Delusions of Grandeur and Normal People20 Jun 2008 09:00 am
By Alex
This is the beginning of the racial war in the oldest democracy in the world, America.
Miller of the DeeYou’re right. Magna carta was of course signed in Philadelphia, Charlemagne came from Chicago and Plato and Aristotle used to hang about the cafes in ancient New York.
C L, Glasgow
46 Responses to “Olden Days”
Zing
oldest democracy in the world - America, hahah where do you even start with someone like that.
C L, Glasgow is the sort of person who would constantly makes positive statements followed by “…not!”
e.g. “I hope I don’t get terminal nut cancer…not!”
Is it because CL resides in Scotland that they object to ‘oldest democracy’ more than ‘race war’?
Reminds me of when I visited the Acropolis in Athens and there were loads of Yanks there.
There was a sign showing how they were putting all the bits of building back together in the right order, with a code to show which bits were bits.
Next to me this Yankee lady yells (they never talk) “OOh It used to be colored!”
Moment later in the museum, another spots a swastika on an bit of 3000-year old pottery. “How could they use it ” yells the woman “after what Hiter did?”
You often hear that American have no idea about history, but I didn’t realise this included chronology.
That Yankee lady sounds exactly like one I heard about… A friend of mine told was once in an art gallery looking at a picture of St Sebastian (the one that got tied to a tree and pelted with arrows).
The American next to her emotionally yells (to no-one in particular) “OH … MY … GOD! I knew they crucified Jesus, but I didn’t know they shot him as well.”
And these are the 10% who actually own passports.
In an outdoor cafe in Paris, I witnessed a Dutchman asking nearby American diners to identify Europeans countries from his road atlas.
Americans may not be the most informed people, but I doubt that many are so rude.
Well given that last time I was in the states some drunken frattard heard my English accent and forced himself into my party’s conversation by fucking up a quite from Hitchhikers’ and thereby making a pass at my girlfriend and calling me boring, and then wouldn’t take some polite hints that we didn’t want to converse with him like ignoring him while he blithered at us for half an hour… I would say yes, there do exist Americans that are so rude.
“Hey, look, they have the internet here too!”
- American woman, Victoria station, about 3 days ago
—
Woman (looking at York minster): “Ooh, it’s got such an air of history”
Man (in all earnestness): Yeah, I think it’s that it’s so, you know, old that gives it that history.
—
Actually, someone must have started a ’stupid things said by American tourists’ blog somewhere.
Yeah. Those Americans. They sure are stupid. Much stupider than us. Imagine having some form of culture shock! Ha! Ha! Ha!
After all, if there’s anything that this site proves it’s that British people are definitely not barely sentient reactionary morons. Who can spell really well. And are much superior.
I don’t think you can really attribute it to culture shock, as that implies they have some sort of culture to compare it to.
It’s not that Americans are particularly more prone to stupidity.
Their unique trait is that they seem to believe that
a) The USA is genuinely the best country in the world in all ways, and universally recognised as such and
b) Everywhere else wants to be like the USA, and if it doesn’t it damn well should.
Hence the (otherwise bright) American girl I knew at university who was both baffled and appalled that the UK didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving.
Sorry Bingolittle. You are spot on.
My example was just a story… there was no need to tag the dumb ass american stereotype on the end.
I hear British people say stupid stuff all the time as well.
I know an english person who, at a football match once, commented after about 70 minutes “oh… so they change ends at half time then”.
James, I’ve got Charlie Parker, TS Eliot, Ernest Hemmingway, Smokey Robinson, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Frank Lloyd Wright on the phone. Yeah, they all say you’re a wanker.
Took all six of them to work out how to dial the number, I see.
I once convinced a bus load of tartan-trousered American tourists not to kiss the Blarney Stone “because it’ll give you the BAD AIDS”
One threatened to sue.
My finest moment.
