Expat Jon takes on the world (well... Sweden)

So Pride Week just happened here in Stockholm last week.  The week of festivities is culminated by a huge parade.  Word is, there were 60,000 people at the parade this year!  That's a lot of pride.  I had to work on Saturday, so I was unable to attend.  I hadn't thought about attending, though.  I didn't know how big it is here.  I didn't know the level of support that the gay community gets here.  I must say, it's remarkable. While I was working, Young Cousin called me to see what I was doing.  I told him I was working.  He said that was unfortunate.  He was calling to invite me to watch the parade from his friend's balcony.  He said they were having fun and the view of the parade was awesome.  I tried to hide my surprise.  Young Cousin is 23.  At 23, a gay pride parade would probably have been one of the last places I would have gone to.  I wasn't homophobic or anything (or was I?), but I was more ignoran...

When I was high school age, one of my best friends in the world blew my mind in the grocery store.  She told me that what I had been putting on my "grilled cheese" sandwiches and "cheeseburgers" was not real  cheese.  I stopped in my tracks and promptly began arguing my case in the dairy aisle.       - Get outta here!  On the commercial they say it's cheese.  That's cheese! I continued my rant and she slowly, silently guided me over to the "cheese" section and picked up a package of my precious cheese.  There it was.  Cheese was right in front of my face.       - They don't even call it cheese themselves.  They call it cheese food.  Look. I investigated.  Dammit, I had been duped!  As an adult I realize the power of marketing.  They put the yellow product up and put it on a sandwich and a cute kid eats the sandwich and the viewer says that was cheese.  But on the commercial they were c...