i know full well...

....yet am always somehow surprised at the strangeness of british people.

the little blurb in the middle of this tesco box of fruit & fibre cereal says that it is "suitable for vegetarians."

i am not a vegetarian, and i have no pressing plans to ever become one. but i have a very hard time conceiving of a universe where cereal is not vegetarian-safe. isn't all cereal vegetarian-safe? is there narwhale in my rice chex?

m-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i

there's a lot i enjoy about being back home with my family. chiefly, my family and butterfinger candy bars. and netflix. and ice cream with butterfingers in it.

but the other day i noticed a nice, unintended, non-candy-related little perk of being in mississippi. no one ever spells the word mississippi in an attempt to amuse me. if you're from mississippi and you end up some place where there are not that many people from mississippi (say, like, south korea), people will invariably, once they learn you hail from mississippi, spell the word mississippi, then look at you for a reaction, as though being able to spell the word mississippi is the most original and entertaining thing that has ever happened. ever.

it's not. to the point that when strangers in far-flung places ask me where i'm from, i reply: "mississippi. don't spell it." if they DO spell it, i take their drink out of their hand, finish it for them, and walk away.

imagine if this was how people greeted each other within the state.

A: Where are you from?
B: Jackson.
A: J-A-C-K-S-O-N! [holds hand up aggressively, demanding a high-five]

ugh, i say. ugh.

my passionate love affair with america is over

i just got home from the grocery store, where i bought - i swear - healthy foods to promote asia skinny retention. and a glamour magazine. it was my stop-over at the magazine rack that brought on my disdain for america. because i counted THREE (3)magazine covers featuring one of the girls from Teen Mom. if you don't know what Teen Mom is, go in peace, my friend, and never look down that road. it will kill your soul.

i want to like america. i really, really do. but i cannot abide by a culture that turns sixteen year-old girls too stupid to make their boyfriends bag it up into celebrities.

and, from looking at the covers, none of these magazines are offering cautionary tales, about how you don't end up pregnant before you can vote, living without furniture, struggling to get your GED. maci is back with her baby's father! amber has lost a ton of weight! farrah isn't pregnant! i made note of all the covers, since i like to have accurate fodder for my indignation.

i would never categorize someone else's child as a mistake, but i feel like these girls are being put on a pedestal for making really bad choices. it grosses me out.

vegetables

i've been back in america for about two months now, desperately trying to hang on to what i call my "asia skinny." it's not the same as being actually skinny, just skinnier than i am when there's butterfingers everywhere. grocery stores in asia don't have butterfingers. i cannot be trusted around a butterfinger candy bar. i enter a fugue state, and basically black out for a few minutes and wake up covered in chocolate and crispity-crunchity crumbies, with no memory of having actually eaten the butterfinger.

i've been trying to eat as well as i can, lots of fruits and veggies and very few trips to cold stone. since the last time i was home, america has become seemingly obsessed with getting enough veggies, since every commerical on the television claims that product X contains A FULL SERVING OF VEGETABLES! chef boyardee, apple juice, manwich, pasta sauce and many, many more contain a full serving of vegetables. exclamation point.

you know what else has a full serving of vegetables? broccoli. you want to get veggies in your diet? you think your kids need to eat more vegetables? then buy a damn vegetable. because manwich is not vegetables. at. all.

oprah

and, today, some i-have-too-much-time-on-my-hands thoughts on oprah.

i watched the season premiere of oprah. you know, where everyone gets to go australia. whee! what lucky, lucky folks.

and, then, the next day on oprah, wynonna judd! wheee...? she's a great singer, with a hot sister and mom issues and a skeevy ex-husband. which makes for plenty to talk about, but wynonna judd is no trip to australia, my friends.

which got me thinking about oprah's audience. one day, everyone gets a car and a recording contract. the next day, the world's most inspirational dog. really. once there was this dog that only had two legs, and the pound wanted to put the dog down, and a family stepped up and took the dog in and NO ONE IS GOING ON VACATION.

i ask you: does this seem fair?

top chef

i'm currently unemployed (or, "retired," if you will), and instead of socializing with, dating, or in any way relating to my peers, i've been watching a lot of television. in my defense, people on television are generally better looking and better scripted than actual mississippians.

last week was the top chef finale. i love top chef. i especially love when william and i watch entire seasons of top chef while having a mcdonalds picnic, but we are sadly separated by an ocean at present. but i digress.

in my many, many free hours that i spend watching television, i come up with ideas to make it better. so, here's my advice for top chef. the first season was hosted by katie lee joel, then trophy wife of billy joel, who may or may not be a robot. in the second season, she was replaced by padma lakmishi, who was married to salman rushdie.

padma's been the host ever since, but i think the bravo network missed out on a great hook: each season is hosted by some old dude's trophy wife. you could even host for mulitple seasons, as long as you remain trophy-wifed. as soon as you get divorced, sorry, new host.

of course, if you got divorced and traded up, then you could keep your job. like if katie lee joel had become katie lee springsteen.

living in a foreign country can turn you into the worst possible version of yourself.

right now i am back in america: visiting with my family, hitting up the sturgis south biker rally, eating fattening foods, trying to determine which city's housewives are the real-ist. i'm going with new jersey, mostly because they are the housewives i fear the most.

(side note: it turns out that when one is actually sober enough to walk around the sturgis south biker rally, it ends up being a little bit like every other outdoor happening in mississippi. sunburned people who have no business being shirtless eating funnel cake and drinking beer at 11am. but maybe with a tad more racism.)

amongst the many things that i miss in korea (kimchi, my girls, being able to afford stuff), i really miss being able to talk about strangers with impunity. yes, i understand that makes me a bad person. you see how polite and civilized you are when there's a 97.8% chance that no one else on the subway will understand what you're saying.

a while ago my good chingu william and i were walking in downtown daegu when a poorly dressed woman ran into traffic.

william: she just tried to kill herself!
me: oh, god, look at her shoes!
william: look at her hair!
me: it's like she's already dead.

just can't do that in america.