how a Californian (like me) sees the world

WARNING: What follows is exceedingly general and perhaps a bit non-PC. I don't care, and neither should you. Au contraire, you should laud me for admitting my ignorance rather than disguising it. Consider this a list of what I don't know about the world (and hope to learn someday).

DISCLAIMER: You'll notice that I said a Californian like me. You can no more judge all Californians to be the same than you can judge all Dubliners or all Tokyoites to be the same. We're a mixed lot. But even among them, I am an outlier. I was born in Northern California, for one thing. I've lived in the capital, the Midwest, the American South, and the Great Plains, so I know a bit more about the rest of America than the average Californian does. My political views don't exactly match up with a lot of other Californians', either. I'm a white middle-class twenty-something, and proud of it.

Ready? Then let's begin:

THE REST OF AMERICA:

• OREGON: Best known for portraying that forested planet in The Return of the Jedi. And being mispronounced by Midwesterners and foreigners alike.
• WASHINGTON STATE: Coffee. Rain. Pine trees. Killer whales. Reggie Watts. Legal marijuana. Sententious living.
• IDAHO: Potatoes.
• MONTANA: Looks really good on a postcard.
• NEVADA: Vegas, baby. And machine guns. The rest of it's desert. And Reno.
• UTAH: Mormons! Who doesn't like Mormons? And saltwater?
• ARIZONA: Simply marvelous gun laws. Cacti which are the envy of the civilized world. Gila monsters. Fatuous Nicolas Cage movies. Mountains that look like Indians.
• NEW MEXICO: Are the rocks supposed to be red like that?
• COLORADO: Best place to raise abducted children.
• WYOMING: Fewer people than a single suburb of Los Angeles. Seriously, the antelopes outnumber the humans. Scary thought.
• NORTH DAKOTA: I felt like a celebrity there.
• SOUTH DAKOTA: Big stone heads. The Black Hills (yeah, baby). Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.
• NEBRASKA: What the guy who thought of the phrase "middle of nowhere" was thinking of.
• KANSAS: You're not there anymore, Toto.
• OKLAHOMA: Bombs. Musicals. The Dust Bowl. Tornadoes.
• TEXAS: If it weren't for them, Mexico would have invaded long ago.
• MINNESOTA: So, like, let's go to the lake, eh?
• IOWA: The Minnesotans are right. The best thing coming out of Iowa is I-29.
• MISSOURI: My dad went to college there. Considers himself more Missourian than Ohioan. They've got an arch. That's the limit of my knowledge.
• ARKANSAS: Most direct route between Tennessee and Oklahoma.
• LOUISIANA: Bayous, swamps, Cajun food, levies, Mardi Gras, and hurricanes. Especially hurricanes.
• WISCONSIN: Cheese.
• ILLINOIS: Abraham Lincoln.
• INDIANA: No friggin' idea. Maybe basketball?
• KENTUCKY: Is the grass really blue, or is that just a figure of speech?
• TENNESSEE: Too many mullets for my taste.
• MISSISSIPPI: Hard to spell.
• ALABAMA: Probably has the most likeable/least unpleasant Southern accent, depending on where you stand on Southern accents.
• GEORGIA: Good peaches.
• FLORIDA: Can't think of it without thinking of the auto-tuning rapper. Thanks a bunch. Before Flo Rida was a thing, I associated Florida with Scarface, my grandmother's house with the orange trees in the backyard, the one billion percent humidity, and the white-sand beaches.
• MICHIGAN: They make cars there, don't they? And awesome music?
• OHIO: Hot in summer, rainy in spring, miserable in winter, the most beautiful place on the planet in autumn.
• WEST VIRGINIA: Coal. The Civil War. Trout fishing. Caves. Chuck Yeager.
• VIRGINIA: This may sound weird, but I can't help but think of Virginia in terms of the famous people who were born there: Ella Fitzgerald, George C. Scott, Sam Houston, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (yes, that Lewis & Clark), Patrick Henry, Robert E. Lee, Tom Wolfe, Booker T. Washington, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and, like, twenty U.S. presidents. 
• NORTH/SOUTH CAROLINA: What's the difference? 
• WASHINGTON, D.C.: Crazy homeless people in the streets, crazy people in the government.
• MARYLAND: You need to put on some weight, you're too skinny.
• DELAWARE: Sounds like a seldom-used word you'd find in a dictionary.
• NEW JERSEY: Just as all myths have some basis in fact, the moniker "Armpit of America" must on some level be well-deserved. 
• CONNECTICUT: Pretty. And filthy rich.
• PENNSYLVANIA: The birthplace of liberty and independence. Looks nice in autumn, too.
• NEW YORK: California's biggest competitor in terms of culture and coolness. They've got some pretty country, too; and heck, they even have their own version of the San Andreas Fault. We'll get you yet, you buggers.
• RHODE ISLAND: Too small for my Californian mind to encapsulate.
• MASSACHUSETTS: Baseball. Football. Clam chowder. Cod. Moby-Dick. Cheers (the TV show).
• NEW HAMPSHIRE: The last stop before Maine.
• VERMONT: The second-to-last stop before Maine.
• MAINE: The last stop before New Brunswick. Also, Stephen King is from there; I do know that much. A lot of his books are set around those parts.
• ALASKA: I know as much as everyone else does. Grizzly bears, gold, the Inuit, glaciers, the tallest mountain in North America, savage cold, bush pilots, hunting, cruises, trains, oil, fishing, formerly Russian, real men and real women. Oh, and I'd give my right arm and two or three toes to live there.
• HAWAII: Palm trees. White-sand beaches. Turquoise water. Tropical fish. Sunshine. Ukeleles, luaus and leis. Volcanoes. Surfing. Pearl Harbor. The U.S.S. Arizona. Paradise on Earth. California's biggest competitor in terms of fun in the sun and water sports. Not bad if we can take on New York and Hawaii and still compete, eh?

