Okay, I admit it. This is almost definitely not an American phenomenon. I suspect it’s a worldwide thing that happened since I got to America. However, my friend Ryan tells me that blogs are supposed to have themes and stick to them, and America is my theme, ergo this is a problem with America. Nobody said this was going to be fair.

Something new is happening in the world. Nobody had heard of it ten years ago, but now you’re doing it with almost everyone you know. That new thing is social networking. Social networking is the great electronic bringing-together of people. Social networking allows people to interact online with their friends, their family and their colleagues more easily than ever before. With a couple of clicks of a mouse, it’s now possible to learn that your ex-girlfriend became a lesbian, discover that your boss spends his weekends performing live-action roleplay and find pictures of your uncle Bill vomiting in a pint glass in a strip bar. How did we live without this?

A fascinating part of social networking is a feature called the “status update”. You can now inform your friends, family and colleagues what you’re up to at any given second. I am going to take the dog for a walk. I am going to work. I am at work. I am still at work. I am probably working late. I am working late. You can even do this using your mobile phone. I’m standing at the bus stop. I’m thinking about buying some chairs. I’m taking a dump.

This is great. We’re all in touch with everyone we know, all the time. Unfortunately, it is also the root cause of man’s very newest newest personality disorder. Let me introduce antisocial networking: the state of being more involved in updating your status message than in actually doing whatever it is you’re claiming to be doing.

Let me illustrate this principle by showing you a selection of Twitter posts.

 

Wow, that must be some great brunch they’re all having. I missed one hell of a time there. Why did I end up staying home? Well, wait. Let me show you a photograph of that brunch.

 

These people are not having a great time. They’re so interested in talking about having a good time that they have forgotten to have a good time. There are antisocial networkers reading this now. I know there are, because I mentioned this post on Twitter. Come on, guys. Come on, you antisocial networkers. The last time you actually had a good time, did you Tweet about it whilst it was happening? As you slipped between the sheets with Miss South America, did you lean over to rummage for your phone in your crumpled jeans on the floor? As you pointed the nose of the powerboat you’d unexpectedly been lent towards the setting Pacific sun and slid the throttle towards the bow, did you ponder which pocket your iPhone was in? As you opened the door to discover that your boyfriend had covered the entire house in rose petals, put up the sets of shelving that had been in the garage since 2001, smeared himself in honey and prostrated himself on the couch, did you look at the kitchen table to check whether you hibernated your laptop? No. You did not. This is because actual interesting stuff was really happening to you. Perhaps a good Twitter feature would be to add “and bored” to the end of every post.

 

It’s the small things in life, they say, that make a difference. I drive to work most days, across the lovely Evergreen Point Floating Bridge. I really mean lovely – you usually get a great view of Mount Rainier. Anyway, this means I get to spend a reasonable amount of my time in stop/go freeway traffic, looking at Mount Rainier.

In Europe, like in America, cars are equipped with a special set of rear lights which are intended to show to other road users what the driver is attempting to do. There’s a white one to show that the car is in reverse. There are two, perhaps three large red ones to show that the car is slowing down. And there are two orange ones, one on each side, which employ a time-honoured blinking action to demonstrate that the driver is intending moving in that direction. This system works great.

In America, there is a similar system. Similar, except for the fact that the lights intended to indicate motion are not orange, but red. The sharp-eyed among you may notice that this is the same colour as the brake lights. Perhaps orange is an unsually expensive filter. Perhaps orange was once regarded as unlucky. Still, not to worry. They still blink. Surely anyone who could confuse a single blinking red light with several solid red ones ought not to be on the road in the first place.

This is a reasonably sensible conclusion to draw, until you are furnished with two other pieces of information. First off, Americans primarily drive automatic cars. Automatic cars don’t slow down appreciably when you lift off the accelerator, so you often need to give the brake a little tap when trying to maintain pace with traffic. Or perhaps two or three little taps. This introduces a behaviour not unlike flashing in your brake lights. Secondly, unlike most other countries, America doesn’t require any sort of roadworthiness test alongside its road tax. This means that there are oceans of cars out there with one single operational brake light.

