Amusing anecdotes & random ramblings
Posts tagged america
Only in America…
Mar 2nd
would they want to charge overseas tourists $10 to register for the privilege of visiting America. So they can fund a travel tourism promotion group aimed at … getting overseas tourists to come to America. And explain to tourists why they have to be fingerprinted and give away lots of their personal details.
Nothing like being scanned for fingerprints and asked if I was involved in a Canadian drink-driving incident in 1994 to make one feel welcome when entering the land of liberty and freedom. Looks like I’ll have to pay an extra $10 for the privilege soon…
One image to represent America…
Oct 2nd
Imagine you’re quintessential Englishman Stephen Fry – who, naturally, is a geek of Jewish Hungarian stock. He’s spent the last few months travelling the land of the United States, and naturally, has written a book and TV programme about it.
Now you have to publicise said book in a book launch. What’s the one image of America you need to sell the book to a British press? Find out.
This – no doubt hilarious – book joins other ones on the shelves dedicated to explaining America to a European readership. Although given the huge amount of press coverage the American elections get in the UK, I’m not sure anything needs explaining.
Two random moments from American television…
Jul 10th
Last night, we were at a sports bar grabbing a bite to eat. A sports bar with about sixty thousand LCD screens showing various moments from American TV – including coverage of the Ultimate Fighting Championships – which just about has to be the most homoerotic thing to be screened on American television.
Well, how else would you describe something which mostly seems to involve one muscular topless man sitting or squatting on another, grunting and generally thrusting various bits of his body on the other, while the other one lies there helpless or is grunting and thrusting away himself? All while the male observers in the sports bar were whooping and hollering, encouraging every movement – and then trying to chat up the young nubile college students nearby?
Then this morning, I was flicking through the various TV stations, and came across some kind of US equivalent of This Morning, where the hosts were comparing water options to go with your food. And the caption that ran along the bottom of the screen said:
Tap Water: Good for hydration
I shall never complain about British daytime TV again.
America – you need more windows!
Jul 9th
If I was designing a nation that sat under never-ending huge amounts of summer sunshine, then I’d think I’d make better design choices than:
- making all the buildings brown or dark (Florida is probably the honorary exception to this rule)
- ensuring a relative lack of windows, to make the interiors seem surprisingly dark
- because it’s all dark, then having to use electric light fittings to give more light. At 2pm on a sunny afternoon
- because of a lack of opening windows, aritficial a/c has to be used instead. Thus raking up the electricity bills, which is never a good idea.
Granted, the sun must wreak havoc on all sorts of things – like my body for instance. But at least bigger windows would enable you to use sunlight for its good stuff.
Never mind the differences between blue and red America, the differences between outdoors America, street America and inside America are vastly huge. Inside, it’s quiet, dark and rather cold thanks to excessive a/c. Outside, it’s quiet, bright and blisteringly hot. And people are still walking around in business suits, dark trousers and not sweating. I also note that the weather in Cleveland today is 82 F/28 C.
Oh, I have finally realised that American daytime television is terrible. Either that, or I need my fix of Dave and daytime Top Gear. Stat.
If this is how America treats its friends…
Jun 14th
So the UK stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the US against pretty much everyone else in launching a doomed war against Iraq, which sends Tony Blair out of office, potentially Gordon Brown with him and ushering in the Tories at the next general election … and what does the UK get in return?
Erm… surely, the whole POINT of a visa-waiver system is so that you don’t have to do bureaucratic things like registration, retinal scans, fingerprint IDs and all that?
I’d like to think Obama would change this when he gets into office. But he won’t.
Ever wonder why we get the feeling that Bush/NASA’s plans for a Mars colony aren’t about exploration, but about setting up Planet America? 
Two nations seperated by a common light bulb
Feb 3rd
Over here in the antiquated sometimes-backward UK, we have a simple system for lighting up a room. In the middle of a room lies a lightbulb fitting, to which you fit your lightbulb. Connected to said fitting is a switch by the door – so that when you go in the room in the dark, you can flick the switch, and lo, there is light. Simple. Easy. It works.
It was obviously engineered to ensure you could walk into a room with light. So why do all the American apartments I’ve walked into seem to flout this basic piece of design common-sense? I can’t count how many times I’ve walked into a room in an American apartment, thoughtlessly flicked the switch on the door, and instead the tv / video / stereo / computer has flicked off, leaving a rather angry person in the room just when I’m trying to ingratiate myself on the people who have offered to show me their house.
Instead, there’s usually only one light source. Some tiny tiny lamp to the side of the room. And tiny tiny windows, so you can’t take advantage of the huge sunlight opportunities by being in a vast open space.
The only conclusion I can come to is that American eyes are just incredibly sensitive to light. Nothing else explains the sometimes pathological determination to minimize the amount of light in a room. Either that or it’s a huge design flaw that has escaped the attention of the best minds in America over the last 50-100 years.
Scary thought: do a search for lightbulbs UK in Google, and see how many small adverts for light bulbs pop up. It’s almost enough to make you think you need to start a blog on lightbulbs to get all that Google Ads traffic…