ehBeth wrote:Planning a trip for the autumn?
If only! Mebbe if we win the lottery? My work team goes in it.....
Wilso wrote:Gee Tarantulas, don't let the truth interfere with your view of the world. Australians are NOT prohibited from purchasing firearms. As I stated previously, I work with several people who shoot regularly. We had a gold medallist in skeet shooting at the last Olympics for heaven's sake. The biggest restrictions are on the TYPE of weapon available.
I thought jumping to conclusions was the great American exercise. Apparently it's a worldwide phenomenon. Here's what I said:
Tarantulas wrote:There are households in the US where there are no guns, but it is hard to imagine living in a country where a person would be prohibited from purchasing a firearm. It just boggles the mind.
No specific country was mentioned. As for the question of killing for fun, don't you have gophers in your country? If so, do you let them dig up your lawns and do nothing, or do you kill them? Instead of using poison and letting them die a horrible painful death, I killed them instantly and mercifully. Plus, there was a bit of skill and marksmanship involved, so for a kid it was something of an accomplishment.
heehee:
" don't you have gophers in your country?"
no
Tarantulas wrote:
"There are households in the US where there are no guns, but it is hard to imagine living in a country where a person would be prohibited from purchasing a firearm. It just boggles the mind.
No specific country was mentioned."
Oh please - gimme a break!!!!!! Just admit you were wrong, eh? Cor blimey!
dlowan wrote:ehBeth wrote:Planning a trip for the autumn?
If only! Mebbe if we win the lottery? My work team goes in it.....
Canna even afford bloody Melbourne! Waaaaah....
ehBeth: Wow, I'm amazed Canucks don't have to be printed upon crossing the border into the U. S. of eh? If we did, I wonder what would happen if I told them to kiss my ass. Hmmm...I know border guards/customs people/INS types are a pretty serious bunch on the job. But if I said it politely do you think I'd still end up in shackles?
Well, Caprice, that might depend on the sequence of the conversation. For example:
INS agent: "That's not proof."
Me: "Proof of what, what are you talkin' about?"
INS agent: "Your driver's license, that's not proof of citizenship."
Me: "Seems to work well enough when i drive across the border."
INS agnet: "Hey buddy, this is an international airport, this is a foreign country." (U.S. Customs and Immigration for US-bound flights at Pearson in Toronto is located in the airport.)
Me: "News flash, Buddy, it's a foreign country when i drive, too."
INS agent: "Hey, i'm just tryin' to educate you here, you need a passport or your birth certificate."
Me: "Speaking as a taxpayer, we don't employ you to educate folks--if you're sayin' i have to stay in Canada, that's not a problem, you know."
He then stamped my customs form and shoved it at me, and hollered "Next!" to an already frightened-looking, diminutive American lady.
LOL! I found the Canadian border folk pretty tough....the Americans, in 1997 mind you, were pussy-cats...
I've occassionally had some flinty-eyed types when crossing into Canada--by and large, i've found them to be no nonsense and professional, but not intimidating. Of course, when you cross at night from Detroit to Windsor, and see them in flak-jackets and carrying machine pistols, you tend not to take them for granted. Once, crossing from Lewiston, New York to Queenston, the very serious and thorough lady, when she had finished her questioning, referred back to my answer to where i lived, and told me her brother-in-law is a firefighter in Hilliard, Ohio. I told her to get outta here. She said, no lie, and proceeded to demonstrate that she had been to Hilliard, or at least knew how to get there by highway. She actually almost smiled when she waved me on, but i didn't turn her in (these folks are the only Canadians who are not required to be obsessively polite--it must grate on their nerves). On one other occasion, the joker i got only asked me if i planned to spend more than six months, and when i replied "about five days," told me "beat it," and theatrically waved up the next car, hollering next. I headed for the toll-booth, and then got on the 405 and floored it. Ah, it's always great to be back on the lunatic-infested highways of Canadia.
LOL! We were quizzed about the length of our holidays - my friend was going on to Europe and Africa for a couple of months, after we left Canada and the US. We told them that if they had decent unions they could have long service leave and four weeks annual leave a year, too
And by the way, a propos of this thread, the flak-jackets and machine pistols appeared in considerable numbers after Canada's new gun laws came into effect on January 1, 2001. According to one border guard with whom i chatted (we both recognized one another), immediately afterward, any number of American yahoos, accustomed to selling as many guns as they liked at guns shows or out of the back of the truck, headed for the border with loads of firearms. He told me it was pathetic the number of idiots they busted in the first week alone.
And then the whole carriage got into a groundhog conversation, cos I asked if the portly ball of fur ambling along beside the tracks was one of these mythical critters. A mutual international exploration of small furry life and the differences between countries in this matter entertained us all happily until we reached Montreal.
margo wrote:dlowan wrote:dlowan wrote:ehBeth wrote:Planning a trip for the autumn?
If only! Mebbe if we win the lottery? My work team goes in it.....
Canna even afford bloody Melbourne! Waaaaah....
Double waaaahhh!
Ya know - one of these days the inate politeness, good manners and consideration for others, so basic in Australians, is gonna slip, and we'll tell these fact-free yahoos and drongos with guns and blather exactly what we think of them.
But.....who can be bothered! And there's the TOS to consider. I don't think the hamsters could cope with all those asterisks!
My god, Margo - which Australia do you live in?
All my friends are rude, cynical and delight in the misfortunes of others......lol.
Well, I got already photographed a couple of times at "speed traps", and even fingerprinted by our state-FBI (this, however, only as a joke, when I was doing something together with them).
Quite funny for me that you get fingerprinted and photographed entering a country, whose citizens themselves would never like to have an ID-card.
Through the heart of Toronto (either the fourth or fifth largest city in North America, depending upon how much population they picked up through amalgamation, they may have passed Chicago), runs the Don River, fed by many tributary streams. As a result, the hardier types of small, North American furry critters not only thrive in the city, but bid fair to overrun it. The lowly Opposum (our only furry cousin to the Oztralian fauna) is not often seen, but they are shy, and not seen that often in rural areas either. The ubiquitous raccoon is now vying with the black squirrels as most annoying animal in the city, and are capable of a trick the squirrels won't master, knocking over the dust bin for a late night snack. Skunks are killed from time to time in neighborhood streets--as someone who was essentially raised a country boy, i find it amusing, and when a passerby sniffed the breeze and commented that a skunk must have been run over nearby, i replied that no, if it were close, it would smell a lot worse.
The Canadians are so polite it is sometimes just sickening . . . my experience (admittedly limited) of the Ozzian makes me doubt the veracity of Our Dear Margo--but then, she probably doesn't have the Canajuns as a standard to judge by . . .
we doan 'ave no skunks, bears or gophers, neither!
