bobbiesquares reblogged
There's a stereotype that USAmericans tolerate very long car rides.
op I think you may have wildly underestimated american's car tolerance
bobbiesquares reblogged
don't think europe vs US states is a fair comparison actually. take this quiz and see how many american countries you can name.
bobbiesquares reblogged
ive never liked the phrase "manmade horrors beyond your comprehension" but i cant think of a better way to describe texas roads
biblically accurate highway
not only are these pics real, the second one in particular was taken within 10 minutes of my childhood home and is an area ive driven through >1000 times
They absolutely look like that; my fave is the I-10 410 interchange
which has the nice combo of looking like THAT but also you have the ridiculous boom in housing from the baby boom *right there* You can even see the elementary school i went to (on the left, next to the baseball diamond in the private school next door)
Georgia's got a couple of those too! We call this one "Spaghetti Junction". Sometimes I have to use it on my way home depending on if I need to run errands east of my house.
Fun fact: According to a list of traffic hotspots put out by the American Transportation Research Institute, Spaghetti Junction was number 1!
But aesthetically, at least this one looks kinda symmetrical if you squint hard enough. If you wanna see a real doozy, here's where I-20 meets I-75/85, smack dab in the heart of Atlanta.
Art
bobbiesquares reblogged
It’s funny when American authors come up with a new European nation so their main character can be a secret royal without the pain of researching a real nation. We should all start doing that with North America, just make up a new state. My protagonist lives in New Utahioshington which is the 51st state and located between Delaware and Maryland
bobbiesquares reblogged
The history of the USA according to 1861 Japan
A young, and incredibly handsome George Washington is taught the path of the warrior by none other than the Goddess of America, Herself.
George Washington is forced to defend his wife “Carol” from a dastardly British assassination attempt, led by the nefarious English officer Asura (far left).
John Adams does furious battle with a giant serpent
Benjamin Franklin fires an entire cannon with his bare hands as John Adams directs the fire.
Washington’s on the move in his carriage, whom the author points out with breathless amazement was only pulled by two - yes, *Only Two!* - horses! His trusty soldiers lead the way, with a star-less American flag proudly flying.
George Washington fights a tiger.
Franklin and Adams have had a falling out.
Adams has had enough, he gets on his horse and fires off an arrow at Franklin before speeding away. Franklin doesn’t even flinch.
John Adams has gone to visit and take care of his mother in a touching display of filial piety.
While Adams’ back is turned, the snake he fought earlier has returned and eats his mother!
Adams beseeches the Fairy of the Mountain (I am deadass serious about ALL OF THIS) to lend him supernatural help in seeking revenge against the matrivorous serpent
The Mountain Fairy hears Adams’ desperate pleas, and enlists the aid of a Giant Bald Eagle (named Freedom) to do battle with this serpent
All is now well under Heaven! America reigns supreme, free from both giant beasts and British influence!
source I got this from the @thocpodcast
bobbiesquares reblogged
this is the funniest headline i've ever seen
bobbiesquares reblogged
My dad told me a Queen Elizabeth x 9/11 combo joke but idk if it works in English
It goes something like this
Q: Why can’t Americans play chess against the British anymore?
A: Because the British are missing the queen and the Americans are missing two towers (rooks).
To whoever unfollowed me for this: I didn’t even come up with the joke myself, you should unfollow my dad instead.
bobbiesquares reblogged
Instead of an angel and a devil every American has a little Angelino that say shit like "Leave your wife. Start a salsa company. Join a cult." And a little New Yorker that says stuff like "You shoulda killed that guy and ate his body."
bobbiesquares reblogged
US state borders but they are based off rivers and mountains
canaryomenharbinger
I think we should do this but leave Colorado alone so there’s just an extremely jarring rectangle in one part of this
I like how you think.
