I like it! You know what Urban that's exactly what I was thinking. Don't know what I was talking about. Drugs that's what it was. :usehead:

What, if any, American bands do the British like?

You probably missed it, so I'm quoting it for him:

I'm sure you'll get more responses though.
(hopefully.. otherwise that would be a pretty big statement in itself)

thanks, sorry i missed that :o:

Regarding the Channel Islands, are they regarded as a separate country from the UK or just part of the British Commonwealth or what's the story? It's never been clear to me.

Part of the UK , but not a part of Great Britain
With seperate governments, like the Isle Of Man.

Guernsey have been independent from the British government for over 800 years.

The British like a ton of American bands. I don't get your thinking about this. Of course if a new thread regarding a band from a Brit is usually about a British band because we have heard them first and want to share them, just the same as an American will hear a band from the U.S before us (generally).

If you are British then it's only natural that you will have an affinity for music that you are familiar with and can identify with and will talk about them more but there is no bias from any genuine music fan I assure you.

Apart from the usual suspects (Radiohead, Coldplay) it could be argued that British music is talked about far less than U.S bands but not through any natural bias.

I'm sure I'll have some questions soon enough.

I'm from Dawson Creek, British Columbia/Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

No you won't, Mucus.

Joey Potter or Jen Lindley?

Added.

Freebase:

Do you live on a houseboat in the middle of a swamp, shooting alligators for dinner and playing the banjo on your front porch in your free time, whilst shooing away mosquitoes?

Hahaha... you remember that conversation huh?

Well, in short, no.

Well that's disappointing:(

What else is Louisiana good for? Besides bead necklaces?

@ Freebase
I see your location is LA does that stand for "El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula?"

The food is probably the main thing.
Mardi Gras. (Other people try to emulate it, but that's like fucking a duck and pretending it's a super model.)
Great scenery.
Cultured, interesting history.
Extremely low cost of living.
Hilarious accents.
Some of the most beautiful women you'll see apart from Romanians. (Totally subjective, I know.)
The most relaxed gun laws in the USA
Crawfish (It's not just food. They're like little red angels of deliciousness)

And plus, I live here. So that's like... Lagniappe. (A little something extra, for all you yankies)
;)

As long as that translates to Louisiana, then yes.

Doesn't sound that bad I suppose. But your women can't match up to Brazilians... those chicks are unreal.

I thought he was from L.A. too. I feel cheated.

Quick lesson folks...
The state abbreviation for Louisiana is LA.
Los Angeles is not a state, and its abbreviation is punctuated with periods.

All the time.

Gotta go with Jen. :)

No offense freebase, but liek 54 eapafgwed of lame nenss

Wow, you're from Lebanon? That's quite exotic! I know there's recently been some internal strife and power struggle in Lebanon. Has that all died down or is there still tension? How is tourism at the moment?

I saw a travel program once about sailing along the Croatian coast. I remember it well because it looked like an awesome. :)

I'd like it if more people would post some summaries of their respective country. Especially those from weird ones.

I'll post some trivia about Norway :


GEOGRAPHY :

• It's north in Europe
• It's a long country, so long that if you swivelled it around it's southern point, the north end could easily end up somewhere down in mid-Italy.
• Warm waters from the Gulf current warm up our west coast while the inlands are much colder
• "Norway" usually also includes Svalbard, an archipelago of islands in the high arctic at about 77~80 degress latitude whose largest settlement is Longyearbyen, the world's northernmost settlement with a complete infrastructure (police, hospital, school, even a university of sorts)
• The person to area ratio is quite low, there are only about 4.5 to 5 million norwegians.

POLITICS

• Norway was under Denmark in the Danish-Norwegian union which lasted for 436 years from 1521 to 1814.
• Then Norway was under Sweden much to the norwegian people's discontent until 1905 when there was a peaceful separation and we became fully indepentent.
• After the separation, the people voted for Norway to be a kingdom as it had been back in the days, so we still have royals although they don't actually interfer much with politics.
• Because of our vast oil reserves in the north sea discovered in the 60s/70s, Norway may be the richest country in the world, at least of a decent size (I mean Louxembourg? That's not a real country).
• Norway is social democratic. The current government is "red-green", meaning they're somewhat socialistic and care for environmental issues.
• People enjoy a lot of freedom here - freedom of speech, free health care, reasonably equal rights, freedom of speech, functioning democracy - and we generally have trust in our government
• Svalbard has no immigration laws, so anyone who want can go there. The only requirement is that you have the resources/ability to keep a roof over your head while you're there.
• Although there's a lot of positives to norwegian politics, we have a hard time integrating many of the immigrants who come to Norway which, among other things, leads to crime.
• There have been public votings on whether or not we should be part of the EU or not. Norwegians generally worry that being in the union would force farmers to compete with products from countries where agriculture is cheaper, so many vote no in order to preserve norwegian agriculture although that means we pay more for our meat, milk and eggs.

