Is it just me or is there a real wish for the western world to rip itself out of the banality of its current non-existance based around sporting events and soap operas?
I'd like to think i add a little to the inane distractions of life, by writing posts about obese Americans or about Russian girls living on Coffee and cigarettes so they keep slim and get a husband. Today i'll enrich your lives, dear reader, with some more observations on American life (which translates as more Europeans guffawing at the silliness that happens in USA) since i've been stuck here for over a month now...
1. Sauna culture.
US, despite being cold in many places has no Sauna culture. This is possibly connected to the fact that you don't really want to see most American girls naked. In my gym, there is a sauna though, where people turn up with their training shoes on, and full tracksuit, and sit down...kind of missing the point. You can't put water on the Sauna either (for no good reason actually, because i do it all the time when there are no litiganous yanks to whinge)
2. World Travel.
It took 20 minutes in the bank the other day for the tellers to check my ID. They had never seen a foreign passport before. I kid you not. What does this say about the broad/narrow mindedness of the population? I actually told someone I was a Scottish refugee and they believed me. Funny but not funny. It seems that the vast majority of the CNN/Fox watching population have absolutely no interest in or wish to visit anywhere in the outside world. Of course the media tells them it's dangerous (they don't tell you that this is primarily due to US military intervention in the outside world) but these aren't people who are putting 2+2 together. So basically, yet another reason why the world has, and always will have a majority 'slave class'. Which i'm personally, quite alright with.
3. High Fructose Corn Syrup.
The biggest ingredient in pretty much everything in a working class Americans diet, the middle classes woke up to this trick a while back, but being good libertarians, all they do is just buy other (more expensive) stuff and let the working man continue drinking/eating his Pepsi and Burgers. So basically, the taxpayer, pays for Obamacare, which in turn pumps poor/ignorant Americans full of drugs, because they gave themselves diabetes/heart problems, because they eat the food in the supermarket/fast food place. Kind of brings up the shortcomings of the selfish American culture in a nutshell. Of course, this healthcare for the poor wouldn't be needed so much if, for example, food that is in fact toxic was not legal (like other countries who actually care about their citizens) but of course, who would pay for the election campaign costs if Pharm and Food companies lobby groups weren't getting their way? Personally i'm quite ok with all this, so long as the people who choose to poison themselves, are taxed to hell to pay for the healthcare bills, so I don't have to pay for them. So, why not tax High Fructose Corn Syrup the same as Alcohol or Narcotics? Then maybe the intensive care wards of American hospitals wouldn't be full of fat alcoholics and drug users, wasting US taxpayers dollars...
4. Guns
I'm all for guns. I'm sure I wouldn't last long as a burglar if householders all had guns. Even semi-automatics, why the hell not? And it seems to me to be a good way to get rid of bad people (let them shoot each other all the time, like in Chicago.)
Perhaps Hollywood and the Pharmaceutical Industry have more to answer for on the 'mass shootings' that Americans love, than actual normal people who have guns to protect themselves from burglars and the US government.
If I lived in a country like USA where the only thing I know for sure is that I cant trust the government, then i'd be doing every single thing that they want to ban, as i'd know there's a negative reason for it.
Piers Morgan, who left the UK embroiled in scandal, is completely wrong about getting rid of guns in USA. It won't disarm criminals, it won't disarm the insane prescription drug killers, it will disarm law abiding responsible citizens - soft targets for the authorities.
The UK doesn't have a gun culture. But we don't need one. The bad guys, by and large, don't have guns. Our Police don't have guns either. And we have no real need to be afraid of our bike riding softy Prime ministers (If Labour got in then thats a different story...)
However, living in Buffalo. It seems to me that no one actually has a gun anyway...I must visit Alabama or Texas sometime ;o) But the point is that the problem is the culture here, not the guns.
6. Swimming - can someone tell me why does no one in USA swim?
I'd like to think i add a little to the inane distractions of life, by writing posts about obese Americans or about Russian girls living on Coffee and cigarettes so they keep slim and get a husband. Today i'll enrich your lives, dear reader, with some more observations on American life (which translates as more Europeans guffawing at the silliness that happens in USA) since i've been stuck here for over a month now...