bobbiesquares reblogged
One of the first books I read in English as a kid, maybe 1 year after I started learning English, was a booklet with a title like, How to Have a Great Time at Summer Camp. I don’t remember the exact title and I know I only picked it up because the other books in English in my school’s library looked way beyond my level, stuff like Austen and Dickens. The summer camp booklet didn’t look too interesting but it was small with simple sentences. I ended up being fascinated with it because it was the most American thing I had ever got my hands on and it felt impossibly exotic
- all the kids had cool American names like Jill and Mike. One of them at one point talked about the “chipmunks” in the woods near the camp, a mysterious word that didn’t exist in my tiny English dictionary, and for some reason I pictured them as scrawny wolves. I had read Little House on the Prairie so I knew wolves were a major concern for Americans
- camp “counsellors” were often mentioned, and my pocket English dictionary only defined that word as “psychologue”. I thought it was weird how American summer camps had dozens of psychologists roaming the premises, one for every 5 to 10 kids. That felt like a lot of psychologists
- I had no idea that the word “pet” could mean “favourite”. When the booklet said one kid might become “the camp counsellor’s pet”, my dictionary helpfully led me to believe it meant that a psychologist would pick one unfortunate kid to be his domestic animal for the summer. Slightly disturbing. I moved on
- the kids slept in “bunks” and my stupid dictionary only defined this word as “couche”. Which is not wrong, but we would probably say couchette instead, or better yet lits superposés, and couche is also our word for diaper so you can see why I continued being deeply intrigued by every new detail I learnt in this booklet. American kids are excited about camp because they get to sleep in diapers
- I had never encountered the word “baseball” before but managed to guess it was some kind of sport, but when the booklet mentioned the “baseball diamond” (in the context of a kid saying the baseball diamond was big) I of course assumed it was an actual diamond that you could win if you won a game of baseball at camp. For some reason I had a debate with a classmate over the plausibility of this. I say for some reason because I didn’t really question the diapers or the wolves or the psychologists with their human pets. A diamond though? Doubt. I just remember that we were queueing up for lunch and I was like “What do you think?” and my friend said hesitantly, “Maybe if it’s a small diamond?” and I insisted “No! The book says it’s big!”
- among the basic items the book said every kid should bring to camp were “batteries”. I didn’t bother looking up that word in my dictionary seeing as it’s the same in French. I didn’t know it was a false friend, and I was impressed to learn that most American kids own a drum set and bring it to camp as an essential item
- on the same page, in the list of things every kid should put in their suitcase for summer camp, another item was “comic books”. I wasn’t sure what those were since in French we call them BD, but basing myself on the word “comic” I assumed they were books of jokes and puns. I loved learning that in the US all kids bring humour anthologies to summer camp, presumably because they worry about running out of funny things to say. I thought American kids sounded nervous and sweet. But also really cool, because of all the drums
bobbiesquares reblogged
put a bunch of Americans from different states in the same room and they'll literally just spend the entire time arguing about weather
one time this guy from new york tried to tell me that summer in new york is worse than summer in florida and i almost killed him with a brick
bobbiesquares reblogged
Map of the US by a truck driver who has seen most of it…
This is DEFINITELY someone I call an expert.
I’m desperate to know who Gary is. So I can also avoid him.
bobbiesquares reblogged
do they think we're only allowed to eat kraft singles or
i go to the american grocery store and step into the cheese isle pondering which kraft single i will buy
Everyone wants to act like Americans don’t have cheese but no one wants to talk about the cheese caves, the caves where we put all our cheese because we make too much and our cringe government keeps bailing out our fail dairy farmers to keep the price of milk stable because The Great Depression so now we have so much cheese in this country we could literally stop producing cheese right now and still have enough cheese to give everyone in America a pound of it every day for four years. And I’m not even talking about kraft singles pictured above, I’m talking about an actual not cursed product-- real cheese. Cheddar, brie, gouda, munster, swiss, you name it we have a billion pounds of it, literally. We have so much cheese that we’re literally running out of places to put it and in an effort to get rid of it we reprocess a lot of it into kraft singles (hence it’s a cheese product and not actual cheese-- cheese is but an ingredient in kraft singles, much like how bread is itself an ingredient in German graubrot, although graubrot is a food item that is actually meant to exist on this earth and isn’t the end product a cautionary tale on how not to stabilize a vital industry when your economy is collapsing) and for a very long time we gave it away as part of certain food assistance programs. And that’s not even counting the fancy imported shit from Europe, because yes even though we still have way too much cheese we also still import it from Europe in addition to the too much cheese we already have.
