I understand you spent your life in the middle of nowhere. There were cows and chickens and not that many people. And if there were people, they were pretty much the same kind of people. They looked and talked the same way, they had the same religious beliefs, and they ate the same foods in the same way. Life was bleak in the small town. But now you are in a big city that has more diversity than you've ever been exposed to. How do you handle this new and colorful state of affairs? What should you do to avoid making a fool of yourself by revealing your provincialism? I'm here to lower a rope down into the dark cultural hole you're in and pull you up to the light of big-city life. The advice I have to offer will not solve all of your problems, but it will make things a little bit easier.

When I traveled through Montana two or so years ago, the first thing I noticed is that people in small towns eat utter crap. What they call breakfast or lunch or dinner is actually no better than a salt lick. This results in a severe stupidity of the tongue, and there is a part of me that believes this kind of stupidity should not be dissociated from the political stupidity of the rural areas. A person who has enjoyed a truly supreme bowl of pho is not likely to vote for a Republican or believe in that Tea Party nonsense. You are what you eat. So if you are a student from a small town, the first thing you must do is raise the IQ of your salt-dumbed tongue...

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