“Kids get hits, right?”
~Nielson, fools
So while fewer people meander the web on a Saturday, we at AFFotD try to find an image that even the laziest American can appreciate on a Saturday. Unfortunately, we haven’t found that. Instead, here are some kids.
Fuck. Yes.
Have a good weekend, everybody
Posted in Saturday Image of the Week
“This Fidel Castro character won’t last. That beard is far too absurd.”
~U.S. Politics in the 1950’s
It’s remarkable to think about how things used to put us on edge in the past when they seem pretty innocuous right now. Similar to looking back at fads you partook in as a child (pogs, anyone?) when you look at what the nation feared years ago, and compare it to how we view them now, it all seems pretty silly. The most relevant example we as a staff can think of would have to do with the fervor surrounding Fidel Castro and Cuba.
Yes, we get it, having a communist power so close to America during the Cold War’s perpetual game of nuclear chicken was probably very terrifying at the time. But we’re talking about a man who America unsuccessfully tried to poison the beard of who now is considered such an afterthought that most of you reading this aren’t sure if he’s alive (he is) or if he’s still in power (he is not).
Of course, our stacks of archives from the 1950s remembers everything, and we have no shame about pointing out how incorrect our views were in the 1950’s. So that is why we present you today with…
The Informative American: CUBA! COMMUNISTS! CAPITALIZED LETTERS! (Originally Published June, 1959)
Posted in The Informative American
Tagged America, Cuba, Fidel Castro, The Informative American
“Fuck no, I’m not foreign, I’m American, you assholes.”
~Anthony Bourdain
We at AFfotD know of a few “celebrity chefs” out there. Guy Fieri likes to put Jack Daniels on everything, so he’s alright by our book. Wolfgang Puck speaks with a silly accent, so we hate him. The same should go for Gordon “fucking” Ramsay, except for the fact that Kitchen Nightmares is brilliant and if we ever said otherwise we suspect that the crazy soccer-playing Scottish bastard would hunt us down and harvest our livers for pate. And we’re conflicted on Rachael Ray but that’s just because our male staffers have spent the last three years trying to figure out if they find her attractive or not.
One person we never really paid much attention to was Anthony Bourdain. He has a foreign sounding name, and while he has a popular Food Network TV show, we mainly had heard of him through his best-selling books. And we at AFFotD never read books unless it tells us to kill Europeans, so even if Wikipedia says that your writing is “peppered with F-words,” sorry Tony, we’re still not going to read it. But we apparently were foolish in leaving this guy out, because even though we’ll never remember how to spell his name, this Bourbon Bourdain guy.
Because we found this.
That link is a SFW summary of a Playboy interview that Bourdain recently did. For those of you raising your eyebrows saying, “Oh, sure, your staff was totally just reading Playboy for the articles, italicized sarcasm” we just want to say for the record- our staff members that read Playboy do so solely for the pictures of naked women, this was just an instance where we saw the guy talking smack about Vegans and were suddenly enraptured. Then we did some digging and found that he’s a hard drinking, chain smoking, former heroin user (we’re not endorsing Heroin by any means, and in no way are we implying that doing Heroin makes you more American…but that being said…Lou Reed, you know?). To make a long story short, he seemed pretty damn American.
While we won’t go as far as to say he’s American enough for a Fun Fact of his entire life (at least not yet) we’ll at least throw him a bone by giving him one for his awesome views.
Anthony Bourdain’s America is Pretty Much AFFotD’s America
Okay, except for the excessively ripped jeans…
“Uh, guys? We’ve got perfectly good booze right here…”
~Seriously, Bath Salts? The fuck?
In America, we agree with that Ferris Bueller quotation. “Life goes by pretty fast, if you don’t stop and alter your state of consciousness once and a while, you could miss it.” That’s why we have liquor, a magical liquid that warms your belly and makes it seven times more likely that your evening will end with you dancing on a bar in some state of undress. But sometimes, people of a certain white trash persuasion either don’t want to spend the money on booze, aren’t old enough to buy booze, or have such high tolerances that they need to inject themselves with the liquid inside of Magic 8 Balls just to feel something.
On the streets, they call it “Shootin’ Dome.”
Really, while you can easily find perfectly good liquor or questionably prescribed pain medications for you take enough of to forget your inevitable mortality, a lot of people of certain white trash persuasion are eagerly looking for items you can legally purchase that randomly will get you high or in an otherwise altered state. Much like the first man to eat a tomato when the world thought it was poisonous, adventurous white trash souls look around at random items they can purchase in a gas station or a Bed, Bath and Beyond and think to themselves, “Huh, I wonder what would happen if I smoked this.” See a string of carpet abandoned in a dumpster? Smoke it, maybe the glue will get high. See a vat of tar sitting by some road workers? Huff that shit, maybe you’ll see Jesus. Spot one of those house plants with the big leafs that look like elephant ears? Holy shit, do not eat that, you will die.
It is possible to do stupid things that can still be considered American. That’s why we are here to present you with…
The Strangest Ways Americans Get High (Legally)
DISCLAIMER: Some of the products listed below can have harmful, possibly fatal side effects. They are dangerous, damaging, and make you look cool. You know who else was cool? Elvis. And you know what happened to him? He DIED. He slept with hundreds of beautiful women and then he died. To be honest, we’re not the best at writing disclaimers.