Wayne;
“Actually, someone must have started a ’stupid things said by American tourists’ blog somewhere.”
http://www.b3ta.com/questions/stupidtourists/page16/
I am an American who moved permanently to the UK 10 years ago this September. I can confirm the general stupidity of most Americans around things like Thanksgiving/Independence Day, and more.
My cousin once told me that I was really brave to live in a country where I didn’t know the language (yes, I know English people think I don’t know the language too, ha ha, but she meant it literally). Then she “thought” for a moment (I use the term loosely) and asked, “What language *do* they speak in England?”
I regularly get asked if we have various basic conveniences over here, like televisions, or hot running water. When I came over, I was advised that “English women don’t wear clothes that are modern or colorful or fashionable, so be careful not to dress too flashy if you don’t want to stand out.”
Americans do believe exactly what Wayne suggests, because we have it drummed into us that America is the best country in the world, the one with the most freedom and the most opportunity available to anyone, and that everyone wants to be there–and if they don’t, it’s because they don’t understand how great it is because their governments have oppressed them and fed them misinformation, or because they hate freedom and opportunity.
I don’t think anyone I knew had ever heard of anyone permanently *leaving* America before–it remains strange to them, and they don’t, and can’t, understand why I haven’t gone back and have no plans to do so in the future.
(I was advised on the clothing thing by an American who had never been to the UK, of course, in case that wasn’t clear. I think she gets her ideas of how English women dress from Marple films.)
I saw a tv program where an american said he wouldn’t vote for obama because it sounds too much like osama.
i think basically we are all fucked.
But on HYS most people won’t vote for Brown because they keep getting it confused with clown.
I was once at Windsor Castle, in the gift shop (God knows why) and an American woman was creating quite as scene, absolutely furious with this poor shop assistant.
The woman was buying something to do with Henry VIII’s wives and there was one for each wife. I honestly can’t remember what it was postcards or mugs or some shit.
Anyway she’d got the items for 6 of his wives and was asking if the other 2 wives were in stock. When the assistant said he only had 6 wives and she’d got all of them, the American lady went ballistic and was screaming “DON’T YOU TRY AND TELL ME THAT! I KNOW MY HISTORY!” etc.
That doesn’t begin to compare to the amount of times I’ve been abroad and been horribly embarrassed by some English tourists stupid comments or behaviour though.
Friend of mine worked at Edinburgh Castle, and was asked by an American: “Did they build it near the train station so it was easier to transport the stones?” and: “How much does the castle weigh?”
However, a British colleague of his (perhaps a HYS mouthbreather) also once said “All these Indians coming over here, how would they like it if we went over to India and took THEIR country over?”
Edinburgh’s great for Americans:
“What time does the one o’clock gun fire?”
[Pointing at the Crags] “Look, Arthur’s Hill!”
And best of all:
[Pointing at a TV aerial in the distance] “Look honey, you can see the Eiffel Tower from here!”
Laos, beach - yes
Young female Amercian “American History” student.
Perplexed
Why?
She could not understand why the people in Laos and Vietnam had such a downer on the US of A.
True - short - done
I’m interested now - how much *does* Edinburgh Castle weigh?
I could tell you, but it’s a metric figure and the ARM would hunt me down and knifecrime me.
CL, Glagsow’s comment looks suspiciously like a speak your branes one, maybe he’s using some sort of reverse twat-o-tron.
*looks up Wiki entry on ARM*
*pulls own head off & throws it at desk exactly ten times*
If we’re doing stupid yankee tourists, overheard thereof, then:
Imperial War Museum, Duxford- the air one. Jack and Hortense, the Great American People are strolling round. Spying one Lutwaffe aircraft, Hortense asks a curator “why don’t you have more German planes?”
I didn’t fully listen to the response, but I think it was, to his credit, a polite explanation of how we destroyed most of them- rather than than calling her a dozy cow. Which is how I’d repsond.
