A feeling common to most Canadians is that Americans, when met
individually, can be so likable, while the country as a whole is not.  The
American I liked best in my travels about Europe was the young man I
encountered one day at the Acropolis as tourists scrambled to record that
crowning achievement high above smoggy Athens.  He was standing outside the
Parthenon, offering to operate the cameras carried by an endless series of
puffing couples in pastels and pinks.  He had grown so ashamed of the
gaucheness and vulgarity of his fellow Americans throughout Europe that he
decided the Parthenon _ the site of the photograph of a lifetime for Madge
and Henry _ was the spot for revenge.  He took all their pictures for them _
while carefully cutting off their heads or including only their feet.  He
cackled as he imagined all those tourists, safely back home in Iowa or
Louisiana, finding out when the drugstore returned their Kodak prints that a
saboteur with the same passport had betrayed them.
                          Allan Fotheringham,
                              in "Capitol Offences:  Dr. Foth meets Uncle Sam"
______________________________
     There's this pheasant standing in a field chatting to a bull.
"I would love to be able to get to the top of yonder tree" sighs
our feathered friend, "but I haven't got the energy." (bit of a
lazy layabout pheazzy) "Why don't you nibble on some of my droppings"
replies the bull sympathetically "they're packed with nutrients".
So our hero pecks at a lump of dung and finds he has enough strength to
reach the first branch of the tree. The next day, after some more eating
he can reach the second branch, and so it continues. Two weeks later we
find our plumed friend perched on the top of the tree proudly surveying
the countryside where he is spotted by the local farmer. "What a beautiful
creature" says the farmer as he dashes into the farmhouse. It is the work
of an instant for him to emerge with a shotgun and blow the f**k out of
the pheasant.
       The moral of this minor tragedy? Bullshit might get you to the top,
but it won't keep you there!