Greetings from Carlisle Pennsylvania, a suburb of Harrisburg. I am smack dab in the middle of Pennsylvania, smack dab in Middle America, smack dab in the middle of fucking nowhere. There are no Starbucks here, no Pasqua or Tully’s. There are, however, plenty of Thomas Kincaid galleries and Wall-Marts. Not to mention flags heralding people’s love for Dale Earnhardt Jr and billboards for gun shows. I have come from a city that is adorned with “Bush is a Nazi” posters to American flags being hung from everywhere. From yoga-ins to “Support Our Troops” rallies down on Main Street.

Man, do I miss San Francisco.

I can’t believe I can’t find good coffee anywhere. I can’t believe that seeing a documentary about the human body at the downtown Imax theater would be the big thing to do on a Saturday night. I can’t believe that so many people would fly flags honoring a NASCAR driver. And I mainly can’t figure out what the hell people are doing here.

We’re in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere. Harrisburg is a small city that wouldn’t matter if it weren’t for it being the state capital of Pennsylvania (for whatever’s that worth). Yet people live in Harrisburg. People commute to Harrisburg. And people go to Harrisburg for their big night out. I live in a city where just on my block I have three Mexican restaurants, two bars, a tapas place, a Chinese restaurant, a Vietnamese restaurant, two pizza places, the Worker’s Party of America, a used book store that likes to show pictures of dead Palestinians, two Indian restaurant, and a place that sells Indian ice scream. And I’m in Carlisle because my mother works at Dickinson College, a kind of cute small college in the ‘burbs of Harrisburg. I went to a college surrounded on three sides by the ocean. You’d have keg parties on a house overlooking the ocean. On a Wednesday.

What the hell are people doing here?

Man, I am such a snot