AFFotD’s Book Review of “Kill All The Belgians”

“Book review?  Only if it’s extremely negative to other cultures.  It IS?  Sure I’ll give it a shot, then”

~AFFotD Book Reading Guy, Chuck Palahniuk

Books are scary.  Look at those assholes up there, just… looking all…rustic and shit.  Since you are reading an America Fun Fact of the Day, we can safely assume that we should explain what books are to you, the semi-literate reader.

“Hey that there tuxedo bird hurt it head, hyuk”

Books are a series of pieces of paper that are usually organized in a way to inform the reader or tell a story.  They are “bound” together using glue or string or magic or whatever shit they use, and the front of a book is usually a “cover” that will have a picture telling you what the book is called, and giving you an idea what it is about.  About half the time the cover has something to do with Fabio.  Popular books include, The Bible, Harry Potter, and The Day My Butt Went Psycho.  Books should be viewed as dangerous, however, as they often will force Americans to read, and greatly increase your risk of paper cuts, which always suck, no matter how much Neosporin you put on them.

IT DOES NOTHING!

That is why we at the AFFotD offices are hesitant to begin our next segment.  While we were perusing the google translate for various Belgium website (as most people do in their spare time when their firewall blocks out porn) when we found a garbled article decrying a book written by an American that paints the Belgians (Belgiums?  Belges?  Gums?) in a particular negative right.  For whatever reason, Belgians had a problem with this book, and were offended by it.  That got our attention.  If an American is pissing off a foreign nation, we’re going to approve of it.  When we found out that it was a children’s book with pictures, we got even more excited, because that meant that at least 60% of our staff would be able to make some sense out of it at least.  And finally, we saw the title…

Yes, that’s right.  Let’s Kill All The Belgians: A Child’s Guide to Genocide.  We had a lengthy argument in the office about if that was the best book title ever, or the best book title ever, eventually settling on a fistfight.  So we figured, coming in at a whopping seven pages, we out to give Danny Wind’s masterpiece a proper review.  So now, here is the first ever AFFotD Book Review (of America!)

The key to good writing is to grab your attention from the very beginning.  According to the internet and Cliff’s Notes, we’ve come to learn that many of the greatest works of American literature start with memorable sentences.  “Call me Ishmael,” Moby Dick begins.  “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since,” starts The Great Gatsby.  The Catcher in the Rye probably starts off with some angsty whining.  The truly great books grab your attention and direct you towards their goal with their first sentence, and Let’s Kill All the Belgians is no exception.

There is genius in simplicity.  Here, we have a Belgium, who appears much like an Alien, which reinforces the stereotype of “Belgians are aliens.”  It also informs us of the very real danger Belgians pose.  Clearly, Danny Wind has done his homework, as he has unearthed the little known fact that Belgians are in fact descendants of the first troves of Zombies to wander the European hilltops.  Belgians love nothing more than American brains.

So right from the start, this book has grabbed your attention.  Skeptical readers might have seen the title of this book and thought, “Sure, we all hate Belgians, apart from their waffles and breweries, they pretty much only exist to make us uncomfortable.  But why should I want to genocide all over them?”  With this first sentence, the stakes have been set.  It’s you or them.  If you like your brain intact (except for the alcohol-related gaps and holes), it’s your duty to go over to Belgium and bash in their eyes with a cue ball.

“Woah there, this shirt is expensive, I don’t want to get Belgian blood all over it,” you might say.  “The stakes are high, but they aren’t high enough!”  Well to that, we will just move on to the next page of this American masterpiece.

You see that?  That Belgian is going to straight up eat your puppy.  You like puppies, right?  (“Of course I do, they’re adorable and like to play Frisbee, plus they shit on the lawns of people I don’t like”)  Yeah, well according to Danny Wind’s tireless research, they will eat your puppy.  On a baguette!  Sure, purebred American puppies will fight back…

But they are too tiny and cute to put up much resistance.  That’s why, as the book tells us, we have to just straight up murderfy those goddamn Gins (We’re trying to come up with ethnic slurs for Belgians, so far Gins is the best we got.  We’re open to suggestions).

America finds a real connection to the fear of invasion, and the lengths we’d take to fight our oppressors.  That’s why Wind continues to bring the point home with the following eloquent page.

Yes, that’s right, this is exactly like a Gins version of Red Dawn.  The dead parents, the children left to fend for themselves.  Not the waffles thing though.  Waffles are still pretty good.  They’re unhealthy, and you can douse them in sugar.  The author is starting to lose the reader here.  They had us at a solid level of bloodlust after the mommy and daddy murder part.  We all love our mothers and fathers, and the second to last thing we’d want to have happen to them would be their demise during a Belgian invasion (number one on that list- same thing, only with French people).  But when the waffles are brought up, the author gets a bit defensive.  If he wants to get our undying (…pun?) support, he’ll need to up the ante, at least on the culinary front.

Oh HELL no!  Vegitables?  Oh God, that shit is from Belgium isn’t it!?  Alright Wind, you got our support, we’re angry, we’re drunk (we’re always drunk), we’re ready to punch some faces in like a low budget Japanese gore pic, we want to see some dead Belgians.  And, of course, knowing what the audience wants, Wind gives his book a happy ending (heh).

Not since that one book we read (…might have been a comic book) was there an ending that gave us this much closure and satisfaction.  And with that, we’ve finished the longest book that most of us have ever read. All in all, we’d give it a solid 9/10 rating.  It got a little wordy towards the last few pages, but overall, it was succinct, and helped raise a healthy American level of Xenophobia.

So, Danny Wind, might we humbly suggest a sequel?  The French deserve it, after all.