Brits vs Yanks
Now before anyone starts shooting flames back and forth here, let me add a little preamble. First of all, this is purely in fun. I'm American born and raised, and I love my country, even when I don't like who's running/ruining it. It's a big, beautiful country, with monumental natural resources and wildlife. I also love the UK, having grown up watching almost exclusively British programmes on the telly in my later years, if you get my drift - Red Dwarf, Dr Who, Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, the Granada-produced Sherlock Holmes series with Jeremy Brett, and on and on. And of course one need not even mention (though I'm just about to) Monty Python, of which I own every scrap of material and know chapter and verse. "The Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things." Say no more. Also, the Beeb makes documentaries par excellence, and a well done multi-part series hosted by Sir David Attenborough is better than sex to me. And no quips about my sex life! It's doing just...well, it's perfectly... um... well, you know what I'm trying to say. You get the picture. I love England and almost feel I'm a part of the culture. I watch the BBC news at night, a few comedies shows or soaps here and there, every documentary I can get my hands on, and yes I can sit and watch an entire football match and understand what is happening. I rooted for England after the USA got dumped in the last Cup, and I sat through the entire "History of Football" documentary series. THAT'S an Anglophile for you. Not to mention nearly all my favorite bands and writers and poets are British. But I love things about America too... Baseball - Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth, etc. Basketball - Kobe Bryant, Magic Johnson, et al. San Francisco...
Anyway with that preamble to show that I am not biased toward my home country, I propose a very simple game. It consists in you making a point, whether it's over something big or little doesn't matter, where one culture is clearly superior to the other. The winning country gets a point. We'll keep a running total. FOR EXAMPLE, if I were to say British pints are a tad larger that American pints, that would be a point to Britain. On the other hand, if someone were to point out the ingredients of haggis and compare them to say, a New Orleans gumbo, the point would definitely go to the USA. Get it? OK, Here we go. I'll take the first two.
-Monty Python is funnier than anything that's ever come out of the USA. Britain, 1-0 (that's pronounced 'nil' btw).
-Californian wines are unequaled anywhere in the world except in France. British wines: No. Point to USA, evened up at 1-1.
Now your turn... Feel free to post as often as you'd like and boost the score yourself. Like I said, it's all in fun and maybe we'll learn someone about one another.
And I want to see this one break the 20 post barrier for once, dammit!!
33 comments:
Rubs hands gleefully... now this is more like it! Here are some foodie examples:
English strawberries (which I've been feasting on for the past month) are infinitely superior to those huge, flavourless American ones.
There is no such thing as American beer. You drink a generic gas filled liquid the equivalent to mosquito pee. Whereas the sheer variety and quality of English real ale is probably on a par with French wine.
We don't have Smartfood :-(
Good start! Mmmm, Smartfood.
Ok so the Brits are up 3-2 and charging forward hoping to widen the gap. Suddenly, Tony Blair and George Bush jump from the foliage and attempt to sabotage the competition, but due to lack of planning and some "bad intelligence," actually run into one another and self-annihilate, like a bit of matter hitting some antimatter. A big fireball hurls into the sky and then dissipates to the solemn anguish of absolutely no one. No points for either team there.
Now the Brits are getting a little cheeky. Out come the bangers and mash, topped off with a cool pint, which the Americans can only stare with sausage-envy as they smother their poor hot dogs with ketchup and mustard and reach for a Coors Lite. Brits up 4-2!
The competition remains heated though, with the Limey chaps donning...what's this? A Philips MP3 player of some kind? (Technically Philips was founded in the Netherlands but it then spread to England, and it's the closest to homegrown British electronics I could find :P) But wait... It's got all these tiny buttons... none of them can figure out how to get the tunes rollin'... Then a band of tech-savvy Californians surge to within a few meters wearing color-coordinated iPods, expertly navigating to their favorite playlists with barely a glance downward. America is kept in this competition not by culture but once again by sheer technology!
UK 4, US 3
Computechnology definitely, that's an easily won point or three for the yanks, however let's talk domestic appliances;
American vacuum cleaners are good, especially those ones with the motorised heads that make floor cleaning a breeze as they more or less do it for you. Ours are grudgingly designed by people who still believe that we should be on our hands and knees putting in some elbow grease. Seriously, even the award winning Dyson is a cumbersome beast and not what it's cracked up to be.
