The good bits

[thefuriouscynic]

Things I love about Britain: the thrillingly adorable emphasis of certain words that are common parlance here. Three particular favourites:

• Bless - Used as a substitute for "poor you" or "aren't you cute." So, let's say that you've had a shitty day and you tell someone about it, they might say, "Aw, bless" or "Aw, bless you." It just sounds so unflappably earnest and heartfelt, even though it's as automatic and thoughtless a response as "too bad."
• Brilliant - Talk about emphasis. When something is great, it's not just 'great', but 'brilliant!' And all kinds of things can be brilliant according to these freaks - the Tetley Tea commercial says that "tea is brilliant", which I think is cute. I think it's the British equivalent of 'awesome.'
• Rubbish - Used as a substitute for 'crappy', 'ugly', 'stupid', or any number of pejorative adjectives that generally denote shittiness. So if your friends sell you out, you can say, "Rubbish friends!"

I, of course, say none of these words, regardless of how much I like them. These words are Britticisms, and they are strictly forbidden in my vocabulary. Why? Because people who aren't from the UK and say stuff like "cuppa", "bloody", "luv", "bollocks" etc etc are hopeless ugly tools who think that everyone in Britain is Harry Potter and Cate Blanchett, and have clearly never been informed that the majority of this country consists of white trash.

And, apropos of not much, I wonder if there is a lower standard of quality for mattresses in this country. The reason for this wonderment is because all of the UK people who have slept on my mattress have deemed it to be extremely comfortable, but I don't know what the fuck they're talking about because sleeping on my mattress is like sleeping on a pile of dead hookers: pointy (not smelly though. That part of the analogy was false).

Yesterday it was mentioned that all of these sundry UK people could have easily just politely lied about the comfort level of my mattress, and that - for all I know - people from the UK are used to sleeping on floating clouds of ambrosia cotton candy - but honest to god these people still haven't discovered underground wiring so I find the ambrosia cotton candy bit hard to believe.

- JJJJS