These two facts conspire with the red-only lights to produce an effect which could fairly easily be confused for a turn signal, especially in stop-go traffic. In order to save confusion, I propose that every car is fitted with one large, centrally mounted red light. The light comes on automatically whenever the driver moves the gear lever or steers. Not only will this save money, it will also mean there can never again be a confusing signal. Unless the light is broken.

Capital punishment seems to me to be a fairly crap idea. It seems foolhardy to dispense any sort of justice that can’t be at least partially reversed.

That said, I can see why some societies choose to have a death penalty. It is, as they themselves say, one fucker of a deterrent. And I can even see why some of those countries impose it for rape, or armed robbery, or spitting in public. If you believe those things are wrong, why not impose the death penalty? Why not sacrifice one person every so often in return for the happiness of millions? I can see where they’re going with that.

What I cannot understand is the way the death penalty exists in America. Deterrent my fat ass. If you’re sentenced to death in America it really just means twenty years of buggering around waiting for appeals and counter-appeals. The worst part of the death penalty in the US is the sex.

If the Americans are set on having capital punishment, at least make it a deterrent. This means actually enacting sentences, and it means public beheadings. Why not turn it into a primetime show? Popular television celebrities could each suggest an interesting method of beheading, and then the public could phone in their votes. Straight after the 8:45pm advertisement break, the assembled millions will get to watch a convicted criminal being beheaded by a plastic model of Nancy Reagan, fired across a football field by a large ceremonial cannon, lit by the winner of Fame Academy. Doesn’t she look great?

I went to the Paramount Theatre, here in Seattle, the other day to watch Flight of the Conchords perform. Don’t get me wrong, I think Flight of the Conchords are great. In fact, that’s the main reason why I went to see them.

They ambled onto the stage holding their guitars, and sat down at their chairs. The audience all stood up, whooping and cheering and stamping their feet. A standing ovation? Before they opened their fucking mouths? What if it turns out they’ve spent the entire day doing crystal meth in Cal Anderson park and are just about to proudly unveil to the audience the body of the disabled girl they burned because they thought she was a demon? It’s too late now! You’ve given them a standing ovation already! The worst you can do now is clap a bit sarcastically at the end! You are sanctioning ritualistic murder, you crazy bastards!

Of course, they played a pretty fine gig. They didn’t seem to have killed anyone, and if they had spent the day doing crystal meth then they were at least experienced enough to cover it up. They got a standing ovation at the end as well, with some more whooping and cheering. How do they know if they played a good gig? Well, they certainly can’t tell from the audience. Maybe they could ask the promoter at the end, but the promoter would probably describe the gig as “awesome”. This word, “awesome”, is defined on some website I found thusly:

awesome: (adj) amazing, awe-inspiring, awful, awing (inspiring awe or admiration or wonder) “the awesome complexity of the universe”; “Westminster Hall’s awesome majesty, so vast, so high, so silent”

To the average American, the word is defined more like this:

awesome: (adj) not shit. “That was an awesome bowl of cereal”; “My brother got this awesome job stacking shelves in Target”

It’s impossible for the poor Conchords to find out whether it was a good gig or not, because Americans have adopted this unpleasant habit of using more and more superlative words and actions in everyday life, and therefore steadily deflating their significance. Faced with this problem, the promoter would probably have to say something like “it was so awesome I had a boner for the whole of the second half” and, in doing this, therefore contribute to the deflation of the word “boner”. The next time he wanted to explain to someone that he actually had a boner, he’d have to call it a “raging boner” just to make the point. And so, as you see, the cycle continues. After my notable lack of success in coining the phrase “antisocial networking”, I am going to attempt to coin the term “exaggeflation”.

