Tag: Americans

7 Reasons Not to Leave Wrapping Your Presents Until Christmas Eve

Leaving your gift-wrapping until the last-minute is never a good idea. Here are seven reasons why.

Jonathan always uses paper bearing the traditional Christmas gift horse.

1. Reminders. The last thing you want to be doing is sitting in the study wrapping – while rapping along to Wham! – when your loved one knocks on the door and laughs, ‘I hope you haven’t bought me that handbag!’ You look down to see a pair of thick, woolen Rudolph socks. Oh no! She (or he) wanted that handbag. You look at your watch. It’s 5pm. There is no way you can make it to John Lewis now. If only you’d started wrapping on Tuesday. She (or he) could have reminded you then and you could have rectified the situation. Now you’re are going to have to steal one of her (or his) handbags and wrap that up. With the socks inside. Then you’re going to have to get her (or him) really, quite drunk.

2. Paper. However much wrapping paper you buy, it is never enough. It doesn’t matter if you raid your local WHSmith and buy every single roll going, it will never be enough. It’s one of those stupid Christmas rules. Come 11pm on Christmas Eve you have two presents left and no paper. Which is why come Christmas Day many are presented with a gift wrapped in a House Of Fraser bag. Or some printer paper. Or the Daily Telegraph. Though in that particular case I suppose the present was a copy of The Daily Telegraph. Some people like sudukos. The solution is simple*, wrap your presents before Christmas Eve, then when you run out you can go and buy another roll. It works. Though given you wrapped up days in advance you’ll probably have bought six rolls too many. Still, that’s Christmas for you.

3. Sellotape. Because you have no idea where the Sellotape is kept, and you’ll have to ask your partner where it is. And they’ll know that you’ve left wrapping their present until the last minute. And you’ll know that they know. And they’ll know that you know that they know. And you’ll know that they know that you know that they know that you know that they…no, I’ve forgotten. It definitely involved guilt, stationery and repercussions though.

4. Celebration. Christmas Eve is a festival in and of itself. And, having celebrated copiously and extravagantly, the last thing you want to be doing is staggering home in the snow to wrap your presents as, by this point, you may well have imbibed more mulled wine and port than…well…anyone else. Ever. Essentially wrapping presents in this state is a tiresome chore which soon degenerates into screwing large sheets of paper round random objects, with only one eye open and your tongue poking out with concentration while you lie on your side on the dining room floor. It also leads to…

5. Breakages. And you don’t want to break things on Christmas Eve. You don’t want to break yourself because it’s busy at the hospital and having to drive you there is annoying to your friends and family. And you certainly don’t want to break the expensive and fragile blue glass vase that constitutes your then-girlfriend’s main present at 11:30pm on Christmas Eve because it’s too late to replace it. So you’re left with a choice: You either wrap up the remains anyway and express shock and surprise that it’s broken when she opens it the following day, or you explain to her that you broke it while you were wrapping it because you blacked out for a moment while looking at a mince pie and fell off the chair. I chose the former option, naturally.

6. Garages. Despite what people may believe, a garage is not a limitless Santa’s grotto. The flowers are usually gone by lunchtime on Christmas Eve, the Chocolate Oranges by 4pm and the CDs of Cliff Richard’s Greatest Hits by 6pm. So what are you going to do when at 9pm you begin to wrap up your lover’s presents only to realise that he/she has bought you double the number? You can’t get a box of fire-lighters. They still have some left from last year. A free car-wash seems futile given that the car will get dirty again driving back. A new can of petrol is a fire hazard under the tree. A pint of skimmed milk lacks the festive spirit. You’re going to be screwed. So don’t do it. Don’t wrap on Christmas Eve.

7. Americans. For some reason best known to themselves, many Americans open their presents (which they insist upon calling gifts) on Christmas Eve. But what if you have an American coming over? Because if you haven’t wrapped your presents by Christmas Eve, muddleheaded ex-colonial types will want to open them before you’ve done so. And you know what will happen if they do that? They’ll just be removing stuff from boxes. All of the boxes. Because they won’t know which boxes are for them because they won’t have labels on because you won’t have done the labels because, let’s face it, if you haven’t done your wrapping by Christmas Eve you’re hardly likely to have made gift labels, are you? So your house will just be full of Americans removing all of your boxed-possessions and taking them. It would be like being burgled, except you’d have to give the burglars your mulled wine and make small talk with them while they burgled you, spelled things badly and insisted that science isn’t a real thing. And if that image hasn’t motivated you to wrap your presents right now, nothing will.

*Not the solution to the sudoku. Those bloody things are impenetrable.

