Cali. I love to hate you. California has many wonderful attributes according to people somewhere. I recently bought the biggest pumpkin here I have ever bought which does bring me great joy. Also my boyfriend lives here. So two things actually. Two good things. And people like dogs here. So yea there are upsides for sure. But I have been here a lot lately and I have talked before about how overrated it is, and oh my gosh is it ever.
So let's begin from the ground up. Feet. Very few people have attractive feet. On the plane to California I saw a man wearing just the most provocative shoes a hobbit can wear. He had thick pale feet he had slid into the most g-string reminiscent shoes I had ever seen. Chacos, a shoe I despise, all of a sudden seemed less unsightly as my vision had now been clouded with these burlesque shoes. No doubt about it though Chacos are still unnecessary and unsightly. My friend recently bought a pair claiming they're just so practical for camping. How I thought? The Appalachian mountains have both copperheads and rattlesnakes. Most of the creeks while hiking are easily passable over rocks, and stepping on twigs can snap and hit your foot. At no point in the woods have I ever wished for less foot protection while simultaneously being a siren hoping for a woodsy lady to come sweep me and my bare-clad foot away. Chacos have so many straps it looks like a spider built a web connecting your foot to a sturdy and sensible black brick. But the sandals this rotund gentleman wore were like a love child between a swarthy Italian man and his lumbersexual hippie lover. The brand is Shamma. Every picture of a man's feet I see in these sandals just brings to image a woman being coy and demure in the 1900's showing a bit of ankle and blushing at her flirtatious ways.
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Oh this? It's just a little something I had lying around.
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| Chacos and I are done now. I'm a free agent. |
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| Live. Laugh. Love. |
I get it. People like their feet to breath, stretch those little toes out. Live a little. But these are just showing a little too much of your hobbit feet. And of course they were invented in California. And as a side note, cut your damn toenails people. I can't tell you how many times I have made Kyle de-claw himself or remove black toe fuzz from underneath his nails. Come on now.
Moving on from the ground of California, we raise up ever so slightly to the train tracks. As Kyle and I were going home he pointed out an ancient looking train on the BART tracks. It was a rusty brown and looked straight from the old west. As we drove closer we saw the words "BART Maintenance" scrawled across the side. It wasn't cute and old-timey, it was just old and worn down. It's odd that you see videos of electric cars being launched into space, robots replacing workers at coffee shops and Amazon shipping warehouses all in San Francisco and the that thing thing that connects these places is still BART, a transportation system that reaches over 100 decibels of train noise for over three minutes that its like holding a screeching child while you slowly amble along the 40 mile track to the airport in just a quick 2 hours that I am not at all shocked that Silicon Valley, the (former) tech capital of the world got de-throned by Beijing's Zhonhhuancun last year.
While in Silicon Valley, we went to a chocolate tasting tour where a pretentious, but interesting man, told us why the chocolate we eat is shit and why we are stupid people for enjoying something so appalling as a Reese's Cup. He started the tour by asking us what was our favorite chocolate. A well dressed woman in her 30's declared she preferred dark chocolate and had even tried Lindt's special order 99% dark. The man scoffed at her. Lindt he repeated. The audacity. It was a battle between who could be more uppity about a dessert. I said I like Cadberry's and have no shame about it. Sugar makes things taste good. But this was a tasting to shame your little gauche taste buds. Kyle summed the experience up perfectly. This was an experience that rich people love. They now can take the chocolate they purchased and lord it over other people who think the same thing they think. It's a bit chaulky. Yea it tastes good, but a Reese's is better and eleven dollars cheaper. We left having enjoyed ourselves still secure in ourselves that the chocolate with sugar tasted better and drove on past the multitudes of 5-10 million dollar Palo Alto homes of 2000 square feet on basic plots that skirted a highway ensuring a lifetime of noise and down the street from an Ikea ensuring a lifetime of traffic. The dream if you will. As we drove on my stomach began to feel weird. The same feeling when I drank coffee a few times in college or had too black of a tea. Oh my gosh I thought. I am about to shit myself. I asked my body how long do we have? Can I make it the 45 minute drive home? No my butt answered. You have minutes. Good luck. I told Kyle he had to get off the highway as quickly as possible. Thankfully we were by an exit. I had a Jack in the Box or a McDonalds. McDonalds I declared longing for their ugly faux brick interiors and heavy wooden stall doors. I speed waddled into the bathroom and let loose. 15 minutes later I managed to feel secure enough to walk back to the car and get home without soiling the car. It was during those 15 minutes though I decided McDonalds should win some sort of medal of honor. They have been a bathroom to those most in need for decades. A safe place for shy and bold poopers alike. When our beach house toilet was broken my mom knew where she could turn. The backyard. But the next day she picked McDonalds. Way less sanitary but it beats a squat.
So I'll add that to the list. California has dogs, my boyfriend, McDonald's, and Spanish men who will berate your taste in chocolate for an hour for the low low price of $50 so you feel shamed while a Telsa orbits you. At least the next time I'm here it will be "winter" which means the 8 days of rain they get a year should spur men to put their pale feet back where they belong, out of my view.
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