Tag Archives: America

The Informative American Presents: What Scares Us? A Terrifying Look at America’s Fears (Originally Published April, 1950)

Posted on October 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

“Oh God, it’s a man with an unkept beard!  Kill it!”

~Average 1950’s professional


America puts on a pretty brave face, but if you think about it there are a lot of things that scare us.  China, the national debt, the fact that China has us on the hook for a terrifying amount of the aforementioned national debt, all of these things keep the President awake at night (but not for long, because the presidential silk pajamas are so comfortable).

But that’s just what 2011 America worries about.  Sometimes we like to sit back and wonder, how would America in 1950 react to the terrifying truths of the world changing around it?  Well, that seems as good of a time as any to dig into our stacks of The Informative American and see what our AFFotD predecessor was terrified of back in the 1950’s, and sure enough, it was a tried and true mix of understandable and terrible.  So without further ado.

The Informative American Presents:  What Scares Us?  A Terrifying Look at America’s Fears (Originally Published April, 1950)

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Wherein AFFotD Responds to Critiques of American Culture While Suppressing the Urge to Vomit or Declare War on China (because, let’s face it, they’d probably win…shit)- an Academic Lecture by Professor Washington

Posted on October 12, 2011 | 1 comment

“ROAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!”

~The Ghost of General George Patton

 

The staff of the America Fun Fact of the Day is sort of like a cross between Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction and an overzealous stage mom.  On one hand, if you cast our kid in your commercial (or, say America is appropriately awesome), we’ll totally sleep with you.  On the other hand, if you spurn our advances, we’re going to kill your pet rabbit.  What we’re trying to say is, if there’s one thing we hate more than Nature, it’s people who write articles besmirching our fine nation.

Especially when it’s…the enemy!

It’s the face that killed millions, yet would not be out of place behind the counter of a gas station.

While doing our weekly google searches (affotd, America fuck yes, America is awesome, why is America so damn awesome you guys, etc) we stumbled across an article on “Asian Times” called, “What is American Culture?”  We’ve been spurned by the Chinese before, so we weren’t necessarily expecting any celebrations about our inventive uses of gravy, but we were not expecting an article flinging more shit at American Culture than the cast and crew of Two Girls One Cup.

In order to do it justice, we brought in an American academic on our staff, who also teaches our “America, fuck yes, an examination of everything great about America” classes.  He is a bit more “straight laced” than we like, but if we were in charge of writing up about this article, we’d probably say some pretty hateful shit.  Professor Washington will likely say some pretty hateful shit too, but at least he uses bigger words and reads shit like “books.”

America Fun Fact of the Day Responds to Critiques of American Culture While Suppressing the Urge to Vomit or Declare War on China (because, let’s face it, they’d probably win…shit)- a lecture by Professor Washington

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America’s Strangest (And Greatest) Bacon Flavored Products

Posted on October 11, 2011 | 5 comments

“Goddamn it, you’re right.  I AM delicious.”

~A pig


When someone goes up to you and asks, “What is the most American breakfast food imaginable” you’re never able to respond because your mouth is jammed full of delicious bacon.  To say that America is obsessed with bacon is like saying that John Hinckley, Jr. only had a “small crush” on Jodie Foster.  Whenever there’s a heart attack in America, the Bacon Council smiles wryly and adds a tally to a list somewhere.  Hell, there’s a group about bacon as a religion on facebook.  We love bacon because, unsurprisingly, America does bacon different and better than every other nation.

While bacon in itself is simply a cut of pork that’s been cured (usually in brine), many nations use “leaner” cuts of meat for their bacon, where America says “fuck it, what’s the fattiest part of a pig?  The pig belly?  Makes sense, let’s use that shit then.”  This is why English or Canadian bacon is nothing more than a salty pork chop, while American bacon is a glorious piece of art streaked with more fat than a bar of soap made in Fight Club.

“I don’t know, I’m partial to crispy myself.”

And while bacon deserves its own Fun Fact, we here at AFFotD feel impelled to talk about a phenomenon more specifically American than bacon itself.  We of course are referring to the American habit to make everything taste like bacon.  It’s the greatest thing to happen to capitalism since factories.  Every day, an executive says, “Let’s flavor this like bacon,” and when a subordinate asks, “why bacon?” he responds, “Because fuck you, you’re fired, bacon is delicious.”

It most certainly is.  With that in mind, we’re here to present you with…

America’s Strangest (And Greatest) Bacon Flavored Products

 

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Zombies in America

Posted on October 10, 2011 | 1 comment

“AGHHHHH!  OH MY GOD WHY!?  IT’S EATING ME!!!!!  AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

~Gandhi

While Paganism is responsible for most ills in America (Hippies, The popularity of the Twilight films), it did bring us one great thing.  Halloween.  All’s Hallowed Eve.  For 20-somethings, it’s the closest we can get to Caligula levels of debauchery without having to get a lethal weapons permit.  As this glorious day filled with alcohol and costumes of questionable modesty approaches, we at AFFotD are here to celebrate this glorious day.

But even great things like Halloween can have a dark side.  An awesome dark side.

We are of course talking about…ZOMBIES.

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America Fun Fact of the Day 10/9- October 9th in American History

Posted on October 9, 2011 | Leave a comment

“Huh…not a lot of shit went down on October 9th.  Huh.”

