INTRO … The American Ugly article calls for a longer introduction than is usual on this website. That’s because I have a bit of a problem with it. Let me explain what bothers me about this kind of writing and how I came to dislike it (although not necessarily this particular text or this very author). Be warned, this is not a fun read. It’s more of a pet peeve of mine that I’m going to expand on. One that I really need to get off my chest. If you want to get straight to the fun part, skip this introduction and head for the fill-out. Actually, what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you the meat right now and serve the potatoes later. This way, fill-out enthusiasts won’t be put off by my ramblings but I’ll get to have my say.

AMERICAN UGLY (2) PERFECTLY UNHAPPY

Hollywood films are almost always …….. Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis should ……. to fight each other to the death with the winner receiving the electric chair. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude van Damme should ……. their visas revoked.

Diet or low-fat food and drink is all a big …….. If they really work, why are so many Americans so fat? Czechs look pretty good in comparison, with the exception of a beer belly here and there. So don’t feel guilty about ……. down your daily quota of tlacenka, tvaruzky and skvarky.

I’m very bored of ……. to explain to people that life in Los Angeles, which is where I live, is ……. like Baywatch, Melrose Place or Beverly Hills 90210. I do not surf, ride a skateboard, ……. out at the gym, have divorced parents or commit hideous crimes after consuming two beers. I am also a terrible driver which is by the way one of the reasons I live here.

People who walk down the street talking loudly into their cell phones are a ……. as are individuals whose car alarm goes off at all hours of the night for no logical reason. Noise pollution is not a product ……. importing from the United States.

Mixing English words in with your Czech when you speak does not make you more interesting, but merely shows that you ……. the ability to use your own language …….. Using the phrase “jsem in” means you are completely out.

I realize some of this might seem offensive and overly critical. This is far from the ……., however. I will be ……. happy when Czechs return to wearing zmijovkas and drinking slivovice, turek and desitka with their vepro knedlo zelo.

CASE | DISGRACE | HAVE | HAVE | HAVING | HOAX | LACK | MORONIC | NOTHING | PERFECTLY | PROPERLY | WOLFING | WORK | WORTH

enjoy

alarm goes off … spustí se alarm
beer belly … pivas
commit a crime … spáchat zločin
disgrace … ostuda, hanba
here and there … semtam
hideous … ohavný
hoax … žert, podvod, smyšlenka
lack st … postrádat něco
low-fat food … nízkotučné jídlo
merely … pouze
moronic … hloupý
noise pollution … zvukové znečištění
offensive … urážlivý
quota … kvóta, dávka
revoke st … zrušit platnost
this is far from the case … tak tomu ani zdaleka není
wolf st down … zhltnout (rychle sníst)
work out … zde: posilovat, cvičit

if you’re a teacher of english and you’d like to use this fill-out in your classes, here is the print-out version as well as the keywords

INTRO (CONTINUED)

The text was written by David Livingstone, an American living in Olomouc, if I’m not mistaken. It’s the kind of text that will no doubt have students of English in stitches. After all, it has all the right ingredients. It mixes Czech words like ušanka (funny in itself) and knedlo-vepro-zelo in with nice idiomatic English and it makes fun of the American lifestyle as well as Americans themselves (in all fairness, Czech people are not spared the author’s sarcasm, either). I can easily see my gymnazium students forwarding it to their friends (man, you gotta read this, it’s totally funny and totally true!) and dropping the funniest bits into conversations they have with native speakers to show off. All in good faith, of course.

On the face of it, it looks like a great idea to put your trust in someone like ‘the American abroad’. But you have to realize that these are not some mythical beings from the Land of Sound Judgement. They’re more like your own neighbors, your bigmouth boss or your annoying smartass uncle. I dread to think of my average fellow Czechs traveling abroad and spreading their wisdom among the locals. Doesn’t the idea of your very own neighbor going abroad and spouting off about life in Czechia and being received uncritically by his or her listeners give you the creeps? It sure does to me.

Having said that, most of what Mr. Livingstone says is completely true, although I do have a little trouble believing the opening scene (sounds like it was cooked up to get the story off to a good start). Mr. Livingstone is obviously not your average neighbor. He is a smart, well-educated person who makes a lot of good points. However, he seems to be an exception rather than the rule. Too many Americans who move to Europe become the victims of their special status, no matter how well-meaning they might be to start with. Convinced of their own infallibility, they soon turn into wisdom-dispensing machines. At the same time their views get more and more radical as it becomes clear that that is exactly what their Czech listeners want to hear.

