America’s so awesome that I ran out of space yesterday! I’m going to continue where I left off, but not without first wowing you with a recent discovery of mine: The Heart Attack Grill. Words don’t really do it justice, so just watch this little video segment from a very serious-sounding TV news reporter.

With that out of the way — Christ, those nurses were hot, eh?  Did you see that ‘A wheelchair ride to your car’ is on the menu? My kind of establishment! — it’s now time to conclude why Americans are AWESOME.

Guns don’t kill people

There’s something about America and the celebration of firearms. It’s probably tied into what I said yesterday about Americans being big and brash — what better way to win an argument or ensure the cessation of all disagreement than with an automatic shotgun? If that doesn’t work, how about equipping it with a clip of armour-penetrating grenade rounds that can be fired off in under two seconds?

Apparently, it’s your God-given right to bear arms in the United States. Well, not God-given, but granted by the second amendment — which was probably divined under the omnipresent supervision of God. Most things back then were, don’t worry — anyway, constitutionally, Americans are allowed to own a firearm. 200 years ago, y’see, there was still some risk of a tyrant leader forcing their way to the top. It was actually sensible that localised militias were maintained in case of emergency — in the event that they would have to help maintain the republic (by shootin’ the dictator).

Fear of oppressive/tyrannical leadership is a common trait amongst all democratic republics and begun way back in Roman times. Today though, there isn’t really a reason to own a lethal weapon, other than because your neighbours do. And other bad drivers. Do Americans really think that owning a gun makes them safer? I can’t get my head around that one so I’m just going to label that particular logic as ‘awesome’ — perhaps there is a method in the madness. Perhaps you really can whip your gun outta your glove box and shoot ‘im dead faster than he can squeeze the trigger.

Maybe, if the mugger knew you weren’t packing heat, he’d carry a baseball bat instead of a gun? Broken ribs instead of dead on the cold floor.

I still remember the day I first saw an automatic submachine gun, at the airport, cradled gently, reverentially, in the arm of a police officer. I was meant to feel safe; I had never been so afraid.

McDonalds and Starbucks — globalisation — American havens the world over

Most non-Americans reading this will probably have bumped into an American tourist at some time or another. More than likely this would be in a Starbucks or McDonalds — the American’s there to pur-chase a slice of cake that’s just like my momma’s home cookin or a cup of hot, national-pride piss. I’ve found the best way to enjoy Starbucks coffee is to drink it fast while it’s still hot; burn all of them there pesky taste buds off! You then have a tongue that’s ready to sample the finest of American mud. Like KFC: they tell us it’s chicken, as we’re biting down into that slippery, spicy succulent morsel we try our damnedest to believe it is chicken — but is it really chicken? Starbucks tell us they serve great coffee. They wouldn’t lie to us like KFC, right?

(As an aside, the gangster slang ‘homeslice’ originates from from the phrase ‘a slice of home’, i.e. someone that reminds you of what it’s like to be back home. How cute is that? Starbucks, your American homeslice, the only solid bastion in a sea of crazy foreigners; seriously, Europeans, go check out a Starbucks in a busy city like Paris or Rome and just marvel at the number of Amerkins you find.)

The unstoppable sprawl of globalisation is an almost-uniquely American thing. The fast food chains, music, film — television. I’ve seen a news clip of a religious fanatic in Iraq decrying Americans as imperialist pigs with Friends and Joey’s inane face plastered on the TV behind him — you couldn’t make that kind of sweet irony up. A lot of people actually learn English from syndicated TV and Hollywood films and pop music — it always amuses me when I meet a local resident in Turkey or Croatia or Serbia that has an American accent. I wonder if they know just how funny it is?

Realising fairly quickly that they couldn’t actually take over the whole world (damn those commie Ruski pigs) they had to settle for the next best thing — CAPITALISM! Once you’ve reached national saturation there’s only one option left: go multinational! There’s a place in Portland, Washington there are actually two Starbuckses opposite each other. Either side of the street. That’s saturation and that’s why I have more Starbucks stores in London than in New York — I’m not complaining though — their coffee might be shit, but their ice-blended coffees with whipped cream on top… mmm.

(I did a little research, and it turns out ‘two Starbuckses on the same street’ is actually a smart move intentionally deployed by Starbucks. Each cafe would be decorated differently and thus serve a different kind of clientelle! So that’s actually quite smart, Mr Starbucks…)

I don’t think globalisation is intentional though, it’s just a side-effect. In the olden days, only the richest of merchants would have offices in more than one city. Today, our technology-rich world is an environment tailor-made for America’s big corporations. They’ve capitalised on their vast reserves cash to quickly spread their long, gribbly, money-grabbing tendrils all over the world. That’s not to say the rest of the world has suffered — far from it. We’ve reaped a lot of benefits of such quick world-devouring expansion (though there are plenty of arguments against the culture-destroying aspects of globalisation). We have globalisation to thank for cheap fast food (hooray!), a lot of employment and a huge amount of consumable entertainment. Kudos has to be given to Americans for finding some way to conquer the modern world without nukes.

