"Are we in England? No? Then shut up, you stupid Massachusetts kid."

I'm going to start saying this to Tom during arguments.

And they were like, "Are we in England? No? Then shut up, you stupid Massachusetts kid."

Bwah!!! So. Damn. True. That is exactly how we are. I dated a guy (coincidentally, from Massachusetts) who refused to pronounce it the right [our] way purely on snoot factor. I thought my mom was going to bitchslap him, and she is not normally a violent person.

She basically said the above, though I think a bit more nicely.

In England, yes. The Tems. In CT? Thhhhhhhhames.

Go Fug Yourself has moved.

Oh, ITA. And I'm sure if colonels appeared in my novel half as often as sergeants, it'd bug me more.

Thanks, Susan! I was feeling so alone in my hate.

Katie! My sistah in viola-playing! How much do we hate pizzicato? Almost as much as we hate whole notes.

Aww. I played violin, so it's not quite the same, but man do I hate pizzicato, too. (And I used to yearn for whole notes, because we were usually playing some horrible combination with 32nd notes. With the occasional sixteenth notes, and if we were lucky some quarter notes, but the quarter notes usually had some crazy grace note coming off it, and it was all supposed to be up in third position, which we were never formally taught. That said, I could easily see where the non-violin sections of the orchestra would be bored, however. Harmony isn't nearly as much fun to play. And I only know that because the one year I was a second violin was incredibly boring, musically speaking.) And my irritating song is Canon in D, which is played all the freaking time, rather than The Nutcracker.

May I still join the We Hate Pizzicato! club?

Moving to Connecticut also caused my introduction to the bizarre concoction known as "fritters," which in retrospect was the very first encroachment of the now-wide variety of inappropriately-fried objects into my consciousness.

N.b.: Fritters are nasty and who thought it would be a good idea to put cooked corn into a doughnut in the first place?

I played violin as well (for ten years before switching to viola), though I was full time viola by the time I hit the university symphony. The violinists were notoriously snooty about the whole 32nd note thing, so I got no sympathy there, lady. NO SYMPATHY!

t waves viola bow threateningly

Actually, the first piece we played when I hit the university was Stravinsky's "Firebird", so that pretty much took care of my "playing harmony is boring" issue. Phew, is that piece hard, no matter what part you're playing. The speed is difficult enough, but it's the counting that's really brutal.

Ha! Amazingly enough, I have a cousin in the Navy. But I have never quizzed him about modern rank. (And until two years ago, he did not work on a ship anyway, just fixed things right next to the ocean.)

See, sadly, my brother is in port at the moment, so if I make the mistake of being in the same room as him, everything is "blah blah blah boat, blah blah blah captain, blah blah blah boatswain, blah blah blah stupid asshole head engineer, blah blah blah whatever."

stupid asshole head engineer

I'm pretty sure I don't remember this one from any nostalgic seafaring yarns I've read. Are you sure he's really in the Navy?

May I still join the We Hate Pizzicato! club?

But yes. You may, so long as you have been a second violin.

In England, yes. The Tems. In CT? Thhhhhhhhames.

The main drag in Newport is pronounced Thhhhhhhhames Street, too, so not just a Connecticut thing.

Fritters are nasty and who thought it would be a good idea to put cooked corn into a doughnut in the first place?

I stand in kernel-free (as opposed to colonel-free) solidarity with Nutty on this.