fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2086 ]

[ SECRET POST #2086 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2086 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 060 secrets from Secret Submission Post #298.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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It has been over a week. We've had fun in the past, so shall we do it again?

For those who haven't seen the first three here we go;

For those who don't know, let me explain for those who missed those threads;

Do you have a question about something dealing with a different country other than your own but have been too afraid to ask because you thought the question was too stupid?

Go on. Ask. Everyone is curious about something.

The only thing I ask of you is to be polite. Nothing bigoted or vicious. Just genuine questions of curiosity.

I'll start;

I'm curious, what sort of infomercials do you get overseas? I always see memes referencing American infomercials. "HI, I'M BILLY MAYS!" but never any other country's. Do they even have informercials in your country?

I'm in the UK and I'm not even 100% sure what an informercial is and how it differs from a regular advertisement. So yeah I don't think we have those!

An infomercial is much longer than a regular ad and often disguised as a talk show that just happens to be focusing on some "wonderful product."

I didn't realize the UK didn't have them. Lucky you.

Yay for two questions answered for the price of one! As far as I'm aware we don't have those here, the closest thing would be shopping channels.

Re: Stupid questions from non-natives (Part Four)

insanenoodlyguy - 2012-09-19 01:15 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Stupid questions from non-natives (Part Four)

biohazardgirl - 2012-09-19 04:02 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Stupid questions from non-natives (Part Four)

fingalsanteater - 2012-09-19 06:32 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Stupid questions from non-natives (Part Four)

(Anonymous) - 2012-09-19 21:17 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Stupid questions from non-natives (Part Four)

(Anonymous) - 2012-09-19 21:21 (UTC) - Expand

But then they don't have those oh, so wonderful catch phrases that refuse to leave your head at two o'clock in the morning.

"JUST SET IT AND FORGET IT!"

Re: Stupid questions from non-natives (Part Four)

rosehiptea - 2012-09-19 00:53 (UTC) - Expand

An informerical a half hour long commercial for a single product that tries to pose itself as a talk show of some sorts. They usually air both very late at night or very early in the morning after regular television programming ends. (It used to be in the US, stations would stop airing programs after a certain hour, like midnight and would go static. Now they sell those hours where they are off air to companies that have informercials.)

Re: Stupid questions from non-natives (Part Four)

kathkin - 2012-09-19 00:44 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Stupid questions from non-natives (Part Four)

(Anonymous) - 2012-09-19 01:04 (UTC) - Expand

Are helicopters common on Australian ranches?

What are the standard breakfast staples for whatever country/region you're in? (There are a lot in the US - eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, hashbrowns, pancakes, waffles, bagels, muffins, toast, doughnuts, fruit, cereal, etc. - I don't usually eat breakfast, but cereal is generally my go to.)

Is there some built up mythos of The Old West or Native Americans in Germany? I lived on a reservation when I was younger and there always seemed to be German tourists at the trading post.

My family usually eats plain steamed buns or steamed scallion buns with peanut butter and jam and eggs for breakfast. It's east/west fusion, so it's not standard at all.

My family eats toast with cheese or tomatos, churros, or muffins with coffee to drink.

Believe it or not, there's a Wild West theme park in Germany. I find that non-Americans are more into the whole Wild West thing than Americans. For Americans, it's more about history. For non-Americans, it's more John Wayne, Gun Smoke and The Magnificent Seven. Less history and more Hollywood's take on it. Or to bit it another way, less Wild Bill Hickock and Sitting Bull and more "cowboys and indians."

Re: Stupid questions from non-natives (Part Four)

(Anonymous) - 2012-09-19 01:22 (UTC) - Expand

Nobody I know calls them ranches here (I'm thinking stations? same thing?). I know a few of the larger properties have helicopters or light aircraft (usually if they run cattle or sheep and have too much land to find them on foot). We have 47 hectares, which is 116ish acres, so I check the fences, water pumps, and move the cattle on foot with my dog or on my horse, sometimes I take the ute (er. pickup if you are from the states) if I have heavy stuff to move. Unless my brother has it, in which case, I lug 25kg bags of feed across a kilometer long paddock and over a creek with no bridge using my arms, because the wheelbarrow doesn't like the creek (and on those days, I hate my life). I wish we had a helicopter. I would seriously sell my soul for one.

Re: Stupid questions from non-natives (Part Four)

(Anonymous) - 2012-09-19 04:44 (UTC) - Expand

I assume by Ranches you mean farms? The bigger ones sometimes own a helicopter. You can also rent them. They're kind of expensive to keep and maintain (fuel!) so it would really depend on the purpose of the farm and how big it is.

In Germany and eastern Europe there is a lot of love for the idylical "Wild West" and Indians. See Karl May for example.