exaggeflation: (n) the diminishing of emphasis by over-use

This problem pervades the whole of American society (and, much like most of the things I grumble about in these posts and try to fob off as American phenomena, the rest of the world). Think of the other words you hear kids using all the time these days. Gorgeous. Excellent. Amazing. Fantastic. Superb. What on earth are they going to say when something really good happens? Even “100%” now means “35%”. The actions are perhaps even worse than the words. Ten years ago, I remember aircraft passengers occasionally clapping when the pilot managed an unusually smooth landing in the middle of gail-force winds and a lightning storm. Now, everyone on the plane practically starts performing Mexican waves when the 7:32 from Spokane plops down in bright sunshine. Soon they’ll be clapping when the hostess successfully opens the door, or when their luggage arrives on the carousel.

I have done some complex calculations in order to find out how much exaggeflation modern society can take. The results, my friend, are disturbing. In ten years, audiences at Flight of the Conchords concerts will be forced to expose themselves as the band come on stage and then, if the gig was particularly good, ritually disembowel their first-born child using a rusty penknife. By August the following year, it will be a Samurai sword, and their first born had better be male.

First, you must see a picture.

Taking this picture, I need you to know, turned out to be one of the more difficult things I’ve had to do recently in the name of art. There was no lock on the door, and just as I had squeezed into the corner with my camera and was framing up the shot, a gentleman burst in. We stood frozen, each as surprised as the other, for several seconds. He held the door open so that I could leave, and so I left. We exchanged no words. I came back later.

So, here we have a urinal and a toilet, sat next to each other in the restroom. There is a lock on the door. Perhaps a helpful American can fill me in on the etiquette here. Do I lock the door if I’m intending having a number two in the toilet, but leave it open if I’m having a number one in the urinal? If I walk in and someone is using the urinal, am I allowed to pee in the toilet, or is it strictly reserved for number twos? Is it acceptable for me to drop my trousers, mutter a cheery “good evening” and sit down for a crap? May I sing?

Of the various possible situations that this special restroom configuration offers, I have so far only come across one instance of dual occupancy, and that was when I was having a pee in the urinal (having left the door unlocked) and someone else came in and had a pee in the toilet. This, I have to admit, was something of a relief. Oh, and there was that time when I was taking the photo.

So I’m something of a Car Guy, but let it be said that I like motorcycles as much as the next man. They look nice, they’re fun and they’re fast. My, they’re fast. Driving a car quickly is a fairly cerebral experience, whereas riding a motorcycle at pace is more like a test of virility.

There are fast bikes made all over the place. The best ones mostly come from Japan, but some of the greats come from Italy, Germany – even the United Kingdom, who appear to be less shit at making bikes than they were at making cars. The best way to see a bunch of fast bikes is to turn up at the Nürburgring on a Saturday afternoon and hunt around the car park. Ah, the smell of mineral oil and the rattle of those Ducati dry clutches. This is the life.

There is, however, one motorbike that you’re not going to see at the Nürburgring on a Saturday afternoon. That motorbike is the two-wheeled abortion known as the Harley Davidson.

There are two things wrong with Harley Davidsons. The first thing is technical. I’ve not ridden one, so I don’t know how they drive. Instead, I’m going to guess how they drive by comparing some vital statistics of the 2009 Harley Davidson Sportster 1200 Low (which appears to be one of their sportier models) with the 2009 Yamaha YZF-R6, one of the Japanese efforts. Perhaps the best way to represent this is in a table. Please excuse the American units of measure – it was all Harley had and I couldn’t be bothered converting them.

	Yamaya YRF-R6	Harley Davidson Sportster
Engine size	599 cc	1200 cc
Power	126 bhp	80 bhp
Weight	414 lbs	581 lbs
0-60mph	3.6 secs	5 secs
Top speed	165 mph	110 mph
Price	$9,990	$9,799

Based unfairly on these numbers and my own preconceptions, I’m going to guess that a Harley Davidson drives like a Dodge Durango. I bet I’m right. Anyway, either way it’s clear from this that the Harley Davidson Sportster wasn’t designed with sport in mind. But cars are more comfortable, drier, more practical overall – what was it designed for? Which brings me nicely to the second thing that is wrong with Harley Davidsons.

