coworkers, as a general rule

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

and Virginia was for misguided opportunists!

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

and Cavaliers who knew that being on a different continent was preferable to getting ones head separated from ones shoulders.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

how can you be so cavalier about beheadings?

[stacer]

I know you were being funny Sprig, but Georgia was where they sent their criminals before they sent them to Australia. New England was where all the religious freaks went.

Actually, Georgia wasn't a penal colony the way Australia was. It was a debtors' colony. Instead of sending people to prison, they sent them to Georgia, where they worked off their debt. Of course, being a debtor was a crime, so...

From the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online:

English settlement

A trust for establishing the colony of Georgia was granted a charter by George II (after whom the colony was named) in 1732, long after the large English migrations of the 17th century. The prime mover in obtaining the charter was the English soldier and philanthropist James Edward Oglethorpe, who sought to found a colony where the poor of England could get a new start. He and other trustees encouraged the settlers to produce wines, silks, and spices, and thus relieve England of a dependency on foreign sources. The colony also would serve as a bulwark against the Spanish and French to the south and west.

The first English settlement in Georgia was made at Savannah in 1733. Some colonists paid their way; the colony's trustees paid the expenses of others. Oglethorpe directed the affairs of the colony, primarily its military operations. Essential to the trustees' utopian plan was a tightly structured settlement system designed to create a population of yeoman farmers living in compact villages and towns and cultivating outlying garden and small farm tracts. Slavery was prohibited in order to avoid the growth of large plantations. Like most such schemes, the colony failed to live up to the trustees' vision. Their most notable success was the planning and construction of Savannah. Faced with unrest and emigration, the trustees surrendered all power in the colony to the British government in 1752, a year before their charter was to expire.

[House of Mustard]

Fuzzy, when I was living in New Mexico I had to call some company that was fixing my camera (I think it was in Seattle), and they told me that they couldn't ship it back to me because I was outside the U.S..  I told him it was a state, and he said "But you have to have a passport to get there, right?"

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I grew up in Virginia, I can be cavalier about anything.

[fuzzyoctopus]

Fuzzy, when I was living in New Mexico I had to call some company that was fixing my camera (I think it was in Seattle), and they told me that they couldn't ship it back to me because I was outside the U.S..  I told him it was a state, and he said "But you have to have a passport to get there, right?"

GAH! Exactly.  I mean, it's bad enough that it says on most of our webpages "this item is not available in U.S. Territories", so I get people calling in every day saying, "Why don't you ship this thing to the United States?"  
"We do, sir, we just can't ship to U.S. Territories like Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands."

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

see, that makes sense in a twisted sort of way. The states are territory that the US owns, right? So I can see that, even if they just aren't thinking it through.

However, yesterday, a customer called at 3:28. We had a company ice cream social out doors at 3:30. And I spent 15 minutes answering the exact same question (with not even the courtesy of a rephrasing) for fifteen minutes. Yes, I answered the exact same way each time. I've no idea what was so confusing. ANyway, the mint ice cream sandwiches were all melted by the time I got out there. Jerks.

(what I'm really mad about is why these customers expect me to care that they can't fix an instrument they bought FORTY YEARS AGO. No, we can't fix it! Comprende vous anglish?! We don't make those parts. Haven't for decades!)

[EUOL]

Heh.  One of my mission companions was from New Mexico.  He loved to spout facts about the state in relation to the other states.  One of his favorite was to relate a poll taken in New York among high school students, were some amazing number of them couldn't find New Mexico on a map, and who thought it was another country.

His other favorite was pointing out that New Mexico was the only state whose license plate had the letters 'USA' underneath the state name.  You know, to remind people.

[Maxwell]

actually the liscence plate says "New Mexico USA. Land of enchantment"  the USA part is next to the name not under it, I know cuz I have a new mexico liscence plate sewn to my backpack.

[House of Mustard]

What a odd thing to have, TFO.  Shine on.

I get the New Mexico magazine (mostly for the pictures and the leftist propaganda).  There is a regular feature in the magazine where people send in stories about how no one thinks it's a state.  It's pretty funny.  One recent story I remember was told by a waitress in Santa Fe.  She said that an older couple came in and ordered enchiladas, and then threw a fit because the enchiladas were stacked (one tortilla, then a layer of cheese n' stuff, then another tortilla, etc), not rolled (like a burrito).  Finally, they agreed to accept the food, and the husband told the wife: "You have to remember honey, we're not in the states anymore."

[Maxwell]

that's really funny... my mom owns a house and some land in santa fe, we go there for thanksgiving(it's where i got the plate) the funny thing is she got the house for almost nothing, she went adn bought this trailer(for the same amount that anyone would pay for a trailer)and then they handed over this deed for the FIVE acres of land surrounding  the trailer, and she said what is this, they the land you just bought(apparently the trailer came with the land and that was what  she paid that minuscule amount of money for.) so now she had just obtained five acres of land in sant fe(this was about 17 years ago before land there became expensive) so she gradually built a house around the trailer. the house is pretty normal except the center of it is about five feet higher than the rest of it...some of our neighboors there JUST realized they are americans...

[42]

I find that their are a lot of people whose understanding of United State's geography is rather limited. I get people calling me at the hotel all the time saying stuff like, "Salt Lake City, that's like right next to Las Vegas, right?"

My favorite is when my older brother got his job in the DC area they asked if he could start work after the weekend. They told him this on Friday. My brother response was, "Well I need to drive my stuff from Utah out there first." Their response was, "So how long can that take to drive out here? About five hours, right?" This coming from an engineer.

I still repeatedly find that people who live in States east of the Mississippi don't undestand that States west of the Mississippi are a lot larger in area. A long with not understanding that New Mexico is a state. Also, Alaska is a lot larger than Texas. And California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Nebraska are not in the same time zones.

[fuzzyoctopus]

And all the people in Utah who have never been outside of Utah and refer to anything east of Denver as "The East Coast"

(and yes, i've heard multiple people say that...)

[42]

I think the whole concept of the Mid-West and Mountain West are kind of lost on people.