THE REST OF THE WORLD:

• MEXICO: Lovely beaches, great food, incredible culture, marvelous natural beauty, and good booze...but a corrupt government and a few too many all-powerful drug cartels. Oh wait, that's California.
• CANADA: A dichotomy. On the one hand: nigh-socialism, a Governor General, and a certain amount of cultural snobbery (though that might just be the folks from Toronto). On the other hand: maple syrup, the Yukon, Nova Scotia, the Northwest Territories, British Columbia, Alberta, the Canadian Rockies, ice hockey, Shania Twain, William Shatner, Dan Aykroyd, Kim Cattrall, Stana Katic, Nathan Fillion (whom I hear is from Edmonton), Rick Moranis, Leslie Nielsen, Donald Sutherland, Alexander Graham Bell, Elijah McCoy (the real McCoy), James Howlett (better known as Wolverine), Anne Shirley (a.k.a. Anne of Green Gables), Chris Hadfield (the astronaut), Rush, Barenaked Ladies, Great Big Sea, dinosaurs, Black Velvet whisky, the Devil's Brigade, lentils, Swedish Fish, and some of the friendliest, politest people on the face of the Earth.
• BRAZIL: Great barbecue, oddly-named mountains, and the best jungles and parties (and jungle parties) anywhere.
• BOLIVIA: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid got zonked down there, didn't they?
• URUGUAY: It's all about the tango.
• KENYA: I know Tanzania, Mozambique, and some of the other countries have amazing biodiversity, natural beauty and safaris, but whenever I think "East Africa," my mind just leaps to Kenya. Craters, rhinoceroses, the Serengeti, poaching problems, and now some election brouhaha. And a spectacular John Wayne movie.
• SOUTH AFRICA: Let's move past the bit with the apartheid and get into Sharlto Copley, J.R.R. Tolkien, Basil Rathbone, Manfred Mann, Candice Swanepoel, and that sweet movie Zulu with Michael Caine. Just please don't mention Dave Mathews. We don't mention Dave Mathews on this blog.  
• LESOTHO: See RHODE ISLAND above.
• EGYPT: Revolutions. Pyramids. Rivers. Desert. Camels. Political turmoil. And they have their own version of The Daily Show.
• MOROCCO: I only know where it is 'cause I watch Bogart films. 
• CROATIA: It gave the world Serious Sam, so it can't be all bad, can it?
• RUSSIA: I was born five years before the Berlin Wall fell, but I'd venture to guess that my generation's the first one that doesn't think "Commie bastards" whenever we hear the word "Russia." That doesn't mean I trust Putin or the KGB, but I sure would like to visit the country, ride their trains, drink their vodka, walk over their bridges, and so forth. Oh, and see St. Petersburg in the wintertime.
• FRANCE: The other place an aspiring artist or writer might go besides California.
• ICELAND: All of the wintry fun of Canada or Alaska with none of the urban sprawl.  
• ENGLAND: Sorry, did I say Canada was guilty of cultural snobbery?! Though that could just be Londoners. Seriously, some of my best friends are from England. I wouldn't mind retiring to Newcastle someday, having fish and chips down by the quayside, a pint in the Turk's Head, then a walk 'round the priory and a pipe-smoke on the point. Geordies rock.
