It's coming up to Christmas and New Year's and as such a holiday time where we put our negativism and critical energy away for a few weeks.
In keeping with the spirit I shall remain irreverant to the end of the year.
Here's a lighthearted and not-so-lighthearted view of what's wrong with the United States.
By the way, no politicians included because they'd take up all 100 places!
...and don't worry, I'll be getting around to Canada next.
- US citizens arrogantly anointing themselves 'Americans'
- Omitting the 'U' from words like 'colour' or 'valour.'
- Stupid uni-coloured green money and referring coloured currency as "Monopoly Money'
- The useless penny and one dollar bill
- Using 'Entreé' to describe the main course in a restaurant.
- Constantly weather complaining about that annoying 'Canadian Cold Front'
- Elections every week.
- Unable to count votes properly or in a timely fashion
- Hysterical partisan news coverage
- Pronouncing "Montreal as 'Mohn-Tree-All' or Toronto as 'Tor-on-Toe'
- Black Friday hysteria
- Fahrenheit, ounces, pounds and feet.
- The Electoral College
- Gigantic doughy and tasteless New York-style bagels.
- Flagpoles and flags in front of private residences.
- Pronouncing 'Zee' instead of the proper 'Zed'
- The 'First Lady,' as a pitiful substitution for the Queen.
- Righteous indignation over Russian election interference while the CIA remains the biggest foreign election interferer.
- Constant complaining about illegal immigrants while shamelessly exploiting them as cheap labour.
- 'Stand your Ground' laws
- Too many natural disasters like hurricanes, droughts, mudslides, floods, tornados and wildfires. ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!!
- Taxes on lottery winnings
- 'Venti-mocha-cookie-Frappuccino with 6 shots of expresso'...aaahhhh!
- Appropriating 'Poutine' and describing its origins as Canadian instead of Quebecois.
- ...and its pale imitation, the ever-disgusting 'Disco Fries' and 'Waffle Fries'
- 'Tonite' instead of 'Tonight'....Really?
- Bullet-proof school knapsacks.
- Super-sized portions for a super-sized nation
- No mustard on burgers and no vinegar or mayonnaise for fries.
- Horrible Mexican fast-food that look the same going in and going out.
- No steamed-hot dogs or thick-cut fries in fast-food chains and strangely, outside of upstate New York, no Michigan Hotdogs.
- Thinking they know something about hockey. Commentators using the terms 'Dasher' and 'Cycle'
- Cheerleading as a competitive sport.
- Massive homeless population
- Ambulance-chasing lawyers and prescription medicine advertisements
- Using the word 'Soda' or 'Pop.'
- Cheese-filled crust pizza
- 'Mac'n Cheese' instead of the proper 'Kraft Dinner.'
- Drive-through banks
- Trigger-happy cops
- Obsession with the Bible and fundamentalist bible thumpers
- Clueless winter-weather drivers who can't drive in snowstorms, plus 18 wheel drivers who immediately jackknife in the face of a dusting of snow.
- Using the term 'ice hockey' but not 'tackle football'
- Unsingable national anthem
- Anti-vaxers.
- Creationists and intelligent design
- 70% of Americans now describe themselves as 'VICTIMS' while others describe 70% of Americans as 'PRIVILEGED'
- Asians punished in university admissions for being too smart and dedicated.
- No 'Smarties' Caramilk, Coffee Crisp, Aero or Mae Wests
- 'Kinder Surprise" banned as a danger to society but rapid-fire assault rifles are okay.
- Obsessional reverence of 200-year-old obsolete Constitution.
- Right to bear arms
- 21 years age minimum to drink....18 to buy a gun.
- Pronouncing 'Iraq and Iran as 'Eye-Raq' and 'Eye-Ran'
- Promoting the fantasy that Canadians pronounce 'ABOUT as 'A-BOOT.'
- Interminable chutzpah of Americans who never travel abroad believing that the USA is by far the greatest country in the world and the best place to live.
- Televised beauty pageants, cooking and dance competitions for children.
- Left-lane highway hoggers
- Emotional support animals
- Referring to Back Bacon" as 'Canadian Bacon..'
- Unhealthy portions
- Hipsters
- A technologically advanced society that hasn't yet embraced chipped credit cards.
- Christian TV evangelists
- Amazon package thieves
- Mass shootings
- Brainless politicians who ask the public to pray every time there's a mass shooting.
- The NRA, bump stocks, assault rifles and open carry
- Fat people yoga pants
- Weirdos in Walmart
- Hot-dog eating contests
- Ambulance chasing lawyers
- The Western Baptist Church
- The Kardashians
- Referring to American baseball championship as the 'World Series'
- 2-year, billion dollar Presidential election campaigns featuring endless primaries
- Idiot elections for judges, district attorneys and sheriffs resulting in crooked judges and cops
- For-profit jails
- Political Action Committees (PACS) and nasty negative political ads on TV- "I approve this message!