CULTURE

• Our language is a bit more melodic, so members of some of the neighbouring countries (ex. Sweden/Finland) think we sound happy all the time.
• The typical norwegian of old is born with skis on his feet and likes to be out in nature. He or she is also down to earth, not wasteful and does not brag or excess (or like people who do). He or she may be becoming increasingly rare, though.
• Although we're friendly, I've heard from some immigrants that norwegians are hard to make friends with. I think we're a bit "stiff" meaning we adhere to standards of behaving which are friendly even if we're not feeling very warm towards those we talk to.
• In some coastal areas, minke whales have traditionally been hunted for hundreds of years. Today, we have a small sustainable whaling industry which seems a focus of much animosity from outside our borders. Norwegians themselves have generally little problem with it.
• The amount of swearwords used in daily speech correlates positively with how far north you go, meaning they swear much more up north than they do down south.
• We have an indigenous population/culture called sami whose distribution cross the borders of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia up north. Much of their culture revolves around the use of reindeer which, traditionally, is is a source for not just food for them, but also the skins and other things to make their clothes, tents, tools, instruments and so on.
• The amount of distinct dialects in Norway is very high considering the total population number (4.5~5M). We have two written languages in Norway, one based on dialects and one based on a norwegianized danish. These two are only written languages, though, they both try to represent the actual spoken norwegian.

Darn that 10000 characters limit! Anyways, if anyone have any questions, fire away. :)

EDIT :

Some more trivia!

• The main religion here is christian protestant, although less than half the population consider themselves religious at all
• Aside from the exploding harpoon and advances in oil related engineering, the cheese slicer is a norwegian invention
• Black Metal is a major cultural export
• Since we're not part of the EU, the map in the old 2 euro coins didn't have Norway in it. It (and also the lack of Latvia, Lithauen, etc) made Sweden look like a giant penis with Finland as it's balls.

http://staff.science.uva.nl/~fransve...coin_penis.jpg

It's a pity they changed it.

Everything seems better than all previous years. There were a lot of tourists this summer, specially from the US (not many from the Gulf, yippy!) as the New York Times declared, Beirut as the #1 city to visit in Summer 09. Though the polls were obviously rigged, as the new NYT Editor in Chief is Lebanese (or something like that) but anyway... lol
The country was over crowded in the summer, and xmas season was great, in contrast to the previous very pathetic years...

There always has been some internal strife, sadly the ones that are showed as the "good guys" in the international media, are actually the corrupted politicians. However, some common grounds were reached from both parties some months ago, and everything looks calmer than ever.

I luckily live very far from all these political tensions, so I don't know much about what's been happening for the last 3 years... But we're living well, and tourism, market and business are booming.
I'd say... I'm optimistic. *smiley*

I thought of writing some trivia also:

GEOGRAPHY :

_ It's in the Middle East. Syria on the Northern and Eastern border, Palestine/Israel is on the Southern border.
_ On the west, the Mediterranean sea, from North to South. The coast is 120 km long.
_ Lebanon is a very small country, of 10452 (square)km. The population is over 4 million, with 1 million living in the capital Beirut alone.
_ There are 2 mountain chains (The Eastern chain, and the Western Chain), separated by the Bekaa Valley.
_ The highest mountain top in Lebanon is 3800m high. Travelling from the coast (after a swim) to the any ski resort, can only take 30 minutes. Something enjoyable to do between March and April.
_ Temperature is between 25-30ºC in the Summer, and 10-15ºC in the winter (on the coast) and -5ºC (in the mountains).
_ The Lebanese diaspora is mainly in Canada, Brazil, US, France and Australia, with over 35 million Lebanese living outside their home country.
_ Lebanon was, in the past, named Phoenicia. Phoenicians have created the Alphabet, soap and of course the Phoenix, that still symbolises Lebanon.
_ Many Lebanese, still consider themselves as "Phoenicians" and not "Arab"... which is stupid imo.