Posted in America's Greatest Fun Facts
Tagged America, Bath Salts, Drugs, Freon, Legal Highs, Nutmeg, Spice
“Weighing in at over 300 pounds, this 3 foot tall hunk of meat….”
~A Porn actress’s nightmare
It should come as no surprise to you that we at the America Fun Fact of the Day have a pretty well-established love of Hamburgers. We also love needless excess. Show us the person who would say that we’re “wasting our time” making and selling the world’s largest gummy bear and we’ll show you a sad individual whose dream of making and selling the world’s largest gummy bear was likely dashed by diabetes.
America loves unhealthy things, and we love lots of unhealthy things far more. When someone tells us something has 540,000 calories, our response is generally, “I’m sorry, you’ll have to repeat yourself, I just climaxed.”
But, to quote the guy from Queens who thought we just insulted him in that last sentence, “I got your 540,000 calories riiiiight here.” And he does. Or at least we do. And by “we” we mean to say “Detroit”. In the form of…
Holy Mother of Cow, It’s the World’s Largest Hamburger!
Pictured, from left to right: Ingredient, Ingredient, Hamburger, Psychopath chef
“And I shall banish this evil from the land.”
~He who shall save us from our darkest hour
Drinking alcohol is not only a delicious and helpful way to forget about your troubles, it also happens to be crucially important to all of America. Without alcohol, churches wouldn’t be able to drink Jesus, baseball stadiums would be empty, and our birth rates would drop considerably. It is responsible for the popularity of bowling, golf, and attractive female bartenders. Alcohol is, in a word, essential. It is our nation’s lifeblood.
Which is why this post will be distressing to many of you.
For as great as alcohol is as a way to cure you of your boredom, inhibitions, or not-having-cirrhosis tendencies, there are people out there that spurn alcohol. While that itself is a shock to our sensibilities, they compound they issue by…by…
…By making non-alcoholic versions of booze.
“NON-alcoholic beer? I’ll KILL YOU
That is why we are here to warn you, the vigilant American reader, about these threats to our society. And if you happen to see any of the following products for sale in a grocery store, you are within your legal rights to burn the place to the ground. It’s in the constitution, look it up. And now, with much trepidation, we present to you…
The Guide to Non-Alcoholic Beer, Wine, and Liquor
Posted in Booze Facts
Tagged America, Beer, NA Beer, NA Vodka, NA wine, Non-alcoholic, vodka, Whiskey
“December. On the plus side- Christmas. On the down side- winter.”
~Farmer’s Almanac
December has come, meaning that winter is fast approaching. Unless you live south of the equator, but truth be told we’re not 100% convinced that anyone actually lives down there. So as we brace for the winter, we take comfort in spending the cold months with our friends, loved ones, and whiskey was the second thing we just said.
And of course you will have fun facts to get you through these harsh winter months. Well not today though. Today we’re half-assing it again so we can present…
Today’s Date in American History (America Version)
Posted in Today in American History
Tagged America, Burger King, Chinese, Log Angeles Times, Today in American History
“AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
~You
Happy Saturday everyone. Prepare to be freaked the fuck out by an insect large enough to eat a whole carrot.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Have a good weekend, everybody.
Posted in Saturday Image of the Week
“I decided to sire a child every time I killed an elephant. I’m sure my wife was glad that there were only six elephants in American zoos at the time.”
~Teddy Roosevelt
As you’ve seen in our three previous articles about the children of Teddy Roosevelt, the man did this country a service by creating a miniature army of super Americans. Roosevelt children defied gender roles, stormed Normandy into their 50s, and navigated mysterious Amazonian rivers like it was nothing. So as we continue our ongoing Teddy’s Tots series we look into the Roosevelt Daughter who shied away from the limelight…and in doing so still ended up being the first Roosevelt to show up for World War I.
Because you do not fuck with the Roosevelts.
Ethel Roosevelt Derby: Nurse, Philanthropist, and Preserver of the Roosevelt Legacy
Posted in Teddy's Tots
Tagged America, Ethel Roosevelt, Red Cross, Teddy Roosevelt, Teddy's Tots, World War I
“Come on man, just put this hat in your shirt and walk out. Don’t you want to be cool like us?”
~The Cool Kids
People steal shit. If that surprises you, we’re sorry. Here are a few more doozies for you: People enjoy sex, fast food is unhealthy, and emails from strangers with a poor grasp on English asking for money tend not to have honest intentions. Welcome to the real world, junior, we play for keeps.
Yes, there many categories of theft, but the most commonly occurring one would have to be shoplifting. And in this economy, it should come as no surprise that there was a 6% increase in reported shopliftings between 2010 and 2011. Shoplifting is so rampant in this country that there is even an organization called the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention, or NASP, whose sole purpose is to deter you from shoplifting while maintaining a website that doesn’t understand how color schemes work.
So when Adweek posted an article about the top 10 most shoplifted items, we were interested. Not because it is American to shoplift (it’s not) but because it’s Americans doing the shoplifting, and we secretly hoped that they were at least picking out things that fell into our definition of “Hell yes, that’s American.”
And for the most part they did. That’s why, we here at AFFotD are here to present…
AFFotD Discusses and Interprets the 10 Most Shoplifted Items of 2011
That’s a really harsh punishment. Letting everyone know you shop at Walmart. Yeesh.
America Fun Fact of the Day 