Oh Just Another Kind of Outdoor Game...

I asked an English girl I knew to speak for her entire country and asked her what she thought of us. Us being all of us- the US. She said "they" liked a lot of American culture, they liked most individual Americans they encountered, thought we were a bit Puritanical in our sensitivity toward language and naughty bits, and wondered how collectively we could put a man like W, who by most estimates seems a bit dim, in charge of our country and make him so responsible for the well-being of the world.

Well, he promised to lower taxes; that matters quite a bit to us. And Americans aren't big fans of intellectuals or cultural elites. We sometimes pretend to respect brains but then in the back of our minds we're thinking of the kids that reminded our teachers they forgot to give us homework or the jerks who correct our pronunciations or correct us when we say something verifiably wrong. And even though we're overwhelmed by evidence that we worship wealth, power and celebrity we pretend to prefer a folksy plainness- but only if it's an affectation or a mythic kind of folksiness. I mean you have to have an Ivy League background if you want to get away with saying "ain't" and wearing cowboy boots. If you clear brush for a living, or if putting food on your table earns you calluses and blisters, we don't want to know about you; you're dirty, probably smell, and are more than likely poor. We're not big fans of poor people. But if you do it for fun- hey that's endearing and homey.

We're weird. That's our excuse. But we're also generous. And this isn't lost on the rest of the global neighborhood.

That's cool. As long as we remember there are different kinds of generous neighbors. There's the neighbor who comes to your house craps in your tub, stains your rug, breaks a couple of things, and gives you $50 for your trouble (but not before stealing a couple of CDs- you'll notice later). And then there's the neighbor who helps you chop down a tree for a beer or a sandwich. I want us to be the beer neighbor. It's easier to make up for something like your dog pooping in their yard every now and then if you're the beer neighbor.

Who Else Gives You Free MP3 Downloads?
Underture- The Who
How I Could Just Kill a Man- Rage Against the Machine
22nd Century Man- The Briefs
Amor ti vieta -Jussi Bjorling
Silver- The Pixies
I Wanna Be Your Lover- Prince
Caravan- Dizzy Gillespie
Solitary Confinement- The Weirdos
Turn On Your Love Light- The Grateful Dead