Washing machines though... ha ha. Brits win this one methinks. Ours are thorough, efficient front loaders with a huge variety of alternative settings for optimum fabric care and stain removal. US ones are vast primitive beasts that waste gallons of water, have no thermostat and necessitate the irate disentangling of ones favourite sweater from that flippin' post in the middle. True, you can wash the kit of an entire sports team in one go, but ooooh dear... now the sleeves are all 10 feet long and have those grass stains gone? Have they heck!
(Good grief get a life S.!)
Blair is out. Now it's Brown vs. Bush. Too bad it wasnt "Green", then the Brits would get a point. LOL
Gonna have to burst your bubble here. Maybe you have those washing machines at a more affordable price point there, because it's true out low- to middle- machines are pants. Er... eat pants. Whatever.
But my mom as a very nice washer and dryer side by side. Washer in front loading, has all the options you mentioned with touch buttons and a little readout screen, no agitator (the phallic thing in the middle), you can fit an entire platoon's dirty fatigues in it, it's quiet, and washes everything like a charm. So we certainly have them, but maybe a higher percentage of Brits have access to these nicer appliances? I'm not sure.
And vacuum cleaners have gotten worse over the years rather than better. I mean, in some ways they're more convenient, sure. They're lighter upright with loads of attachments and come in a range of gaudy colors designed by a blind man, and some of them have those fancy HEPA filters and such. But reliability seems to have gone down the crapper. I remember as a kid, when plastic was only used to toys, and serious stuff like appliances were made of metal, our little canister-style Electrolux lasted my entire childhood. Now people seemed to need a new one every few years. Even Hoover, that once standard brand, is just a shell of its former self.
I did a little reading on the history of these things and it seem an Englishman called Hubert Booth patented a system in 1901 which was brought to the person's house drawn by horses (!), and used a large gasoline motor to provide suctions down several tubes, which were used by the service men or women to quickly suck up your dirt, hair, and plastic army men.
Melville Bissel of the US was inspired by this and made a machine that was a bit klunky but could be brought into the house, had a smaller engine, and required no horses. Unfortunately it was still a "service" you paid for because they were too expensive for the average family to afford.
The Hoover company seems to have produced the first practical cleaner than ran on an electric motor rather than petrol, as well as later the first upright. Hardly any innovation was made for decades until Mr Dyson came along with his new design, about which I've heard mixed thing. And now they have to vacuum robots like Roomba that work fairly well in some environments, not so well in other.
So we'll call appliances a draw!
Here's an easy one. Exotic sports cars: Aston Martin vs Corvette. Mid-priced: Jaguar vs Mustang. British cars win both hands down (IMO of course).
UK 5, US 3
I have to equivocate a bit and say that Aston Martin and Jaguar are both Fords now technically, and also I forgot about the Dodge Viper on the US side. But still, historically, I like Jags, Range Rovers and such over American cars, so I'm still giving the point to England.
Also, excuse my more than 40,000 typos and missing or nonsensical words in my longish post above. I hope it made sense despite that. Why can't we edit these #@$%! comments??
Brits have fair railways ( not even close to the French ). In the US not so good.
One for UK
What's the score
The English people know how to speak English ( I love lorries and lifts ). Most Americans speak a poor excuse for English.
Can I give UK 2 points?
UK 8? US 3
Good ones... I was gonna use the language one if no one else did. No two points, but one for sure. And one for better trains (though nothing like France, Germany, Switzerland).
So that's UK 7, US 3.
We need some US backers here...
I've got one. Mexican food. US Mexican food near the border (LA, San Diego), even up here in California, is dee-licious. In England, if you can even find it, eh...not so much. (So I've heard, correct me if I'm wrong.)
UK 7, US 4
*NORTHERN California I meant to say.
I'm certainly not going to correct you over the Mexican food bit. We do Indian instead of course. Now let me see... throws spanner into works.. we have the National Health Service, which although currently in a sorry state resulting in stressed out health professionals leaving in their droves, myself included, it still does pretty much what it's supposed to do. America provides very nicely for those who are fortunate enough to have an HMO thrown in with their employment package and allows nasty situations for those who don't. In 1991 I was on the receiving end of a bill for $40,000 for my baby daughter's heart surgery, I vowed at the time, never to complain about the NHS again. I did of course, many times, but I really think you owe the Brits one point at least for this one.