POLITICS

_ Lebanon has been occupied, since the defeat of the Phoenician Empire by the Roman Empire.
_ After that, Lebanon was occupied by the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) form 1415 till 1915.
_ In WWI, one third of the Lebanese population died from hunger, and another third immigrated to another country.
_ From 1915 till 1945, Lebanon was occupied by France.
_ The 60s was the decade of high life... Lebanon was free at last!
_ In 1975, the civil war started. (Christian v/s Muslim| Christian v/s Palestinian | Muslim v/s Israeli| Christian v/s Syrian | Muslim Sunni v/s Muslim Shi'ite | Christian v/s Druz | Palestinian v/s Israeli, on Lebanese ground | Syrian v/s Israeli, on Lebanese ground etc ... etc ... I think it's enough for now)
_ In 1982, Israel occupies half the Lebanese territory.
_ In 1990, the war ends, with Syria occupying the country (except the South, which was occupied by Israel)
_ In 1995, Israel occupies the South no more.
_ In 2005, Syria occupies Lebanon no more.
_ From 1975-2010, the lords of the Lebanese civil war, are still in the Government.

So... I think that's about it, not much has changed in the last 1000 years.

PS: There is no Official unified Lebanese History, from 1970 till 2010...

You don't get Beans in the US?! It's not a vicious stereotype, beans are very popular. For a good reason :D. They are good with certain foods, like fish and chips! :D

Wow NumberNineDream, that sounds like quite a turbulent history. It's good to hear things are calmer and that you're positive.

Also sounds interesting that you can go from swimming to skiing in such a short amount of time. You can only do that here if you have a heated tub. :p:

I don't know what Sam is talking about. The city I come from originally, Boston, is famous for its baked beans. Beans are pretty common here.

It's less common here I guess, but I also like a fry-up with beans for breakfast. I'll take it with a little pile of black pudding as well if I can.

Your going to have to break down the major differences....

Besides NC has a Vinegar Based BBQ sauce and SC has Mustard based BBQ sauce.... The two states are probably the most alike I figure then any other two states.

Even though I really do like GA.

Black pudding almost makes a fry up.

There's nothing quite like beans and toast for breakfast, it's pretty much the staple diet of students here. What i used to do in the college canteen was cover a couple of sausages with beans and toast so that the checkout ladies wouldn't see them and only charge me for the beans and toast :)

I dont know about eating beans for breakfast unless its just leftovers.... Seems like it would cause you to have gas all day long.

Baked Beans are a must for any Hot-dog and Hamburger cook out....

Most of time besides Baked Beans I am eating Beans over rice.....
Black-eye peas or Field Peas over Rice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoppin%27_John

Beans don't even make people fart, that's a myth.

The Peoples Republic of Mancunia
With apologies to wikipedia

Geography.

Location: 53°28′0″N 2°14′0″W / 53.466667°N 2.233333°W aka the centre of the known universe.

The Republic of Mancunia lies in a bowl-shaped land area bordered to the north, south and east by England.
To it’s west, across the plains of Cheshire, lie the wastelands of Murkyside, a baron and desolate land who’s rat eating inhabitants constantly cast an envious eye over it’s more affluent neighbours.
The river Mersey runs through the south of the city and onwards through Merkyside and it’s capital, Loonypool.
The people of Mancunia frequently use the river as a public toilet and it’s contents are recycled and used as drinking and bathing water by it’s poorer Loonypool neighbours.
It would also explain their rather peculiar and nasty tasting local ale known as Higson's bitter.
Mancunia’s geographical features were highly influential in it’s development as the worlds first industrial nation. (more about that later)

Demography.

