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John Cleese's letter to America
V
12 November 2005 19:21
JOHN CLEESE'S LETTER TO AMERICA

To the citizens of the United States of America:

In light of your failure to elect a competent 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 other territories (excepting Kansas, which she does
not fancy).

Your new prime minister, Tony Blair, 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:

1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Then look up "aluminium," and check the pronunciation guide. You will
be
amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. The letter
'U'
will be reinstated in words such as 'colour', 'favour' 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."

You will learn that the suffix 'burgh' is pronounced 'burra'; you may
elect to respell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you find you simply can't
cope with correct pronunciation.

Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable
levels (look up "vocabulary"winking smiley. Using the same twenty-seven words
interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an
unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.


2. There is no such thing as "US English." We will let Microsoft know
on
your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take
account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of "-ize."

3. You will relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The
Queen",
but only after fully carrying out Task #1 (see above).

4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. November 2nd
will
be a new national holiday, but to be celebrated only in England. It
will
be called "Come-Uppance Day."

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 adult enough to be independent. Guns should only
be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out
without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown
up enough to handle a gun.

6. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything
more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if
you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

7. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for
your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what
we
mean. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will
start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you
will go metric immediately 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"winking smiley -roughly $6/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 mayonnaise but with vinegar.

10. Waiters and waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with
customers.

11. 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." American brands will be referred to as
"Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine," so that all can be sold without risk of
further confusion.

12. 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. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English
dialogue in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" was an experience akin to
having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

13. 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, will 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).

Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host
an
event called the "World Series" for a game which is not played outside
of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world
beyond your borders, your error is understandable.

14. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

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.

Thank you for your co-operation.

John Cleese
V
12 November 2005 19:24
for those of u who don't know john cleese , here's a picture of him


[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c0/John_Cleese.jpg/150px-John_Cleese.jpg[/img]

he's a british actor , he's been playing the role of Q in the last james Bond , 'die another day'
l
13 November 2005 11:15
Indeed - but we know him much better from 'Fawlty Towers' and 'Monty Python'. He's hilarious as a comedy actor. Never could get used to him in a serious role. Thanks for that Vador - excellent.
V
13 November 2005 15:30
and here's the response from AMERICANS :


SUBJECT: NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE

To the citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland:

We welcome your concern about our electoral process. It must be exciting for you to see a real Republic in action, even if from a distance. As always we're amused by your quaint belief that you're actually a world power. The sun never sets on the British Empire! Right-o chum!

However, we regretfully have to decline your offer for intervention. On the other hand, it would be amusing to see you try to enforce your new policy (for the 96.3% of you that seem to have forgotten that you have little to no real power). After much deliberation, we have decided to continue our tradition as the longest running democratic republic. It seems that switching to a monarchy is in fact considered a "backwards step" by the majority of the world.

To help you rise from your current anachronistic status, we have compiled a series of helpful suggestions that we hope you adopt:

1. Realize that language is an organic structure, and that you aren't always correct in your pronunciation or spelling. Let's use your "aluminium" example. Sir Humphrey Davy (an Englishman) invented the name "aluminum" (note spelling) for the metal. However, in common usage the name evolved into "aluminium" to match the naming convention of other elements. In 1925 the United States decided to switch back to the original spelling and pronunciation of the word, at which point we dominated the aluminum industry. We'd also like to point out that the process of actually producing aluminum was developed by an American and a Frenchman (not an Englishman).

However, we'd like to thank you for the Oxford English Dictionary. It's an interesting collection, considering that over 10,000 of the words in the original edition were submitted by a crazy American civil-war veteran called Dr. William Charles Minor.

2. Learn to distinguish the American and Canadian accents, and then we'll talk about the English and Australian accent issue.

3. Review your basic arithmetic. (Hint 100 - 98.85 = 1.15 and 100 - 97.85 = 2.15)

4. If you want English actors as good guys, then make your own movies. Don't rely on us for your modern popular culture. We liked "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels", "Trainspotting", and "The Full Monty". We've also heard good things about this "Billy Elliot". But one good movie a year doesn't exactly make a cultural powerhouse. However, you're doing pretty well with music, so keep up the good work on that front.

5. It's inefficient to have a national anthem that changes its title whenever your monarch dies. Let's not forget that your national anthem has an extremely boring tune. We suggest switching to that Rule Brittania ditty, it's toetapping. Or maybe Elton John could adapt "Candle In The Wind" again for you guys.

6. Improve at your national sport. Football? Soccer? This just in: United States gets fourth place in men's soccer at the 2000 Summer Olympics. United Kingdom? Not even close. By the way, impressive showing at Euro 2000. You almost managed to get through the tournament without having your fans start an international incident.

7. Learn how to cook. England has some top notch candy. Salt 'n' Vinegar chips are quite yummy. However, there's a reason why the best food in your country is Indian or Chinese. Your contributions to the culinary arts are soggy beans, warm beer, and spotted dick. Perhaps when you finally realize the French aren't the spawn of satan they'll teach you how to cook.

8. You're doing a terrible job at understanding cars. The obvious error is that you drive on the wrong side of the road. A second problem is pricing, it's cheaper to buy a car in Belgium and ship it to England than to buy a car in England. On the other hand, we like Jaguars and Aston Martins. That's why we bought the companies.

9. We'll tell you who killed JFK when you apologize for "Teletubbies".

Thank you for your time. Yu can now return to watching bad Australian soap operas.

P.S. — Regarding WW2: You're Welcome.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/2005 03:33 by Vador.
Z
13 November 2005 20:12
ha ha ha crazy world !
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep …
a
21 December 2005 01:12
..



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2005 11:12 by aziz_dk.
m
21 December 2005 13:05
bonjour frères et soeurs ,il y'as un nouveau phynomaine ,une grosse arnaque de siècle ,je demande à tous les sans papiers et tous les gens qui les soutient , et qui ont leurs compte d'une banque marocaine ,et qui peuvent plus acceder à leurs argents sans carte séjour c indigne ,et je veux que tous ces etre humain face quelque chose ,pour avoir leurs droit ,et tous les gens qui sont toucher par ça de boycoté ce système ( contacter association aide au consomateurs en france )je vous remercie.
 
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