An American who criticizes America is usually considered a prophet abroad, an all-knowing judge of human nature. Everything he or she says is taken without as much as an iota of salt (unless, of course, he or she is a Republican, Mormon or supports the war on terror). Anything this person says is applauded and accepted as gospel. After all, who else but an American should know all this, right? Inevitably, most of these Americans sooner or later develop a routine consisting of stock witty reactions to news about the US and glib comments on their country’s politics. They let their guard down intelectually, knowing their conclusion are unlikely to ever be called into question.

Oh, how shocked they are if they are suddenly confronted with a person who disputes this well-rehearsed routine. What’s worse, it may not be another American but a little Czech person, one of the horde that has been so pleasantly adoring so far. This one won’t nod along every time you denounce President Bush as a moron, won’t collapse on the floor in spasms of laughter at every put-down of fat American tourists, won’t shake his head sadly at the issue of Iraq. How dare the little worm question a liberal American’s views? Doesn’t the UN charter forbid it or something?

Why do so many American expatriates act like this? I suspect they somehow assume that foreigners are aware of their countrymen’s potential for charity, kind-heartedness, willingness to stand up and fight for other people (as well as their trustiness bordering on gullibility). Traveling abroad, they feel the need to counterbalance this imaginary set of views by highlighting and magnifying America’s dark sides. What they fail to realize is that it’s actually the other way around. People outside the US (certainly those in Czechia) are heavily misinformed about the country to start with. Fed one negative picture after another by the media, they come to believe all the ugly stereotypes.

American girls are fat and ugly. All Americans are fat, stupid and loud. They know nothing about the outside world. They don’t care, either. All they really want is oil. They pick countries more or less at random to start wars in so that they can test their new weapons. Big corporations are behind all this. Don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly ok to be suspicious of what the US administration does or says. But people who routinely give benefit of the doubt to two-bit tyrants and UN busybodies are suddenly unwilling to give an inch to a country that has twice pulled chestnuts out of the fire for them and will do so for a third time if necessary. Which is exactly what this continent has been working towards, if you ask me.

So what in fact these expats end up doing by going with the flow and reinforcing these stereotypes is pouring oil into fire. The US, like any other country, has many strengths as well as weaknesses, good as well as less good points. Unlike other countries though, information about the US tends to get heavily filtered on the way to the average Joe (or the average Pepa in our case). The positive bits have a tendency to drop out or rather be left out while the negative ones are often blown out of all proportion. When was the last time you heard or saw the media paint a truly positive picture of life in the States? You may think you have but you’d be wrong.

Take other countries. France, for instance. Now, France gets its share of bad press but there’s also plenty of starry-eyed accounts by French-loving people in the media. I read all the time about French people’s joie de vivre, their love of wine and food, their unwillingness to devote more time than is absolutely necessary to working (that’s supposed to be a good thing). If someone tried to push into the same media a story about the US that has nothing bad to say about the country, they’d be laughed out of the door. And what about third-world countries? Can you really imagine a talking head making fun of–say–Ecuadorean villagers (or French farmers, for that matter), calling them uneducated bigoted hicks, the way people living in America’s Bible Belt are routinely portrayed?

Ultimately, most of what really gets through to the average Pepa (that is, what makes the front pages of newspapers and magazines and the evening TV news) is mainly negative and often accompanied by a sarcastic commentary. You may say that nowadays the average Pepa will have little trouble checking the Internet for more information as well as counterpoints. But for some reason, I don’t have a lot of faith in the average Pepa’s willingness to analyze all this information, or in his eagerness to look for counterpoints on the Internet, not to mention his ability to weigh up the two sides of each argument and come up with an unbiased conclusion. I’ve seen and talked to too many Pepas to hang on to any illusions.

No, putting a typical American expat and the average Pepa together is not a good idea. It gives you a situation where one of the pair is tempted to say exactly what the other one wants to hear. That’s a recipe for disaster. Synchronized nodding usually is. And it happens all over the world, with average Joses, average Vladimirs, average Kikos. It bums me out to see even intelligent Americans giving in to this temptation and failing to foresee the results of their actions, which do nothing but further fan the flames of anti-Americanism. As if those needed any more fanning.

There, it’s off my chest. Well, not half of it, actually, but enough to make this into an official post.