And Bytedoc is right of course. We know how to spell English too!;-)
Indian food, 1 pt.
National Healthcare, 1pt.
Not sure about your spelling assertation. Sure it looks nicer (for some reason) to see "favourite" as opposed to "favorite," just as a French word can look beautiful and have 27 vowels in it and is one syllable. But is that any better? I think it's just snobbery. American English is more consistent, if more pedestrian. So spelling doesn't get you any points.
UK 9, US 3
Now for a small barrage...
We dumped your tea in the harbor. USA +1.
US: Sylvia Plath. UK: Ted Hughes. USA +1
Street toughness. UK: Any Northern town, Brixton, East end, so on. Skinheads, guys with knives and bad attitudes. US: LA gangs, NYC, Detroit, Miami, the list goes on. People who will shoot you on site and have automatic rifles hanging from their shoulders. US +1
US: Basketball, Baseball. UK: Footie, Cricket. I'll take the US sports any day but we'll neutralize this because it's so subjective.
UK: Sham monarchy still in place. US: Good old dictatorship... I mean democracy. At least we don't wear wigs in one our Houses and there's no useless Royalty. USA +1
Current score: UK 9, US 7.
Magdalene - The health care system is excellent in the US, it's the payment system that sucks for those who don't have adequate insurance.
Question, how did your daughter do with her surgery?
How long would she have waited to get the surgery in the UK?
Meta, consider giving us back that point!
Well, are we considering the services rendered or the coverage (cost)? I'll let UK keep their point for national coverage but give the US a point for slightly more state of the art services. So evens out.
UK 9, US 8
Magdalene, better get here quick...
One more while I'm here.
UK: JRR Tolkien, JK Rowling, Lloyd Alexander, CS Lewis
US: Stephen R Donaldson, George RR Martin, Ursula LeGuin, L. Frank Baum.
Piers Anthony is UK native who's spent his adult life in the US.
Very good writers on both sides, but Tolkien is the 800lb gorilla in the room.
Big fat point to UK for fantasy authors.
UK 10, US 8
British motorcycles are way cool.
BSA
Triumph
Norton
And probably more.
UK 11 US 8
Getting close to 20 comments.
Jet airplanes:
The British Comets all blew up in the sky. I'm probably the only one old enough to remember.
The Concord went broke.
Having trouble building Airbus 360's
US Jets, what can I say.
One for USofA
Good ones, ByteDoc. I think the Brits probably had better *pilots* than us in WW2, certainly in WW1, but nothing beat the P-51 Mustang in the sky and ever since the US has leapt WAY ahead in air superiority. A Harrier is a nice little plane that would get crushed by an F-16, and F/A-18, an F-22 Raptor, or a Stealth Fighter. And you know that since both the B2 and the F-117 were in development since the late 70s (!), there is stuff like the Aurora and whatnot that is probably flight-capable right now that would blow your mind.
Boeing fended off Airbus's attack with coherent, one-country, one-company design, where Airbus tried to be all thing to all people and it was uglier than than a EU meeting in Brussels. American jumbo jets will continue to dominate most of the market for at least a decade.
The Concorde was a sweet plane, but it was way overpriced, no one wanted them, and it failed in the end.
So for aviation, I hate to say it because I think the Battle of Britain was one of the most courageous acts of WW2.... USA wins a big fat point.
UK 10, US 9
I wanna hear more about motorcycles before the point is awarded. I don't know much. I've heard the names Norton and Triumph, also heard of Indians and Harleys. What is the real truth here (I know you used to like motorbikes)?
We also need Empath, Magdelene, and possibly Disillusionist to weigh in here, to think of some more cultural things since you and I just think about machines and technology.
Aaaarrgghhh! Broadband problems just when it was getting interesting. I am so mad at my ISP right now, anyway, congratulations Meta in breaking the 20 posts barrier. Hooray!
Bytedoc, yes you're right about the quality of medical care, I have no disagreements there but the system is crap. My daughter was 11 days old when she needed life saving surgery. We were living in the Boston area at the time and had fantastic care at the New England Medical Centre (note spelling.) She would have had immediate surgery in England too, only we wouldn't have had the bill! However, I think we were in the right place at the right time, I can't tell what would have happened in other hands.
