And….50. Stop reading this and go check out the stories from our users. In one day we heard from both an 11 year-old who tattooed Firefox to his forehead (temporarily—”my mom wouldn’t let me tattoo my head”) and a grandfather celebrating his 82nd birthday with Firefox cookies. A girl who’s knitting her own Firefox hat using yarn she hand-dyed in the microwave with kool-aid. Two guys who advertised Firefox in the dust that coats their Jeep.

Naturally, the same press that covers us when we rearrange the pixels in Firefox’s backfur seems unmoved by all of this. C’mon guys, this is the real story.

Oh, and featured above is the newly minted commemorative coin we’re giving away to those people whose stories about spreading Firefox just make us smile. We made just 50, and we have only 38 left. What’s your story?

Tristan Nitot over at Mozilla Europe points to a new marketshare study by the XiTi firm that reveals some stunning figures in Europe—31% in Finland, 22% in Germany, 18% in Poland and 13% in France. Not that it’s the only factor driving such fast adoption, but Europeans seem to “get” open source moreso than we Americans—why is that?

I’m tired of analysts. I’m tired of hearing what people will do, should do, have done historically, are likely to do, will never do and have never done. The browser is dead. People won’t download software. The only way to compete is to bundle. Open source will never reach the mainstream.

Whatever. Join us in flipping off how-things-oughta-be as we count down to 50,000,000 downloads of Firefox worldwide, poke a little fun at Opera, and dish out unique prizes you won’t find anywhere else. If you thought the coins were cool, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

There are people out there who will caution us against celebration for fear of getting too cocky. That’s wrong. Cocky is when you stop celebrating because the millions start to blend together and your users become a figure on a spreadsheet. We know damned well we have to keep improving the Web experience or we’ll die. The fifty millionth downloader matters as much as the fiftieth.