Dadevster":xntkkabx said:
We're not hostile towards the states, per se. But go into any school here, ask everyone if they think Canada is better than the states, and you'll get an overwhelming agreement. I dunno. Maybe I'm just not as nationalistic as I should be. Gotta be patriotic and whatnot. :|
Well, nothin' wrong with that. "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," that kind of thing.
I myself am from Hawaii. Not the kind of "from Hawaii" that you get when people move there on their parents' inheritances and have kids, but the "my people were living there from before people were living there" kind of "from Hawaii."
It's fun to be a young...ish author there because while you might not necessarily be successful enough to afford it (like me), you still have that immature Social Nobility mindset that compels you to go to the fancy expensive restaurants, except the fancy expensive restaurants are all in the commercial areas, which is where the tourists stay in their cordoned-off part of the island, and they all give me the stink eye when I show up because What The Hell Is A Filthy Local Doing In My Fine Dining Experience. Which is amusing, but kind of appalling, too, because holy shit how hateful can you get? This probably contributes to why I'm a huge jerk.
Having grown up there, I like to compare Hawaii to a subtropical island version of Texas, or perhaps Texas to an arid phallic version of Hawaii: we have our own trashy rednecks who sit on the porch and drink booze all day, and work construction, and spawn twenty-child broods, and shop at WalMart, except they're Hawaiian instead of Caucasian; we have an excess of illegals; we love our ranches and our beef; according to its local residents--myself included--the Castle Law is the best thing on God's green earth; speaking of which, we have a gigantically Christian population; we even have our own Republic of Texas separatist social sect, except we call it the Reinstated Hawaiian Nation, and both refuse to pay taxes and are run by absolute idiots.
Of course when you grow up in Hawaii's normal areas and not its gated communities--which by the way are full of shit and should be overrun and demolished--you tend to have friends from a lot of different backgrounds. Shit, half my family is Japanese and the other side is a Hawaiian and Caucasian mix alone. So yeah, lots of friends from lots of backgrounds--when visiting my white friends' houses, we usually have rednecky backyard barbecues with expensive beer (which is kind of what happens at my house too, since my clan is generally largely Caucasian in our company-keeping practices); when I stay over at my Japanese friends' houses, we also have rednecky backyard barbecues with rice wine and Japanese beer brewed in Canada, and I get to bathe in a real fire-heated indoor bath; when I visit my Hawaiian friends, who are also generally huge mixes of races and cultures, we tend to skip the barbecue part and just buy a few kegs of Heineken, drive out to the park, and tailgate. Worldwide cultures of alcoholism, which is perfectly fine and acceptable.
Fun social fact: for around ten years--encompassing people from Hawaii who are currently ages 20-29 or so, myself included--being a part of the US, Hawaii was exposed to the social and economic expansion of Dungeons & Dragons, but it had South Pacific Syndrome (called such because this phenomenon still exists in islands in the South Pacific) in that there was no social stigma against it, so anyone who was even remotely interested actively wanted to try playing. When I was in boarding school, our adventuring party consisted of 1) me, 2) a really white Hawaiian who would eventually become a barfly of a firefighter, 3) a guy who came from the most ghetto and Hawaiian-nationalist part of Oahu and was actually suspended from the boarding program for a month for kicking five guys' asses at once before the semester started, 4) a breakdancing genius who went to MIT on a full scholarship, and 5) a musclebound, bronze dude who surfed religiously. We all played, and somehow, we all absolutely loved it. I remember the surfer's character in particular: you'd never guess that he wanted to play as a scrawny halfling wizard with an orc fetish.
This phenomenon, of course, no longer occurs since the social stigma you find in the continental US caught up to us. Kids these days are just as critical of the hobby, but you'd be amazed at the kinds of people in the aforementioned age group who you'll find who played D&D, and most of the time, are still looking for a solid, fun group to play with. The firefighter guy? He plays with a bunch of other Hilo firefighters who are just so into it, almost makes me wish I was from Hilo instead of upcountry Maui.
Also something about linguistics and humor and how I have to watch my mouth when I'm in the continental US because nobody will understand me if I speak in Hawaiian Creole English, and how I can't tell jokes because Hawaii humor is unbelievably racist and skinhead black jokes will make us just burst out laughing and are likely to get me shot by some ghetto thug, not that they'd even come to a signing on account of being illit--
see what I mean