~AFFotD Editor-in-Chief, Johnny Roosevelt

Some days in history are kind of boring.  But AFFotD on Sundays is always lazy.  So even on a day like, say, hypothetically, October 9th or something, when there’s very little that happened, we’re still going to present…

Today’s Date in American History (American Version)

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America Fun Fact of the Day 10/8- Saturday Image of the Week

Posted on October 8, 2011 | Leave a comment

“Heh.  Penis.”

~AFFotD Editor-in-Chief Johnny Roosevelt

We don’t have much to add to this.  Here’s a comic.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

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The Conspiracy Theorist’s Guide to Groceries

Posted on October 7, 2011 | Leave a comment

“Hatchets were invented by Aliens to trick the Navajo into alcoholism!”

~Francis Firegrove, AFFotD Conspiracy Theorist


A few months back we introduced you to one of our more…eccentric writers in the AFFotD office.  Francis Firegrove has some…well, interesting thoughts that thankfully are easy to ignore.  Hell, it livens up our lunch break to no end just watching Firegrove rung around swatting cantaloupes out of people’s hands screaming, “NO IT’S MADE OF LISTERIA!” (…wait what?  He’s actually right about that?  Haha, holy shit).

Of course, the problem with hiring a certified nutjob is that, on occasion, you have to…well, let him speak.  Contractually.  In retrospect, we don’t really know what we were on when we decided to add Firegrove to our staff…

Ha, oh right.

Well, either way, we might as well get this over with.  If we don’t get Firegrove an article each calendar month, he technically becomes the majority owner of AFFotD.  Yeah we don’t know the legality of that either, but this is the last time we’re writing a contract on the back of a Denny’s menu, we’ll tell you that.

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AFFotD News Item of the Month: October, 2011 named “American Cheese Month”

Posted on October 6, 2011 | Leave a comment

“Hey.  Hey.  HEY!  Listen!  Hey.  We got this.  No.  No.  Trust us.  We got this.”

~Wisconsin


October is a month full of contradiction.  On one hand, Fall is infinitely better than Winter, and we are big fans of the beauty of watching the leafs change as well as the subtle racism that goes hand in hand with the wonderful weather conditions of Indian Summer.  On the other hand, Winter’s coming, and we’ve set a lot of forest fires this year so we’re sure to face their wrath in the form of motherfucking blizzards.  As much as October tries to win us over with generally mild weather conditions and Halloween, it’s also the month that has a large rise in the Zombie population while constantly warning us that Winter is coming.

Ugh, thanks a lot Jason Strange, just what we needed- our two least favorite things represented in our THIRD least favorite thing (a book)

However, America’s Councils for American Food (in America) have made a strong push to put a little additional awesome into the Month of November.  October already is National Caramel Month, National Cookie Month, National Dessert Month, National Pasta Month, National Pizza Month, AND National Pork Month.  In fact, October has more items that are celebrated in October than any other month of the year (poor August is only left with National Catfish Month).  So while you may think “Hey, October’s got enough going for it already” we would have to gentle remind you…there’s always room for cheese.

That’s right.  To continue our long-running, often forgotten AFFotD News Item of the Month Series, we’re here to announce…

October, 2011 named “American Cheese Month”  


“Now with 29% fewer ‘that’s Gouda’ puns!”

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Food Trucks: Mobile, Trendy, Fatty American Goodness

Posted on October 5, 2011 | 1 comment

“The question at hand is…how do I get this…into my facehole without having to walk?”

~Americans at work


American society is often influenced by its fringes, and the fringe can decide seemingly at random what “old school” concept they want to reinvigorate and make fashionable.  In the past years, aspects of societies have flocked to make things like vinyl, cassettes, and artisanal soda fountains popular again.  By the way, in case you couldn’t tell, we’re talking about Hipsters.

Surprisingly enough, the latest Hipster endorsed cultural subset also happens to be incredibly American, while making lunch easier for working Americans in a difficult economy.  It’s where white people can go outside to decide if they want to listen to the eager shouts for business of a Latino man or a troop of Vietnamese sandwich slingers.  It’s where your coworkers will flock to be on the right corner so they can spend nine dollars to get Mac & Cheese with truffle oil.  It’s the American ideal that allows drunk college students to get “fat sandwiches” at three in the morning.

We are of course talking about the timeless, and currently trendy, notion of Food Trucks.

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More Insane American Patents

Posted on October 3, 2011 | 2 comments

“You’d think it never gets old…and it really doesn’t.”

~US Patent Office Worker

 

http://science.discovery.com/top-ten/2009/strange-patents/images/03-strange-patents-fart-pad.jpg

As we’ve previously discussed, American patents are ridiculous expressions of the American spirit.  The patent process is so American that, if you go to the Government’s search engine for patents that came out in the past 40 years and type in “alcohol” you get 414,477 results.  “But AFFotD,” you may be saying as you shudder off a shot of rough whiskey, “alcohol is a common element in medical and chemical research, so that doesn’t really tell us that much.  Okay, fine naysayer, so try searching for “Alcohol and guns.”  1,859 hits!  Hell, even going the redundant route0by searching for “Alcohol and guns and beer” yields you 51 patents.

Yes, Americans love coming up with insane things that have no purpose, but most of them don’t have anything to do with alcohol or guns.  That being said, a surprising amount of American patents were invented by people that have a mannequin named Mother that they use to store their family of pet Pill Bugs.  These inventors magically appear behind you if you say their patent numbers out loud three times into a mirror.  That’s right, we’re here to delve into the very depths of insanity with…

More Insane American Patents

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