Californication

[randomness]

Here I am in Riga, Latvia, after having taken the fairly empty overnight train from Vilnius, Lithuania. I climb the spiral staircase to the fourth floor of my hotel, drop my bags and fall over. I didn't get enough sleep on the train because of the quaintly annoying Eastern European custom of being woken up from your nice, comfy sleeper berth by gruff border guards matching you with your passport picture. I've also been wandering around Riga in the drizzling rain for the last few hours because my room wasn't ready, so I'm somewhat grumpy.
I'm just going to veg out for a bit, lie down, and watch some mindless TV.

I find MTV Europe while channel surfing. Gak.

Sometimes, when I'm travelling, I find that the universe decides there will be certain themes to certain days. Today seems to be one of those days.

Last night, just before boarding the train, I ducked in to the grocery store in the basement of Vilnius train station. While browsing for snacks, I found a packet of ramen with the brand "California Sunshine". Of course, with a name like that you'd figure that it'd be from anywhere *but* California. Out of curiosity, I flip it over and see.

It's from Walnut Creek. Okay, truth in advertising, I guess. And welcome to the global economy. At least it wasn't Milpitas.

On MTV Europe, they're doing "anthems", whatever that means.

Californication, by the Red Hot Chili Peppers is on. Okay, sure, I guess that's an anthem.

Followed by Green Day's Redundant. Yeah. You're telling *me* that's redundant. I get the joke already.

I've crossed eleven time zones and gone seventy-two hundred miles east. I'm in a place where less than a dozen years ago the cultural icons were statues of Lenin and red stars. A city where Soviet naval officers retired to. And yet, California keeps smacking me across the face.

Thank you, world, I get it. And all the Californians can now tell me smugly that they live in the center of the cultural universe, and isn't that just how things are?

Time to go splash my face with some water and go confront Riga before I look out my hotel window and start seeing Alcatraz and the Bay Bridge.

I'll be less cranky after I get some lunch.

Comments

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

you know, i'm seriously entertaining the hypothesis that you are actually a government spy.

this "traveling the world for the hell of it" pose is just your cover!

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Really, there's nothing I can say in reply to this. :)

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

when we next run into each other you could give me a sign if i'm right, like accidentally leaving top secret documents strewn about!

[merlinofchaos]

No no no.

We Californians understand that we live in the cultural void of the universe. We have no culture of our own (Well, that's not true; SFBay has a very distinctive culture) so instead we make one up like an underpaid writer cranking out pulp fiction as fast as he can for as long as it will sell so that he can eat something better than kibble every day.

Then we export it to the rest of the world, and we hire some jackass commentator to say just how good that pulp fiction culture is.

When nobody believes it, we continue broadcasting it. Somewhere in those broadcasts something that's actually good might slip through--that's the bait. And it's probably an anomoly, but that don't bother us. We'll latch onto that because people know it's good, and we try to convince everyone that the pulp-fiction culture from the back of a cereal box we could have found rotting in a pile of refuse in Watts is the same thing.

The sad part about The Big Lie is that if you say it often enough, people will start to believe it.

[sylphon.livejournal.com]

dammit now I have that damn song stuck in my head

[elthar.livejournal.com]

Latvia, eh? Say hello to the long-confiscated estate of the barons von Ascheraden on behalf of my mother's family!

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, the Germans have returned, and some are buying back their properties. Well, some of them, at least. Getting in on the ground floor, too. Probably anticipating a real estate boom once Latvia joins the EU next year.

Where was the estate?