back in the USA one month now, am going to keep this up..

Well, I have been back in the USA for one month and feel the need to keep this up, because I'm having massive culture shock. It's been gradual because there's so much to take note of...

Television. DAMN! Daytime broadcast TV is nothing but ads for attorneys, pills, and medical devices. There's nothing quite like eating your lunch and hearing the fast paced disclaimer for some purple/green/orange pill rapidly and oh-so-softly stating "this medication may not be for everyone due to serious risk of kidney/heart/etc. problems and may even cause death." And the content in between? Unbelievably undignified. Maury Povich and their ilk with the women who had the baby but need a DNA test because there could be eight possible fathers other than their husband - and of course that whole show is a commercial for DNA paternity testing!

Cars. Why so huge? I read that in Paris there is a radical group that lets the air out of all four tires of parked SUV's and then leaves a note under the windshield wiper suggesting the driver get a smaller vehicle if they don't want it to happen again - and the best part is, this is legal under French law because they aren't doing lasting damage. (I don't advocate actually damaging someone's vehicle, thats going a little too far.) And the price of gas... massive profit taking by Bush and his cronies is what that's all about. Let's see how far we can push the prices up and have the oil companies make record profits. Here's an idea for funding highways: leave the damn gas tax as it is, and slap a tax on the excessive profits the oil companies are making off the stupid people who buy Ford Explorers and Humvees - and tax the oil companies even more based on the compensation of their executives. Of course it will never happen, but it should... I am glad my parents sold their Explorer years ago and traded it for a Prius. The thing gets 50 miles to the gallon, it's incredble. But the people who complain about the price of gas... I have no sympathy for them. Oh, poor dear, you drive something that gets less than 20 miles to the gallon and you live 50 miles from work? Poor baby...

Houses. McMansions are all the rage. These giant houses are being built all over the place that are at least 2000 square meters or more. If the builders were smart they would roof the homes with photovoltaic cells and use the sun to generate electricity for the home - the cost of a solar power system would add like 1/2 of 1 percent to the price of the home, for god's sake and it would pay for itself pretty darn quick. But its insane to see how "rural" areas are all getting filled in and built up now. The place where my mom used to take my sister and I to pick strawberries during the summer - it was great, you drove in, parked the car, and went into the fields and picked them right off the plants, paying for the containers that you filled - well, now its been bought by developers and turned into a nine hole golf course that's intermixed with McMansions.

Disaster preparedness and/or terrorism. Two words, baby: New Orleans. Nothing has changed since 9/11 except a bunch of Bush's fraternity buddies getting cushy jobs in a new federal agency. Oh sure, lip service is paid to "security" - on the regional trains into Chicago there are recordings that play about "heightened security" and how bags should not be left unattended and that unattended bags should be reported. Umm, reality check? Everyone is too busy loudly talking into their cellphones to notice, and unattended bags will more likely be stolen. Within Chicago with the CTA its the same deal, there is advertising saying if you see something you should report it. But seeing what happened to New Orleans and how that city devolved into Mad Max meets Waterworld meets The Day After Tomorrow, live on TV - it was incredible how little response the federal government had and how slow it was! From what I hear from my Uruguayan friends, Uruguay did a better job of recovering from their once-in-fifty-year storm than the response to New Orleans -- although I hesitate to draw much of a comparison there since the weather in New Orleans was undoubtedly worse. The federal government finally got their shit together and got some help in there, after a week of being embarrassed 24x7 on CNN, MSNBC and Faux News. But of course the help is all tied to Dick Cheney's business cronies with no-bid contracts and whatnot.

Iraq? It's another Vietnam. It's going to take a lot more deaths of Americans and innocent Iraqis before its all over. I watched Bush address the UN the other day and enjoyed more everytime the cameras cut away to the expressions of the world leaders rather than seeing HIM on TV... fuckin' looks like Alfred E. Newman from MAD! Magazine anyway.

Medicine. I had a good dose of what its like to be uninsured in this country. There are four medications that I take and I came back from Uruguay with a month's supply. Now technically, I'm below the poverty level because of how little I made in the last year, so I should qualify for whatever public assistance there is, right? And yeah, I did - except the first dr. appointment available in my area was in November. So I paid $84.00 for a 20 minute visit with a physician's assistant (I don't know if they exist in the rest of the world - the training is somewhere in between Dr. and Nurse - physician's assistants in most states can write prescriptions just like doctors, and nurses generally can't). I declined the blood test, and the urinalysis - that would have added another hundred bucks to the bill at least! The prescriptions themselves? $115.00 for a sixty-day supply of everything, and it was all generic stuff, not the little purple/orange/plaid pills ya see advertised on TV every 15 minutes that cost five bucks apiece. But I got what I needed, I can't complain too much, and if you divided those prices by six (because I made six times less money in Uruguay) they are close to what you'd pay down there for the same services in that economy.

Job hunting? Well, I had to put that off for a month. I have something in common with Bill Clinton - I inhaled and I did it during my last night in UY. So that meant 30 days until I could consider applying for a job because no matter what you gotta either piss in a bottle or give a hair sample to "prove" that you don't use any drugs. Fine, I waited 30 days and a #1 clipper cut took care of the other possibility.

Privacy? Doesn't exist. I am behind on a payment because I used USA credit to try to prop up my business in UY - and get this "coincidence..." I landed in Chicago after being out of the country for quite awhile... and then the very next morning I got a call from a bill collector at my parents house. And of course this will be held against me when I go to apply for a job to earn the money to pay the debt because my credit will almost certainly be checked as part of the hiring process at any company! What's more, I have already started getting junk mail at two addresses!

Religion has gotten even more pervasive. Churches are everywhere and they are as HUGE as the cars parked all around them. My advice for the people who run around saying loudly and fervently that they are "On fire for god," -- please, catch fire, posthaste or at least keep it to themselves!

But I gotta say this: the economic opportunity here is incredible. The sheer momentum of the whole economy and size of the population produce some incredible opportunities. Provided I don't "drink the kool-aid" and start accumulating stuff, I'll be able to save up some cash and get out of here for some other locale more first-world than Uruguay and more liberal than here. Then I can marry the man of my dreams and start a life together with him in a land where cars are a little smaller, people are a little more practical and dare I hope openminded, and privacy actually exists.