INTRO … The American Ugly article calls for a longer introduction than is usual on this website. That’s because I have a bit of a problem with it. Let me explain what bothers me about this kind of writing and how I came to dislike it (although not necessarily this particular text or this very author). Be warned, this is not a fun read. It’s more of a pet peeve of mine that I’m going to expand on. One that I really need to get off my chest. If you want to get straight to the fun part, skip this introduction and head for the fill-out. Actually, what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you the meat right now and serve the potatoes later. This way, fill-out enthusiasts won’t be put off by my ramblings but I’ll get to have my say.

AMERICAN UGLY (1) WHAT’S COOL, WHAT’S NOT

Last week I met my neighbor and some friends of his in the supermarket. On my arrival home, about 200 meters ……., I noticed them just getting out of his car with their …….. When I asked him why he drove such a short distance when he could have ……., he replied, “It’s the American lifestyle.”

As an American I am continually ……. at how the worst aspects of American culture are adapted by Czechs. So, let me set the record ……..

McDonald’s is not a ……. place. No self-respecting intellectual would be caught dead inside it. The only forgivable reason for ……. there is the excuse that your children forced you or that you needed to use the toilet. In America, McDonald’s is considered vulgar and …….. It is the last place an elegant couple would go for dinner or coffee.

Baseball hats are for playing baseball, not for wearing 24 hours a day, indoors and out. They are shaped the ……. they are in order to assist players in catching the ball when the sun is in their eyes. They are also useful when it is raining. If I were President of this country, all Czech males caught ……. baseball hats, who do not know how to play baseball, would be penalized and ……. to wear zmijovkas or ušankas instead.

Coca Cola is not it. Anyone who orders Coca Cola in a restaurant in a country where a half liter of some of the best beer in the world costs less must be mad. The same ……. for Pepsi Cola. Drinking Kofola is acceptable as ……. as it costs less than a beer. Instant coffee is ……. barbaric. Beer in a can is only acceptable when it is ……. cheaper than beer in a proper bottle as is the case in the USA and UK. Paying almost twice the price for a can in this country is beyond absurd.

BEING | CONSIDERABLY | COOL | DISTANCE | DOWNRIGHT | GOES | GROCERIES | HORRIFIED | LONG | MADE | STRAIGHT | TACKY | WALKED | WAY | WEARING

considerably … značně
cool … supr
downright … naprosto, zcela
groceries … potraviny
horrified … zděšený
I wouldn’t be caught dead there … sem bych nešel ani náhodou
is that the case? … je tomu tak
it’s beyond absurd … je to víc než absurdní
male … osoba mužského pohlaví
penalize … uložit trest, pokutovat
self-respecting … se zdravým sebevědomím
set the record straight … říct jak se věci skutečně mají
tacky … kýčovitý, laciný, podřadný

if you’re a teacher of english and you’d like to use this fill-out in your classes, here is the print-out version as well as the keywords

enjoy

INTRO (CONTINUED)

The text was written by David Livingstone, an American living in Olomouc, if I’m not mistaken. It’s the kind of text that will no doubt have students of English in stitches. After all, it has all the right ingredients. It mixes Czech words like ušanka (funny in itself) and knedlo-vepro-zelo in with nice idiomatic English and it makes fun of the American lifestyle as well as Americans themselves (in all fairness, Czech people are not spared the author’s sarcasm, either). I can easily see my gymnazium students forwarding it to their friends (man, you gotta read this, it’s totally funny and totally true!) and dropping the funniest bits into conversations they have with native speakers to show off. All in good faith, of course.

On the face of it, it looks like a great idea to put your trust in someone like ‘the American abroad’. But you have to realize that these are not some mythical beings from the Land of Sound Judgement. They’re more like your own neighbors, your bigmouth boss or your annoying smartass uncle. I dread to think of my average fellow Czechs traveling abroad and spreading their wisdom among the locals. Doesn’t the idea of your very own neighbor going abroad and spouting off about life in Czechia and being received uncritically by his or her listeners give you the creeps? It sure does to me.

Having said that, most of what Mr. Livingstone says is completely true, although I do have a little trouble believing the opening scene (sounds like it was cooked up to get the story off to a good start). Mr. Livingstone is obviously not your average neighbor. He is a smart, well-educated person who makes a lot of good points. However, he seems to be an exception rather than the rule. Too many Americans who move to Europe become the victims of their special status, no matter how well-meaning they might be to start with. Convinced of their own infallibility, they soon turn into wisdom-dispensing machines. At the same time their views get more and more radical as it becomes clear that that is exactly what their Czech listeners want to hear.

