Something I've been thinking about.

I've been thinking lately about America, being an American, and stuff of that sort.

I was surfing a British website, forgot which one, and one of the pages was a satirical Q&A type of thing. One of the questions was "I'm an American, what should I do?" The guy answering went off on an anti-American rant, something about how we suck, we should be ashamed of ourselves, stuff like that.

Know what I say to that?

Suck it, pal.

Get off your dole-collecting ass and go attend a soccer riot, or something.

Meanwhile, those of us in America will be busy inventing really cool stuff.

You know, like the electric guitar, TV, computers, the '59 Coupe DeVille, stuff like that.

Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, you owe us an apology for Oasis. They suck more crap than Roto Rooter.

Anyways, where was I?

Right. Cool inventions. Stuff like, say, video games.

Granted, the PS2 was brought to us by the good people at Sony, but Microsuck came back with the X-Box.

None of which wouldn't have come about if it weren't for Pong, and the Atari 2600. How many people over say, 30 years old HAVEN'T spent time killing a few space invaders?

Many thanks to Nolan Bushnell. American, BTW.

Transportation.

A good deal of the world has access to automobiles. Before Henry Ford, American BTW, automobiles were the custom built playthings of wealthy people. Henry figured out a way to assemble autos quickly and inexpensively. Also, he figured out that if he paid his people a fairly good amount of money, they'd buy cars themselves. The man was a genius.

I have no idea how many airplanes are landing in the world at the moment I write this. What I DO know is that if it weren't for Orville & Wilbur Wright, getting places would take a wee bit longer. Airplanes sure came in handy when Americans were fighting and dying all over Europe alongside our European allies.

Meanwhile, back home in the USA, Rosie the Riveter and her compatriots were busily cranking out the airplanes, tanks, etc. that were needed to destroy the Axis powers.

Then, afterwards, Europe was rebuilt. Look up 'Marshall Plan' sometime, my smug Brit friend.


More recently, Americans have shown their generous side by donating well over 500 million dollars to Tsunami Relief efforts in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. This doesn't count the man hours donated by aid workers, or the men and women of our military.

As ever, when disaster strikes, America will assist in any way possible. We're like that.

As with any country, we've done some really stupid things. On the whole, however, we should NOT be ashamed, as America's contributions to the greater good by FAR surpass the bad.


So, for our Brit friend, I'll reiterate.

Suck it.

Signed,

A proud American partsguy.