What to talk about.

What, what, what? Do you know how it is that you can only win a mega-lottery amount if you live in a trailer park? Why is that? What is it about trailer park dwellers? Living in a trailer park also guarantees that your house will be crushed by any wayward tornadoes. So you either lose it all in a natural disaster or you win it all in the powerball. Just can't decide if it's worth it or not. So everyone is clearing out southern Texas in preparation for Rita. It'll be interesting to see how much people have learned from Katrina. I wonder if the entire place in blown to bits if people will be sending donations with the same fevor as they did for Katrina. I'm not bad-mouthing everything that's been done for Katrina victims, I just wonder if it will be hurricane overkill by the time Rita takes care of business. I don't know if there's anywhere in the world that's worth it for me to live with the constant threat of total annihilation from hurricanes or floods or whatever. We do get a lot of tornadoes here in Indiana, but I live here against my better judgement anyway, so it's not like I'm getting something out of it. If I could live the same life somewhere else, I would in an instant.

Oh, this is the depressing thing I realized the other day: My daughter is an Indiana native. It's like a burning knife to the heart to understand that fact. She called soda "pop" the other day. That's what everyone here calls soda. They call soda "pop" in Utah, too, and I hated it just as much when I lived there. Anyway, she called it pop and my ears started to bleed.

"No," I said, "it's soda."

"OK, soda," she said.

I don't know why it bothers me to hear pop, but it does. I don't know, maybe because it sounds kind of red-necky.