A MESSAGE FROM JOHN CLEESE TO THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

[j.m@talk]

In light of your failure to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new prime minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.

A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix -ize will be replaced by the suffix -ise.

Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (Look up 'vocabulary').

3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as 'like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.

There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize. You will relearn your original national anthem: God Save The Queen.

4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent.

Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.

6. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

7. All American cars are hereby banned. They are **** and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

8. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

9. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline)-roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call 'French Fries' are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

11. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting Nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of British Commonwealth - see what it did for them.

12. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie McDowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

13. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full Kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies). Don't try Rugby - the South Africans and Kiwis will thrash you, like they regularly thrash us.

14. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

15. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

16. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

17. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups, never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; strawberries in season.

God save the Queen. Only He can.

[mireland]

hey...you can HAVE it!

[Shoreguy]

(cookies)

[Steve R Jones]

hmmmm. Didn't we kick some serious English backside to WIN our independence

[JPnyc]

18. All monies earned by Mr. Cleese as a result of the sale/display of any entertainment endeavors in the former US market will be converted to pound-sterling(at the current exchange rate of two to one) and will be taxed according to UK Income tax law.

That ought to shut his cake hole.

[j.m@talk]

hmmmm. Didn't we kick some serious English backside to WON our independence

"WIN" mate win .........

[mobo57]

Oh Lord, here we go again. We made you-we saved you-without us-with us-you need us-we don't need you-we could have-we did-we are-you are-they are-you are this-we are that.............. and another thing..................

[j.m@talk]

New thing out ..... Called a bit of a chortle ....... "Concept" Humour

[BadDriver]

Shaddup you young whipper snapper.

[mireland]

I like pie.

[j.m@talk]

Shaddup you young whipper snapper.

Daft old coot

[leprechaun_40]

Just Bite ME

[mobo57]

Just cut and paste from here:
http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthre...ghlight=cleese

[Jarhed7276]

REBUTTAL:

A message to John Cleese from the citizens of the United States of America:


In light of your threat to revoke our independence, we are assuredly certain that you are indeed a comedian, since no serious-minded Brit would ever forget so easily how America “whooped your ****” in every battle ever fought on Yankee soil.

Of course, we would welcome your Queen to our shores any time, as her incredible fashion sense would lend itself nicely to Soho’s garment disctrict, San Francisco’s cross-dressing community, the U.S. wax museums, or any Easter parade.

We would also welcome Tony Blair to govern alongside of our esteemed President Bush. We have not been amused by a duo that hilarious since Abbott & Costello’s “Who’s On First?” routine. You needn’t threaten disbandment of Congress, however, as most of them sleep through sessions anyway (think Parliament, without the powdered wigs).

Thank you for the tips re: transition to a British Crown Dependency. While we are most confident we will never need them, we would like to reciprocate with a few tips of our own to facilitate your visit or immigration to the country of purple mountains and amber waves of grain (after all, most of your former citizens now make up America’s most beloved rock and roll bands anyway):

1.) Please leave your Oxford English Dictionary at home. We use Webster’s, as Webbie was a Harvard man, and we do so enjoy pandering to our Ivy League pseudo-intellectuals (think Tony Blair, prior to the last election). Webbie spells “aluminum” as it sounds. But since you are fond of adding useless “U”’s to words as decoration, please feel free to spell it “aluminoum” while you are here. We don’t mind. After all, we are the Melting Pot of the world, and while your superiority complex would indeed stand out among our average citizenry, your inability to conform to our speech patterns or anything else Americana would likely land you a job at any American phone company in its customer service department, or as cabbies in New York City.

2.) “Like” and “you know” are keywords used by American teens to gauge parental aggravation. We are not happy about the overuse of these words by our youth, but compared to the British “poppycock” and “I say, old bean”, we consider ourselves lucky. By the way, are British lads wearing long pants yet? Feel free to legally import our K-Mart “Blue Light Special” denim jeans to sell in the UK for $200 per pair. We like to share our wealth, and would rather you went about the importation of goods to the UK in a more dignified and legal way, rather than smuggling them, so that we can reap the tax benefits. It’s only fair.

3.) Feel free to attempt the conversion of the Microsoft spell-checker. We understand Bill Gates spends more time and money on your shores than ours anyway, thus making it difficult to contact him from here, unless of course you get in touch with one of your immigrant comrades at the phone company.

4.) We find it interesting that you refer to “God Save The Queen” as your “national anthem”. In fact, it is sung in the United Kingdom only as a matter of tradition. It has never been proclaimed the national anthem by any Act of Parliament or Royal Proclamation. But regardless of this oversight on your part, we thank you for the chuckle in stanza #2 of your country’s traditional song:

“O Lord, our God, arise,
Scatter thine enemies,
And make them fall:
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On thee our hopes we fix:
God save us all.”

