Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.
To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:
1. look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.
3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as 'like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable...
6. you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. Although a permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
7. you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables.
8. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline)
9. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips
10. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all.
11. experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.
12. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer.
13. Further, you will stop playing baseball.
16. Daily 'Tea Time' begins promptly at 4 pm
Some points well made (and well taken) from the Britain that used to be Great. And to show there is
humour on both sides of the big pond I refer interested parties to my new book @ Chapter 17: "Apple Pie versus Spotted Dick."
Meanwhile, I like the part about disbanding the House and Senate as presently constituted, but I fear that trading Congress for Parliament would be like swapping a mild headache for a terminal upset stomach.
As I recall, the venerable sport of fox hunting while riding horses in company with hounds was outlawed in England and Wales in 2004, when the popularly elected members of Parliament trumped the House of Lords. Thus ended the Englishman's "first and noblest amusement" that traced back a thousand years. The law was not to save Reynard anxiety or pain (they can still be trapped, shot, or poisoned as vermin), but to deny sportsmen their pleasure. Thus the part about registering vegetable graters is understood in context.
As to the Oxford Dictionary, sorry, but the plural of "teal" is "teal," not "teals" [
sic]. However, my Webster's does cross-reference "humour" as being the pretentious spelling of
humor (in the context of an American
shop being an "Olde Edglish Shoppe"). My Spell Checker here wants to reject the red-lined over-use of the letter "u." Perhaps if the Brits weren't squandering their "U's" their petrol would be cheaper.
(1) As to the correct pronunciation of "aluminium" [
sic], the spoken language should be left to those who can spell it correctly, and especially the people who actually smelt the stuff (ALCOA).
(3) Perhaps the Oxford Spell Checker can do a default swap of "bloody" for "like, you know..."
(6) For the life of me I can't imagine why the English, or anyone else, cares about the mile or foot or inch, or metric-like yard. When the Brits had twenty shillings to the pound and umpteen pence to the shilling and a sixpence and guinea and a quid, we Americans found it humourous (note the excessive "u"), but we didn't rag on the subject.
Several years ago I was down in Trinidad on my boat for the hollidays, and was invited to another boat for New Years Eve. Everybody at the party except my wife and myself were European or British. I spent the whole evening fending off protests from Danes and Germans and Brits about America not adopting the metric system. You would think the Germans would be concerned about the American military still camping out on their soil, or the Danes about the fact that nobody really knows where their small country is, or whether they produce anything besides Danish Butter Cookies. Suffice it to say that I put up a good fight that night and the issue was not resolved...ho, hum.
(8/9) Please! I'll be willing to allow that calling gasoline "petrol" (short for petroleum) is just oblique jargon in the context of calling kerosene "paraffin," but being advised by someone from the British Isles on gustatory topics loses something in the translation. When I think of "English cuisine" the first thing that comes to mind is "oxymoron." Please be advised that Burger King is about all Americans know about British cooking...and warm beer...gimme a break!
(6/11) Removing ears with a cheese grater after watching a movie and licensing vegetable peelers got me to thinking that the Prince of Wales might benefit from some ear grating...and maybe it's time for the Non-Virgin Queen Elizabeth to give the kid a chance, before he dies of old age.
(12/13) Give up football and baseball?!: Now you hit a nerve. We have invaded countries with less provocation. Actually we do allow soccer here as a sop for those who are, let's say, "less adept." You always hear about "soccer moms," but never baseball moms or football moms...I wonder why? And cricket, if one of the bowlers could ever throw a proper pitch he might be entry level for the minor leagues and start making some real coin of the realm. The big sports problem here is that Monday Night football is no longer on network TV...if the Queen could fix this maybe we'd have something to discuss.
(16) As to "tea time" [sic}, it's
tee time that strikes the responsive chord hereabouts, and I don't even play golf. But I do recall once being in the presence of "tea timers" in the BWI's. My wife and I stopped by a cricket match, having no idea of the nuances of play. This was Anguilla in 1982, when all the faces were black. As we sat down next to a big prosperous-looking black guy, the game promptly ceased and the players left the field. Our first thoughts were that they weren't going to play for "whitey." I asked the big guy, "what gives...?" He reached into his cooler, pulled out a cold beer, and handed it to me, saying "Tea time."
So here we are, as Churchill (not the gun maker) said, "...two peoples separated by a common language. Perhaps in the spirit of Anglo-American homogeny I'll treat my wife to dinner at a fine British restaurant. But, wait! There is no such thing. We have Italian, Mexican, French, East Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and every other country and sub-culture under the sun. She says No! to Burger King. Sorry. Looks like Mexican tonight (to honor all our recent arrivals). But for dessert we do have one last can of Heinz's "Spotted Dick"...maybe we'll hum a few bars of "God save the Queen."
EDM