77.6% people as 'White' (71.0% of residents as White British, 3.0% White Irish, 3.6% as Other White – although those of mixed European and British ancestry is unknown, there are over 25,000 Mancunians of Italian descent alone which represents 5.5% of the city's population). 3.2% as Mixed race (1.3% Mixed White and Black Caribbean, 0.6% Mixed White and Black African, 0.7% Mixed White and Asian, 0.7% Other Mixed). 10.3% of the city's population are South Asian (2.3% Indian, 5.8% Pakistani, 1.0% Bangladeshi, 1.2% Other South Asian). 5.2% are Black (2.0% Black Caribbean, 2.7% Black African and 0.5% Other Black). 2.3% of the city's population are Chinese, and 1.4% are another ethnic group.
Over 38% of Mancunians can trace their ancestory to Ireland and Manchester's Irish Festival, including a St Patrick's Day parade, is one of Europe's largest. There is also a well-established Chinatown in the city with a substantial number of oriental restaurants and Chinese supermarkets. The area also attracts large numbers of Chinese students to the city, attending the two universities.


History, Economics and Politics.

In the beginning... http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/c...oto/080203.jpg

The Brigantes were the major Celtic tribe in what is now Northern England; they had a stronghold in the locality at a sandstone outcrop on which Manchester Cathedral now stands, opposite the banks of the River Irwell. Their territory extended across the fertile lowland of what is now Salford and Stretford. Following the Roman conquest of Britain in the 1st century, General Agricola ordered the construction of a Roman fort in the year 79 named Mamucium to ensure Roman interests with Deva Victrix (Chester) and Eboracum (York) were protected from the Brigantes.
This decision greatly pleased the Roman rank and file as Mancunia was a great place to party 24/7 and the nightlife was nothing short of awesome. Central Mancunia has been a great place for a piss up ever since. (see culture)

Manchester began expanding "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century as part of a process of unplanned urbanisation brought on by the Industrial Revolution.
It developed a wide range of industries, so that by 1835 "Manchester was without challenge the first and greatest industrial city in the world." Engineering firms initially made machines for the cotton trade, but diversified into general manufacture.
Similarly, the chemical industry started by producing bleaches and dyes, but expanded into other areas.
Commerce was supported by financial service industries such as banking and insurance. Trade, and feeding the growing population.
A centre of capitalism, Manchester was once the scene of bread and labour riots, as well as calls for greater political recognition by the city's working and non-titled classes.
One such riot ended with the Peterloo Massacre of 16 August 1819.
From that moment on, outraged Mancunians declared Manchester a republic and separated itself from the apron strings of England once and for all.
In true Mancunian style (we like to do things our way here), Mancunians failed (couldn't be arsed) to notify the British government of their decision. And to this day the Republic of Mancunia has remained something of an embarrassment to "dat there Lundon".
It was around this time that the work shy, greedy good for nothing job dodging Scouse bastards attempted to blackmail the good people of Mancunia by introducing a levy for all inbound goods via the port of Loonypool, bound for the hard working citizens of Manchester.
In the spirit of “doing things our way” the people of Mancunia dug (by hand) a ship canal stretching from the Irish sea to Manchester, thus becoming a self sufficient inland port.
"Levy? My arse! Grab the shovels r' kid!"

The economic school of Manchester capitalism developed there, and Mancunia was the centre of the Anti-Corn Law League from 1838 onward.
Manchester has a notable place in the history of Marxism and left-wing politics; being the subject of Friedrich Engels' work The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844; Engels himself spent much of his life in and around Manchester, and when Karl Marx visited Manchester, they met at Chetham's Library. The economics books Marx was reading at the time can be seen on the shelf in the library, as can the window seat where Marx and Engels would meet.
Engels + Marx + Manchester = Hey Presto...The Communist Manifesto!
The first Trades Union Congress was held in Manchester (at the Mechanics' Institute, David Street), from 2 to 6 June 1868. Manchester was also an important cradle of the Labour Party and the Suffragette Movement.

Monetary system; 20 spot, tenner, skin diver, the sob, or dab (1 sob, 2 sobs etc), 10 bob, shrapnel (small change).

Culture.

Music of Manchester - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Manchester United F.C. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nightlife in Manchester & Night clubs in Manchester

Paaaaarrrrteh!!!

It's not a myth.
High fiber causes gas.
Beans are high in fiber.

http://ibdcrohns.about.com/od/otherd...es/f/beans.htm

Vancouver here! Gettin ready for the Olympics.

Hated it when I lived there. Concrete lifeless jungle. Night clubs are good though..but being 38..I'm past that.

The Uncyclopedia guide to Ireland

Way to piss on my fire :(.