UK woman moves to America and takes over her dog. This is all too much for American woman who asks if its possible that the dog can tell that US dogs have a different accent when they bark. UK woman thinks for a while and replies “well, it might be possible but of course the dog has no way of letting me know if thats the case”!
Oh goody! Are we mercilessly bashing the Americans? Wonderful! I have always loved being racist and stereotyping foreigners as inferiors. But nowadays you can’t say ‘wog’ or ‘coon’ or ‘paki’ or any of that fun racist language, it’s tragic. We’re the best cuntry in the world, obviously, and it seems the only people you’re allowed to lazily generalise about are those fuck-wit yanks. How they rule the world is beyond me.
Personally, after 40 years of living in GREAT Britain I’ve never heard anybody ever say anything stupid once in the UK. But those Sceptic-Tanks, fuck me are they in-bred? We gave them democracy and they gave us the monster truck festival.
(Chelsea Flower Show, circa1990…
Posh English Old Lady1, “It’s so busy. It’s awful. I’ve never seen it so busy”
PEOL2, “Yes. You’re right. It’s awful. If it wasn’t so busy, It’d be a lot more popular.”)
Then again…
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww&feature=related
I’m astonished, I truly am, at the way we can take the piss out of stupid Brits on this site day after day, week after week, and no-one lifts an eyebrow, but the moment we suggest that there might be some Americans who aren’t exactly the shining light of intellectual superiority, people are up in arms defending the whole nation. Guess what, you chumps, every nation has good and bad but we’re responding to the context of the original comment. Anyone reflexively leaping to defend their entire country because of an anecdote about something one three-hundred-millionth of its population once did reveals themselves to be as knee-jerk idiotic as any HYSer. Now if you can’t shut up and let SYB embrace all the world’s retards and cretins in one gibbering mass, go and and fucking live there.
Oh, and just to belabour the point, the whole reason I have that story about the drunken frat-twat in the first place is because I was visiting my American fiancé’s family. And, my thin-skinned friend Rodafowa, one of the highlights of the trip was a visit to Fallingwater. Now does anyone else feel like losing their sense of humour and quacking on about racism?
To be fair to James, or rather to be unfair to Americans, in Britain we vilify our idiots and poke fun at them, but in the U.S. they make them President.
On the other hand we have Prince Phillip. Fuck.
I’m not racist… I think everyone’s an utter twat, without exception or preference.
It’s mid-afternoon. An American tourist asks a gift shop assistant at Canterbury Cathedral where all the monks are.
“There haven’t been any monks here since 1539.”
The tourist looks at her watch, then looks at her friend and says “Damn it, we just missed them.”
Runners up for the stupid question prize while I was working there were “Who shot Beckett?” and, at the ice cream kiosk, while stood staring at an ice cream machine and a large tower of plastic cups and spoons, “What’s ice cream in a cup?”
Bless them. It’s only British tourists who are as stupid about as regularly as (some of) the Merkin ones.
And, my thin-skinned friend Rodafowa, one of the highlights of the trip was a visit to Fallingwater.
I’m not the one still apparently fuming after a light-hearted comment made two days ago, chum.
Who’s lost their sense of humour, again?
Whereas when I call, you come running. It’s sweet really.
Now children….if you can’t play nicely, you can BOTH go to your rooms.
There are American twats and plenty of them. I just get bored of anecdotes about them. A part of me dies every time I hear another lazy stand up saying “have we got any Americans in tonight?”
Carry on.
Sounds like you’ve been going to shit comedy
Try Just The Tonic instead.
Ah, but Alex, Prince Philip is Greek, so we can poke fun at him all we like, the big-nosed racist twat! Hohoh, the hypocrisy.
Gotta love it.
My American tourist anecdote is seeing an American lady ask “Which direction will the train be travelling in?” - it was at the start of the line, and so could only go in one direction.
To her credit, she did manage to figure it out in mere minutes, and had a laugh at her own expense.