CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Fourth of July Entry: 5 Awesome Things About America!

Friday, July 04, 2008

this entry brought to you by blur, "song 2"


Today is the birthday of my country, and this year I decided to actually do something patriotic. Despite all my complaining, I do in fact love this country that I live in, much in the same way an abused child still loves their abusive parent, kind of. Provided the child is actually just a little abused and not, like, having hot pokers shoved in their ear. You know, I suppose I'm being too harsh. America isn't a somewhat abusive parent, it's just a really fucking bad parent. Not criminally bad, but definitely the kind of parent that, when you move away, you only want to call them on holidays. But you still love them, even if getting into conversations with them drives you crazy. And I don't mean just crazy in the way people say that oh, the way the receptionist chews her gum drives you crazy, I mean crazy in "My blood pressure has gone up too much, I need to take my medicine" crazy.

But my point is, I do love America. And I have come up with five things that I love about America.

5) It's fucking huge. One thing I definitely like about America is that, unlike other countries, which tend to be puny, America is gigantic. In other countries, there can be a single voice that, in general, works for the entire populace. This might sound ignorant, but it's true: if you simply have a lot of people living so close to one another, a general opinion is going to raise that's going to be generally true across the entire country, and any minority opinion is going to be very minor. In America, that almost never happens. There are so many voices it can be frustrating. Still, this is what makes America special. America's voices and needs are so multifaceted, it helps maintain a balance and a general roundedness. The "melting pot" thing is true, but it's increasingly becoming true of all Western societies, so to call America the melting pot is becoming something of a misnomer. What is still true about America, however, is that, depending on where you go, the concerns, needs, and opinions can be vastly different than where you came from. This can cause headaches, but it also means that no matter what your opinion is, you can find a city, somewhere, that agrees with you completely. Even if you have asshole opinions that nobody should have, there's a whole shit-hole town somewhere that would embrace you.

4) Americans in general have absurdly good hygiene. Yes, you have a cousin who just doesn't give a shit about taking showers, and yes, you have that fat guy at work who smells and your boss has had to tell him repeatedly to take care of it. But foreigners universally fucking stink. And even the ones from high-end foreign places like England, where they generally smell very nice, have awful teeth. The same goes with Japan, which is hyper germophobic, but smokes cigarettes like there's no tomorrow, and who also, in general, have bad teeth. Americans, on the other hand, have comparably beautiful teeth, and generally smell fantastic. And when I say "absurdly" good hygiene, I'd like for you to compare the hygiene aisles in any typical American supermarket to anywhere else in the world. America is utterly obsessed with cleanliness. Granted, I've never actually been to most places in the world, but I feel confident saying that the people that make hand sanitizer bottles aren't making all their money in Russia. If you think about our soap sections, and how we have soap, then anti-bacterial soap, then hand sanitizer on top of all that, and how comically overwhelming that might be to a foreigner just trying to rub something on his stinky body so his boss won't think he's a hobo, you can't help but laugh. If you can think of a country that, in general, is more anal about its personal hygiene (aside from Canada-- those people smell fantastic, and have beautiful, picturesque teeth), then keep it to yourself. I'm actually trying to find good things about this country I described earlier as being an awful parent. Can you let me have this one?

3) Our riots are few and far between, and the body counts are very mild. It seems like every time I open a newspaper, somebody's rioting. And I'm not just talking about countries overrunning with religious assholes, or primitive countries where school teachers get stoned for acknowledging that women have sex organs, I'm talking about France, where riots aren't seen as being that unusual a repercussion for negative political decisions. When we do have riots, and like, a guy gets hit on the head, it's absolutely horrifying. Any sort of deaths in a riot is a nightmare.

2) We, generally, have excellent response to natural disasters. Don't get me started on Hurricane Katrina. Do not get me started. I get much, much, much more riled up about that than even the average American, and believe me, Americans get riled up over Hurricane Katrina. But the reason the government's absolute and complete dismissal of those people, and their absolute ineptitude at helping them, hurt so much is that this sort of thing doesn't happen in America. We get hurricanes every single year, and the death toll is usually one, and it's always because some stubborn person wouldn't leave their house when the Army came around to evacuate them. Yet when you look at the news, and I don't mean to belittle other countries at all, every single natural disaster wipes out freakish amounts of people. An earthquake will take out 10,000. A hurricane will take out a similar number. Even a mudslide will take out 700. Here in America, numbers in the teens are seen as absolutely horrifyingly disastrous. If this were any other country, Hurricane Katrina would've been seen as utterly disastrous, but-- how do I put this without belittling the victims of the recent disasters in Myanmar and China?-- it would seem like the kind of thing that, well, happens. But in America, what happened to Louisiana wasn't just a disaster. It was a disgrace, precisely because that sort of thing should never happen here. It's one of the benefits to having the word "USA" printed on your birth certificate. It's why people still, to this day, risk their lives to make residence here.

And finally...

1) Rock N' Roll. The number one most awesome part of America is and always will be rock n' roll. All that great music that's enhanced your lives throughout the years? You're welcome. And yes, other people make rock n' roll music, and they make pretty damned good rock n' roll music-- I mean, those Beatles guys, they knew what they were doing. But aside from The Beatles, The Stones, and Zeppelin, all the best rock bands have always been American as a general rule of thumb. And the best rock bands in the world currently are American. And even if you don't like rock n' roll very much-- and what the fuck is wrong with you if you don't?-- basically all forms of popular music across the entire world are all derived from American music, whether it be jazz, hip-hop, or techno. You're welcome.
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with love from CRS @ 8:53 AM 

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