yes, your highness

this morning i heard some news. that is to say i was listening NPR. i heard that Queen Elizabeth is celebrating her 80th birthday today and as part of the celebration she'll be doing her 'traditional' walk about (as they called it) around London. they played a sound bite of people cheering for her - all out cheering like they were at a rugby game or something. it was great! they also filled us in on some of the royal protocol: in the presence of the Queen you shouldn't speak unless spoken to and if that were to happen you should say 'happy birthday' and nothing more.

then what's going to happen to all of those cheering Brits who have not been spoken to and are saying other things in addition to 'happy birthday' at the top of their lungs? i know the Tower of London has long since been turned into a museum and tourist attraction so they can't throw them in there. and i highly doubt they'll ship them off to one of the old colonies that aren't really British colonies any more. so... what will be their fate? maybe they'll be forced to watch that one movie What a Girl Wants where Daphne Reynolds (Amanda Bynes), a strong-willed American girl who has no regard for British protocol goes to London in search of her estranged father (Colin Firth), who happens to be a British senator, and finds out that he is about to marry a stuffy-jerk English lady with an even bigger stuffy-jerk English daughter and there are scandals and montages and romantic consequences.

p.s. the only redeeming quality of that movie is when they play the Clash's London Calling during the 'getting to know London' montage .