So yesterday, a friend and I were coming home from school to go to work. Our car breaks down right on the very top of the Jamestown(RI) bridge, stuck. So we're waiting for the AAA guy to come and tow us, and three Porsche SUVs filled with people in really nice clothes and jackets comes up behind us and beeps at us. Everyone else was just going in the passing lane to get by us, but they stop and honk their horn, gave us a "What are you doing" look and gesture, so we turn around and flick them off and tell them to go around us.

Reading the paper today there was an article talking about Mikhail Gorbachev, former Soviet leader who probobly ended the Soviet Union, was coming in town for a speech. The reporter described the them leaving from the Quonset airport in three Porsche SUVs, and the only way to the island(my town) from Quonset is along the same route we were, same time. Even judging from the photo, it was definately the same people. I just flicked off a Soviet leader! hahahaha

The guy who tried to reform the Soviet Union? That's not very nice. :p

Damn Rhode Islanders.

Ronald Reagan kicked his ***. Ronald Reagan was a total badass.

Some of my buddy Ron has rubbed off on you.

Random Ronald Reagan fact: He was born in Tampico, Illinois, my mom's hometown. I've been to his house, it's about a 5 minute drive from my grandparent's farm.

If they bomb us, it's your fault!

That is just awesome!!!

That's the man who invented perestroika! Show some respect. :p

Hahaha, I would give anything for that opportunity.

Well not anything..

[QUOTE=Michael MacFarlane]That's the man who invented perestroika! Show some respect. :p[/QUOTE]
Don't forget glasnost.

First you say you are old and play DnD recently, when everyone knows that isn't true, now you say yo like Ronald Reagan.

Your respect level is decreasing...

Unless you're intentionally doing this for some unknown reason, or perhaps I see an unknown unknown, in which is impossible.

Regan was good. Let's not let this descend down to the level of most political discussions which could just as easily be video card fanboy wars, if some names were changed.

No, Reagan was bad. But let's not let this get political.

:p

No, Reagan was good, but let's leave politics out of this.

Pfft. Reagan was good but he was no Dubya. Reagan's military spending only put the US in $3 trillion debt. George W. Bush's military spending has put the US in $8.4 trillion debt. The winner here is clear.

I need to study more of what Reagan did, so don't kill me over this one thing.

I liked Reagan.

I also think it's funny that you gave Gorby the finger.

Never heard the expression "flicked off" before. "flipped off" I've heard.

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Reagan SMASH!"

Heh. Cool

Is "the finger" an international expression?

Good american, you flicked off a dirty commie!

History of the "finger"

The Battle of Agincourt in the 100 years war marked the end of the french knight-in-shineing-armor with the english longbowmen.

Before the battle, the French mocked them, telling the English that when they lose, they will cut off their middle finger (the finger you pull the arrow back with).

But, the Longbowmen obviously prevailed and as a sign, flipped off the French to show them that they still have their middle fingers.

How it evolved, I dunno. I'm going off of memory here also, so you might want to look up the full details.

good is just a point of view of course though



Politically in the US Regan was more powerful yes, but you have to look at what the USSR was going through at the time to see why Gorby seemed weak.

Gorby's reforms came too quick and unintentinally caused the USSR to desolve, and he hates that fact, he was trying to strengthen it and even ran in the 90s under the communist party but got such a lower percent of the vote because the people over there pretty much hate him.

Americans loved him back in the day though



I hope you're being sarcastic for the sake of intelligence

Finns possess no sarcasm. Geez!

You're way too serious.

*insert "In Soviet Russia..." joke here*

I've heard it as both "flicked off" and "flipped off", but I prefer the latter. The first one sounds like what you do when you have a booger on your finger.

I heard that story is not true about the origin of "the finger."

"I flicked off Mikhail Gorbachev" means "I stimulated Mickhail Gorbachev's clitoris" to me.

Its a lady fiddling term to me.

[quote=Napoleon Bonaparte]History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.[/quote]

You're right in one way...who has the right to declare what is fact and what is ficion with history, I say?

Er... the people who know what actually happened?

Seriously, this kind of postmodern approach to history really pisses me off.

[QUOTE=Michael MacFarlane]Er... the people who know what actually happened?

Seriously, this kind of postmodern approach to history really pisses me off.[/QUOTE]

Do you have any idea what my post was about?

"Now for the facts. The "one-finger salute," or at any rate sexual gestures involving the middle finger, are thousands of years old. In Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution, Desmond Morris and colleagues note that the digitus infamis or digitus impudicus (infamous or indecent finger) is mentioned several times in the literature of ancient Rome. Turning to our vast classical library, we quickly turn up three references. Two are from the epigrammatist Martial: "Laugh loudly, Sextillus, when someone calls you a queen and put your middle finger out."

(The verse continues: "But you are no sodomite nor fornicator either, Sextillus, nor is Vetustina's hot mouth your fancy." Martial, and Roman poets in general, could be pretty out there, subject-matter-wise. Another verse begins: "You love to be sodomized, Papylus . . .")

In the other reference Martial writes that a certain party "points a finger, an indecent one, at" some other people. The historian Suetonius, writing about Augustus Caesar, says the emperor "expelled [the entertainer] Pylades . . . because when a spectator started to hiss, he called the attention of the whole audience to him with an obscene movement of his middle finger." Morris also claims that the mad emperor Caligula, as an insult, would extend his middle finger for supplicants to kiss.

It's not known whether one displayed the digitus infamis in the same manner that we (well, you) flip the bird today. In another of his books Morris describes a variety of sexual insults involving the middle finger, such as the "middle-finger down prod," the "middle-finger erect," etc., all of which are different from the classic middle-finger jerk. But let's not quibble. The point is, the middle-finger/phallus equation goes back way before the Titanic, the Battle of Agincourt, or probably even that time Sextillus cut off Pylades with his chariot. And I ain't kidding yew. "

Wow, that is a cool life story.

This entire thread=

i heard the agincourt thing was the Vs, not just the middle finger.

I like the V.

then some stupid hippies turned the knuckles inward and made it a peace sign.

Nice. I have to look into that

But, my point is that HISTORIANS STILL HAVE THE RIGHT TO DISSAGREE WITH CERTAIN EVENTS. Not saying I dissagree, because I am still ignorant in your story, but I'm just saying.

[QUOTE=Mr. Stafford]i heard the agincourt thing was the Vs, not just the middle finger.

I like the V.

then some stupid hippies turned the knuckles inward and made it a peace sign.[/QUOTE]

I would have thought so too considering it'd get painful pulling back a bow string with just one finger.

If I've misunderstood, perhaps you could explain.