Perhaps you would have better luck peddling this song to Iraq, as we are certain they dislike our "knavish tricks". However, you may be forced to substitute “God” for another diety, should you decide to take us up on our suggestion. May we suggest “Goud,” to satisfy your love for the letter “U”?

5.) Should you decide to cancel July 4th, we feel obliged to warn you: you and your comrades would most assuredly be found at every Redneck barbecue on the rotisserie with apples in your mouths. Trust us - you don’t mess with a hillbilly’s right to celebrate with beer and fireworks.

6.) Although it is written in stone in the Second Amendment to our Constitution, thus making it a citizen’s right, it is a fallisy to state that every American carries a weapon. We hide them in our toddlers’ diapers instead. Knowing you would recognize (recognise?) the dry humour in this, allow us to be frank: a Brit’s askewed view of America can be traced to the BBC. (After all, what else are you going to watch? Coronation Street?) BBC is fed news from America via either Los Angeles or New York City, which cities are the Top 2 in America known for violent crime. Saying all Americans own and/or use guns regularly, based on the news from the BBC, is akin to Americans saying all Brits have bad teeth, love gossip, and liquidate their paychecks in pubs, based on the news we receive from your tabloids and homely BBC broadcasters. As well, our lawyers are much like your barristers, only they get to keep a great deal more of their earnings since we have no Queen to keep in the lap of luxury. And strangely enough, our most famous therapists drive British automobiles, so you should be thanking them for your jobs – the ones you have to go to Germany to get.

7.) We thank you for your offer to convert our English system of measurement to metric. It is far more accurate, and when measuring petrol, we want to get our nine-tenth’s worth. Paying $6/US gallon will probably happen when our troops are withdrawn from the Middle East. Sadly, this would cause your gasoline costs to double, unless you can somehow figure out how to convert the oil-covered Thames River into petrol. Speaking of oil rich England (British humour here), we feel that roundabouts, though fun for the young, would seriously impair our elderly population. It is hard enough for us to get them to turn off their right-turn blinkers on the highway, much less keep them from serious vertigo should they be forced to drive around in circles all day.

8.) Real chips are neither US fries nor British crisps. They are poker chips, used at all of our native-run casinos. Since the Pocahontas incident probably absolved you from native animosity on our shores, I’m sure you would be welcome to spend your hard earned pounds at their tables. Just a hint: Blackjack is also called 21, but since you are accustomed to the metric system - and we would want to accommodate your customs - Blackjack, for you, would also be called 3, although the same rules as 21 would apply. We wouldn’t want you to lose your return British Airways ticket money at our casinos, so you can thank us later.

9.) While we Americans often walk on the wild side and sample British beer you can eat with a spoon fresh from the microwave, we are happier using our amber waves of grain in dark bread instead of sludgy beer. If it’s bug urine taste you seek, may we suggest you try the beer from the country north of us, with creative names like “Canadian”.

10.) We agree with you that Hollywood’s lack of English actors is abominable, especially in comedies, considering the grasp of humour for which you Brits are well known the world over. However, we truly enjoyed Sir John Gielgud’s performance in “Arthur”. But could you please do us a favour and take Elton John home? Ever since he gave up his vast array of sunglasses and fashionable conservative British performance attire, we have no use for him here.

11.) We cannot, in good conscience, allow you to interfere with American football. Its athletic scholarship programs are the only ways Goober and Gomer from the Ozarks can graduate from prestigious universities and become the lawyers we so desperately need. Further, we cannot allow you to dispense with American baseball, either. Bookies are people, too - just ask Pete Rose – and our unemployment rate is high enough.

12.) “You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.” Hmmm…you guys really need another TV show besides "Have You Been Serv'd?" and reruns of "Benny Hill". Though the CIA and FBI pale in comparison to the Keystone Kops you call "bobbies", we will pacify your curiosity, British tabloid style: Ari Onassis probably put the hit on JFK. He and Jackie were hotter than Jack and Marilyn. Ari had more money than “Goud”, so he could afford to escape conviction by hiring to Gomer The Lawyer.

13.) Although we believe our debts to your country we paid in full when we allowed British rock music and shaggy haircuts to invade America, we can certainly understand why your IRS agents are backlogged, what with draining your taxpayers to feed the royal family and all. See you in another 200 years.

14.) We Americans would certainly welcome a daily 4:00 tea time, as well as your customary early workday skip to the pub an hour before work is supposed to end. We’d also like a daily Mexican 2-hour siesta, and a Canadian civil holiday each and every month. At that rate, our traditional 40-hour work week would be reduced to a scant 9 hour week, leaving us more free time to make more American babies in whose diapers we can hide more guns. It’s the American way!

Welcome to America! Thank you for your interest, and have a nice day!


~Julie Donner Andersen

[werz]

You want the USA, you take it's debts to.
No thanks.