benefit in one way or another from today’s screwed up system.
Sad to say, Iran has a more democratic method of choosing its president than the United States does. Oh sure, candidates who are not ideologically acceptable to the elite aren’t allowed to run or are hampered by rules that don’t allow them to win. Oh wait, we were talking about Iran? Forgive me, I was thinking about Dennis Kucinich and just completely lost my train of thought there :-).
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
We should just find 538 suckers and stick them in a barn in Kansas and let them deal with all of the campaigning while the rest of us get on with our lives, or make it a true popular election with every US citizen 18 and older eligible to vote, and the one with the most votes wins.
OTOH, we could probably pay off some of the debt if we used telephone voting and charged a buck a call. Just a thought. 😈
But that would make the USA a Democracy Bryan. 🙂 And the rednecks in charge don’t want a Democracy! That’s bad for business and everything else they want. Hell, they would bring back slavery if they could (though the current system is pretty close anyway, it’s at least financial slavery). And the small (mostly Southern) states would never give up their disproportionate big voice at the table. Most of them are still annoyed at the old Confederate/Yankee thing. LOL
Things like this, for example:
Business Week: Consumer Credit Arbitration — you lose!
What was that about abolishing slavery? The only difference now is, you can’t see the chains, and it’s not just Negro’s and Asians.
There are so many inequalities in the USA (and growing in the World generally) now, that I’m damned if I can see a way to fix it( well I can, but it’s not a way anyone wants to know about!) LOL
talk about buying an election!
but the idea holds a certain appeal. all those special interests would deposit their $$$$$ directly into the u.s. treasury instead of 527s, attack ads, whatever. we’d probably still end up with the same person in office.
also, the idea of reverse robocalls, finally a good use for that.
If the people with money are going to make all of the decisions, they may as well pay for it.
Kryten, if you look at the fine print on the H-1B and H-2B visas – they are indentured servitude, no other way of interpreting them.
We had a large influx of Brazilians into my area who had been taken to New Orleans on H-2Bs and were looking for construction jobs here to pay for a ticket home. They claimed that if they went to the immigration guys, instead of getting deported, they would get shipped back to the contractors who were ripping them off in New Orleans. I don’t know that that is true, but they really believed it.