An American who criticizes America is usually considered a prophet abroad, an all-knowing judge of human nature. Everything he or she says is taken without as much as an iota of salt (unless, of course, he or she is a Republican, Mormon or supports the war on terror). Anything this person says is applauded and accepted as gospel. After all, who else but an American should know all this, right? Inevitably, most of these Americans sooner or later develop a routine consisting of stock witty reactions to news about the US and glib comments on their country’s politics. They let their guard down intelectually, knowing their conclusion are unlikely to ever be called into question.

Oh, how shocked they are if they are suddenly confronted with a person who disputes this well-rehearsed routine. What’s worse, it may not be another American but a little Czech person, one of the horde that has been so pleasantly adoring so far. This one won’t nod along every time you denounce President Bush as a moron, won’t collapse on the floor in spasms of laughter at every put-down of fat American tourists, won’t shake his head sadly at the issue of Iraq. How dare the little worm question a liberal American’s views? Doesn’t the UN charter forbid it or something?

Why do so many American expatriates act like this? I suspect they somehow assume that foreigners are aware of their countrymen’s potential for charity, kind-heartedness, willingness to stand up and fight for other people (as well as their trustiness bordering on gullibility). Traveling abroad, they feel the need to counterbalance this imaginary set of views by highlighting and magnifying America’s dark sides. What they fail to realize is that it’s actually the other way around. People outside the US (certainly those in Czechia) are heavily misinformed about the country to start with. Fed one negative picture after another by the media, they come to believe all the ugly stereotypes.

American girls are fat and ugly. All Americans are fat, stupid and loud. They know nothing about the outside world. They don’t care, either. All they really want is oil. They pick countries more or less at random to start wars in so that they can test their new weapons. Big corporations are behind all this. Don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly ok to be suspicious of what the US administration does or says. But people who routinely give benefit of the doubt to two-bit tyrants and UN busybodies are suddenly unwilling to give an inch to a country that has twice pulled chestnuts out of the fire for them and will do so for a third time if necessary. Which is exactly what this continent has been working towards, if you ask me.

So what in fact these expats end up doing by going with the flow and reinforcing these stereotypes is pouring oil into fire. The US, like any other country, has many strengths as well as weaknesses, good as well as less good points. Unlike other countries though, information about the US tends to get heavily filtered on the way to the average Joe (or the average Pepa in our case). The positive bits have a tendency to drop out or rather be left out while the negative ones are often blown out of all proportion. When was the last time you heard or saw the media paint a truly positive picture of life in the States? You may think you have but you’d be wrong.

Take other countries. France, for instance. Now, France gets its share of bad press but there’s also plenty of starry-eyed accounts by French-loving people in the media. I read all the time about French people’s joie de vivre, their love of wine and food, their unwillingness to devote more time than is absolutely necessary to working (that’s supposed to be a good thing). If someone tried to push into the same media a story about the US that has nothing bad to say about the country, they’d be laughed out of the door. And what about third-world countries? Can you really imagine a talking head making fun of–say–Ecuadorean villagers (or French farmers, for that matter), calling them uneducated bigoted hicks, the way people living in America’s Bible Belt are routinely portrayed?

Ultimately, most of what really gets through to the average Pepa (that is, what makes the front pages of newspapers and magazines and the evening TV news) is mainly negative and often accompanied by a sarcastic commentary. You may say that nowadays the average Pepa will have little trouble checking the Internet for more information as well as counterpoints. But for some reason, I don’t have a lot of faith in the average Pepa’s willingness to analyze all this information, or in his eagerness to look for counterpoints on the Internet, not to mention his ability to weigh up the two sides of each argument and come up with an unbiased conclusion. I’ve seen and talked to too many Pepas to hang on to any illusions.

No, putting a typical American expat and the average Pepa together is not a good idea. It gives you a situation where one of the pair is tempted to say exactly what the other one wants to hear. That’s a recipe for disaster. Synchronized nodding usually is. And it happens all over the world, with average Joses, average Vladimirs, average Kikos. It bums me out to see even intelligent Americans giving in to this temptation and failing to foresee the results of their actions, which do nothing but further fan the flames of anti-Americanism. As if those needed any more fanning.

There, it’s off my chest. Well, not half of it, actually, but enough to make this into an official post.