By now most of you know I am in Los Angeles. I believe it is Los Angeles County as well. I have looked at a map a few times and noticed Orange County, what has been popularized as the OC, is south of Los Angeles and Ventura County is north creeping along the coast. Mark has verified this somewhat, in no direct way did he say Ventura was north, but I know for a fact the town is and what better county seat then that of the largest town in that county. Maybe it is not the largest town in the county north of Los Angeles, but it is a town noticeable on a map while driving across the country.

I do not like writing "LA". It does not feel natural. I like writing Los Angeles. For one, it provides me a sense of multicultural significance, being a Spanish word and all. I do not even know what it means. Maybe "The Angels", maybe something a bit similar where I find my language skills a bit rusty; at least the Romance languages. Those I do not find myself enjoying very much. But they sound delectable do they not? Especially French and Romanian.

Driving across the country caused mountains to look like bowls of pudding in the distance and the spotted trees and shrubs that covered them made them look dirty for some reason, but also covered with raisins.

The ground disgusted me. It was not barren, it was not the dunes of Lake Michigan or some desert in northern Africa. The ground was dirty. It was scarcely covered with dirty shrubs and small cacti. You have to look deep into the horizon, climb over the mountainous cloud formations and see the land from a different view because the view I had was not special. It was not serene or bucolic. The rivers were not crystalline. They were fake. They looked pure like blue blood. It was disgusting. By the end I was ready to cross glaciers. The southwest is beautiful, but not through sunglasses and a highway. I remember what the real southwest looked like from my childhood vacationing there. The sand was red, the oxygen was warm and burned your lungs when you breathed in too deep. The shrubs were greener than they are now, especially the saguaros in Arizona. This time they were dull. Perhaps they were dying, I could tell some had holes in them. I could see the holes from the road. I imagine small desert rodents crawling in and making them their homes. What a success that would be for a small rodent or a desert bird, to find cactus innards delightfully roomy and spacious--are they full of water? How hard are they? At one point I wanted to jump out and go Casey Jones on the cactus staring at me with their arms ready to pull God from his heavens and let him loose to attack me like a vicious dog. Imagine that power. Cacti rule the southwest and my heroes, the saguaros, rule only a small portion geographically, but they are the proudest, the most natural in their environment, and they tower over everyone else. Are they thick like trees? If I rammed into one with an automobile or a bat would they crumple at the force or would they destroy me instead. I am too afraid to even try, but the thought crossed my mind.