h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Especially for those of us in the middle of the country. We tend to be friendly and we don't even care to visit
DisneyLand or World or whatever. Heck the tornadoes here in Kansas are entertainment enough!
Around here, you can find the true American sense of humour, though some of us tend to overdo puns at times.
I have a 'possum living under my front porch, who is a better tenant than the skunk who boarded there last summer.
She is a very ugly possum, though. Looks like she has a lot of freckles.
Possums are not very clever, though. Many of them commit suicide by running in front of cars on the highway
and pretending to be dead.

Ok, I sent some of these America bagging articles to my girlfriend, here is her response, she lived there for the best part of a year, it's amusing... incidently, I've been to the US before too. And yes, we're both Aussies!!!


"Honey, that was great - aerosole cheese is exactly that. fat free
cookies, cookie dough icecream, icecream of every flavour in the world, 43 flavours of donuts, national pride in where the first Ben and Jerry's icecream lesson was held, who can invent the most bizarre flavour in the world, the country of "shot" drinking, pissy beer, queues in car washes on Monday mornings, a land where "landscape architects" make millions (glorified grass cutters) and think driving a corvette makes good business sense (even if it is leased).

The land of opportunity - you can work 24 hours of the day if you so
want. No stop, Americans are SO BIG they probably have MORE hours in
their days.

The country where friends (and copiuos quantities of them) are a
necessity, and all must look like future baywatch extras, the place
where breast implants come before people and personalities are squashed underneath a facade of how to be the nicest person you know.

The land where your TV size matters more than your dick size, (it is
more visible) and papertree houses flourish until the next torando.
Then at least you can get fame from nature reclaiming its own on
national television.

In fact TV numbers in your house are equivalent to social rankings. So is cigar size.

A place where the perfect fitting jean is the next thing to national
pride (or maybe around the other way), and bum-lifting jeans are the
next best thing to bum-lifting surgery... Well they last until the bank loan is approved anyway...

And ever wondered why caps are so huge? Well, university degrees are
second only to god, and thanking god for our wonderful educational
institutiuons (named above) is paramount to cheap advertising for how
intelliegent you must be. Even if you just visited the place once when you were 5, at least you will have everybody wondering.... Or you have national debt for your bank account and a degree in pet psychology and how to recognise when your pet is happy. (It is much deeper than the sideways mechanics of the most distal attachment to the trunk) You idiot!!!!..

And Americans are the most glorified researchers in the world... I bet
you didnt know that Pennsylvania has the most pot holes for equidistance driven in the world (canada and mexico included).

AMERICAN QUIZ;;;

How many countries in the world?
52 (may be 54 if you include canada and that one down south).

Where in the world is Australia?
Downunder (in a vegemite sandwich I think).

What does the average Australian do?
Knife salesmen in New York, alligator killers.

Where is London?
Somewhere near where Princess Dianna died.

Where does pineapple come from?
The sealed plastic package company that supplies the supermarket.

What food is good for you?
Anything fat free.

What is good conversation?
Telling everyone how much you know about the world, where you went to
uni, and how many televisions do you have, while smoking a BIG cigar."

was that an overdone-pun?
what's with the possum story?
you have done, i believe, little to dispell myths about americans.
no sarcasm, no irony and no relevence.
this, perhaps, is a little harsh, but i refrain from apologising on principle

Apologies for not having enough irony. Many of us got our definition of irony from listening to the Alanis Morrisette song "Isn't It Ironic."

I think the major difference between Americans and non-Americans is that we never quite got the hang of subtlety. Let's face it - in a place this BIG you can't get noticed unless you're wearing cone-shaped bras, or buying John Merrick's remains, or sticking cigars in places they weren't meant to be placed in, etc. So we tend to be loud, boisterous, and downright obnoxious because that's what we have to do in order to survive.