1. Sauna culture.
US, despite being cold in many places has no Sauna culture. This is possibly connected to the fact that you don't really want to see most American girls naked. In my gym, there is a sauna though, where people turn up with their training shoes on, and full tracksuit, and sit down...kind of missing the point. You can't put water on the Sauna either (for no good reason actually, because i do it all the time when there are no litiganous yanks to whinge)
2. World Travel.
It took 20 minutes in the bank the other day for the tellers to check my ID. They had never seen a foreign passport before. I kid you not. What does this say about the broad/narrow mindedness of the population? I actually told someone I was a Scottish refugee and they believed me. Funny but not funny. It seems that the vast majority of the CNN/Fox watching population have absolutely no interest in or wish to visit anywhere in the outside world. Of course the media tells them it's dangerous (they don't tell you that this is primarily due to US military intervention in the outside world) but these aren't people who are putting 2+2 together. So basically, yet another reason why the world has, and always will have a majority 'slave class'. Which i'm personally, quite alright with.
3. High Fructose Corn Syrup.
The biggest ingredient in pretty much everything in a working class Americans diet, the middle classes woke up to this trick a while back, but being good libertarians, all they do is just buy other (more expensive) stuff and let the working man continue drinking/eating his Pepsi and Burgers. So basically, the taxpayer, pays for Obamacare, which in turn pumps poor/ignorant Americans full of drugs, because they gave themselves diabetes/heart problems, because they eat the food in the supermarket/fast food place. Kind of brings up the shortcomings of the selfish American culture in a nutshell. Of course, this healthcare for the poor wouldn't be needed so much if, for example, food that is in fact toxic was not legal (like other countries who actually care about their citizens) but of course, who would pay for the election campaign costs if Pharm and Food companies lobby groups weren't getting their way? Personally i'm quite ok with all this, so long as the people who choose to poison themselves, are taxed to hell to pay for the healthcare bills, so I don't have to pay for them. So, why not tax High Fructose Corn Syrup the same as Alcohol or Narcotics? Then maybe the intensive care wards of American hospitals wouldn't be full of fat alcoholics and drug users, wasting US taxpayers dollars...
4. Guns
I'm all for guns. I'm sure I wouldn't last long as a burglar if householders all had guns. Even semi-automatics, why the hell not? And it seems to me to be a good way to get rid of bad people (let them shoot each other all the time, like in Chicago.)
Perhaps Hollywood and the Pharmaceutical Industry have more to answer for on the 'mass shootings' that Americans love, than actual normal people who have guns to protect themselves from burglars and the US government.
If I lived in a country like USA where the only thing I know for sure is that I cant trust the government, then i'd be doing every single thing that they want to ban, as i'd know there's a negative reason for it.
Piers Morgan, who left the UK embroiled in scandal, is completely wrong about getting rid of guns in USA. It won't disarm criminals, it won't disarm the insane prescription drug killers, it will disarm law abiding responsible citizens - soft targets for the authorities.
The UK doesn't have a gun culture. But we don't need one. The bad guys, by and large, don't have guns. Our Police don't have guns either. And we have no real need to be afraid of our bike riding softy Prime ministers (If Labour got in then thats a different story...)
However, living in Buffalo. It seems to me that no one actually has a gun anyway...I must visit Alabama or Texas sometime ;o) But the point is that the problem is the culture here, not the guns.
5. Conspiracy Theories.
I find this pretty funny. Especially the conspiracy theory that the city of London is a law unto itself, and the Queen is the evil reptile Nazi ruler of the world. The tragedy is that most of them are true (like 9/11 or basically any other 'coincidental' scandal just when a new law needs to come out (mass shooting anyone?) But someone must have laced these forums with dodgy kool aid (or more likely they're infiltrated, Philip K Dick style with CIA goons) who put the more crazy ones out there to make fools of the poor sods...
