Well, this should be interesting. I really don’t feel like writing right now. My current mental state does not want to be pegged down and made the speak. I am experiencing a pleasant, almost whimsical state of mind, and the zephyrs and chinooks of my inner realm tug playfully at my clothes, and point my heart at the sky.

But I gotta blog. So, here we go!

I know, I will share some media with you, at least until I think of something more to say.

I love this lady SO DAMNED MUCH.

She is most definitely my kind of nut. Finding a cool piece of clothing at a thrift shop is something anyone can do. A lot of people these days would also make a video talking about it.

But not very many people would turn the whole thing into a hilarious bit of weird crazy music and record themselves dancing and prancing around like a lunatic. That takes the kind of wacky mania that I really cherish in people, and the whole thing reminds me of something my sister Catherine would do in one of her moments of zaniness.

When I look back on it, I really do come from a family of funny, nutty, strange people. Even my father had his moments, rare but always amazing. I remember walking through Halifax on a very unpleasant rainy, blustery day with him when he looked at me and said, “This is the kind of day where I want to lash myself to the mast of a ship and yell ‘Thor!”.

Which is quite the image, really. And there’s days when I have felt like that too. Where even a milquetoast like me, when forced to deal with nasty weather, wants to scream at the sky. “Is that all you can do? Well fuck you! I’m a survivor!”

Hey, I never said I was sane.

Then there is this marvelous experiment :

Like I said on Facebook, it’s nice to know that our food is as weird to them as theirs is to us. That there is not some imbalance in the relative weirdness levels that means their food is truly weirder than ours.

It’s all about what you grow up with.

I love their reaction to goldfish crackers a la Pepperidge Farm. Because there is no way to explain that. Why are they shaped like goldfish? Because they are. Because someone made them that way, and it caught on. Because it’s cute. Because if you put them in your soup, you can pretend you are EATING THE OCEAN.

I was surprised at their reaction to Pop Tarts. They kept going on about how artificial they taste. And sure, that’s true. But they have cheap pastries in Korea, don’t they? And toasters?

One girl says it “tastes like a toy”. I assume it’s been a while since she’s eaten a toy.

The chocolate covered Rice Crispy treat went over really well. Like one of the girls says, who could hate this? Personally, I find the store-bought Rice Crispy treats to taste artificial, stale, bland, and like air. But I have a basis for comparison and I am very particular about some foods.

It’s not like they are awful, or anything.

Salt and Vinegar chips? Okay, that’s just not fair. I am pretty sure in Asia, vinegar is something used to preserve food, not a flavouring. That just seems like a crazy ass thing to throw at them.

Then again, when we do these kinds of experiments on ourselves, it’s stuff like natto and fertilized chicken eggs, so I guess fair is fair.

“Like someone is punching my tongue. ” I can’t argue with that, and I actually like those kind of chips.

Their reaction to Twizzlers completely surprised me. That did not strike me as a challenging food, certainly not compared to the other stuff. But they hated them! The texture really threw them off. Like eating rubber, they said. I guess Korean cuisine does not have anything with that particular consistency.

Now I feel sort of weird about all the Twizzlers I have eaten. Imagine if they had been given the black licorice ones! Black licorice tastes awful to like, a third to a half of the popular here. I can’t imagine what it would taste like to them.

Ah, my beloved Cheezits. A go-to source for satisfying my craving for ridiculously over the top cheese flavour. They are the sort of thing you have to be a certain sort of person to really get into. I am kind of surprised any of them liked it. I thought it would be just too weird for them.

I mean, do Koreans eat a lot of cheese?

And then finally, Warheads, the extremely sour edition, something deliberately made to be crazy sour even by the standards of people familiar with the concept of sour candy. That, I think, was just plain cruel.

What else…. oh yeah, there’s this image!

Where does he keep his ATM card? And how does he type his PIN?

Is that the cutest thing ever, or what? It’s like he’s people! And I love that he has a sort of earnest look on his face, like he’s hoping the people in front of him don’t have to do anything complicated because he has a bunch more errands to run.

Speaking of which, I waited a long time in line at Money Mart last night because the lady in front of me was like a perfect storm of the kinds of people you don’t want to be behind. She was :

1. Old. At least seventy.
2. Easily confused. Comes with the territory.
3. Doing something very complicated. Some kind of timed wire transfer of funds. And finally,
4. English was clearly not her first language.

And so every step of the transaction had to be explained and re-explained over and over again till she understood it, and that made the whole process excruciating.

But hey, better to be behind her in line than behind the glass dealing with her myself.

Well, that’s it for me today. I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.