I'm an american who is just arriving at a financial state of being which allows me the opportunity to perhaps travel out of theis country and into another. Every place has there problems....but when it comes to sense of humor there is one thing you should recognise about america. THere are levels of culture.
The first level you will encounter is the on your will find on TV...those plastic robot like people who seemed to have eaten lithium for breakfast...the second level is the stressed out working class which clings onto the ladderrungs of economy...then you will find the entrepeneurial type who attempts to make money off of the manipulation of elements or ideas....but beneath all of this dung you may find the buried subcultures...the oppressed freedom seekers which still pulse within americas earth-blood. I hope that the whole world can keep making up jokes yet see the intricites of the earth...OPEN UP YOUR MIND

I'm an american who is just arriving at a financial state of being which allows me the opportunity to perhaps travel out of theis country and into another. Every place has there problems....but when it comes to sense of humor there is one thing you should recognise about america. THere are levels of culture.
The first level you will encounter is the on your will find on TV...those plastic robot like people who seemed to have eaten lithium for breakfast...the second level is the stressed out working class which clings onto the ladderrungs of economy...then you will find the entrepeneurial type who attempts to make money off of the manipulation of elements or ideas....but beneath all of this dung you may find the buried subcultures...the oppressed freedom seekers which still pulse within americas earth-blood. I hope that the whole world can keep making up jokes yet see the intricites of the earth...OPEN UP YOUR MIND

are these levels of culture so accepted?
there appears to be, even in this statement, a strong presence of apathy. the 'underground' will always be there, but the problem with it is that as soon as you recognise it and bring it to light, it ceases to be what it was that made it so pure.
these cultural levels are immediately evident, but perhaps, within each one, there is this growling for change.
if you are going on holiday, leave your camera behind you. don't buy any souveneirs. this is a big part of the 'plastic' culture, the need to verify and prove that you were there, you did that. which leads to competition, which leads to jealously, which leads to hatred and then segregation.
but i suppose you could look at it in another way.

(I'm an American.) I like to bring my camera when I visit other countries, and occassionally I buy a souvenir if it is something I really like and if it is unique to that country.
The pictures and souvenirs are just that- ways to remind myself of the different places I have visited and the different cultures I've observed. I like to take back with me a way to remember.
It brings my visit to another country back to life for a while.

America (or actually more correctly, the USA) is most assuredly not like what you have described, save perhaps in your own mind. Good luck with that.

America may include some of what you've come up with. I'd be surprised if it didn't; your list/rant is scarcely inclusive and therefore nowhere near sufficiently descriptive to qualify as accurate. I've been observing here for nearly a half-century and find that there is a great deal more to the folks labelled "Americans" than the simplistic and cartoonish culture you've come up with.

You do great disservice to the sorts of "Americans" left out of your description, more to yourself by closing your mind, and most to others who may not have direct experience and who rely upon your information to help form their own opinion. That's a bit sad.

Anyway, analysis of "Americans" is probably better done by region or state. These function more to shape the attitudes of the people than the federal government does. The notion that American people are all of a sort and can be described meaningfully is very much doomed to failure, I'm afraid. Your attempts, laudable perhaps, [actually, no, they're not] are sophmoric to the extreme and may even suggest some kind of chemical imbalance. Have you discussed this with a professional?

With best regards, and hoping that you stay away from sharp objects.

That's what commerce makes everyone out to be. I admit some, no, most people in the U.S. are like that, but there are lots of Americans who aren't. For example, my dad and sister are. They both color their hair. I and my mom are not. We don't.

I think you can narrow it down to the people who pay money to color their hair and wear too much makeup and paint their toenails with glitter and stuff and who don't. A lot of people, the nice, talented, wonderful people who like to contribute to society don't color their hair, and are not like that. The only reason visitors think that people are like that is becasue commerce tries to make money, and the only way they can make money is to appeal to people who would fork over money for stupid things like hair color and plastic surgery, and the rest of the people have to deal with it.

right, I live 16 hours from a disney them park> But really to defend us americans I must say, everything is big in texas (who really wants to be a seperate country) Everything cool is californian (who really should be a seperate country) and everything worthless is sent to washington dc every 2 4 or 6 years depending to help govern the country (and most of us really wish it was possible to be a seperate country. And everybody else (except those who agree with you) are just weird and we want them part of somebody else's country.

