The American sense of humor is coarse, crude, and sexual, not to mention juvenile. A lot of people don't like to admit that, because despite their boisterous nature, Americans are also reserved and embarrassed about who they are as individuals as well as who they are as a society. Think of it like putting out the guest towels. We desperately want everyone to believe we actually use those frilly things, when as soon as the guests leave we go back to drying our hands with rags. Meanwhile, the guests themselves don't feel worthy of using them either, and choose to wipe their hands on their pants rather than stain the beautiful, fake towels that they know the hosts only put out for show.

Back at the dinner table, everyone perpetuates the facade. Lovely towels, Francis. Why thank you, Jane, you're too kind.

(You bet your ass you're too kind, you lying slut.)

Huge swaths of society would love nothing more than to pursuade everyone to pretend they've never heard a dirty joke. Even though, according to what we love to consume on television and in movies, we can't get enough of them. When people do talk about raunchy comedies, they blushingly admit it as a "guilty pleasure." They can't stand to be a part of the 98% of America that thought the masturbation-contest episode of Seinfeld was hilarious when it aired. Admitting that would suspend their membership to the 2% of funsuckers who are "above such things."

I love our dirty American humor, and I'm proud of it. And whenever I find myself in a room with even one of those funsucking killjoys, I feel like cramming my genitals in a garbage disposal and flipping the switch on the wall.

One could chalk all of this up to Americans being repressed about sex, but personally, I think Americans are more embarrassed about comedy. They hate to admit to enjoying anything simply because it is funny. Look at the Academy Awards, for example. In the entire history of the Oscars, only five Best Picture winners in my opinion could by any stretch of the imagination be attached somehow to the word "comedy." And even then, the funniest of these movies (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Apartment, American Beauty) are simply not comedies. One movie that could be considered a comedy, Forrest Gump, is not funny, and was obviously selected for its nostalgia quality, not its humor. Which leaves Annie Hall as the only true comedy ever to win Best Picture.

Then again, maybe the only reason Annie Hall won was because Woody Allen didn't dress up like a sperm cell in it.

When I was in English major in college, one of my professors used a word I will always remember: "climbers." Climbers, by his definition, were people who tried to use the English language to make themselves seem like something they were not. Climbers want you to believe that they come from the upper crust, when they are probably just lower middle class, like everyone else. There used to be lots and lots of books written to help climbers appear more sophisticated and worldly, to make them appear to have grown up rich when they actually grew up poor. Our whole system of grammar that we learn in school is based on these cheap books from the 18th and 19th centuries, and the books were deeply flawed. You can't simply learn to talk rich, mainly because trying to sound sophisticated nearly always makes you sound stupid, exposing you as a climber. It's always best to speak simply and honestly.

Americans are, for the most part, climbers. Devoid of the long history and perspective of Europe and Asia, they feel embarrassed and ashamed. Instead of accepting the truth like adults, they choose to behave like children acting as adults. Of course, European tastes are more sophisticated and highbrow. Take the Benny Hill Show, for example. How can you not feel intimidated by that?

Benny Hill isn't even funny. You know who is funny? Charlie Sheen.

One of the highest-rated shows on network television, Two and a Half Men, is also one of the raunchiest sitcoms I have ever seen, and is also one of my favorites. Consider the episode entitled "Repeated Blows to His Unformed Head" which is about a woman who likes to have sex when she is pregnant. See? The title alone is hilarious, not to mention offensive on at least two levels. And every week, millions of Americans -- men, women, couples, families -- sit down on the couch and laugh their asses off. Because it's dirty and it's funny.

Maybe if Americans stopped repressing their humor -- boxing it up like a stack of tacky porno rags beneath their adolescent bed -- their humor could grow and ripen.

So let me be the first to say it.

My name is Barrett Chase. I am an American. And I know two things to be true:

1. I love nothing more to laugh at things that are funny.
2. Nothing is funnier than butts and weiners.