Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

Another typical tangent before I get to the point: I've been hesitant to use the word "irony" ever since Alanis Morissette made the term too popular to be used accurately. I'm going to brave it now.  In one of my many trips to the grocery store last week, I noticed that a stack of wine crates advertised their support of finding a cure for  prostate cancer. I entertain zero thoughts of alcohol's health benefits, and several of its many detriments; it seems a stick in my side that alcohol funds good things, from the Olympics to finding a cure for cancer. Why can't healthy foods fund these things? Probably because America doesn't consume enough healthy foods to compete with the revenue from alcohol. The frustrating thing is that if America ate more healthy foods, the risk of many illnesses, including cancer, would decrease. Another snapshot: I was waiting at a red light, and a man on the street was asking for donations. The car in front of me rolled down ...

This post, from what I have conceived of it so far, portends to be extremely random. There is a common thread, I swear. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before, but I mostly faked pronouncing "r" through much of childhood. That, and the fact that I tended to use proper grammar AND large words led many people to believe that I was from England, or Australia, or Africa (I'm assuming they meant South Africa).  They are, if you stretch the definition of 'from,' all accurate. Most of my ancestors come from Great Britain, one at least was born in South Africa when his father went there during the Boer wars, and my father lived in Australia for 2 years. I doubt any of these facts played into my pronunciation, as I was born and raised in America. Probably the next most influential factor to my speech, besides my speech impediment, was the media I was raised with. Right after reading, say, The Hobbit, or watching Pride & Prejudice (the long version), I aut...