Thank you for your kind thoughts on my poem. I never cared much for poetry but I tend to write poetry when I am going through deep emotional trauma. All the reading of thoughts of post colonial writers along with things I have heard and experienced since I came to the islands along with all I have learned about the extermination of the indigenous peoples in the American continents; all of that has my head spinning.

Before I thought things through I sent it to my professor. Still waiting to hear from her.

A while ago I signed up to get BBC America added to our cable subscription. I did it so I could watch Doctor Who and I have been totally enjoying it. However...

There is a program that comes on after the Doctor that has caught my attention. It is about cars of all things. When I first saw it I thought it was mindless drivel about modern European cars. It is so much more than that.

Top Gear is first and foremost a hilarious comedy dressed up as a serious look at modern cars. They do feature semi-serious reviews of cars but they also have challenges and unusual races. The play soccer using cars. They have one segment where they put a celebrity in a "reasonable priced" car. He or she runs a series of laps on their race track and the best time is posted on the board through the season. Celebrities vie with one another to make the fastest runs.

They have raced a car against the Japanese public transportation system; against a letter carried by the Royal Mail from the English Channel to the Orkney Islands; they raced against a high speed boat along the coast of France; they raced a car against a private airplane; And they raced a car, a speedboat, a bicycle, and public transportation across rush hour London.

Challenges have included driving to the North Pole in a race against a team of dogs; driving used two wheel drive cars across the spine of Africa; driving used super-cars (purchased for less than 10,000 pounds) from one part of England to another; converting regular road vehicles into amphibious vehicles; building their own stretch limos; and trying to outrun a British Army tank in an SUV.

It's really funny. But it also has me thinking about something I've started to call the myth of the USA. I need to think some more and do some research but the gist of the matter is that we've convinced ourselves of our own superiority over the other nations of the world without actually knowing if our beliefs are founded in anything real. I'm starting to think we might be wrong...