The second thing that is wrong with Harley Davidsons is that they are one of the greatest triumphs of marketing ever to exist. This is done in part by the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club. The Hell’s Angels is a group of unemployed misfits and small-time cat burgulars who are scattered around the world. Every so often they hit the headlines when one of them punches a woman outside a nightclub, or strangles his dog, or chokes to death on his own vomit. One thing they have in common is that that all happen to own Harley Davidson motorcycles. You have to have a Harley to get into the club.

Harley Davidson, of course, don’t officially have any relationship with the Hell’s Angels. Officially, they’re pretty angry with them. That’s the way it has to work. Harley Davidson knows that scattered all over America are bored dentists, middle-aged stockbrokers and lonely realtors who are sitting in front of the television watching their lives ebbing away. They have money in the bank, but they’ve already bought a house in the suburbs, a brown dog and a silver BMW 525. They can’t think of anything else to spend it on. More importantly, their wives are complaining about their rapidly receding hairlines and increasing levels of impotency. But wait! Breaking news on the television! Some Hell’s Angels have broken a window in a bar downtown! There they are on television, with their tatoos, and all that leather gear and their Harleys. I bet they’re not impotent! I bet their wives don’t talk back to them! And all I need to do to join that club is ten grand!

So the morticians and the lawyers run out and buy Harleys. They don’t join the Hell’s Angels. It would be too difficult to explain in church. They do buy leather jackets, and patches with skulls and crossbones on them. They do buy helmets with “ride or die” and such on them. They do meet up with other similarly-minded individuals, where they stand on street corners in their leathers and talk about the Dow Jones, or about  interest rates, or about how difficult Thomas is finding it settling in at Yale. One or two of them will sometimes smoke, and now and again someone will turn up with a beer. Passers-by cross the street to avoid these meetings, which gives the dentists a strange, inexplicably heart-warming sensation. They’re radicals. They’re on the fringes of society. They’re alive. Before they go home, they collect their litter.

America, as we all know, is a country which loves technology. When internet access came through the telephone, America had free local phone calls and a permanently connected population. Some years passed, the rest of the world got free local calls and so America got broadband. The entire country was alive with clever wires beaming pictures of naked ladies to countless dimly-lit homes.

Americans do everything online. The coke dealer who hangs around at the end of the road probably has a web site. You can pre-order your wrap, request how much you’d like it cut with baking powder, pay via a credit card and probably have the stuff delivered via Twitter.

Well, my furry friend, one thing Americans do not do online is transfer money from their bank account to someone else’s goddamned account with a different bloody bank. I wasted a good hour of my life faffing around on First Tech Credit Union‘s internet banking site trying to find where it was I clicked to send money to other people, only to eventually discover that this is impossible. Impossible, you hear. It’s impossible to transfer money from one bank to another. Perhaps I should send a cheque, they said. A cheque! What is this, 1860? And I suppose you expect me to write on it using a pen? I’d have to buy one especially! I don’t even know how to draw letters any more!

One thing the Americans are very proud of is the ease and effectiveness with which they can remove body parts that were causing their owners no trouble whatsoever.

One thing I am very proud of is my foreskin. I’ve had it since I was born and, at least up until the time of writing, it has not gone gangreenous and dropped off, or revealed itself to be harbouring Anthrax. Most American men, however lost theirs during their very first pointless removal of a body part. The Wikipedia article goes into some detail about how exactly this is removed. Those of you with intact foreskins and delicate stomachs may wish to avoid it.

Having escaped this first pointless amputation by not being born in America, I was caught full in the face a couple of months back by the traditional second wave of pointless body part removal. This began with a seemingly mundane conversation whilst at the dentist.