Anyway, much as I'd like to contribute further to this very interesting debate, I'm now off to Heathrow airport to collect aforementioned daughter, (now 16 completely healthy and beautiful)which I'm ecstatic about as due to our family circumstances I haven't seen her since last summer. So one, busy, happy Mummy. I'll check in again as soon as...
Magdelene: So glad your daughter got the treatment she needed.
You must be exhausted. Slogging through the mud for days with your ears ringing and now off to Heathrow for some jet engine noise :-|
Don't forget to take care of yourself, too. Drink lots of water and tea and get extra rest when you finally get home for "real."
I've read all your Glastonbury blogs and will comment soon, but it was great you get us informed almost each day, I felt like I was there with you! Except, you know, like, dry and clean.
=) Talk soon.
I agree about the "life saving" surgery in UK, but try to get a hip replacement. Too bad one can't combine super quality, and total access but no one has figured out how to pay for it.
Fire at will!!!
US: George Bush. US -1
Landscapes:
US - wide open, New England forests, Rocky Mountains, Everglades, Grand Canyon, extensive cave systems, coastal redwood and sequoia forests in NW.
UK - Pastoral "shires," picturesque towns and pubs, Cotswolds, Devon, Cornwall, Bath, Scotland, lot of coastline!, castles, huge estates with breathtaking gardens.
EVEN.
---
US: Surfing! US +1
US: Great white sharks! US -1
Documentaries: UK +1
Creative cursing: UK +1
Bullying in primary school: UK -1
Superheroes and comic books: US +1
Live theatre: UK +1
Movies/Directors: EVEN
Actors who can act : UK +1
Space programme: US +1
Universities: US - Princeton, Harvard, Yale. UK - Cambridge, Oxford. EVEN
Reality TV shows. Both countries have these infernal things. EVEN
US: NASCAR. UK: F1 Racing. UK +1
US: SF Sourdough bread, many other great bakery goods, but...
UK: Scones, more fresh bakeries and variety in each town, etc. UK +1
People's courage and generosity during tragedy/hardship - 9/11, 7/7, Tsunami aid, Live 8, etc. EVEN. Both countries are very generous and put aside differences when need be. Britain is the USA's strongest ally and vice versa.
Ubiquitous fish and chips and kebab shops: UK +1
Skiing: US +1
Rock:
UK - Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, Who, Bowie, Floyd, Smiths, Radiohead, Dido, Nick Drake, Clash, AC/DC, Peter Gabriel.
US - Elvis, Beach Boys, Dylan, Eagles, REM, Pixies, Costello, Springsteen, Ramones, Nirvana, Paul Simon, James Taylor.
CLOSE, but point to UK mostly for gracing the world with The Beatles.
UK +1
---
Standup comedians:
UK: Ricky Gervais, Billy Connolly, Craig Ferguson, Eddie Izzard, Russel Brand, Sasha Baron Cohen, Simon Pegg.
US: Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Robin Williams, Steven Wright, Woody Allen, George Burns, George Carlin, Dennis Leary, Dennis Miller, Dave Chapelle, Billy Crystal, Rodney Dangerfield, Redd Foxx, Bob Hope, David Letterman, Bob Newhart, Jerry Seinfeld, Garry Shandling, Whoopi Goldberg, Ellen, Sarah Silverman, Wanda Sykes.
This is really subjective, feel free to disagree with me. And let me know about really good UK comedians I left out please! Until then, I think the US gets the point here. US +1.
---
Sitcoms: I'm partial to the Flying Circus, The Office UK, and others mentioned in the original post, but I'll allow someone more objective to award the point here. US has had Mash, Newhart, Taxi, Cheers, Seinfeld, lots of other hits, but I don't like slapstick nearly as much as irony or wit, so like I said, I'm biased and will leave this to others. EVEN for now.
Likes reggae mon! UK +1. Big ups.
Blues, R&B, Soul: US +1
Rap: US +1
Jazz: US +1
Shops stay open late: US +1
US: Walmart. UK: Tesco's. UK +1
Outdoor recreation: Mountain biking, climbing, kayaking, etc. Close but US +1. Just more land and types of terrain because of the size of the country, compared to a (big) island.
