Over the past few months I have asked a male architect for ideas & drafts for the renovation of the farmhouse, and at every turn I am stunned by his utter disregard for any cleaning-related concerns. For example, he is very into the idea of having in the living-room a big, non-openable window near the ceiling—which, granted, looks pretty, like having a piece of blue sky when you raise your eyes, but immediately I’m like, with a high ceiling, how will I clean this? You can’t open it so you have to clean both sides separately, and you can’t easily reach either side. I’ll need a tool with an absurdly long telescopic handle. He says, a stepladder. I’m like, but I’ll need to carry it by myself to the living-room and the front of the house every time. “So?” So a very tall stepladder is heavy? And it will be hard not to get dirty water dripping down the wall. He reacts like he can’t believe he is being asked to bring the concept of dirty soap water into his grand designs, like these are base, trifling considerations, when to me it’s a crucial factor in the decision to add this decorative window.
Similarly we both agree on leaving most of the wood beams exposed because they’re old and beautiful, but when I ask if we ought to insulate in such a way as to cover every other one, so the remaining ones are farther apart and it’s harder for spiders to use them as ready-made anchors for their webs, he just looks disgusted, like “I am talking about Architecture and you bring up spiderwebs.” At this point I start to entertain the idea that men make horrible architects. You design someone’s house to give them a nice, convenient space to live in, not to make their life more difficult. A man who has never used a sponge in his life should not be allowed to graduate from architect school and that’s the end of it.
Non-Americans who escalate inter-nationality teasing immediately to “school shootings and trump” stop challenge
American’s Teasing England: Tea in the shower, u have a queen, other relatively benign stereotypes
American’s Teasing Canada: u have moose and beavers, maple syrup u like it
American’s Teasing Australia: kangaroos and koalas, it’s hot there, summer time, toilets flush backward
Canada, England, and Australia retaliating from that teasing: school shootings, kill a child today hm? your police murder you, you’re gonna die from a preventable disease, everyone in the country is hopelessly poor and dying, everyone’s in debt, you can’t even afford to die. THAT’ll teach u to tease us about having ANIMALS in our country!
I mean, sure, it’s all fun and games to you. But I’ve had friends legitimately try to kill themselves just thinking about a future in this country. I have co-workers who cried on the first day of school because they were scared of dying. While I was working at a school there were three school shooting threats in 4 weeks. I had friends break out into tears after the massacre in 2018 talking about it in class, terrified that they were going to die while working–or watch students die.
My high school history teacher was shot in the back on campus. Everyone here knows someone who’s been affected by gun violence. Everyone knows someone who’s been affected by healthcare, or lack thereof. Everyone knows someone whose life has been ruined by college debt.
The day in, day out nightmare of living in America is not a fucking “GOTCHA” for when you’re trying to tease America. Why is this so hard to comprehend.
Non-Americans: Ugh americans are so entitled and mean and rude
Also Non-Americans: Oh you’re gonna make fun of me drinking tea? Well you’re gonna be violently murdered and then you’ll go into thousands upon thousands of dollars in debt from the act lol this is an equivalent comparison and doesn’t make me look like the asshole in the situation at all!! Americans are soooo rude!
Any examples of what we can tease you about then? Any universal Americanisms that cause the right amount of offense without stepping over the line?
Imperial system
Shoes on in house
Smiling too much
High school football
Opossums, raccoons, deer, etc.
Carpet (I’ve heard other countries aren’t as obsessed with carpet as Americans)
Sales tax (how much will this cost? Nobody knows!)
Roadside tourist attractions (world’s biggest ball of yarn etc)
“it’s only a 6 hour drive”
Buying tea in a gallon jug
Being in the prairie states and there literally being nothing in any direction for miles not even trees
Tornadoes anything to do with tornado culture
Waffle house
The mere concept of semi trucks / 18 wheelers
Every state except California claiming they have the weirdest weather
five petrol stations within a two block radius, sometimes two of the same brand
ketchup is too spicy
mayonnaise on/in literally everything we put noodles and mayo in a bowl and call it a salad i shit you not
absolute failures at geography
deep fried everything. seriously. we deep fry BUTTER.
Absolutely everything and anything somehow being a casserole
HELL IS REAL billboard here in Ohio
The giant dinosaur roadside tourist attraction out in the middle of nowhere
Route 66
Corn fields, everywhere you look
Weird salads (like ambrosia)
Fanny packs
Prom (I’ve heard other countries don’t have prom? Or any of the other 100 school dances a year??)
People microwave their tea instead of boiling it
The white people half-jog-and-wave combo when crossing the street
Endless ads for pharmaceuticals
the spelling and pronunciation dissonance of ‘Arkansas’
Everything in Texas being shaped like Texas itself. I’ve teased Texans about this and the responses are always either a frustrated yet resigned sigh or a boisterous “Hell yeah, it is! TEXAS! WOO!”
Freeways. Look a Californian in the eyes, say “the 405″ and watch a piece of their soul flicker out.
Our collective inability to decide the pronunciation of “kebab”.
Sweetened tea is somehow the default.
That every restaurant claims to be “world famous” and somehow nobody ever gets called out on that bullshit.
The utter nonsense that is our continued fascination with disco.
Stomp your foot twice and then clap your hands once. Repeat several times. See what happens.
i had this dream like a month ago that i was playing a dating sim and at the start you create an avatar of yourself and answer a few personality questions
but then when the game starts you’re actually playing as the love interest on the cover of the game, attempting to romance YOURSELF aka the avatar you just made, and the whole point of the game was to try and show you why someone might find your personality and all your little idiosyncrasies lovable
like if in the personality questions u say u like dry humour, then the love interest will comment on how they love how good your comedic timing with that type of humour is, or if you’re always late, they’ll mention how they always watch the door when you usually come through and seeing you arrive late is part of their routine, etc
it was a super cute idea and i was mad into it and then i woke up and realized it wasn’t real lmfao
Me: Hey does anyone know a good video tutorial for very specific skill? I’ve been searching and can only find thing related to skill but not skill itself and it doesnt help.
Some asshole: Why dont you just fucking read!
me: I have dyslexia and fair better learning from an audio/visual medium. also that doesnt have the actual thing im looking for, just glosses over it as a concept