December 17, 2010
7 Reasons You Should Not Kayak Across The Pacific Ocean

If you are one of these hipsters who likes to engage in social networking via the likes of facebook and twitter, it is very likely that one, two or maybe all of your friends have posted a ‘funny’ piece of travel advice they have found on Google Maps. I say ‘funny’ in inverted commas because it is actually a very serious matter. The matter I refer to is the ‘joke’ that tells prospective travellers to make the journey from the USA to Japan via the Pacific Ocean in a kayak. How utterly irresponsible. There are many, many reasons why one should not do as Google Maps suggests, but to save my sanity (and your life) here are just seven.

1. Food. An average kayaker will travel at 5mph. Given that Google Maps says the distance – via Hawaii – between USA and Japan is 2,756 miles, it will take the adventurer just over 551 hours to make the journey. That’s a touch under 23 days. That’s 23 days worth of food you have to take with you. Now, assuming – as is very likely considering the departure point – that the traveller is American, that’s 89,537 calories. Or 92.7 Big Mac Meals. A kayak has storage for about 20 Big Mac Meals. You do the maths.

2. Sharks. The good news is, that out of the 440 species of shark found on our planet, only 36 of them exist in the Pacific Ocean. (Approximately. I am sure others visit for a day now and then.) Unfortunately, within the 36 species is the Great White Shark. The Great White Shark accounts for 20% of worldwide shark attacks. And, just before you come back at me with the stat, ‘of the 108 unprovoked attacks within the Pacific Ocean in the 20th century, only five included kayakers,’ let me tell you that there has never, ever been a Great White Shark attack on a plane.

3. Paddle. You may have heard of the phrase, ‘Up the creek without a paddle’. For those of you who haven’t, it basically means you are in a very serious situation and you haven’t got a bloody clue how you are going to get out of it. If you drop your paddle between the USA and Japan, you can change the word ‘creek’ for ‘Pacific’ but you can’t change the meaning.

4. Iodine. The average human will die if they go for more than three days without water. Luckily, in the Pacific Ocean you will find loads of it. Unluckily, if you drink too much of it, you will also die. That’s because it’s saltwater. If you are going to survive you are going to have to desalinate the seawater. You can do this by either attaching a desalination plant to your kayak – in which case you’ll sink before you even leave the beach – or you can use iodine. You will have to leave ten Big Mac Meals behind, but to survive it is probably worth it. The problem comes when you try and desalinate your beaker of water. You’re in a kayak. On the ocean. It’s bumpy. You have your paddle in one hand, the iodine in the other and the beaker between your legs. Now, I’ve never tried desalinating my penile appendage, but if I did, the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in a kayak, is a place where I know I couldn’t possibly fail. Unless…

5. A Sudden Wave hits the kayak. In which case the iodine might go overboard and desalinate the whole of the Ocean. You are going to murder many, many saltwater fish. And you’re heading to Japan. A country that’s built on fish (one in ten fish is eaten there). They’re not going to greet you warmly are they?

6. Tankers. Generally these are big ships who have very little interest in small-fry like you in your kayak. Mainly because they are always on auto-pilot while the captain has a snooze. If you just happen to be having a snooze at the same time, you are going to get crushed. And, just a warning, if you do survive, there is no point in shouting ‘Tanker!’ at them and waving your fist, if you do, you’ll miss the giant squid that’s about to squirt you with ink.

7. Jovan Pestoric Will Kiss You. In doing my research for this post – I came across the following Yahoo! Answers page where Lovely had asked if it was possible to kayak across the Pacific Ocean. There were only a few answers. One gave Lovely some valuable advice and advised it was not possible. They then said ‘Have fun!’. Then Javon Pestoric announced, ‘yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! omg if u do it ill kiss u’. I have no idea who Jovan is and, if watching people kayak over the Pacific Ocean is his kind of fetish, I don’t think I want to know either.

November 10, 2010
Guest Post: 7 Reasons Americans Call Football Soccer

After a brief stopover in England last week, the sofa is back on its tour of the USA. This Saturday we have wound up in…er…we’re not sure (we forgot to bring a compass and our map seems to have been printed upside-down). Literally thousands of people raced from their homes to see what the fuss was about, but it was Breana Orland who won the place on the 7 Reasons chaise longue. And it’s a good job she did because she’s going to explain to us one of life’s mysteries. Just why do Americans call football, soccer.

Breana Orland is a writer for Student Grants. She also gives advice on the pursuit of higher education and career options for young adults.