Cool regional accents: UK +1
Olympic medals and general athletic success across all sports: US +1
Class system, reinforced by accents and family history. Getting better in UK but I still think more opportunities for upward mobility in the US. US +1
Biggest hub of world finance. NY Stock Exchange, Wall Street. US +1
---
So, score is now...
UK 21, US 20 !!!
Post will "close" this coming Sunday, so be sure to get your last opinions in by then. Thanks.
O.K. Ladies and gents. I have elsewhere begun potentially serious dialogue with a U.S. citizen who seems to be a patriot.(O.M.N.E.G.) This kind of throw away banter is a welcome relief.
Computers; I concede that the whole .com thing and technology is a U.S. gain. But has anybody heard of Charles Babbage? Mighty oaks from acorns grow. Anyhow, i-pods?? When inebriated one could drop ones entire C.S.N.&Y. collection down the bog.
Sport; Hah! your 'avin' a bubble geeza!! U.S. sport is apparently designed around T.V. (not transvestite,)commercial breaks and half-hourly hotdog sales. If you don't weigh 600 lbs your not allowed to play. Eveybody wears womens underwear size 8 stretched to the max...on the outside!!! Another thing, the U.S. wins most things. Well we would if we took it seriously enough to practice. Cricket IS the weirdest and best game on the planet. However, baseball (or rounders as the girls at school who played called it) is a must for all the would be cricket fans cos it's a stato dream. An honorable draw? I don't think so Uncle Sam. Sport is all about inexplicable subjectivity.
Language; My visit to CA years ago taught me that most L.A. residents are bi-lingual, Spanish and Almost English.(but still can't correctly pronounce 'squirrel'). Most brits are NOT bi-lingual. However, Cockney rhyming slang is a major plus. Can any American go up the apples down the frog, get Brahms (or elephants)chucking pig's over their Hamsteads and go home Daffied after a doner cos they were Hank? Gentlemen of the jury, I believe not.
Healthcare; apparently the U.S. govt (or banks) lent the Brit govt much of the money to set up the N.H.S. in 1946 after Britain had bankrupted itself during a 6 year war. The Britain was still repaying that loan in 1989, by which time a certain nameless biarch had more than begun dismantling the N.H.S. Therefore the U.S. wins a point for long term business acumen, though it has learnt from a master.across the Atlantic. Britain may get a warm round of applause for political irony.
Politics. You live in a 2 party state. Wayda go!! That's a 100% improvement on the old Soviet Union. At least Britain allows Communism without threat of street based sanction ie a good duffin' up, even if most of us laugh at it these days.
Smartfood; er.. did wikipedia, probably better than Frazzles.
SPACESHIPS; your skies appear to be bumper to bumper with them.
However, the best example was in the 30's. Orson Welles saw it I believe...
BITING INSECTS; depends whether you want to be eaten alive or not. If so U.S. wins easy. Can I also say bears(no, not 'the Chicago' variety) big cats, (caveat, the Beast of Bodmin) snakes and buffalo (phew, that was a close one)Also, gophers are soooo cute. Racoons vs badgers, score draw.
Overall the U.S. wins on big mofo animals.(The Rock??)
BIKES; Harleys top out fairly slow and don't corner too well. Triumph, A.J.S. Matchless, Arial, B.S.A. Take your pick, boys and girls, tho it's lucky Italy and Japan can't take part in this section.
This is getting too long and I've lost count, so I'll let Met add 'em all up. No cheating now!
L8RS, Rex.
Food is always a good place to start: I'd give the point to the U.S., the melting pot of the world and all their offerings - almost too many choices of types of cuisine here. American food is now a type of cuisine! and not counting drive through fast food burger places. Going the fast food route in extreme brings it down in point value, but still the variety can't be beat. One area where I believe all of Europe and UK suffer - argue if you want, it's just what I've experienced.
History: Obvious point to the UK, being in existence many, many, more years. Knights, castles, the stuff of stories here in the states, but there it was real.
Winnie the Pooh, Paddington Bear - UK
Snoopy and Mickey Mouse (Disneyland included) - US gets the point I would think.
