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The twenties roared. Like lions. >:3 Congress decided that it needed to implement some system too keep too many immigrants from coming over all at once, so it came up with a quota system. Why would there be too many immigrants, you ask? Because Congress was worried that the lions would eat all of them and become fat. But even with the quota system, the lions were still eating too many immigrants for a balanced diet and Congress came up with the brilliant National Origins Act, which only let about 150k immigrants come over. It also reduced the number of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, since those people weren’t to the lions’ taste. And nobody liked the Jews.

Also, many Americans moved to urban centers in order to get away from the lions. People started marrying later and having less children, too, because they were always worried that the lions would eat them, and it wouldn’t do to have the lions getting fat. Few married women worked outside their homes, while their husbands marched around the house carrying pitchforks and torches. To drive away the lions. The capable women were so successful, they didn’t need to be married cuz they had servants to drive away the lions for them.

Meanwhile, the young people were becoming all nonconformist. All of them. At once. So basically it was a big group of nonconformist people conforming to each other. They didn’t fear the lions! So girls wore short skirts and guys picked up dates while their parents picked up the pieces of their broken moral standards. And they were more open about sex, because they knew that if they ever had an unwanted child, they could just throw him to the lions. >:3 Oh yeah, also because Margaret Sanger invented birth control. Unfortunately, Sanger had a habit of cursing like a sailor who was also half gangster and half Cid Highwind (wait, that doesn’t add up to one… >> wink , so she was subjected to the 1873 Comstock Act, which was anti-obscenity. And it wouldn’t let her spread information about birth control. So then she came up with the American Birth Control League in 1921, and they let her because she threatened to set the @#@!$%# lions on them.

Everybody suddenly got divorced, because they found they couldn’t’ stand each other. Women took some crappy jobs then men didn’t want. The women weren’t too happy, and began coming up with plans to create a civilization of Amazon warrior women, and they figured they could just feed the men to the lions.

Meanwhile, people made films! Lots of films! David Wark Griffith made Birth of a Nation in 1915. I would say he’s awesome, because his middle name is Wark, but his movie portrayed the KKK sympathetically, so Griffith really isn’t awesome. He’s a silly dumb-butt (to put it nicely). The Jazz Singer was the first talking picture, and Disney films are just awesome. And there were radios, so people could keep an eye on those lions and warn the cities if any lions went all rabid and tried attacking people that weren’t children or immigrants.

Since life was so easy, people had leisure time to play sports. This originally developed from the need to get people to exercise and become harder, better, stronger, faster so they could outrun those damn lions. But eventually, people just did it for fun. Meanwhile, religious fundamentalists went back to the fundamentals of their religion. They refused to believe fish had legs and wanted to ban Darwinism from schools. Most were from the rural areas. Apparently they had a vision saying God would spare them from the lions if they worshipped Him. Sheesh. Oh yeah, William Jennings Bryan (that guy is everywhere, I swear) became a spokesman, and Tennessee passed a law that bans any story of teaching non-Divine Creation in schools. John T. Scopes was all like, “Whatever.” And he taught evolution in school anyway, and he was put on trial. Bryan was at the trial, and he was all, “Yeah, Eve was created from Adam’s rib and Jonah was swallowed by a whale and somehow came out alive because he was impervious to stomach acid. I make so much sense.” And Scopes was just like, “Whatever.” Then one of them offered to pay people lots of money if they admitted they descended from monkeys, and that idiot refused. Let’s not try and get a hundred bucks for telling the truth, now. Let’s continue to be poor and in denial.

Then in early 1920, the 18th amendment came into place, which prohibited alcohol. Not to be confused with the 19th amendment, which prohibited women. As Dr. Hosmer said, if you were stuck on an island, would you rather have 18 beers or 19 women? Meanwhile, the Lever act prohibited people from making grain to make alcohol. The Germans and the Irish weren’t too happy about this. And the Americans (because they were racist jerks) were all, “In your face, b*tches!!” And Herbert Hoover was all like, “You can have my tea since you’re being good and not drinking alcohol.” Luckily, Hoover’s tea was indeed Darjeeling, so the people were pretty happy. But then some other people just smuggled in alcohol, and the government didn’t do much to enforce it.

Then this guy, William J. Simmons, revived the KKK. They were assholes and fell apart because they couldn’t agree on anything and killed a random woman.

Then some guys killed some person, and people were like, “BURN THE WITCHES!!” and burned Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants, even though they didn’t have much proof except that one of them turned some guy into a newt. The smart people were not happy, because they hadn’t weighed the two with a duck before killing them.

So the intellectuals became all cynical and emo, and they wrote cynical and emo books. They became called the Lost Generation. Sounds emo, doesn’t it? Not to be confused with Peter Pan’s Lost Boys, now. Or that band. Fitzgerald wrote the Great Gatsby, and Sinclair Lewis wrote Babbitt and Main Street, which pretty much said that everyone was the same.

Meanwhile, blacks lived in ghettos. Northerners didn’t have segregation laws, but they automatically came together—mostly because they didn’t trust the whites to be able to deal with lions properly. W.E.B. duBois, who somehow managed to pronounce his own name wrong, wanted an international movement to save the lions! Garvey was convinced the lions in Africa were better, and had a ship and convinced people to buy tickets, but he scammed them and took their monies instead. What a jerk. Oh yeah, there was the Harlem Renaissance too, which was pretty spiffy.

Economy was great, business was amazing, Ford made a crapload of cars and terrorized his poor employees, and the Wright bros built a kickass plane that stayed in the air a while 17 seconds. Or something like that.