updatelet

right, i have 18 minutes of internet time left in san antonio public library in texas until the town shuts down for thanksgiving, so let me do a quick summary of the last few weeks.

well, i am now gearing up to cross into mexico, and i bought this book in austin which has scared me stupid. i bought some chloraquine in a wal-mart, and it cost $98!!

after charleston i teamed up with a fat swiss girl for a few days and we dropped by savannah and then stayed a couple of nights in the tree houses at the hostel in the forest which was amazing! i left her there, as far as i know she's still there :).

then i sped by st augustine florida which is the oldest town in the US, and feels like it. its just like the mediterranean, tho a bit tourist-heavy.

i tried to drive through biloxi mississippi: the highway just stopped though, with the bridge ahead only half standing. on the opposite shore you could clearly see skyscrapers half subsided, and junk everywhere. i did actually drive through new orleans, tho i didn't stop. it is a mess. you all saw it on the news anyway, so you know how it is -- but it's pretty bizarre to pass through. oh i forgot mobile alabama where i had some amazing oysters, and dothan alabama where i didnt bother to attend the national peanut festival. i spent a few days in lafayette louisiana, the heart of cajun country, with lots of good food (crawfish, gumbo, etc) and tried to track down some french speakers which is hard. learned some interesting history of the place too. its certainly a long way from the McDs wal-mart strip-malled USA of stereotype.

i stayed in austin texas a long weekend: there is an incredible live music scene there. every night of the week, every bar in town has some form of live music. and often free! and $2 budweiser -- even i'll drink it at that price. its a cool city too, a little liberal dot in an otherwise conservative republican state. oh and props to the girls in southside bbq in elgin who were the first people i met who actually laughed at my accent. "wow, you're actually from england? that's so amazing!" ;)

a guy at austin hostel tipped me off to global freeloaders. its wicked -- way to get free accomodation! so i'm trying to use it to arrange my first nights in mexico, with some woman who wants to practise her french, bizarrely enough! and she offered me a cup of proper english tea that her english friend sent from leicestershire -- how can i resist that. i'm getting a bit US culture-tired actually. miss home! ;)

the moustachioed lady tells me i have five minutes remaining. hope everyone's well, think i better sign off, wish me luck in crazy mexico, not too sure when i'll next get to the net to update!

night night sleep tight

well i suppose it had to happen eventually. bedbugs. saturday morning i woke up with bites all across my shoulders and arms. in the early hours of sunday morning i actually felt the biting and put the light on to find two or three of these little blighters happily cavorting on my pillow and in the bedclothes, after a tasty supper of me. wide awake now, frantic searching revealed four or five more including some babies. cute eh. i gave them all a good blast of insect repellant and watched with a sort of horrified glee as they slowly curled up, then stretched out, and then died.

i have bites on my hands, face, neck and feet now too. also they are probably living in my luggage. i put it all through the tumble dryer set to very hot for half an hour -- but i wouldn't be surprised if they somehow lived through it. apparently they can live for up to *a year* then come out and get right back into sucking blood.

in other news, i was shocked to read today that 22 people were killed in a tornado in kentucky and indiana on sunday. it seems nearby (although it's not: 500 miles or thereabouts) because we *weren't* that far from there, only a couple of weeks ago. travelling has made the world smaller already.

also, i'm starting to get heartily sick of rich white self-obsessed shallow privileged college kids. charleston is definitely a beautiful town. but the 'college town' thing is even more sickening here, in a place with a lot of poverty, and a very blatant black/white divide. it appears to me, against my expectations, that america has bigger class divides than britain. perhaps because i'm confusing wealth with class.

and everybody's having a remarkable time

Readers of taste will remember today's title from a DJ Shadow album. It is sampled from a recording of a gentleman who went to Memphis, Tennessee "in order to purchase some automobiles". Leaving Memphis yesterday I decided DJ Shadow suited the mood -- and then he went and name-dropped the very "sun-deck of the Peabody Plaza Hotel" that I had just been in!

Well OK, I didn't actually stay at the Peabody: at $200 a room it is a bit beyond my budget. I *did* however see NIN among others at the Voodoo music festival in the baseball arena opposite, and afterward hung out with some Chicagoans who *were* staying there. And I used the phone in their lobby. So it was a rather strange coincidence to have it name-checked the following day on an album I'd had for years...

After crossing Kansas, which wasn't really as big as I'd expected, in St Louis I met up with my former schoolfriend Paul Seet who now lives in Chicago. We hung out for a week, taking in Anna, Illinois (home of Bunny Bread), Paducah, Kentucky (home of nothing in particular), and Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee. People started talking funny nearly as soon as we hit Kentucky.

It turns out that although Paul and I have a lot in common (like our names, and our school years), he is an American in ways that I am not. I see eating out as an opportunity to relax, enjoy good conversation, soak in local atmosphere, and sample interesting local cuisine. Paul sees it as a necessary evil with the aim of consuming as quickly as possible food the quality of which, from the brand name posted outside, can be predicted with complete accuracy. I see sleeping as a necessary evil which must be done to make the next day pleasant, and should cost as little time and money as possible. For Paul it is the key part of the day, where he can relax in the personal space which is for a short time his and his alone, safe from the marauders and risks of the outside world. I find Interstates boring and depressing, unlike their ever-interesting and more leisurely cousins, the state and county roads. Paul prefers the Interstates for their efficiency to the ever-stressful twists and turns of the back-roads.

So just these three differences: and apart from that we agreed that it was nice to see each other. I characterise him as 'American' in these preferences (predictable food, comfortable beds, efficient transport) because it seems that America tends to agree with him in these respects. Hence the rise of the Brand, favourite antihero of the lazy liberal. I prefer the unexpected, the unusual, the interesting. So do some other people.

I can't think of any kind of useful conclusion however. And although it is the first rainy day in a week of hot sunshine (I got sunburned Sunday at the show!), hence stopping by the library to update y'all, I should really get out and see something of Chattanooga. Perhaps the Choo Choo (although I favour the Civil Rights/Trail of Tears museum). So how about you, gentle reader, putting your own conclusion in the comments?