Especially in former Czechoslovakia, there was a rather large organization of people who called themselves Trampers. These people idolized the old west, they wrote country and folk music, dressed in american stylized army clothing, wore cowboy hats...

It was seen as a sort of a rebelion against the regime. People who activelly opposed the regime and tried to sabotage it were often Trampers too.

Our imagined Wild West has probably nothing to do with what really happened except for few base facts but it was a form of survival, bonding and fun in a bigotted and close-minded world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_tramping

A traditional full English breakfast is fried egg (occasionally scrambled), sausages and bacon, with some combination of: tomato, mushrooms, baked beans, black pudding, hash browns, potato scones. A full Scottish breakfast is about the same thing except haggis is always included. The big difference as far as I can tell is that sweet things for breakfast are not traditional here, though they're coming more into fashion.

However that would generally be only for weekends/going out for breakfast/whatever - I imagine normal weekday breakfasts in the UK are about the same here as in the US.

If you live outside of the US, what kind of presence do old (as in decades-old) re-runs have on TV?

In my city, we have two (TWO!) broadcast channels dedicated to re-runs of old shows. (That's not even counting cable channels like TV Land and Boomerang.) One is a Me TV station, the other is Antenna TV. I love these stations because they air a lot of the same shows that used to air on Nick-at-Nite* when I was growing up.

I'm watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show right now and if I switch channels, I can see Good Times.

*Evening programming line-up of 60s/early 70s TV on kids' cable network Nickelodeon.

Reruns are usually fairly popular here (especially if they're of viewer-loved shows/movies). They're often more watched than some new TV series.

Even american TV shows that probably aren't as popular elsewhere are popular here and have a cult following. Like Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction. When they show the reruns they're always in prime time. Or Friends. Or The Nanny. The Simpsons have been running without interruption on one of our channels for the past 12 years. :D

In Argentina we have infomercials (if I'm understanding correctly what they are xD) but they are in specific channels or early in the morning/late at night.

When I was around 13 I would watch religiously at 10 am one about a set of knives and freak out my mum xD

I don't watch TV nowadays so dunno about the most recent ones, but most were for cleaning products (vacuums and the like), exercising equipment (treadmills) or kitchen appliances (I remember one about an old guy who drank juice made with this machine that made him feel younger and invigorated, so he ran around while he talked about the product xDD)

I saw one the other day here (Japan) that was for an American exercise machine -- it was just the American ad dubbed into Japanese.

Australian here. I'm not sure what an informercial is. Reading descriptions above. hmmm. The closest we get are 30 second adds on weight or cleaning equipment with a number at the end.

Question! The little cleaning disks. Roombas? they look adorable. Do they actually clean?

You, my dear fellow Australian, obviously don't watch enough day time/ late night TV. If you have freeview, channel Television 4 (I think that's its actual name) is actually an entire channel of informercials (well, when it's not a Psychic TV hotline). You should check it out and be enlightened/ horrified ;)

(I will admit that most of the infomercials on Aussie TV are American - unless you count the weird advertising segments on morning TV, which I don't. /apparently an informercial purest.)

Re: Stupid questions from non-natives (Part Four)

(Anonymous) - 2012-09-19 10:54 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Stupid questions from non-natives (Part Four)

(Anonymous) - 2012-09-19 13:24 (UTC) - Expand

The Roombas aren't that good if you have deep carpets. If you have thin, thin carpets, they are pretty okay. We bought one when they first came out. We ended up buying a regular vacuum to get the job done.

In Czech Republic (and Slovakia) we call Infomercials teleshopping. They're not allowed to be a part of regular commercial slot and they also have different paying rates. They usually also have to be scheduled.

The most famous person to do teleshopping is Horst Fuchs, funny guy.

Question for US Americans:

I see a lot of pop culture stuff about showering after gym class in high school. Does that actually happen? They give you enough time between classes to shower?

We barely had enough time to change clothes before our next class.

And in college, do you really have to take a bunch of classes unrelated to your major? I mean, if you're majoring in English or art do they make you take math and biology? I can see having mandatory electives in other arts classes or low-level computer science, but physics? Seems like a waste of time.

Well I'm in the UK and one of the schools I went to had showers attached to the changing rooms which technically we were supposed to use but no-one did - or at least none of the girls, I think the boys were less shy/needed less time to let their hair dry and so wouldn't be cold all afternoon if they showered.

At all the schools I went to we normally finished P.E. at least 5-10 minutes before the end of the class to give people time to change and breaks were 15 minutes.

Nope, we were never even allowed near the showers.

And yeah, if you go to a liberal arts school you'll have to take a bit of gen ed.

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