[I am flat on my back in the chair – my dentist is peering into my mouth]
Dentist: Ah-hum. You have some decay on the back of your ante-posterial pre-prandial molar.
Chris: Gar.
Dentist: [Strains a little] It’s really… hmm, it’s really quite far around the back.
Chris: Oark.
Dentist: Yes, as I thought, it’s really right up against your wisdom tooth.
Chris: Gung.
Dentist: Well, I think the best thing is probably to have the wisdom tooth out before I try and cap it.
Chris: Gout?!
Dentist: Once those are out, it’ll be easy to get at.
Chris: GOSE!?
Dentist: It’s really quite a simple procedure – I can recommend a great guy just down the hallway.
[Dentist retracts from my mouth, and casually steers me back to an erect position]
Chris: Do I really have to have them out?
Dentist: It’s really a very simple procedure. You’ll hardly feel a thing.
Chris: But… umm, I mean, is there something wrong with them?
Dentist: Look, I’m just talking about taking your wisdom teeth out, it’s really very simple.
Chris: Are they decayed?
Dentist: It’s all covered by your insurance.
Chris: How many of them are there?
Dentist: Three. They’re not under the skin or anything, so it’ll really be quite easy.
Chris: Just to get at this one tooth?
Dentist: Chris, really, pretty much everyone has them out.
Chris: Oh.
Dentist: It’s all covered by the insurance.
Chris: I see.
[The dentist reaches for his pen]
Dentist: I’ll write you a referral.

Obviously I realised that the dental industry had some sort of vested interest in this particular pointless body part removal, so I decided to raise my concerns with some friends. This is how this conversation went.

Chris: So, the dentist says I have to have my wisdom teeth out.
Steve: You’ve not had them out yet?
Chris: Well, no, I didn’t really think –
Ryan: Man, you’re going to hurt for days.
Steve: Yeah, jees, you’re going to be sore.
Chris: Why did you have yours out?
Steve: Oh, years ago.
Chris: Not when, why?
Steve: What?
Ryan: They’re wisdom teeth, dude, everyone has them out.
Chris: Were they rotten?
Steve: I don’t know, I have them in a bag somewhere, I could look at them. They had bloody bits of gum stuck to them.
Ryan: You’re really going to hurt. I was eating soup for a week.
Steve: Yeah, I was off work for four days.
Ryan: It’s going to be brutal.
Chris: Steve, do you have a foreskin?
Ryan: Steve’s Jewish, man.
Steve: Are you being racist again?
Ryan: Why do you have to keep on with the Jewish thing?
Chris: Forget it.

So I went to the wisdom tooth removal guy. He quickly and efficiently removed my wisdom teeth. It cost somebody $1800. I hurt for a few days. He gave me a selection of Vicodin pills, which turned out to go very nicely with beer but created the mothers of all hangovers. Once all the Vicodin had gone I slipped into the silent mass of people in American who’ve had limbs removed on the advice of people they barely know.

I’m starting to realise how Bush got elected.

One thing I can guarantee when I go abroad on holiday is that within a week or so my trousers will be around my ankles. This is neither because of my irresistability to the local ladies, nor because I only wash my trousers once a week, although the wife can testify that one of those isn’t entirely false. No, dear friends, this is because my pockets are full of coins. Like anyone else trapped in a world where they can’t add up coin values at speed, I am forced to hand over notes in shops and I never manage to get rid of my change.

I moved to the U.S. two years ago, and even now my pockets are full of change. But why? I understand how to add up the coins now. Well, I was contemplating this in a bar the other day and it dawned upon me what the problem was. The problem is that Americans quote prices without sales tax, so it is physically impossible to sit in the queue at the supermarket waiting to buy milk and idly put together the exact money it’s going to cost you. Although it says clearly on it “99c”, it’s not going to be 99c. It’s going to be 99c plus sales tax, which is not something worth bothering to idly work out in the supermarket queue.