#tell us where the cheese caves are#I want good sharp cheddar#get some Munster and Swiss#get some other cheeses to try why not via @malconvoker
The cheese caves are in Kansas City, Missouri I believe, though I’m not sure how guarded they may or may not be.
thought this was something you guys were making up to gaslight the europeans only to find out the massive cheese caves are in fact, real.
what the fuck
bobbiesquares reblogged
…it is still 7:34am 😂
bobbiesquares reblogged
santhomedusae-deactivated202006
americana manifestations of the 14 powers
The Vast
the american interstate highway system: driving into texas or montana or california and realizing how many more exits you have to go before you cross into another state, driving in the interstitial parts between cities with one eye on the gas gauge hoping you make it to the next gas station before you run out, the brief vertigo of glancing up through your sunroof on a clear, cloudless day on the road and seeing nothing but blue, or at night and seeing nothing but black
The Lonely
the american interstate highway system: road trips alone between the reach of local radio stations, hearing only the passing static as your stereo tries to latch on to any thread of contact, but you’re gone too fast to ever hear it clearly, stopping late night at empty gas stations on empty roads, meeting only the reflective eyes of a racoon near the dumpster and wondering if you’re the only person left on earth
The Dark
the american interstate highway system: the parts of it too distant to justify the cost of streetlights, the moment of panic when you turn off your high beams too soon and nearly miss a curve, swerving out of the way of a deer who seems to have materialized from nowhere, the blanketing blackness that seeps into your cab when there’s no other cars around at all
The Desolation
the american interstate highway system: seventeen-car pileups at poorly conceived city exits across nine lanes of traffic, the explosions of semi trucks and gas carriers, road rash stealing the skin from motorcyclists, the scream of ambulances carrying the burned, broken, crushed, impaled, shattered
The End
the american interstate highway system: the moment of panic when a truck turns too close to you, when you lose focus for a moment and almost don’t hit the brakes in time, when someone cuts you off, when you sneeze and lose the wheel for a moment, when you shift and the gears don’t catch, when you drift to the side and the road guard snaps you back to awareness
The Eye
the american interstate highway system: the surveillance state that exists when driving through large cities, the watchful eye on medians and under bridges for cops waiting with speed radars
The Hunt
the american interstate highway system: the sound of sirens behind you as you glance down at your speedometer and realize that you drifted up to the 90s without realizing, the brief moment of wondering if you could shake them off if you take this exit real quickly, the urge every time to just keep going
The Spiral
the american interstate highway system: what is this exit doing here. when did this local road turn into a highway. wasn’t that your turn? how the fuck did you end up in Atlanta again
The Stranger
the american interstate highway system: glimpses of people’s faces as you drive past, the false cheer of the people laughing on billboards, that one driver you saw years ago whose face changed every time you looked in the mirror
The Corruption
the american interstate highway system: vultures lurking over dumped garbage bags, piles of fast food waste, the smell of a killed skunk contaminating the air for miles, the damp pull of asphalt under sun hot enough to melt
The Flesh
the american interstate highway system: you pass a dead bird. you pass a dead racoon. you pass a dead dog. you pass a dead deer. you pass a dead alligator. you pass a dead
The Slaughter
the american interstate highway system: the simmering rage of being eight hours in when the traffic congests and you slow from 85mph to a crawl, the force that drives men to lean out of their truck cabs with guns
The Buried
the american interstate highway system: you are driving through a tunnel under the bay and it is raining and the water is rising from below and pressing down from above and the tunnel gets smaller and smaller and you are driving through a tunnel through the mountain and the ground is shaking and the rocks are falling to block you in and you are driving through a tunnel and honestly who decided tunnels were a good idea
The Web
the american interstate highway system: self explanatory at this point really
santhomedusae
The Extinction
the american interstate highway system: this whole bitch is run on oil combustion, land clearing, air pollution, and habitat destruction idk what you want from me
bobbiesquares reblogged
tiktokmuseum
howdy!