At the moment I'm not so proud of my own country, which has gotten me comparing it to the next one along - no, not France. I mean the more successful, handsome, rich kid who lives a few streets away, who the United Kingdom likes to hang out with so it can watch him play his Super Nintendo and perv off its much prettier mum: the United States of America.
Over the last few years, my life has become distinctly more internet-based, and as such, less English. I've been basically a hermit: I'm not even joking. More and more, I stay in and spend my time online - reading Roger Ebert rather than watching Jonathon Ross, catching up with Cheers on YouTube instead of following whatever the hell passes for British comedy at the moment, and carrying-out a lot of my social life on forums and Google-chat.
Mostly this has involved long talks with my co-author on this site - a slightly younger man from California whose company is always a pleasure, even if it does necessitate neither of us ever leaving our homes. One thing that comes up endlessly in these chats, endlessly, is cultural differences. I think it's fair to say that the general British and Irish understanding of what Americans are like is halfway between Peter Griffin and Samuel L Jackson, because these are the two representatives who we are mostly exposed to. We see US citizens, on the whole, as loud, stupider than us, fatter than us, aggressively Christian, pigheaded, extremely dangerous, and yet in all cases inexplicably adorable, like a puppy dog with a lit firework in its mouth. Although my main source defies all of these characteristics, I still think it's about right.
History's most terrifying single image, or kind of cute? YOU DECIDE.
And Americans see us, I think, as 'The United what?' or 'Susan Boyle', both of which are pretty accurate descriptions.
So for three years or more, I've picked-up a lot of little bits of information which completely surpised me. I'm going to share a few of them now - and remember, all of these are 100% accurate.
----
1) They really don't have biscuits. They have chocolate chip cookies and they have Twix bars, and that is all. They have the word 'biscuits' which they use to describe a sort of scone-like thing that you apparently have with a pale, grey sauce.
2) To them, Kentucky Fried Chicken is a shameful place to eat and also, wierdly, the basis of racial stereotyping (I don't know why), rather than the 'kind of fancier alternative to McDonalds' it is here.
3) They do not know what the word 'beefburger' means, not even when you explain it by comparing it to 'cheeseburger'.
4) Alaska and Hawaii are nowhere near where I thought they were, and absolutely not where they appear on that bullshit map of theirs, which probably exists just to confuse us.
5) Instead of letter-boxes in their doors or the little boxes on sticks with surnames on, like you see in the films, they actually have large filing cabinets in the middle of the street.
6) Whatever their relative average intelligence, Americans are absolutely not uninformed. Sorry British people, but just because we speak more elegantly doesn't make us cleverer. Laziness is curiously not encouraged in the United States: the fierce, inhuman, competitive spirit that powers Samuel L Jackson and Ryan Seacrest on a daily basis lives within all of them, instilled at an early age. In terms of competition and personal pride, they're like Germans but without the organisational skills. If you think I'm making this up, Britain - have you ever been part of a 'spelling bee', which I understand is a spelling contest for children that takes place outside school hours, when X-Men is on, and is often voluntary? No.
7) They have a fast-food chain called 'In-N-Out Burger', and nobody over there finds that funny. This is by far my favourite US fact.
8) One more food one: Taco trucks. These are literal trucks where meat is prepared and eaten.
9) Americans do not know what the UK's flag is called, despite the fact that we were good enough to emerse ourselves in their culture like Malcolm McDowell with his eyes being held open in A Clockwork Orange, to the point that we have now quietly adopted their language, because it just seems easier not to try remembering how things used to be spelled... in the before-time...
Hoe-nor?
10) They really do prefer their version of The Office. They're not just teasing us.
11) 'Fox News' is apparently not a comedy.
12) Who loves orange soda? Kel loves orange soda.
----
And with that, I'm really out of ideas. Believe it or not, after all that (when I try to be funny it always ends-up smarmy and hateful,) I'm very fond of the place. If we seem to obsess over the country and follow them around at parties, there are good reasons, beyond the obvious wanting-to-be-on-their-side-in-the-next-World-War.
Every time I look at a website, and every time Knight and I chat, I pick up another little fact I never realised, something awful they never dared show us or the occasional quiet triumph that never made it to the news here.
Meanwhile, we're sat around reading about how our children spent the day burning down Selfridge's in town. At least it beats watching bloody Outnumbered.
