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Suffering From Elation - Harden the f*ck up, America!
A Survivor's Tale
ailurophile
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Harden the f*ck up, America!
The title is an Aussie in-joke, the entry that follows was yoinked from [info]snapesgirl34; and I edited one point because it had an error:

To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II:


In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.

A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

(You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary)

1. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour', 'favour', 'labour' and neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix '-ize' will be replaced by the suffix '-ise'. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').

3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as 'like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as US English. We will let M*crosoft know on your behalf. The M*crosoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize.

4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can't sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not ready to shoot grouse.

6. Therefore, 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. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side of the road with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

8. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.

9. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

10. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager.
South African beer is also acceptable as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting Nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth - see what it did for them.
American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

11. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters.

12. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full Kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies). Don't try Rugby - the South Africans and Kiwis will thrash you, like they regularly thrash us.

13. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is barely played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

14. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad. We will help Iran with their Nuclear Programme.

15. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

16. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.

God Save the Queen!

PS: Go ahead and share this with your friends in the USA (those with a good sense of humour and NOT humor.)
Comments
ninjawookie From: [info]ninjawookie Date: May 8th, 2008 11:14 pm (UTC) (Link)
Thank fuck the metric system is back in place~!
ailurophile From: [info]ailurophile Date: May 8th, 2008 11:22 pm (UTC) (Link)
The metric system is +10 Awesome. Haha, "ten". See what I did there?
xxbalaaxx From: [info]xxbalaaxx Date: May 8th, 2008 11:16 pm (UTC) (Link)
hahaha I laughed so hard it made me realize where my spleen was located as it jabbed me proper from the tempest of abusive laughter.

Ironically I always spelled sense of humour just that way ;)...and though I immigrated to the states, I grew up here and there are many things that don't make sense to me even now.
ailurophile From: [info]ailurophile Date: May 8th, 2008 11:21 pm (UTC) (Link)
I sometimes find myself typing 'color' instead of 'colour' and saying 'zee' instead of 'zed'... I blame an overload of Sesame Street in my childhood!

Where were you from, originally?
xxbalaaxx From: [info]xxbalaaxx Date: May 8th, 2008 11:23 pm (UTC) (Link)
I was born in Tartu, Estonia, on the Baltic Seaboard..but my family is Russian so I consider myself Russian. We moved here riiight before the USSR collapsed when the KGB was giving our family a lovely old time ;).
thelauderdale From: [info]thelauderdale Date: May 8th, 2008 11:23 pm (UTC) (Link)
Hah! I've seen this, and I love it. (I want to know the in-joke!)
ailurophile From: [info]ailurophile Date: May 8th, 2008 11:39 pm (UTC) (Link)
There's a bloke over here called Chopper Read. He's a former underworld figure and basically built himself into a celebrity over us. Nobody loves crims like us Aussies (see: Ned Kelly, the whole 'convict colony' thing...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Brandon_Read

Anyway, there's a comedian here who has built himself a name purely by making fun of Chopper Read (a slightly risky business, all things considered). He did a tour called "Harden the f*ck up, Australia!" and it's become a cultural in-joke and a line used on anyone perceived as being the slightest bit wussy, ever since.
ailurophile From: [info]ailurophile Date: May 8th, 2008 11:41 pm (UTC) (Link)
Damn, I can't edit the above comment to add this info, but:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Brandon_Read

For more info on both the original and the pisstake.

Also, "built himself into a celebrity based on that" was what I was trying to write. Caffeine make my brainy no worky.
kkitty23 From: [info]kkitty23 Date: May 8th, 2008 11:33 pm (UTC) (Link)
Oh man, this totally cracked me up xD Just because everything is so TRUE. It almost makes me feel embarrassed to be American, because of all the retardation going on xDDDD

Oh man...this was totally what I needed today xD Thank you!
kulhain From: [info]kulhain Date: May 8th, 2008 11:50 pm (UTC) (Link)
Hey, we've been over this. We took a land infested with hungry wildlife and dangerous mineral deposits and you kept all the fun words like "wanker" and "nob".

NO TAKE BACKS.

PS: Can we please have the words? Plz? We'll give you Guam. It's almost a state. Sometimes.

--
Lost Dragon
ailurophile From: [info]ailurophile Date: May 8th, 2008 11:54 pm (UTC) (Link)
Bollocks! :D

It's true, the Brits kept all the good words. Although we Aussies cheerfully share 'wanker' with them. Plus we added some of our own... although the only one I can think of right now is "poofter", which is pretty damn offensive, really. ;P
mharpold8 From: [info]mharpold8 Date: May 9th, 2008 02:01 am (UTC) (Link)
I like "dodgy". Dodgy is the word I took back with me from my time in Scotland. Also, the use of the word "pants" to refer to anything that sucks. :D
jesskat From: [info]jesskat Date: May 9th, 2008 12:04 pm (UTC) (Link)
Personally I like how the Americans have adopted the word "bugger" as an innocent, harmless word. Sure, even the Brits use it in less questionable sentences, but if you think about its origin....
ailurophile From: [info]ailurophile Date: May 10th, 2008 12:05 am (UTC) (Link)
True - and believe it or not, we Aussies had an entire ad campaign centering around the word 'bugger'. :D I think it was a Toyota ute ad, you can probably find it on YouTube.
boatswain From: [info]boatswain Date: May 9th, 2008 12:20 am (UTC) (Link)
*GASP* And I rooted my heart out for you guys in the World Cup! :P
denali_kat From: [info]denali_kat Date: May 9th, 2008 01:39 am (UTC) (Link)
ROFLMAO!!!!
Thanks for this post! XD I've got a local friend from Britain who's going to fall over laughing when I copy this and send it on. He was just making the comment about the "World Series" last time I talked to him. XD XD
inc_b From: [info]inc_b Date: May 9th, 2008 01:57 am (UTC) (Link)
It might please you to know Mr Cleese wrote this. I think anyway. Don't quote me.
ailurophile From: [info]ailurophile Date: May 9th, 2008 02:07 am (UTC) (Link)
It pleases me greatly. And if that turns out to be untrue, ah well, truth is no fun anyway. ;)