- Health insurance and co-pays
- Personal bankruptcies caused by medical bills.
- Nation of litigious idiots suing over nothing and gazillion-dollar jury awards.
- Ridiculously expensive college tuition resulting in....forever student loans.
- Violent anti-abortion, Antifa and White Supremacists activists.
- Annoying Robocalls
- Crackers and Rednecks and Bible Thumpers
- Ambulance chasing lawyers
- Confederate flag
- Civil forfeiture
- Childhood obesity
- Corporate political donations
- Unnecessary and costly mid-term elections
- TSA pat-downs of children, old people and invalids
- Astronomical prescription medicine cost
- Helicopter and Lawnmower parents
- Inner city ghettos and gangs speaking in Ebonics. 'AXED" instead of 'ASKED'
- Misogynist Rap music lyrics
- Snowflakes and Safe spaces for fragile millennials
- Huge prison population serving incredibly long sentences
- and general rank stupidity of Americans where.....
- 51% don't believe in Evolution.
- 55% believe that the Constitution established America as a Christian nation.
- 51% don’t trust the Big Bang theory.
- 56% believe that vaccines cause autism.
- Only 38% believe the Civil War was fought over slavery
- 77% believe in Angels
- 18% believe the Sun revolves around the Earth
- 33% believe in ghosts
- 20% are counting on winning a lottery as their retirement plan
- 33% believe Bigfoot exists
- 60% believe dreams predict future
- 26% believe in witchcraft
- 42% believe that homosexuals choose their orientation
- 75% have at least one paranormal belief
- 7% think chocolate milk comes brown cows
- 25% believe God has a role to play in who wins the Super Bowl
- 41% believe in psychics
- 40% believe that spiritual powers lie in objects like trees and crystals
- 62% say you have to believe in God to be a moral person
BTW... Care to add something??
American 'cheese'. God knows why they'd want to take ownership of it, though.
ReplyDelete4. Appropriating 'Poutine' and describing its origins as Canadian instead of Quebecois.
ReplyDeleteThey probably don't realize how important that is to your identity, otherwise I'm sure they would although, you probably wouldn't be happy with the way they pronounce 'Quebecois".
60. Referring to Back Bacon" as 'Canadian Bacon..'
Yeah, I know, it should be Quebecois Bacon.
There are a whole lot of classics in there, but I think my fave is how we seem to export cold fronts to them. Actually, Daddy Trudeau once did recite how they send us baseball players and acid rain while we send them hockey players and cold fronts.
DeleteAs for Kraft processed cheese food (many think it contains plastic), fair is fair. They call it American cheese and we call it Canadian cheese. I think the rest of the world would be embarrassed to adopt that processed cheese as their own. We also have Cheez Whiz (I haven't bought a jar in at least a decade), and remember Squeeze-a-Snack, the cheese in a tube you'd squeeze out of a plastic tube that somehow never needed refrigeration? I shudder to think what preservatives were in there that prevented the need for refrigeration! I also noticed it never stuck to the plastic tube...why?
12. Fahrenheit, ounces, pounds and feet.
DeleteCanadians use oz, lb and ft too, to my frustration. Join the rest of the world and use gram, kilogram and meter for God's sake!
21. Too many natural disasters like hurricanes, droughts, mudslides, floods, tornados and wildfires. ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!!
Not their fault, though.
22. Taxes on lottery winnings
Never experience one, here or there. Wish I had, taxes be damned.
36. Using the word 'Soda' or 'Pop.'
What is the correct term then? 'Soft drink'? Nobody uses that in North America except Quebec.
38. 'Mac'n Cheese' instead of the proper 'Kraft Dinner.'
What if the dish is not made by Kraft? Or, this may be a wild idea, what if the dish is made at home from scratch?
39. Drive-through banks
Available in many places in Canada as well. If one only wants to withdraw 40$, why one needs to park and get into the bank?
44. Unsingable national anthem
What about changing the national anthem as an act of appeasement?
57. Televised beauty pageants, cooking and dance competitions for children.
Yet those shows are wildly popular in Canada as well.
75. Referring to American baseball championship as the 'World Series'
This I agree, including the NFL and the NBA calling their champions as 'World Champions'.
83. Ridiculously expensive college tuition resulting in....forever student loans.
As if Canada is not as expensive. I can give you my calculation that for state universities, total cost of education maybe lower than in Canada.
85. Annoying Robocalls
No robocalls in Canadian elections?
95. Helicopter and Lawnmower parents
No such phenomena in Canada?
44. Unsingable national anthem
ReplyDeleteWe wish you a Merry Christmas, too.
Returning after a long time lurking: this subject is something that had been playing on my mind for some time.
ReplyDeleteMy list:
1 - The Deep State.
