I am typing from a Chili’s restaurant, jammed along a strip of other restaurants and gift shops. They are all very close to the road. The signs are clustered so thickly that they blend together along the sky. It’s impossible to drive at any kind of speed and look for where you are going.

…except that every place here has a very familiar logo, so it’s not necessary to actually read what the signs say. It’s only necessary to recognize the symbols as something you either do or do not wish to consume.

This is my embarassing America, like a drunken girlfriend making too much noise and flirting with everyone.

There is a restaurant next door called Lobster Feast. God, what a name. I knew I was going to loathe the place before I even got close to it, and I was right. I don’t believe in negativity, but I’m going to indulge myself and hate on Lobster Feast for a few seconds.

First of all, I maintain a bias against any salad bar that features iceberg lettuce as the salad. That shit is the Bud Light of salads. It’s technically salad, but it is utterly devoid of character, let alone nutrients. Its most prominant redeeming features are that it’s crispy, and it’s not very likely to cause cancer. You can say the same, however, about thin wood veneer. Fuck Iceberg lettuce.

After the salad bar, I walked by the window, and each table was covered in coarse white butcher paper. The nearest one’s butcher paper was splattered with an explosion of small food particles, as though someone had jammed random parts of a salad bar into a trumpet and blown like hell. Shredded tasteless cheese, god damned iceberg lettuce, and kid-smashed crackers were all in attendance.

My grilled chicken ceasar from Chili’s was horrible. If there had been any more salt in it it would have come in block form. My shower didn’t work this morning, so I had to go out into the world au naturale, which is french for “smelling like a marathon-running wildbeast”.

The most important thing to take away from all this is, I really, really love traveling. I know it sounds like I’m about to gnaw off my own arm and beat myself to death, but I’m actually having a great time in my stinky hotel room where I have to crouch to bathe because I am too tall for the shower.

I have really come to enjoy it when things are shitty, for some reason. It makes me think I am really living, grinding against the world like the bottom of a rocky stream. I think people who have it easier than me are just floating along with nothing to talk about.

And that’s why they can’t write songs like I can. Also because they’re not as smart as I am. Suckers!