No answers, just lots of questions.

Oh, I almost forgot why I started with Vermicious Knids. Lola found the real America.

Our Bedford-style suburb doesn't count. It's a bubble of million dollar shacks and luxury cars driven by teenagers. Now that Romney's out, the signs are all for Obama and Hillary.

But lo, last Friday, Lola was making an emergency Lightning McQueen run. Long story. But this took her to Target.

On a Friday night.

Oh yeah.

As she navigated the overweight mother/daughter pairs buying care packages for the troops - and Dr. Phil DVDs, she came upon the mack daddy. The large-ish woman (note: you don't have to be overweight to be considered a typical American overseas, but it helps) who was eating from the Fritos bag that she was in the process of purchasing and yelling at the cashier about the fact that the sticker said $1.98, but it rang up for $1.99 spewing out chunks of fried corn goodness onto the poor cashier.

It's good to be home.

Ok, but seriously: I suppose everywhere is like this, but I do feel that the US has become much more segregated than when I was younger. The racial segregation is still there (which it largely isn't in the UK), but the economic segregation has become much more blatant. (The UK doesn't have so much of that, though it, of course, exists, in the UK it's more about where you went to school, who you know, what your accent is. You can buy your way up, but not as much as in the US.)

Is it really that way, or am I just in a different part of the economic pile and am seeing it more?

Also had a thought this morning: given the weakening dollar and the loss of face around the world and the looming economic turmoil - are we leaving the 1950's and entering the 1960's and (more to the point) the 1970's? Are we at the twilight of the American century? Do empires fall faster now that everything seems to have accellerated?

No answers, just lots of questions.