Leave it to the bloody yanks to bastardize the world’s sport by giving it a different name and, refusing so thoroughly to recognize its real name, that we assign it to a completely dissimilar sport. As per our usual custom, Americans have to do everything on their own terms. First we separated from England. Then we said no to the metric system (forget the liter, I need a gallon of milk!) and driving on the wrong side of the road (if we drive on the right side, then yours must be wrong). And finally, we took the most beloved sport in the world, football, and applied the name to a sport that should by all rights be called handball. And we named football, soccer. But if you ever wondered what caused Americans to raise the ire of football fans everywhere by giving it a new name, here are a few things you may want to consider.

1. We Already Have A Sport With That Name. Football may be THE international sport (played with feet), but here in America, football is a game that is played on Sunday by enormous men in spandex and padding that line up facing each other like they’re reenacting a pre-revolutionary battlefield. It is a sport played mainly with hands on the ball, but for some reason, we call it football.

2. Because Of The Soc? No, not the funny socks they wear. Apparently, soccer was a slang term derived from “soc” in the original name “associated football”, and since we gave the name football to the gridiron sport, the international sport of the same name got the short end of the soc.

3. We’re contrary! Deal with it! There’s a reason everyone thinks Americans are, um, jerks. We kind of are. You wanna go?!

4. New language Is Our Bag, Baby. Sure we inherited our national tongue from the British, but you don’t hear us running around shouting “Bollocks!” or “Pip, pip, cheerio!” In keeping our image as the kid who ran away from Mommy and Daddy, we have adopted our own accents and colloquialisms and set to making up words. If you don’t believe me, just consider the fact that “truthiness”, a fake word made popular by The Colbert Report’s Stephen Colbert, was actually added to the dictionary.

5. Soccer Is America’s Sport. That’s right; we jacked the world’s sport and gave it our own name. Then we stole England’s soccer legend (but Becks, wouldn’t you really rather live in Los Angeles?). Then we embarrassed them at the World Cup (okay, they embarrassed themselves). And still, it is the least recognized sport in our country. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

6. We did it our way. At least, according to Frank Sinatra. And the Chairman of the Board is never wrong. Americans always have to do things their own way, even if it means that we’re going against the entire world and firmly established facts or traditions.

7. We’re idiots. At least, according to the rest of the world. Apparently we just don’t get it and we never will. Maybe if you called it soccer…

July 31, 2010
7 Reasons The British Know Thanksgiving Must Be Important To Americans

1. Where the hell is Wichita? Whole Hollywood movies are based around the theme of trying to get home for Thanksgiving and feature scenes in which the lead shares a bed with John Candy. Most other films with the theme of trying to get home, feature daring escapes from Colditz and shenanigans with a French Resistance fighter called Michelle in a bunk-bed somewhere outside Paris. So yes, if they make films about Thanksgiving, we know it’s important.

2. Happy Thanksgiving y’all!!! Such words are dominating Twitter at the present time. We haven’t seen the like of it since Balloon Boy didn’t fly. Even that naughty Britney girl is having a day off from following people. Oh hang, no she’s not.

3. He’s over the 40…the 30…the 20…no one’s going to catch him! Touchdown! That’s right, the football is on. And it’s a Thursday. Everyone knows the football (the kind you use your hands to play) is a Sunday and Monday night sport, so playing it on a Thursday must mean it’s a special day. We liken it to the Boxing Day Test Match – a much more delightful event that doesn’t include spiking.

4. Phone in now. If you’ve been listening to Simon Mayo on BBC Radio 2 this week, you’ll know he has been celebrating Thanksgiving by getting people to call in and tell him what they are thankful for. I have no idea why he’s doing this. Simon Mayo is not American. Neither are his listeners. But anyway, if Britain’s most popular radio station is celebrating it, it must be big. Though incredibly frustrating for someone like me who very much doubts that American DJs ask people to call in on St. George’s Day and tell the nation about the last time they fought off a dragon.

5. The one with the Thanksgiving. Yes, in at number five is the ever popular sitcom Friends. Every sixth episode of Friends features Thanksgiving. E4 are almost certainly showing one of them right now.

6. Another slice? We all know that Americans eat everything, but Pumpkin Pie? Seriously? That is some commitment. Especially when you consider that just four weeks earlier, the pumpkins had been used for Halloween. It’s full of molten wax and wicks and all sorts.

7. Oranges. It’s bad enough that Americans have swapped perfectly acceptable English words for their own made up nonsense. Pavement for sidewalk. Trousers for pants. Boot for trunk. But at least they kind of make sense. On Thanksgiving though, logic apparently goes out of the window and any old word is perfectly fine. ‘Orange’ instead of ‘aren’t’ for example. What is that about? And why is it funny to some checkout girl called Rose? Only in America. Over to you Mr. Hanks.

November 26, 2009