Protip:
To make your day more dramatic, post a random news story with the title, “It begins.“
as an american I can indeed confirm that we go like “what the heck is a kilometer” and shoot our guns into the air 

(real, not fake)
people use etc either because they can't think of more examples or there are too many examples
me when i create a regular expression in english class because i am lazy and do not want to look for 30 places where dialogue is