"I can't be Arsed" the greatest contribution England has ever made to civilization.

I like a lot of things about the English.

• I like how they all look like they just crawled out of coal-mines after 30 generations of living down there and only dreaming about the sun.

• I like their beer - nothing could be finer than a half-pint tour of London.. walk till you are tired, stop in a pub and have a half-pint of something tasty, then walk on. This was how I found the old Tate museum and the power house at Battersea.

• I like how the Germans always understimate the English, then end up surrendering to them.

• And of course the accents, to use an Amercanism, rock!

But most of all I like the phrase "I can't be arsed." Because it so sums up a sensible type of laziness.. not unconcious laziness.. rather, considered laziness. It implies that the utterer of the phrase is not lazy in general, in fact has reasonably thought through what he or she might gain by an activity and considers the rewards of an action not worth pursuing. It is not, like the Mexican laziness of "manana" a putting off of something.. it is saying that something will never be done. It is not like the Muslim laziness of "If Allah wills it" a surrender to the allegedly greater power of some wacky God... it is, instead, a surrender to the realities of Newtonian physics. It is a noble laziness.

I might write more but I can't be arsed..