Midwest / Noise.

I like the Midwest. Some people might slam it for its degenerated Old World traditions such as "hammerschlagen", the game where drunk people try to hammer in nails to a log, last one in buying everyone's round, but I know no other region of the country that has fun like we do.

Plus, we're inclusive, as the Milwaukee Brewers' newest member of the sausage race shows! It's so great to think that they've been running a bottom-of-the-6th-inning race with bratwurst and the like all these years, and now Mexicans have been included in, with a chorizo. Or, perhaps Mexicans aren't accepted by Americans, but their cuisine has been? I'm somehow both delighted and slightly disturbed that the mascot just looks like a red hotdog with a sombrero on it...

Anyhow, today I was studying in a perfectly silent library, and this jackass-y undergrad with big headphones (actually he was nerdy, he had a bad haircut and a paunch), was sitting twenty feet away chewing gum loudly, and with his mouth open. I didn't have the energy to go over and tell him to chew with his mouth closed, so I just left instead.