Organisations like the NSA, CIA and all sorts of other acronyms that seem to have the power to act outside the law inside and even outside the borders of the United States and, by all accounts, are all up to some seriously nasty activities "for the greater good" (as if torturing people and radicalising their enemies has some sort of upside...).
2 - Gun Laws.
Now, I'm not totally opposed to gun ownership, and I can see how, in certain circumstances (say a farm in the middle of Wyoming with the nearest police patrol a 2-hour drive away) might even be necessary. But, still, I'm not sure selling them next to the sweets counter in a supermarket is a good idea either. Oh, and to quote from comedian Rich Hall, selling them to spotty teenagers muttering words like "It's time to thin the herd" might not be a good idea either. The argument being made by gun advocates is that bad guy can get hold of guns, so why restrict the good guys... well, with more guns than people around, there's your supply of guns for your bad guys: where did you think they were getting them from?
3 - No free healthcare.
Not all illnesses are the patient's fault, and most society with at least a partially free at the point of use healthcare are not the socialist hellholes where political committees decide who lives and who dies. Also: in those places, nobody ever goes bust for catching a persistent disease. While there can be an argument to how much free healthcare can give the best balance between positive outcomes and exploitation, the US healthcare system, despite some of the most skilled doctors in the world ranks at the bottom of any table of civilised countries and below several less civilised ones too.
4 - Racism.
While racism is, in some measure, everywhere in the world, in the US it's taken to another level. When my black wife was congratulated for being with a white man by another black man in Washington, it became very clear how seriously f**ked up the place is.
5 - Two weeks annual holiday allowance.
That might explain why so many people are trigger happy... I get 24 days this year (I don't live in the US) and the possibility of taking at least a couple of 7-10 days holiday per year and random days off here and there is what keeps me from going postal. I would say the same applies to my co-workers.
Continued...
Delete6 - Compulsory tipping.
Pay your waiters (I am aware that this is a custom of Canada as well, but I don't live there either...). If I see $100 on my cheque, I want to pay $100, maybe add a dollar or two for good service, five if I'm feeling generous, not a random number between £115 and $130 or whatever is "the done thing". Service is not optional, otherwise I'd just buy and cook the food myself for less than half the money in most cases: it's part of the offering and should be part of the price. And when the service is poor, I don't want to be chased down the street (happened to a friend visiting the US) by a waitress that couldn't even be bothered to bring him his drink because he didn't tip her (shouldn't she be at least doing her job in order to get a tip?).
7 - Jaywalking.
Seriously? Shouldn't there be some assessment of the danger one puts onself in before deciding you want to relieve them of some of their money or arrest them? Not all roads have zebra crossings, not all road crossings are dangerous. Most countries manage great survival rates on the road without having this stupid law on the books.
8 - Dates, Units.
I lumped this together: dates go day, month, year everywhere in the world. And the whole world functions with the SI (formerly known as metric) system. While I got used to using both the imperial and the metric system myself (where I live they use a mix of both), at least when it comes to technical matters, engineering etc. there should be no difference anywhere in the world. Hell, the weight of a pound is defined in kilograms, come on!
9 - Home teams last.
When they say Manchester United vs Arsenal, you know they are playing in Manchester, same in every other league in every other country in the world. But when they say Dallas Mavericks vs Boston Celtics, they are in Boston. Why?
10 - Snowflakes and bigots.
Two sides of the same coin, really: one side takes offense at everything and goes out of their way to find things to be offended at, the other side seems to find pleasure in being as offensive as they possibly can, only to shout "freedom of speech" when taken to task for what they say. While I am a strong supporter of freedom of speech, it's usually easy to tell when someone is making an uncomfortable point, rather than being a real-life troll and/or boor...
Not all my points above are super-serious, but some definitely are.
Belated Happy New Year to everyone.
Wow, you know next to nothing about the United States. Funny, I'm an American that believes in God and angels (because common sense dictates the necessity of a creator), and I've never been polled by anyone on my views on stand your ground laws. Would you want me to tell you what's wrong with Canada? Restricting Free speech in churches, ambiguous hate crime legislation, and the fact that several Canadian courts have ruled that firearms CAN be used in self defense (or defence if you'd prefer), and yet Canadians are critical of American gun control. That word is called "hypocrisy". There is one place I DO agree with you, spelling. For the record, we use a mix of English, US Standard, and imperial units. (Canadian railways use miles in official capacities). You don't even know your own country, yet your criticise mine. Oh, and I've been to Canada, the people there were quite rude. In fact, so much for stereotypes, and every Canadian I've ever met (not including Canadian Americans) has been extremely rude. I've met nicer French people (which isn't a lie). That said, there are things I like about Canada, it's a beautiful country, for instance. But, if you're going to get critical of mon pays, be prepared for me to be critical of yours. And please take Jim Carrey back.
ReplyDelete