New York City (Manhattan Island) vs London: in my opinion NYC, but keeping in mind I've only been to each only once. People seem similar, but I could live in New York, even though it's hectic and a City That Never Sleeps (Sinatra), people are boisterous and don't mess around, but that's bred into them. London seems claustrophobic with everything attached and almost every building looks the same. It's busy too of course and I love the Tube. London has cool historic sites, and great theaters (I hear). NYC has Broadway Shows, Central Park!, Empire State Building and other huge skyscrapers, Statue of Liberty - just an awesome skyline (still). Both have great museums, though different types in general. London has pubs, NYC has sky high nightclubs. Everyone put their two cents in but I still go with NYC. I would go back there, but not London. Paris is perfect! Just had to throw that in. Fruits? Strawberries I would probably agree with, not particularly getting good ones often here unless you're lucky, but wild Maine blueberries, lower latitudes give us much more varieties of fruits. Avocados grow in UK? We have Alaska and the best! wild salmon and halibut in a lot of people's opinions. Animals: UK loses Quaintness: UK wins (Cotswolds, Hobbiton). Sheer size of US vs UK, the natural resources go to US, the National Parks like Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, variety of landscapes from Glaciers to Swamps with alligators HAS to be US. I love the US, but I did feel at home in the countryside of England - I would love to go back and see more of the UK!! Didn't count votes, but overall no matter what I have to say the U.S. has more of everything except history! -not getting into political systems, healthcare, and business.
Yes Meta, June has been a pretty exhausting month so far. Not looking forward to the possible crash to follow. Meanwhile drinking tea! (and we win 2 points for tea as you dare to put the unspeakable Liptons on your supermarket shelves.)
This blog is now becoming the equivalent of a night down at my local pub. All we need is a decent pint. Well done for attracting such a great gathering.
Wotcher, Rex, great contribution. Next time you visit the states, stop by and I'll buy us a safe and sound of our favorite sharks and whales, or maybe throw a round of burps and farts before finishing up on the green felt with some kids in school. Better have your ones and zeros with yeh... oh I forgot, you still use the ground swirling.
Ok, that was my attempt. You know what is funny is I used to tell my daughter when she was younger that there was a Thesaurus Rex in her closet, then I had to go check for it or she'd throw a wobbly, and at last I would produce an old Roget's which I'd earlier stashed away and we would be right chuffed to discover it and slay the naff paperback "book monster" with pretend 10-dimensional mithril and adamantium swords which were wrapped up and warped like an inversed Möbius strip in a reversed-physics antiworld, folded so sharply at a subatomic level and tightly/minutely in terms of scale by atomic-size quantum foam-generated singularities that ensured invisibility to our Macro-evolved eyes, all crystallized fractally for an enormous boost in hardness much as an ordinary "real" sword would batter, shred, and behead my quid-challenged billfold and slice and dice my checking and savings accounts quicker than an eight-armed Bruce Lee with each arm wielding a different Master-level weapon, or Chuck Norris on an off-day.
Even if we were possible to image them with a tri-flavoured solar-neutrino counter or tunneling down-quark microscope from a disused janitor's closet at CERN the blades would just appear fuzzy with occasional flashes of geometric solidity as the constituent hadrons and electrons in their clouds hit each other, jumped shells as if by magic, or matter-antimatter pairs continually come into being out of nothingness and less than a femptosecond later destroy themselves back into the deeper nothingness beyond an Einsteinian/topologist's geometric, pliable spacetime 3D matrices; where space itself lands a major role in the play rather than simply representing the foliage, the static theatre boundaries, fixed immutably; Where people pack themselves as dense as something really dense and then fart as quietly as they can throughout the performance; the structure where within those fabled granite walls Jacques and Mathilde Llewellyn from Scotland (natch) watch majestic plays and operas performed. No mon, that which hath uncreated itself purposefully or who hath violated Nature's conservation laws (once they were ratified in Copenhagen) are given handed over to a place beyond hell, beyond the the idea of the play being the thing, beyond life and death, good and evil, where Heckyl and Jeckyl reruns lie strewn about, never to be restored, and where Great Cthulhu lies dead but dreaming.
