(July 15, 2013 at 7:37 pm)Rahul Wrote: Oh, Monty Python. Good stuff.Source of this please.
I remember this old Saturday Night Live skit where a British officer is casually walking around his camp during a Zulu attack and everyone is fighting and dying around him. He's all calm and collected drinking his tea and speaking british sayings. Hilarious. Also closer to reality than us Americans think.
During WWII a combined British/American force had routed a German division. The Germans were pulling back to a bridge and were getting ready to blow it up. The Americans and British are hauling ass to get there before they blew it and stop them.
When all of a sudden the British stopped, started fires, and starting making tea. It was tea time for crying out loud. They weren't barbarians. The Americans freaked, called them nuts, and kept racing.
The Americans saved that bridge and the British had their tea. All in all a pretty chipper morning all around.
Also on D-Day on one of the beaches some British officer was casually strolling back and forth on the beach with a map, smoking a pipe, and inspecting everything like he was looking over a piece of property he was considering buying.
All the time the Germans are raking the beach with machine guns and people are dying all around him.
I don't even think the crazy bastard got a scratch.
That's always impressed me about the British even while simultaneously thinking they're crazy as shit to act like that.
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful" - Edward Gibbon (Offen misattributed to Lucius Annaeus Seneca or Seneca the Younger) (Thanks to apophenia for the correction)
'I am driven by two main philosophies:
Know more about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you' - Neil deGrasse Tyson
"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it." - Mark Twain
'I am driven by two main philosophies:
Know more about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you' - Neil deGrasse Tyson
"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it." - Mark Twain