I think plain ole pat is on the right trail here. While I have never been outside the U.S., I have been around in it a good bit. Most outsiders think of us as one country; we're not. We are one nation made up of a lot of little countrys(I know, Texas and Alaska would argue the size discription). You can no more compare people from California to us in Alabama; or New York to Wisconsin, than you can lump folks from Denmark in the same catagory as people in Italy. Each state has it's own culture,it's own political, social and labor scene. I can imagine the uproar if someone from the U.S. were to say that all Europeans were like the Brittish. It's the same as saying all people from the U.S. are like Californians. I'm sure the Californians would appreciate it, but it "ticks off" everybody else here!
Two more quick points...1)Anyone who thinks there are no people in this country who understand irony and subtlety have obviously never been in a conversation with a "redneck" from a small community in the southeast U.S.. They are masters of the art! 2)When referring to folks from the U.S., avoid the term "Americans". It pisses off everybody else in this hemisphere; and trust me, we have enough enemies already!

And not even the state thing works all of the time: When people say "Californians", they mean the kind of people in Los Angeles. Other Californian cities are wholesome, cultured, beautiful cities like http://www.h2g2.com/P101809 <------San Diego. I love my lil' town, but I hate L.A.

You're right,there! While I know no one here will have the slightest clue where I'm talking about, around here, if you want to start a fight, accuse someone from Warrior of being like folks from Mt. Brook! They'll tell you in a heartbeat they have no use for those counterfiet snoots!

There... I did it, I'm back to myself!!!! Three re-registration attempts, a total cache cleansing and a ground-up restart of this dad-blastit' contraption and I'm finally here as myself!

To clear monshari's good name, and to help insure she is not wrongly accused, this is to let everyone know she is not responsible for the above entry. I mistakenly entered under her user name. (one of the many pitfalls of having two users on the same computer!)

!

I have spent some time in America, and although there are exceptions, I have found Americans to be isolationist and ignorant about anything outside of their country. For many of them, anything outside of their own state (Texans, mainly) is foreign and therefore not worth knowing about.
I'm English. In Detroit I was asked if I had driven to the USA. This was said without a hint of sarcasm or irony; something, as has been pointed out, Americans seem to live in total ignorance of.
Although Americans love defending their own country, often with blind and unwavering patriotism that borders on the fanatical, the more intelligent ones accept that their country has huge social and economic problems.
Where else in the world do kids take guns and bombs into their schools? Where else in the world are handguns so freely available to anyone over the age of 18 (oh yes, but you can't have a beer 'til you're 21). Where else in the world has legislation in some parts of the country to prevent schools from teaching evolution theory to their kids. Where else in the world is there the proliferation of religious cults?
America has a huge amount to answer for. Something said by a frenchman, the name of whom I have forgotten sums it all up rather well:
America is the only country to have gone from barbarism to degeneration without an intervening period of civilisation.

I am an American who agrees with a lot of what you are saying. There are some of us who actually despise guns, fear the religious right, and get tired of Texas acting like it is in another country. (Note: I have lived in Texas for 10 months now, and while it isn't as bad as I thought it might be, there are a lot of weird things going on here)

But c'mon, we are not ALL that bad. There are good folk everywhere, and there are a lot of idiots everywhere. I'll bet there are even people in Detroit who have heard of airplanes and boats.

Yeah, I think that person from Detroit classifies as a "really dumb person" than a "typical American". You know dumb people... I'm sure there are some in England too. And like Frink said, I'd admit to that stuff too, but sweeping generalizations aren't the way to make a point. I have a friend who was afraid to use a FAKE gun in a play, she hates them so much.

I'm afriad there is more than enough arrogance and ignorance in any country you care to name. We learn everything we know from other people, and that includes the arrogant and ignorant.

AS far as firearms being so widespead in this country, that's a long and difficult debate which has been raging here since our creation. It will not be solved anytime soon. If governments could be trusted, there would be no debate. The daily news bears out the fact they can't be, so for our own freedoms' protection, we must learn to live with them.

Patrotism is niether blind nor unwavering here. Detraction is how we survive. We argue, fuss and cuss and in the end find some direction we can all agree to move in....at least until the next person disagrees, and the process starts all over again. It's slow, sure, but it gets us there eventually.

To sum it up, diversity is what makes us. From the dumbest to the smartest, the richest to the poorest. It takes all of us to run this cobbled confederacy, and if we are to be judged by one poor soul who doesn't know where England is, so be it. It probably isn't important to him anyway.