America - *heck* yes.

Well, I'm in America, typing on a Mac of all things from the air-conditioned IT facility of Reed College, Portland, Oregon.
Those of you who have been to the U.S will know about it's fluctuating levels of realism. Driving down the streets I pass cars from the Grand Theft Auto games, I hear the same smatterings of conversations and the radio -ah yes the radio- plays endless, and endlessly bizarre, adverts that seem to have been lifted directly from that game's much-acclaimed soundtrack. Then there's the parts where reality is far too close, like the meth-addicts and the smalltalky introductory sessions I've been having. Last night was an uphill struggle from nine until one to find and drink beer. Me and some people who half an hour ago were strangers passed from room to room like ghosts, congregated under street lamps, smoked cigarettes, drank forties from paper bags. Unlike a lot of the people here I'm old enough to drink legally, and unlike most of them I smoke like Krakatoa about to erupt, so there's a little distance there.
So far I've managed to read the new Bret Easton Ellis novel (you can tell from the blank, unnaffected prose and Gen-X malaise, right?), which is pretty great; the Oddyssey, which I suppose is very important, and The Men Who Stare at Goats, which veers between being laugh-out-loud funny and kind of uncomfortable. All come highly reccommended, but then there aren't many things that I don't like. Except Macs, which are flimsy, toy-like computers with a gimmicky design hiding their grindingly slow operation (Five minutes to log-in, two minutes to open up Firefox, browser windows that judder like Michael J. Fox)