Dear America

I love you, I really do. Most of the coolest stuff comes from you, you have that endearing 'can do' attitude, and you really do try to always do the right thing even if it doesn't work out that way for the rest of the world.

And you, you've had your tits done and your teeth done, your hair has seen more chemicals than a BP oil spill and you've had so much laser eye surgery I'm afraid that you could melt me like Superman. And you've done that all because you think that's what it will take for me to love you back.

You don't need to do that, America, that's nothing but self-harm in another form. Just be the homely, straight talking country girl who could melt the hearts of us stodgy European cynics with our 'could do' attitude and history of making our problems everyone else's.

I want to help you break this cycle of self-harm that you're locked into, and I think we should start with maybe getting your toys under control. Now don't be getting upset thinking that I want to take your toys away, I don't want to do that. I like guns, I have two myself.

All I'd like to suggest is maybe a single page questionnaire before someone can get licensed; it only needs to have a couple of questions like 'Do you have a manifesto?', or 'do the words "kill the bitch" have a warm place in your heart?'.

I know that's easy for me to say, I live in that peaceful little backwater called Northern Ireland. We only had about 30 years and change of terrorism/conflict that more or less ended a decade ago. With that lack of commitment on our part what could I possibly know about the need to own an assault rifle in case Russia decides to invade through somewhere other than the White House?

There are a wealth of statistics freely available online proving that violent crime outside of actual war zones has been decreasing globally over the last 20 years despite the best efforts of the gun lobby. I'd post the facts myself but unfortunately I think that I had those files stored on the same server as Hilary's emails.

There, I picked on both sides, now we can maybe sit down and talk about how controlling guns just means a slight inconvenience for the majority in order to keep firearms out of the hands of the lunatic fringe? I'll even let you pick the coffee shop, so long as it isn't near a book store in Dallas.

Don't think that I'm some cheeky upstart lecturing you, it's not exactly like we have our shit together in Northern Ireland. We've got the largest party in the country who are so anti-gay that they wouldn't watch Star Trek because a fencing foil isn't the only sword that Sulu has had in his hand. And the second largest party are brought to us by the manufacturers of mercury tilt switches.

I hope that this little note hasn't damaged our friendship, America, I just don't like to see the one that I love hurt. But if things are going to go on the way that they are could you let the rest of us know if there is a 'safe word', just so that we know you are working on the global equivalent of a Red Room?

Kyle.
- - - - - - - - -
That was a bit of a more serious post, but then I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do with this blog yet, though I'm expecting my first bit of hate-mail shortly. I like trying to make people laugh though, or smirk at the very least so I promise the next post will have a few dick jokes. Not about my own though, that would just make people sad.