Does anyone else find it humorous that "The Gay Quiz" is probably one of the most common sponsored links on my Google Adsense bar? Has anyone ever clicked it? I'm not helping matters by writing those keywords into this entry right now, which will likely make it appear even more frequently, but there's something mildly entertaining about the fact that Google's algorithms feel like that's an effective advertisement to have on my blog.

Today, I went to a Shell station on La Cienega (you know, that one with the car wash) on my way home from picking up a present for Arlene from someone she works special events with (very excited to go down to San Diego and catch up with the Freemans this weekend). I had about a quarter tank left, so I kind of needed gas, but really, I just noticed that I had a $10 dollar bill that was about a half centimeter from ripping, so I wanted to get rid of it before I had to be that guy who tapes it. That's a stupid reason to spend $10, but today, that was my reason. I remember when $10 made your gas gauge move significantly, but that's beside the point.

Anyways, so I walked into the convenience store/cashier area to find what really resembled a house of horrors, at least for a gas station. The bathroom door was wide open and two women were speaking incredibly loudly in a language I couldn't comprehend (which is tough because I'm familiar with a good number by this point in my life). A girl, sitting in a stroller, had her face and both her hands just covered in vomit and was smiling, talking, as if she didn't even know it. Two other kids, who I assume to be her brother and sister were running around the convenience store, while their sister continued to just play with the barf that was now all over her arms and hands, while the two women continued to speak with each other, run the water in the bathroom and ignore the children.

Making the situation even more interesting, a homeless woman who was blasting some kind of house music through her headphones opened the door for me and moaned loudly and motioned for me to go in before her. I obliged, only to have the homeless woman cut me in line immediately after. She demanded/asked the cashier for a dollar (that's just not realistic at a retail location, but I feel like logic was far out the window at this point), only to have the cashier brush her off. The woman was fine with it, turned around, continued to jam out to her house music and walked out of the store without even asking me for money (maybe she thought my Bluetooth made me an alien, North Korean spy, or she thought that I was the one who was weird looking).

Regardless, I made my way up to the cashier and paid for my gas. I remarked to the cashier, "It's an adventure in here..." He smiled and said, "Naw, man, that lady comes in here all the time. It's nothing." He said nothing about the now-departed girl covered in vomit that looked like something out of The Sixth Sense. I paid, pumped my gas, and left. Weirded out? A little.

However. this eventful trip to what is normally a pretty calm gas station continued to show me something that I've been thinking about a lot lately. More and more, I realize that our outlook on the world is so heavily shaped by our frame of reference that while we all live in the same world, we all look at things so different. Our frame of reference shifts as our situations shift and our values change as our opinions on things are shifted by the world around us. Yes, I realize that it sounds like I have been smoking a lot of weed before sitting down to make this late night post, but I promise that this is a completely level-headed post.

When I went back to the East Coast for the longest that I've been back in about three years (about 3 weeks), I realized that somewhere along the way, I've become a West Coaster. Because I hadn't really been back for so long, I came to this sudden realization that it was really bothering me that I had to sit next to strangers on subways, ride on buses next to randoms, and well, walk places instead of drive. Suddenly, it wasn't ok for me to walk in dirty snow or drive on roads that didn't have reflective paint or reflectors. I was out of my element at the place that once was my element.

Living near USC will get you very used to being around some interesting characters and will really normalize the idea of having a lot of homeless people and experiencing general paranoia when you're walking around at night. Now that I'm out in West Los Angeles, working in one of the most upscale parts of Beverly Hills, it's weird that suddenly, that "hood," where I have class three nights a week isn't normal to me. At USC, designer everything becomes normal, seeing girls with Chanel sunglasses becomes no big deal, and you don't think for a second that "there is no way that Prada purse is real..." Why? Because it is real and it ceases to impress you in a superficial way as much as you likely think it would because of the price tag. Going to college makes you assume that people can write grammatically coherent sentences, make a Powerpoint presentation, or even know how to act in an upscale restaurant, but the reality is that this is not what much of the world is like. Life for everyone is not like The Hills on MTV, even though it's easy and completely doable to live that life, but we often forget that our life is not everyone else's.

While I stupidly and wrongly worry about how I'm going to clear $300 off my credit card bill after buying a GPS, someone else is worrying about how they're going to pay their electricity bill, rent, and food with their minimum wage. And it's about time that I realize that a little more and stop feeling sorry for myself when I have more than enough, even if it means that I don't have more than the people around me.

A little ranty today.