Le bâton de marche

21.10.03

 

Ten reasons for being... (attention humour féroce)

FRENCH :

1. When speaking fast you can make yourself sound gay
2. Experience the joy of winning the world cup for the first time
3. You get to eat insect food like snails and frogs legs
4. If there's a war you can surrender really early
5. You don't have to read the subtitles on those late night foreign films on Channel 4
6. You can test your own nuclear weapons in other people's countries
7. You can be ugly and still be a famous film star
8. Allow Germans to march up and down your most famous street humiliating your sense of national pride
9. You don't have to bother with toilets, just shit in the streets
10. People think you're a great lover even when you're not.

AMERICAN:

1. You can have a woman president without electing her
2. You can spell colour wrong and get away with it.
3. You can call Budweiser beer
4. You can be a crook and still be a president
5. If you've got enough money you can get elected to do anything
6. If you can breathe you can get a gun
7. You get to be really obese
8. You can play golf in the most hideous clothes and nobody cares
9. You get to call everyone you've never met 'buddy'
10. You can think you're the greatest nation on earth
10a. When you're not
10b. At all

ENGLISH

1. Two world wars and one world cup, doo-dah doo-dah
2. Proper beer
3. You get to confuse everyone with the rules of cricket
4. You get to accept defeat gracioulsy in major sporting events
5. Union Jack underpants
6. Water shortages guaranteed every single summer
7. You can live in the past and imagine you are still a world power
8. Bathing once a week - whether you need it or not
9. Ditto changing underwear
10. Beats being Welsh
10a. Or Scottish

ITALIAN:

1. In-depth knowledge of bizarre pasta shapes
2. Unembarrassed to wear fur
3. No need to worry about tax returns
4. Glorious military history prior to 400 AD
5. Can wear sunglasses inside
6. Political instability
7. Flexible working hours
8. Live near the Pope
9. Can spend hours braiding girlfriend's armpit hair
10. Country run by Sicilian murderers

SPANISH

1. Glorious history of killing South Amercian tribes
2. The rest of Europe think Africa begins in the Pyrenees
3. You get your beaches invaded by Germans, Danes, Brits etc.
4. The rest of your country is already invaded by Moroccans
5. Everybody else makes crap paella and claims it's the real thing
6. Honesty
7. Only sure way of bedding a woman is to dress up in stupid, tight
clothes and risk your life in front of bulls
8. You get to eat bull's testicles
9. Gibraltar
10. Supported Argentina in Falklands War

GERMAN:

1. you can cook pasta putting the oil into the water before it boils
2. you can drive 400 km/h in the highway but if you drive 51 km/h in the city centre you're sent into jail
3. you can believe to have conquered all the europe although your capital city in 1945 was inhabited by more foreigners (especially russians and americans) than germans
4. you think you are the best car producers in the world, and every year you can proudly say to be beaten by an italian car in the f1 championship
5. you can drink beer in case of water shortage
6. you have to be careful to have your feet always clean because you have
to take your shoes off every time you enter someone's house
7. when you speak german everyone thinks you're swearing all the time
8. you can go with your car also to new zealand
9. you can meet people from your country even in the north pole
10. you can can wear a tablecloth instead of a shirt and anyone will notice it

WELSH

1. You've got to be kidding, right ?

SCOTTISH

1. Yoo arnae Sassenach (English) !
2. Yoo arnae English!
3. Yoo arnae English!
4. Yoo arnae English!
5. Yoo arnae English!
6. Yoo arnae English!
7. Yoo arnae English!
8. Yoo arnae English!
9. Yoo arnae English!
10. Yoo arnae English!

IRISH:

1. Guinness
2. 18 children because you can't use contraceptives
3. You can get into a fight just by marching down someone's road
4. Pubs never close
5. Can use Papal edicts on contraception passed in the second
Vatican Council of 1968 to pursuade your girlfriend that you can't have
sex with a condom on.
6. No one can ever remember the night before
7. Kill people you don't agree with
8. Stew
9. More Guinness
10. Eating stew and drinking Guinness in an Irish pub at 3 in the
morning after a bout of sectarian violence

CANADIAN:

1. It beats being American
2. Only country to successfully invade the US and burn its capital to the ground
3. You can play hockey 12 months a year, outdoors
4. Only country to successfully invade the US and burn its capital to the ground
5. Where else can you travel 1000 miles over fresh water in a canoe ?
6. A political leader can admit to smoking pot and his/her popularity ratings will rise.
7. Only country to successfully invade the US and burn its capital to the ground
8. Kill Grizzly bears with huge shotguns and cover your house in their skins
9. Own-an-Eskimo scheme
10. Only country to successfully invade the US and burn its capital to the ground

AUSTRALIAN:

1. Know your great-grand-dad was a murdering bastard that no civilised nation on earth wanted
2. Fosters Lager
3. Dispossess Aborigines who have lived in your country for 40,000 years because you think it belongs to you.
4. Cricket captain not afraid to cry live on TV
5. Tact and sensitivity
6. Bondi Beach
7. Other beaches
8. Liberated attitudes to homosexuals
9. Drinking cold lager on the beach
10. Having a bit of a swim and then drink some cold lager on the beach.

BELGIAN:

1. You can speak three languages in one sentence without realizing it
2. You get to own a dog that's smaller than your cat
3. You can go out for a beer at 3am, and the bar is just starting to liven up
4. You can speak French as your native language without actually being French
5. When driving you can try to kill every pedestrian that dares to step on a zebra crossing
6. You never have to tip in restaurants or cabs
7. No-one knows where your country is
8. You can step in a dozen different varieties of dogshit between your front door and your car
9. You have a royal family that no-one's ever heard of
10. You can queue for an hour in the post office to buy a stamp and think it was good service

DUTCH

1 You can get arrested for growing plants, but not for smoking them.
2 You can make jokes about the Belgians and still drink their beer.
3 a. You can legally kill yourself
b. You can legally be killed
4 You're exactly like the Germans, except that nobody hates you.
5 You think you are a world power, but everyone else thinks Copenhagen is your capital.....
6 You get to insult people and defend yourself by saying it's a national tradition.
7 You can put your finger in a dyke and it will save your country
8 You live in the most densely populated country in Europe, and still you've never seen your neighbors
9 If the economy is bad, blame the Germans. If a war is started, blame the Germans. If you lose your keys, blame the Germans.
10 Bikes are public property. Locks are a challenge.

NORWEGIAN:

1. You get to pay the highest taxes in the world.
2. You can kill baby seals and eat Rudolf the Reindeer.
3. You live in total freezing darkness half the year and get 24 hour ozone-hole radiation the other half.
4. You can get capital punishment for smoking dope.
5. You can go skiing in your knickers.
6. You get to hate the Swedes and beat the Brazilians in football.
7. You have to be a woman to get anywhere.
8. You don't need to worry about land prices rocketing - its fairly spacious.
9. When abroad you can impress people you meet with stories about killing polar bears and shagging penguins - and they believe you.
10. You can actually get bored with blondes.