6. Swimming - can someone tell me why does no one in USA swim?
1. It's actually not that cold in most of the US. You realize you live a stone's throw from Canada, right? Most Americans don't. I think the sauna unpopularity is a mix of lack of cold climate and Americans being prude. That's why they can't show a nipple on TV either.
ReplyDelete2. How many foreigners show up at a bank in the US trying to open an account? You'd probably get the same scrutiny showing up in Sweden with a Maltese passport. But show up in NY with an Oregon driver's license and you're all set.
3. The HFCS backlash started about 2 years ago, so now you'll find products that tout how they contain real sugar instead of HFCS. The reason HFCS is popular is that corn farmers receive subsidies (just like sugar beet farmers in Europe), so it's a cheaper sweetener than real sugar. I'm not defending it -- just explaining why HFCS is so prevalent.
The backlash about HFCS was strong enough that the industry petitioned to rename it to "corn sugar" but the regulator (I forget if it was FDA or FTC) shot it down as they felt it would be misleading to consumers.
5. Might be a Buffalo thing. Plenty of public and private (club) swimming pools near me. Looking at Olympic medal results, it seems like swimming is fairly popular in the US overall.
Comeon - Showing up in US Bank with a UK passport should be pretty easy...I can open a bank account in Estonia with a UK passport quicker than i can draw a cheque in South Buffalo!
ReplyDeleteEmm of course that's easier. The UK and Estonia are both in the EU, so they presumably have agreements about this sort of stuff.
DeleteOk re the swimming - here there are basically no public swimming pools, which is weird, and the one in my gym is always quiet, which is great...
ReplyDeleteGot a point out again that the UK like the US folks are able to keep guns at home with the correct licences. The difference in the US is looser gun control so irresponsible gangsters and maniacs can get their hands on them which elevates everyones paranoia. You can't only get shot in your home but also outside of it minding your own business!
ReplyDeleteyes, but you can't cure that by banning guns, because gun ownership is already too high.
ReplyDeleteYes you can otherwise your getting caught in what's known as a "Vicious Circle". Anyway no ones saying ban guns just restrict their sale and license to home owners. Stop the morons getting hold of them. Their circulation will soon come down.
ReplyDeleteThe real question is - who are the morons? In Finland and Switzerland a high number of gun deaths are suicide. In UK its black on black gangster crime, as it is in Chicago. In US the high profile cases that kill a lot of innocents are prescription drug zombies - so surely then the answer is not to let people on prescription drugs legally carry a gun. But how do you police that?
ReplyDeleteIn the US also, the overwhelming percentage of gun deaths are suicides, not homicides.
DeleteThe morons clearly is anyone with homicide on their mind. Prescription drug zombies are a pretty narrow band of people. Guns make the process of murder far more efficient and like i said before most law abiding citizens don't want to walk about the place like John Wayne.
ReplyDeleteTrue - but if your planning to kill people then the legalities aren't such a big issue. Lets assume you got rid of legal semi-automatic weapons in USA. Someone could still kill people by either 1. using something else. or 2. getting an illegal semi automatic weapon. So its not such a big deal really, surely?
ReplyDeleteIf your planning to kill people then you DO have every option open to you. If you want to use an automatic weapon then you'd have a much harder time and run the risk of leaving a trail aquiring one in a country that had stricter proliferation laws than one that didn't re: The USA. With prohibition the guns would come out of circulation with gun amnestys, and routine seizures and as criminals are routinely locked up and or give up the life the guns would fall out of their hands.
ReplyDeleteIf your'e planning to kill people then you aren't really worrying too much about the consequences surely...Every mass murder in US, staged or not, had as the 'star of the show' guys so dozed up on prescription drugs that they didn't know what day it was...
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you are worrying unless your completely mental or high on drugs of either variety. The point is with stricter laws guns become harder to obtain such as in the UK. With less guns in the hands of criminals then people need to worry less about a potential confrontation ending fataly. Therefore people are worried less so they don't feel the need to arm themselves and so on. A "virtuous circle"! Seems like common sense.
ReplyDelete