"WHY DO YOU PEOPLE DO THIS?"

My Canadian boss yelled at my crazy American ways again yesterday, for the way we write the date (the title of the entry is what he actually said. I had no idea what he was referring to at first).

America writes the date: July 16, 2008.
Canada and Europe writes the date: 16 July, 2008.

He tried to change my naughty ways, and explained that in a decade there are 120 "16th", 10 July's, and only 1 2008. So we should be writing the date in descending order of how often the numbers appear in a decade.

I'll concede that the Canadian way does make more sense, but I'm not changing my ways now. I'm a stubborn Ugly American. I do find the tiny culture differences fascinating though. How did every western country start doing something one way, except one? America writes the date "weird," England drives on the "wrong" side of the road. What happened in history to account for these differences?

Newsflash: InBev buys Anheuser-Busch for $49.91billion

I'm not sure how I feel about the sudden beer monopoly in America, especially as the new company in charge is based in Belgium. On the one hand, Prague destroyed me, and the only American beers I can stand now are Yuengling and PBR, so this doesn't really affect me.

On the other hand, monopolies in general give me the willies. And Anheuser-Busch's leg-up on the competition was that it was an American-owned company.

I was made fun of yesterday for revealing that I only found out recently (like, in the past few months recently) that Yuengling was a local brew and not a national brand. It's just always been in every bar I've gone to state-side, so I never had reason to think people outside the tri-state area wouldn't be blessed with $8 pitchers of something not brewed by Anheuser-Busch.

Support your local breweries, kids. Fight the monopolies. Drink Yuengling and Victory products. Damn the man, save the Empire, and all that jazz.

P.S. for all you fellow nerds out there, Victory makes a beer called Hoptimous Prime. Be forewarned: my friends love all of Victory's products, but I find them to be too hoppy for my taste, so it depends on your preference. I do recommend (for those of us who don't enjoy the taste of hops) their Golden Monkey.