The first black president!!

Apparently, this is fairly big news. Also, curiously, the USA is the first country to have a dildo shaped like their head of state (pun intended, animated and totally NSFW). I can’t wait for the first British-born Indian-parented Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Thinking about it, I don’t think there’s ever been a black president in any of the European countries… Maybe I should another entry  on why Europeans suck!

A turkey, stuffed with a chicken, stuffed with a duck. Wrapped in bacon. Perhaps America’s greatest invention: The Turbaconucken, courtesy of thisiswhyyourefat.com.

I’ve been tackling the subject of authority (who or what you trust when seeking the answer to a question) and knowledge (a working, true data set) for a while now. I haven’t really gone into ethics because it’s a sticky one. I’m going to try it now, in a couple of articles.

* * *

I think it’s painfully apparent to everyone by now that technology itself is not a good thing.

Technology is merely a tool. Really, that’s all. Technology is a tool that can be used for good or bad. In the future, technology might gain sentience and become much more than a tool, but that’s outside the scope of this entry because… well… arguing something that may or may not come true is hard work. And I’m not a sci-fi author.

There’s an old, trite argument, but it illustrates my point: guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Technology is the same thing, but because inventions are new and shiny, people are mostly blind to its nefarious uses; it lacks the evil connotations of the gun that we’ve developed over hundreds of years. When the gun was first invented it wasn’t ‘bad’ either — just new, and very cool.

Technology — the idea of new inventions, modifications, enhancements – really is the same thing as the humble gun. I mean, if you want proof, a gun is technology. Weaponry is one of the longest chains of technological development in history! And it’s not abating either… it has a long way to go. I’m sure you’re aware of the tax money that goes into ‘defence’. Weapon technology has been the deciding factor of major wars and the continuation of empires and dynasties — having advanced weapons is (sadly?) probably the pinnacle of any given modern civilisation.

But because guns (and canons and muskets and rifles and…) have killed huge swathes of the population, does that make technology bad?

There are literally millions (billions?) of people that would say guns and weapons are Bad Things. They kill people, ergo… bad. Before guns, we had swords, spears, slings — were they also bad?

How about fire? Was Prometheus, the lad that stole fire from the Gods, the greatest war criminal of all time? Without fire, almost everything you see today wouldn’t exist. Chemical energy is the end of that technology chain, and we frickin’ worship chemical energy.

That’s the thing — without fire, that desk in front of you wouldn’t exist. That’s how technology works — it’s omnipotent and omnipresent. You can’t staunch the flow of one technology and expect to carry on living the life you live.

Without fire, we would have burnt out [hah -- frozen to death more likely] and gone extinct a long time ago. Without spears, we would’ve starved. Without guns we would’ve perished in wars.

You see how I keep using the word ‘we’? It’s a selfish thing, eh? Man makes fire because he doesn’t want to freeze. Selfish, selfish, selfish. Man fashions a spear because without it, he uses more energy hunting than he gains from the animal’s flesh. Man crafts a gun because it lets him kill — or threaten — at range, without putting himself at risk. SELFISH!

But what’s the other option? No technology? No fire? No human race? Just step to the side and make way for another master species? How on earth are we ever going to agree to that? No, we can’t stop progressing — that’s one thing we can’t do. We might nuke ourself in the process, like so many civilisations before us, but it’s better than standing still, stagnating, dying.

We can agree then that technology isn’t a good thing itself, but something so intrinsic to human survival that we can’t imagine life without it, without tools. But as always, when anything involves humans, it’s more complicated than that.

With technology we create both solutions and problems. One caveman uses fire to cook his food while another uses it to brand dissident villagers. You keep a gun in the house to dissuade burglars, I keep a gun to shoot Negroes. While one scientist is planning clean, sustained energy from nuclear fission, another is working under the duress of an evil mastermind that wants to nuke us to smithereens.

Thus there are some that think technology has lowered our quality of life — that technology is a bad thing — though that’s impossible if you take ‘technology’ to mean any and every tool we’ve ever fashioned. So they probably mean ‘recent technology’ — the atomic bomb, the Internet, sports cars, Facebook, etc.

And maybe they have a point. You’d never think of a telephone as a bad thing, right? But the Internet? Maybe. Fire’s a good thing — but weapons of mass destruction? Probably not. They’re both advancements on the same technological line

It’s too unknown. The rules are unknown, the lines are blurred. There have been failed technologies in the past