But getting back to the dimensionally-folded swords that exist only in our imagi...Er, what makes these swords so special are the patented red, green, blue, or purple neon glow and 'wonggg' sound they emit to show you the region where the sword actually is so you don't hurt youself and and go and sue the megastore you bought it from, claiming your entire body was severed off. They're cool just because... well, fer one thing, COR!! only pirates, UFC alumni, and U2 edition iPod owners can purchase them this holiday season. Lumberjacks and Clowns are apparently the next group to get some love from the big manzana, but not until at least January of '08. The blade itself IS invisible in the normal vision portion of the EMR spectrum and works on all extraplanar Monsters (you get a +2 to-hit vs non-Material Plane foes and psionic strikes from such creatures directed at you suffer a 50% chance of being lightning-rodded by the blade and blasted harmlessy into the ground; though, if you aren't electrically grounded and fail a constitution throw, every atom of every molecule in your body turns instantly to ash and blows post-haste onto someone's summer barbecue where the meat is almost ready.) You surely have heard that 99%+ of all matter is mostly empty space, but the material out of which our swords are fashioned have much less empty space due to collapsed proteins, ineffective enzymes, deactivated viral strains, and modified RNA sequences we dropped when they failed to consistently allow men to control the size and rigidity of their chubbies and if necessary, as during a defensive wall formation to block a penalty kick on the pitch actually press a concealed button to retract your all-important goolies inside the body to a safer place and away from total annihilation by penalty kick. So, the extra suff crammed into our materials aren't really useful, except a few random events that occur, like one guy's head becoming four times larger than before, but with no increase whatsoever in brain size or improvment in cortical function. The whole office laughed for weeks while this poor bastard took the tube to work every morning and immediately set off full-strength belly laughs where we worked as well. Someone aluded to the incident during a serious four way moderated dialogue between Richard Dawkins, Richard Leakey, Jane Goodall, and David Attenborough concerning disappearing habitats and they all four lost it. The camera who was rolling on the floor, forgot to switch off the camera and thus a large chunk of the world's more erudite citizens watched these self-effacing, classy environmental leaders going off their trollies for a good five minutes before someone shut off the camers. So these unpredictable replication proteins are not neccessarily all junk, some of them end up as quite amazing YouTubes. And because you get all these extras, but a PDF in Ancient Chinese describing how the swords work, they are not only a better value than other high-end weaponry, they are also more awesome. This claim has been confirmed covertly by covert scientists working in a covert location and then posting their covert analysis of this covert data on MySpace, because, according to Condoleeza Rice, "George loves this shit." He also watched a Survivor-like show called Safari School for its entire first run because "That Charlotte Ue..Uhlem.. that host Charlotte is "one hot broad" and has personally sent her his pictures (official and definitely unofficial), a love poem written in crayons, and his CV in an official White House envelope inviting her to visit his ranch in Texas any time and see if she can subdue the mighty Crawford Anaconda while vising, so long as Laura and Condi are "out shopping for the afternoon."
At the Planck scale things start to obey statistical chance and become unfixed in reality, a non-Einsteinian and non-topological view that we've not yet been able to get our heads around. One thing is heads are spherical and extremely hard to deform without causing neurological injury. Even so, things simply don't have a position or velocity until measured, amd both can never be measured with absolute certainty at the same time (I'm a little confused by this though; I mean, it's 11:52 according to my clock.
I'm sitting in my computer chair with a net velocity of 0. What's so mysterious about that?) And also according to Planck and those who followed him down the rabbit hole, even space and time has "atomic" building blocks that cannot be further divided. Back to our sword though, even the most perfectly blue laser-forged, sharpened, and polished edges would look more and more like pixelated/aliased/stepped/jagged lines as we increase resolution and approach the Planck limit. Yes, even He-Man's sword is full of chips and imperfection at this rez. I went from liking He-Man despite the fact that he and Adam were obvious bummers. I even began to admire his abs and his tan after awhile, though I am not, I repeat NOT, a rainbow warrior. But an impfect magic sword is just too much. I take back all the nice things I said about you He-Man!!! The bad things I still mean!!! At the plank scale our viewscreen would become so blocky and fuzzy that we'd observe a moment of silence in honor of the nostalgic (read: pants) Pong or Atari 2600 game console.
All of this tells me two things: 1, that Americans are violent even in good fun, 2, that we've been assaulting and mangling the King's English more than just figuratively by directing said violence on an actual book, crickey EVEN A REFERENCE BOOK!, and, 3, Bob's your uncle. Damn... Ok, three. The THREE things I've learned... Nevermind, let's start over. Patch the mitre-donning person shape in the wall with the breakaway foam... Ready? Go!
REX: ...I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.
