American things

1. biscuits & gravy
2. rodeo
3. smores or smore’s or smore(s)
4. “a super bowl”
5. stoops
6. speakeasy
7. “high school prom”
8. cheese in a can
9. dr pepper

smore

wtf?

Steely Dan
The Beat Generation

10. "democracy"
11. mac 'n cheese
12. sherrifs

It's s'mores and it's short for some more.

13. those varsity jackets with a big letter on the front
14. propeller beanie hats

15. grits

16. Shriners

https://s.hswstatic.com/gif/shriners-little-cars-1200x800.jpg

monster trucks

bison
bass fishing tournaments
Yellowstone Park

Looney Tunes cartoons

22. tipping

Mate,

https://i.imgur.com/kjgsMLQ.jpg

I mean, don't forget 23. Indigenous Genocide, but, you know.

if we're going down that route let's not forget 24. slavery

and of course 25. egg creams

slavery has existed everywhere for all recorded history. hardly confined to America, although we certainly embraced one of the most brutal forms of it for a couple centuries.

26 white ppl
27 mayonnaise
28 conway twitty
29 all the bad things
30 no good things

31 guns guns guns love guns need guns
32 sabermetrics
33 god

(Holland surely king of mayonnaise though, for better or for worse)

34. (With drawl) PICKUP TRUCK. GIDDY UP COWBOY.

35. 99.9% of all "cultural appropriation"

36. $$$

37. Road Trips
38. Self Help
39. Seminars on how to flip properties with no money down

40. Hawaii

41. Grand slams

42. Brian Wilson

43. drive-in cinemas

44. john cena

(19)45. the atomic bomb

(19)46. Donald John Trump

Just sayin some of these things aren't exclusively American. They're everybody's!

47. Superhero movies for "grownups"

48. jack kirby

49. jack ruby

27 mayonnaise

27 "ranch"

ranch-style houses

Ranch might be the most american word there is. The sound of it, the meaning, the house style, the dressing. It's 100% American.

https://i.imgur.com/IOlj6Lw.jpg

51. Saturday Night Live and dozens of comedy series and comedians no-one's ever heard of.

... no-one else, that is.

Every nation seems to have its b-list comedy that doesn't escape its borders though

I mean there are all these british comedians called "Jimmy Pram" or "Tolliver Whelk" or whatever that the britishers on the board seem to reference a lot.

52. happy endings
53. late night shows
54. hyper-capitalism
55. "football"
56. "soccer"

Italians
Irish

57. Barack Hussein Obama
58. Velveeta

Misuse of the collective clause when referring to sports teams

Every nation seems to have its b-list comedy that doesn't escape its borders though

Saturday Night Live is b-list?

'Math'

American comedy is painfully unfunny. There's no real bite, no real cynicism, it always has to be nicey nicey in the end. A or B list, SNL fits that bill surely.

today, sure. I think SNL at its best (maybe 80s-early 90s) was good exactly because it captured and spoofed that wide-eyed lack of cynicism. Kevin Nealon comes to mind, and all of the fake commercials. Since at least Will Ferrell and maybe going back to Chris Farley and Adam Sandler though the style of comedy has been very "I AM BEING FUNNY RIGHT NOW! DO YOU SEE ME BEING FUNNY!"

what

what?

Tracer, do you mean a brush you use in combination with toilet cleaner to scrub the toilet or something else entirely? Because if you mean the former, I have questions

yes that is a toilet brush as i understand it

They seem kinda… optional in America

you may be frequenting different parts of america than me

definitely had one in every home I've ever lived in, in fact I was tasked w/ cleaning the toilet as a kid using one lol

that some slobby Americans don't have them, and the interior of the toilet looks like a faded Rothko painting, well, that also doesn't surprise me. I've been to some houses where toilet upkeep seemed to be taken as more of a light suggestion

I have never not had a toilet brushed or noticed anyone else not having one? I just thought every bathroom everywhere had them.

I just actually LOL'd at this:

ok but you’re clearly a weirdo i’m talking like the other 99.9%

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Saturday, January 4, 2025 9:23 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

We have one in every bathroom and teach our kids to use them. I don't remember being in a lot of homes that didn't have them, other than grubby college houses maybe.

lol was gonna say my mind immediately went to 'fratboys' when thinking of who didn't have them

My hotel room doesn’t have one but I guess they figure that’s not for you to do? I’m here for six days though lol

oh yeah hotels don't give a fuck

cos their staff does it

Well now a lot of places they ask if you want to save the entire planet by not having your room cleaned during your stay and I do want to save the entire planet so nobody’s cleaning the toilet sorry tmi

I mean you're allowed to flush it

NOW you tell me

tracer, I know you’re in las vegas

did you just do a vegas-style bowel movement and come to the realization the toilet brush is part of the housekeeper’s kit and not in each room of the hotel?

