Comrades

I went to a Halloween costume party Saturday night. I was hoping that Cindy and I could go together as a pantomime horse but that wasn't possible so I had to look for other costume ideas. I was considering a few different ideas when I asked a couple of my American friends what they were planning. Larry said that he was going as Fidel, so Sean said immediately that he would go as Che. There was nothing left but for me to go as Lenin.

I think we made a good trio.

Jack o' Lantern, Second Edition

After reviewing last year's effort, Cindy and I spent some time sketching a new and improved, now even scarier face before carving this year's Jack o' lantern. Last year I did the classic square teeth, which are ok but not very scary. This year the teeth are pointy and the eyes angled differently. I'm pleased with the result.

Once again, I toasted the seeds and made pumpkin soup, which I'll be eating for the next few months.

United States Bans Vegemite

Bad news: I've heard from two sources now that the US government has banned Vegemite! It sounds a bit strange, given that I've seen Vegemite for sale here in Bloomington (at SaharaMart), so I'm not entirely sure if it's true. But apparently now it's not only illegal to import it commercially but also for personal use. The story quotes a source - "Former Geelong man Daniel Fogarty, who now lives in Calgary, Canada, said he was stunned when searched while crossing the US border recently."

If they're serious about this I might have to write some letters and lobby for Australian citizens to be allowed to import small quantities for personal use. It could even be argued that Vegemite is a sacrament for us! Surely it's a right to bear Vegemite.

If it's tangy and brown...

This weekend I discovered the joy of car ownership. I took the opportunity to leave Bloomington and took a nice drive through the countryside. Today I went to a cider mill. I bought a gallon of cider and half a peck of golden delicious (before driving off in my car that gets forty rods to the hogshead!). Of course it will take me a while to get through a whole gallon (even if it is a US gallon, not an imperial one) but it's not pasteurised so the longer I leave it, the more alcoholic it'll get; I'm in no hurry. The same place was also selling pumpkins.

And yesterday I went to a little town called Nashville, Indiana (not to be confused with Nashville, Tennessee). It reminds me a lot of Leura. There was a little bourgeois kitchen store where I half expected to see Prue and Trude from Kath & Kim. But most importantly there was a "candy" store with many different types of liquorice. This was quite a find because most US supermarkets only have one brand of hard, chewy liquorice, with a bitter after-taste. The kid working there acted as my liquorice consultant, "What sort of liquorice do you like? Hard or soft? Strong or mild?" and we established that Kookaburra brand was best for me; "An Australian brand," he informed me.

Skype Video

Good news! Skype has released a beta version of a video chat client for Mac. This means I can now video chat with a lot more people (more than I could using iChat over AIM). If you have a webcam and miss seeing my beautiful visage, drop me a line. (If you're used to chatting with me on another network, don't worry, I'll still be on those too.)

Fall Foilage

That's right, while Oz is coming into Spring, it's Autumn here. And Americans don't just have autumn the way we have seasons, they celebrate "the fall". For some reason they feel it's not enough to see the different-coloured leaves everywhere they go (even in a town like Bloomington, where there are deciduous trees everywhere) they have to decorate their stores and sell season-specific foods. For a few weeks already the supermarkets have been decorating with pumpkins, selling "pumpkin chocolate-chip cookies" (sic.) and more normal biscuits decorated with "fall colors" ie orange icing.

No, it's not just that Halloween happens to utilise pumpkins for Jack o' lanterns, during the fall they celebrate apples too, eg prominent displays of cider and apple cider doughnuts. Saturday there was a "Fall Festival" across the road from my apartment at a museum. There they were playing quoits over pumpkins and selling pumpkin cake, pumpkin muffins, the traditional American pumpkin pie as well as apple cider. It had been years since I'd had pumpkin pie, and given the setting I thought I should give it another try, but it was just as bad as I remembered.

Oh, and Friday evening I was at a BBQ where there were many of these fall foods as well as marshmallow Jack o' lanterns, so I realised that this was some sort of fall celebration. And then all the Americans started bobbing for apples. I didn't participate.

You are what you eat?

I went to a different supermarket yesterday. The one nearest my place (just a few blocks away) is Kroger, which is the cheapest supermarket chain in Indiana. I guess I'm lucky that I had the cheapest one within walking distance this last year but now that I have a car I've realised that Marsh has a little more variety.

Anyway, going to a new supermarket was almost as much fun as going to an American supermarket for the first time. There were quite a few things I hadn't seen before but, better still, I saw some familiar products I didn't think I could get in the US. So now there's a couple less things that I won't be asking my family to bring from Australia -- Violet Crumbles and HP Sauce. The funny thing is that I rarely ate things like Violet Crumbles and Mars bars but knowing that I couldn't get them was enough to make me want them. Conversely, I used HP Sauce all the time when I was living in Oz; I couldn't eat steak without it! But now my diet has changed so much -- mainly Asian, Indian and Italian food -- that I decided not to buy a bottle. If I ever buy a BBQ then I'll start keeping HP in the pantry.

The really interesting part was the way this supermarket was arranged. You see, the HP sauce was on the shelf above the Nestlé chocolates. Nearby were Marmite, various jams and marmalades and something that looked like Gravox. I immediately realised that I'd found the British section of the supermarket! I shook my head as I walked past the steak sauce section, thinking how much more sensible it would be to keep the HP there. And then it got weird. As I walked past the Mexican food, I noticed candles for sale with Jesus and Mary's pictures of them! Now, we all know that tortillas and Catholic idolatry go hand in hand but really! (I also saw limes in the alcohol aisle, near the Coronas, I think. A more obvious combination. And every supermarket here has a small Kosher section but I've never seen menorahs for sale there.)

The question is: are these ethno-centric classifications more efficient than others? They could be, I guess.