• SCOTLAND: It gave us Scotch whisky, haggis, Robert Burns, Ian Anderson, and some of the world's finest and hardiest soldiers. I think a good many wars would have been lost without a few good Scotsmen.
• IRELAND: The setting of another rather good John Wayne movie. If you don't think about the Troubles, you can get lost in the whiskey, the beer, the corned beef and cabbage, the stew, the River Liffey, James Joyce and the wild Irish countryside. Gotta love Chloë Agnew and Liam Neeson, too.
• GERMANY: Efficiency. And cake. And philosophy. And awe-inspiring classical music.
• SPAIN: Sunshine. And beautiful horses. Architecture to die for. Paella. Soccer. Bulls, and a lot of sports that shouldn't be combined with bulls. And tomato-chucking. 
• SWITZERLAND: Americans voted it the best place to go if you're trying to escape from a German prison camp. I've heard they make pretty good watches and toys, too. 
• INDIA: Outsourcing. Overpopulation. Sacred cows. Fascinating religions. Fantastic architecture. Pollution. Garbage in the streets. People pooping in public. The Ganges River, which I wouldn't dunk my worst enemy in.
• VIETNAM: The site of a rather nasty and unconventional war. Now home to gorgeous waterfalls, delectable cuisine, a generation of suspiciously blond-haired Vietnamese, and tons of unexploded ordnance.
• CHINA: Big. Really big. Filled with people. Controlled by a Communist government. Mao's noggin is everywhere. Still, even though fat guys go topless in public and toddlers poop in the streets, the trains run on time and the countryside is undeniably gorgeous.
• JAPAN: My knowledge beforehand was mostly limited to World War II, anime and manga. Now I see the country through the Korean lens, and that colors my perception a bit. It's definitely one of Asia's bright stars, a broad, clean, polite and user-friendly country. But its foreign-relations record is a black mark in its ledger.
• SOUTH KOREA: Before I came to live here, I knew the name of the capital and that the country got snow in winter. That's it. Now I know that, despite the bali bali culture that grinds students and salarymen into the ground, Korea has elevated itself from a smoking crater to one of the most prosperous, bright, advanced and innovative nations on the planet. The people, though bound by millennia of tradition and rigid societal and behavioral mores, are some of the most friendly and unconditionally kind folks I've ever encountered.
• NORTH KOREA: If you're ever in need of a good laugh, just look up some of their propaganda.
• AUSTRALIA: Deserts, mountains, jungles, forests, beaches, great music, good actors, some fantastic sports (and sports players), architectural wonders, storied history, a charming accent and some of the weirdest animals to be found.
• NEW ZEALAND: Like some weird mix of England, Iceland, and Hawaii. But it did give us Peter Jackson, Lucy Lawless, Karl Urban and Bruce Spence, and some lovely glaciers.
• ANTARCTICA:  Snow. Ice. More snow. More ice. Mountains. Volcanoes. Rocks. More snow. More ice. Frigid seas. Storms. Penguins. Blubber. Jules Verne, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and every other adventure or horror writer who ever needed a remote, bleak, barren, ice-blasted place to set a secret base or an eldritch abomination.