Why? Why must this happen? Are there that many people that will be reclaiming the tax from baby formula or plastic cutlery? Are the stores thinking that you won’t realise the price of a banana until you’re standing at the checkout and it’s too late? Are they trying to show how little profit they’re collecting, on the assumption that most customers are well-versed with the wholesale price of bread?

Before I get started on this, let me say two things. First off, I am complaining about what Wikipedia calls “Contemporary R&B”, not real R&B. Mariah Carey, not Marvin Gaye. Secondly, I am aware that this isn’t a purely American phenomenon, but it’s American enough that I can stick it up here and still sleep at night.

That said, here goes.

I’m not a music afficionado. I like listening to things like Coldplay and Badly Drawn Boy. In my head they’re the music that cool people listen to, but in twenty years my kids are going to regard them with the same sort of scorn as I currently regard Phil Collins. It’s old people’s music, with easy-going chords and three minute songs. I understand that. Hey, I’m not really a music guy.

I’m enough of a music guy, however, to realise that the dribbling genre of musical wallpaper paste that calls itself “R&B” is an offense against taste so vicious that hanging must surely be the only valid public response. If you’re driving along listening to the radio, there are several ways to detect that you’ve accidentally stumbled upon a contemporary R&B station. Check for the following:

• Ability to predict the next line of a song you’ve never heard before (“you’re the one I love / you’re the one I’m dreaming of” et cetera)
• Use of the words “brother” or “sister”
• Song lines followed by clarifications like “yes he did” or “oh no, no”, just in case you couldn’t grasp the depth of the lyrics and required some further clarification of what was going on
• Prodigious use of “mm-hmm” or “ooh” when a suitable “love-of”/”heart-apart”/”you-true” rhyme is unavailable
• Did that song finish? Is this another one?

Perhaps the most offensive aspect of this Bud Light of musical genres is the fact that it stole its name from a completely unrelated and perfectly decent form of music. In the 1950s, R&B music was the great creative outpouring from a misrepresented black America – as it took off in popularity, it became the unifying sound of the grass-roots civil rights movement in a way that nothing written or spoken could easily manage. There was real feeling behind it, and real power in what it said.

By contrast, contemporary R&B appears to be the disembodied voice of dumpy, angst-ridden fourteen year olds with ill-concieved chips on their shoulders about what a hard time in life they’re having. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the elevator music of the next decade. Watch out, Phil Collins.

Once you get to the age of thirty or so, you’re pretty much done with truly new taste sensations. You’ve experienced the strange dryness of buffalo meat. You’ve savoured the odd nuttiness of a brussell sprout. You’ve gasped at the awkward sharpness of cilantro.

We’re all prone to exaggeration. There’s a world of difference between “that looks like shit” and, well, shit. When you announce “that tastes like vomit”, everyone knows that you’re employing a certain amount of poetic license. No food would actually really taste like that. It’s a turn of phrase.

Nothing, my friend, nothing can prepare you for that first giant swig from a bottle of “beer” which is actually dental fluoride rinse. It doesn’t just taste of dental fluoride rinse. It is dental fluoride rinse. With one crucial difference. Dental fluoride rinse is alcoholic. Root “beer” is not.

I have done some research into how root beer came to be invented. It seems a shame not to share this with the world, so I leave you with the “History” section that I have added to Wikipedia’s root beer page. I hope this will help others who were as confused as I was. Click on the image for a copy of the whole page.

I messed with Wikipedia. I know. It’s not original, and it’s not clever. I didn’t remove anything. I didn’t swear. I wrote in American English. I even gave them $30. But I know it’s a Monstrously Bad Things, because I was actually shaking when I clicked “Save”. I hope nobody dies.

Update: The edit was removed on 14th January – it lasted two days. The good citizen responsible either found this blog posting somehow, or started off here. Looks like this Wikipedia idea works…