META: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Amongst the many varied and nasty weapons in our immense vaults reside such things as 1) condemnation of the violence inherent in the system, 2) the mangling of a language Made exclusively in Britain and not borrowing structure and conjugation from Old German or Old Norse, never retaining any of the hundreds of thousands of words of Latin the Romans brought through the chunnel in their V8 chariots - 8 Vigorous horses pulling a carbon fiber chariot chassis on 20" spinners with lo-pro Pirellies. Nor did you ever absorb any Frankish vocabulary brought over by the Normans in 1066. Wow, your very own language, which some people feel should be stabilized, formalized, and adjudicated on by a government bureau like the French do. I think it's probably impossible with rock music, instant messaging, blogs, and other mass media. I get pen pals from Indonesia who greet with, Yo, what up brah? Just kickin or what? Languages will always be dynamic. But that magnifies the importance of books, to keep a record of languages frozen at a spot in time in certain location, plus good in a pinch at smashing flies, though nothing like rolled magazines. I'm pretty sure I could destroy larger babies and even small toddlers with a good enough towel snap. But use one like Teen People, something that's a completely duff read, don't waste your New Scientist that you might need with occupying your precelein throne later on.
META: Bollocks, I just remembered one of the five we haven't even touched on-
REX: Three, my liege
METAL Quite right...three. Let's run through it one more time. Ok, and go!
REX (deliberately and with no feeling after some seventeen takes): Gee Betsy, I knew you'd think I'd gone barmy on you by tackling the items on your to-do list arse about face, but I didn't expect the Spanish Inqui-
META (breaking through a hole where a breakaway wall used to be:) No one expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapons are... um, wait... I know this! Something about anger...? ah, fuckin 'ell, bugger this scene today. Tomorrow's another day, Rex. Gotta keep telling yourself that. Plus, I'm completely fagged out from all the counting especially. Wots say I see ya down Brixton at the Fighting Cock? Oy, get out. You're a ladies magnet, you just got your polarity reversed right now or somefin. It happens to the earth about every 26 million years. Maybe one of them Bengali healing shops will read your shakra and you'll be like Don Johnson or Tom Jones overnight. C'mon, we'll just pop in for a shufty at the talent and hope to get some of them pissed enough for a snog or a shag. Don't worry though bro, if they start taking the mick out of you, I'll box their ears, or if there's too many of them we'll just bung a few wads of singles near their tip jar while me make like jake and escape on the sneak tip. The pub grub's not bad there either, or if you can wait we can hit that chippy on the way out. Crackin' plan mate, eh?
REX, Yeah, brilliant.
End of Part One.
Oh no. I suspected it might be a bad idea to introduce you guys in blog world... Though I wonder if this time, Rex (aka The weirdo) may have met his match?
RESULTS will be tallied, double-checked, and adjudicated as needed tomorrow (Sat), but probably not until afternoon or early evening, so those Britons who go to dreamland early may need to check the final tabs on Saturday.
Submissions will be accepted till midnight Pacific Time, which is 8:00 AM Saturday in London.
I'll go back through and diligently make a hash mark in one column or the other if your claim is factually valid if it's an objective topic, or give the point as you direct in your reply if it's something that reasonable and doesn't represent an extreme minority view. Lastly, there about two or three topics that were basically repeated or one was a complete subset of a larger subject that was submitted as well.
For anything too subjective potentially contentious, I'll use my own logic as well as 'Net research if I have to to make judgment call. Only as a last resort will I mark the point void if it's too ambiguous and I can't figure the author's intent (was she serious or ironic here?).
I'll try to be completely impartial and only reveal the final numbers to myself at the end. I want to judge throughly and fairly since so many people enthusiastically contributed, even though it was all in good fun.
And Mags, I may just poor a pint of cold Guinness Draught during my judging, to create the pub atmosphere you mentioned. Probably no dart throwing at the monitor though.
Thanks - TTY again real soon!
META
Oh, it's like "close the vote" man Whydoncha.
Too late the hero but in a final flurry, should a tie breaker be required, no matter how hard they may try, even the most advanced U.S. based citizen is still 5 hours behind the U.K.
Neeyahah! Gotcha!
HARK! A WINNER IS DECLARED!
...but see the full blog entry a couple entries up to get the details. These comment window and columns are simply too narrow.
Post a Comment