Only in America (Part Two)

The holiday is going well now the weather has hit the mid 70s at long last!

It sure beats being on call in cold London, here are a few funny things I have noticed whilst being here in Florida.

One local news article reads that many people cancelled restaurant reservations at a local eaterie because the patrons could not park literally outside (something of an expectation here in SW Florida) and therefore went home again. Clearly walking ten feet to the door of the restaurant is acceptable but twenty is reason to abort!

Across the road from this restaurant is "Coldstone", my sister's reason for living (see previous blogs), we go in and there is an extremely pretty blonde girl behind the counter, we begin chatting, I ask her age, she is 16. I lose interest.

My sister continues chatting.

Jail bait - "Where are you guys from?"

Sister - "London"

JB - "Do you guys come here often?"

Sister - "Yes we come back every year for the icecream." She says jokingly.

JB - "Really!!!" She says in total amazement.

In other news my sister and I have been horrified to watch interviews with America's leading actor, Tom Cruise, slating psychiatry....

This is from an interview with Matt Lauer on the Today programme.

"Psychiatry is a pseudoscience," he told host Matt Lauer, later saying: "You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do."

Cruise looked like a man possessed -- or at least in need of some diazepam -- leaning insistently forward in his chair, hammering Lauer when the host suggested that some people were actually, you know, helped, when doctors prescribed psychiatric drugs. Lauer sparred with Cruise specifically over whether it made sense for Brooke Shields to have sought therapy and taken antidepressants for postpartum depression -- a decision that Cruise had previously criticized.

Forget medical research: "There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance in a body," said Cruise, who prescribed vitamins and exercise for depression. "The thing that I'm saying about Brooke is that there's misinformation, okay? And she doesn't understand the history of psychiatry. She -- she doesn't understand, in the same way that you don't understand it, Matt."

Moving on - There I am driving along the twisting Everglades road when the ad comes on - "Do you want your license to carry a concealed firearm!?"

Thinking back to the Tom Cruise interview, I ponder it for a split second. Interesting.. but surely a joke. This is America though. No joke.

That then led me to the society of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership!

http://www.jpfo.org

Yes this country is truly nuts. Nuts but a hell of a lot of fun.