I’m not going to be drawn on that question, I don’t think we should pre-judge. I have always maintained that the inquiry must be allowed to run its course

you could maybe get one or two housekeepers in the room, have one of them clean, have one of them take side action w/ you on how many brushes it takes to get it sparking clean

It’s okay tracer, I’ve wrecked many public toilets myself nothing to be ashamed of just how yer bowels are

What flushes in Vegas stays in Vegas

one can only hope

everyone knows what a handkerchief is in theory, like they know the word, but no one actually has one or uses one

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand)

of course i know what a handkerchief is, i'm never without my grey handkerchief in my right back jeans pocket

my grandfathers carried them and I think my dad did, briefly. and me, when I was doing old man affectations for several months in elementary/middle school. I think I owned a pocket watch

While we are on hotels, do hotels just not have bathroom exhaust fans anymore? Or have I just had bad luck my last several hotel stays?

Most hotels I've stayed at lately still have them, although one had only a standard forced air duct. I know some hotels don't like people leaving the exhaust fans on to create pleasant white noise to help fall asleep or so you can't hear your neighbors since that taxes the A/C or heat; some hotels even provide fancy white-noise generators to discourage use of the exhaust fan or HVAC for this purpose.

What I don't see much anymore in hotel bathrooms are those eerie infrared heat lamps

oh yeah, the sun lamp! I think those were very briefly a fad in houses in the 70s, too. I think the first time encountered one in a cheap motel as a kid I was amazed and asked my parents if we could have one at home. and then any time we stayed somewhere with one, they’d tell me I could only use it for a little bit. I don’t know if they thought it was actively bad for me, or if it was some Immortan Joe “do not get used to water” deal

I do remember once chancing a flush on a possibly clogged toilet (no substance in it) and flooding the bathroom in my hotel room in Manila. I went downstairs to ask if they had a mop I could use to clean and they said don't worry about it and cleaned it up for me.

I imagine if I did that in a Days Inn in Ocala, FL, I'd be kissing cinderblock by the overworked housekeepers

xp - I had one installed in my home bathroom when it was renovated 10 years ago. I prefer them to the more common hot-air blowers as even heated air blowing on me feels a bit chilly at first when my body is wet fresh out of the shower. Hotels often put either of these on those ticking timer switches; not sure if it's because overuse is bad for you or they just don't want a 250-watt heat lamp or heater fan left on for a long time.

i had to learn about toilet brushes through roommates. we didn't have one growing up. i was the person who cleaned the toilet and i used a washcloth bc i didn't know what else to use. :(

we did have a little bank of heat lamps tho. it stopped working at some point bc the bulbs were huge and my parents never replaced them.

non-stainless hickory handled paring knives

Wait huh?

these type of dudes

https://www.moonrakerknives.co.uk/paring-knife-4

i've never seen them anywhere outside the US but they were mainstays in my parents' house growing up. the blade seemingly stays sharp forever which in my parents' case was a good thing because they had apparently never heard of sharpening knives

My mom is bizarrely against sharpening knives. Perhaps we were once a nation of knife sharpening scammers and some generational wisdom was misinterpreted

I finally broke down and told my sister look, I'll pay for it, just take their knives to this place - I gave her the name and address - and they'll do it in 24 hours. She always found a way to avoid doing it. So the last time I was there I rummaged through all their stuff and eventually found some weird old sharpening hoonjadoonja that had been sitting in its cardboard box with a rubber band around it for likely decades, from the look of the packaging. Miraculously the instructions were written on the side of the box and I sharpened every last one of their knives and you know what that old sharpener fuckin worked. Did I get any thanks? Reader, I emailed like three weeks later, and was like so? How are the knives? My sister's like yes, very sharp thank you. ffs

lmao

I kept telling my my that they would work much better, and if she were to accidentally cut herself it wouldn’t be as painful because dull knives hurt a lot more than sharp knives. She made some excuse about how she might cut herself and not notice if the knives were too sharp

my mom, rather

Damn Tracer now that I think about it, I definitely grew up (in America) with a couple of those knives floating around!

Traveling knife/scissor sharpeners were totally a thing. Especially for folks in remote rural areas so they could make their knives last longer. You'd generally get your knives sharpened when he came around because you didn't know when the next opportunity might be.

I can vaguely remember my mother or grandmother circa 1975 lamenting that there weren't as many traveling knife sharpeners about; you had to specifically request someone to come out and do it.

But see now in 2025 we don't need traveling knife sharpeners because.. because.. wait we still totally need traveling knife sharpeners

Wait, you have to sharpen knives?

one traveling knife sharpener went to my maternal grandparents’ and also Tracer’s, but he was the one scammer who just pretended to sharpen them, creating a generation of mistrust

i think that's it

the only Americans who actually sharpen knives are professional chefs and food bloggers

Ginsu commercials broke us, as a people.

Like, it could cut through a tin can! And then a tomato. Sorcery.

I'm always finding knives like that in the woods.

pplains, do you live in an Appalachian horror movie y/n

Lol

You're only slightly off.