'Burb' 'Burb' is the sound I make just before a good projectile vomit.

So, I'm visiting an old friend here in Chicago for a couple of days and will travel to Lawrence tonight. She lives with her husband and newborn in a Chicago suburb. I know that it is a tendency for someone who has been living in Europe for such a long time, like me, to come over and only see the negatives about living in America. But, something about living in Germany since 2003 has done nothing but make the contrasts between lifestyles even more apparent. I took a long walk yesterday to shed some of the lethargy that jet lag brings. I walked for an hour through this suburb, and, like some kind of undying mantra, kept repeating to myself, almost against my own will, 'How could someone live like this? How could someone live like this?'

This probably seems funny, really, because there is so much about living in a 'burb that is idyllic, almost perfect. The lawns are well kept, the streets are enormously wide, the plots are giant; the houses are giant; everything is like some kind of steroid 60s version of Americana. It's really weird. And horribly mundane. And every house has aluminum siding. And the neighborhood is quiet, almost dead during the day as the children are at school and the parents at work. And I walked through it, a weird, yet prim, ghost town—a society put into stasis until 5 when it will become exuberantly alive once again.

Somehow, back in the 60s, there must have been a great shortage of architects. There couldn't have been more than 2 used for the entire district. Every house is some kind of Stepford version of the same model house that must have, sometime ago, stood at the center of this great undrama and was used as the Ur-design for every new house to pop up as far as the eye could see. Aliens, unfamiliar with earth, probably came to study this suburb, thinking that we did it all intentionally, to show that we were all from the same clan. But this clan was obviously very patriarchal as we were unable to branch out from our kin, only able to express ourselves with a green split-level instead of a baby blue one.

This aliens' official story anyway, embarrassed to admit that they were confused at first and thought that the houses inhabit the earth, instead of people. It was this great sympathy for the houses and their great plight of the "human infestation" that brought on the great Glendale Heights massacre of ought 9, where, as a goodwill gesture, the aliens "cured" the houses' disease, triumphantly landing before the oldest house on the block to announce this great purging, a gift of friendship. The houses were disturbingly unresponsive, though, putting the official translators through a week of hell as they sought to interpret the creaking of shutters and general whinings of people-free timber to mean "thank you." Yes, they were later shot, but that's not the point.

How can someone live in suburbia? How? It is vanilla in a world of chocolate fudge swirl with pralines, caramel, candied cherries and chocolate sprinkles. And, what's worse, knowing the possible taste sensations that the broad palate of the world could bring, these people CHOSE vanilla. Ok, I respect that. It is their choice to make and they made it. To me, though, it is a horrible commentary on what the "normal guy" wants or understands. All in all, people want everything that a suburb can beautifully provide: their own house, with plenty of room, in a nice, secure neighborhood, no noisy neighbors, no great weekend challenges of any kind Even the lawns are all mowed by the same person, who, ingeniously, lets the new residence know who they are expected to use in a version of miniature signage places delicately at the corner of every pristine and uneventful lawn. The suburb sustains perfectly for a man what he really cares about…work, family, and rest, not necessarily in that order.

Do you ever get the feeling that you are just not normal enough to understand normal?