Voltan

Min avsikt med VT 2011 var att läsa 30 poäng Engelska via Mittuniversitetet. Jag gillar ju språk och tyckte att det vore bra att lyfta min Engelska från bra till fantastisk. Att läsa språk på distans via Mittuniversitetet visade sig inte vara någon bra idé. Det enda som skulle nå fantastiska nivåer skulle vara min huvudvärk. Jag sa kort och gott upp mig, men jag han lämna in ett par uppgifter. En av dem var ett porträtt av en stereotyp Amerikan och en stereotyp Brittisk person. Jag var lite irriterad när jag skrev detta:

The stereotypes

I have picked up my prejudices about both Americans and the British whilst travelling. Every time I have a run in with any of the two I consider most of those prejudices confirmed. At one time about ten years ago I was on the road in the south of Thailand with a few of the Brits. We spent several hours squeezed in the back of what looked like a toy pick up truck with a taxi sign on the roof.

On arrival at a dodgy hotel in Krabi the first thing I did was to throw my self in the shower. My British friends hit the bar. One bought an impressive round of beers as the others scanned through the TV-channels in search for the latest soccer results.

When I joined the Brits I had three beers waiting for me. British people simply can’t pronounce my name, “****”. They try with anything that starts with the letter “*”. This lot called me “******”. When I entered the bar, Sarah, the leader of the pack, said: “******, you are such a clean person”, referring to the fact that I was the only one who bothered to wash of the road before starting to drink. As she was used to nurse the men around her she asked me if I was hungry. I was, but I was not going to eat either chips and vinegar or toast and Marmite. The Brits had that dreadful herbal mix called Marmite sent to them from England. The vinegar for the chips was bought in a Thai supermarket.

Sarah made sure everyone was happy. She was a pleasure to the eyes with dark curly hair and pale skin that turned brightly red in seconds if exposed to the sun. On that account she was sensible and stayed in the shade most of the time.

The male Brits behaved them selves as a pack of street dogs. No matter how well raised they may appear to be over lunch, two beers later they are all a bunch of hooligans. They come in three different characters; the joker, the drinker and the druggie. The joker usually likes to drink and the drinker usually considers him self a joker and all of them consumes more drugs over a weekend than a cancer patient gets through the system in a lifetime.

The male Brit considers an unhealthy interest in watching soccer on TV to be the very definition of being male. Any hobby they might have is something you can do whilst being on the piss. Anything that happens on the piss usually brings out a fourth character among the male Brits, the fighter.

In a Brit gang, the males take turns in becoming the fighter. On rare occasions they all become the fighter. These occasions are always soccer related. Who ever amongst the males who make the worst ass of him self will be treated like a hero by the British females. If that was not the case there would be no Brits. They would be long gone centuries ago. 

The American stereotype is also found in the bar. He is competing over every ones attention with the British joker. He is a loud character who calls every one “Dude” and ends every sentence with “man”, even if he would address a female. While the British joker simply tells jokes, the American dude entertains his crowd by quoting Cheech and Chong and telling stories about scoring and smoking marijuana. He does not let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Loud mouth and his friends take pride in smoking marijuana with out mixing it with any tobacco. The fact that most marijuana is so strong that mixing it is a healthy survival technique does not bother the Dude and his friends. They pass out a couple of hours now and then. When they wake up they do it all over again. Quoting Cheech and Chong, telling stories about how they score dope, talking about them selves in third person, passing out.

The American Dude considers him self superior to every other culture on the planet. Nothing impresses him as his country is good for everything, but he can’t stop talking about this Dude who could roll a joint in side out.

American females are the gold digging champions of the world. They have developed a sixth sense for sniffing out rich men on their death beds. As rich men on their death beds can’t do much about reproduction that is taken care of by the American Dude. The females usually does not give their consent to this solution, witch is why the American Dude is such a go getter in the date rape department.

Kanske var det lika bra att jag lämnade språkstudierna bakom mig för stunden. VT 2011 fortsätter jag istället på en väl trampad stig genom medie- och kommunikationsvetenskapsträsket. Det träsket är trivsamt.

Storebror