Effing Effingham

This past weekend I drove halfway across the country and back again over the course of about four days. I learned that America is a pretty weird place.

As demonstrated by a mildly retarded man from Texas winning two Presidential elections, most of America is a pretty religious place. Some people demonstrate their religion by helping poor people and stuff like that, things Jesus would have done. Others, however, like the residents of Effingham, Illinois, decided to build the biggest cross in the world. So yeah, there’s a 198 foot tall metal cross along I-70. Truckers are, of course, welcome.

This wasn’t the only cross I saw though, as it was pretty common to see three crosses on hilltops. So here’s what I’m thinking. When Christianity first started, it was really popular with women and slaves, because in Rome their lives sucked, and that whole Heaven thing seemed pretty sweet. This same thing helps explain why it took so long for people like the Vikings to convert: their afterlife is much better than Heaven, they just drink and fight all day, every day, so there’s really no reason to convert. I think that what I’m basically getting at here is that most of the center of this country, like Effingham, really sucks, and the people who live there are already looking ahead. Clinging to their religion (and guns).

Crosses were only the second strangest thing that I saw along the road. First place goes to a series of billboards stretching across Ohio and Indiana, advertising RVs and homes. The name of the RV company, as you may recall if you’ve also been forced to pass through what I’m sure Sarah Palin would describe as the pro-America America, is Tom Raper RVs. How is that someone’s name? If your last name is Raper, just change it.

One of the coolest parts about driving for 14 straight hours is learning all sorts of place names. Driving from Philadelphia to St. Louis is a pretty international experience; I passed London, Lisbon, Brazil, Troy, and Rome. I guess that it’s pretty tough to come up with original place names for an entire country, as demonstrated by Nameless Creek and Arnold City.

Ok, but that’s enough about that journey, I have more important things to talk about. First, science. I’ve made no secret of my desire to see scientists just start doing really cool things, and do them well. I don’t necessarily care what it is, cloning, flying cars, robots, anything like that, I just want to see cool things. Dick knows of this, and the scorn I’ve been heaping on scientists for their failure to keep me properly amused, and sent me this article to show that they’re doing stuff. I’m not impressed. Yeah, it’s cool that they were able to save some guy’s hand. But they used leaches. Come on, doctors have been using leaches for centuries. I’m surprised that they didn’t sacrifice a bull too. And anyway, the guy still doesn’t have feeling in his hand yet. I am not impressed with these scientists.

At least astronomers are still making moves. As this article says, some guys are speculating that there could be tons of earth-like planets scattered throughout our galaxy. That would be pretty cool. If there are alien lifeforms out there, these guys were thinking that most of them would be the kind of things that were on earth hundreds of millions of years ago, not cool things like people or wookies or even dinosaurs, but single cell organisms, and things like that. Which makes me think, how cool would it be if by the time these things get to where we are, evolutionarily speaking, we’ve mastered interstellar travel? We could be the conquering aliens that plucky planet bound movie stars would have to fight off. There could even be an alien President Whitmore. He would give such a good speech, I bet. Europeans are taking the first step here, running an isolation experiment to see if people could handle a trip to Mars. Getting to Mars and back would take over 500 days, so they want to make sure that people could deal with that. Fuck it, I'm sure I could do it. They wouldn't even need to pay me. Just put me in some spaceship on my way to Mars, 18 months in space wouldn't bother me; I don't think anything would. It would be so cool.

So John McCain is on twitter now (here's the story about it, there's probably a link to his twitter page too, but I felt no need to go look at it.) I’m not excited. First of all, fuck twitter. It’s completely unnecessary, who feels the need to put out vapid updates several times a day. Their character limit is going to finish what AIM and texting have started; I cant w8 2 c the first book tat looks liek this. Fuck. Anyway, McCain. What’s his deal? He clearly can’t be considering another Presidential run in 2012; he got his ass kicked this year, he’s going to be even older then, and if he gets in her way, Sarah Palin may shoot him from her helicopter. So why is he trying to stay in the spotlight so much? Doesn’t seem real mavericky.

I just saw a commercial for some show that the Golf Chanel is doing, The Haney Project, where the world’s best swing coach is going to try to fix Charles Barkley’s swing. The commercial said that the show would be uncensored, and I guess to underscore this point they had Barkley saying “shit” after a swing. But they bleeped it.

So it’s looking conceivable that Nadya Suleman won’t be able to take her octuplets home with her. It would suck if the kids have to be put into foster care, but that’s gotta be best for them in the long run. She’s out of her mind crazy, and doesn’t need to spread that crazy around. I’m still really frightened by her. When she has another four kids next year, and she will, someone will hopefully step in then and steal her uterus or something. She’s just terrifying.

I think that’s pretty much it for now. Happy Marty Brodeur Day everyone.

They're on the move!

And headed for a stronghold near you!

Mr. Gerber's Wild Ride

Here's a description of some of the people I had the esteemed privilege of seeing on my romp across the country for the holidays:

The woman in front of me at Airport security
She chose to wear knee-high boots with a zipper down the calf from top to heel. I know that these new-fangled security guidelines are capable of shattering anyone’s routine, and that having everyone take off their shoes really slows down the security line. But September 11th was over 7 years ago. Now, you’re just another fucking moron and not merely living with St. Christopher’s absence.

The guy directly behind me in the Southwest boarding line
For those of you who haven’t flown in the “no hidden charges zone” Southwest still has you pick your own seat. In order to do this, you are assigned a check-in number and you have to get yourselves in line when the time is called like you’re headed to recess. This conversation ensued:

Me: (standing in line minding my own business)
Middle-aged dude in need of friends: Well looks like you’re A15, and since I’m A16 I guess I’m right here.
Yep. That’s how number fucking order works.
My disinterested nod shook him off of me, but my ears could not be saved. After all, A15 must stay in front of A16. We just covered this.
Middle-aged dude in need of friends: (to no one in particular) So…headed to Baltimore, huh?
Crickets: Chirp chirp.
Middle-aged dude in need of friends: Don’t know what the big deal is with this weather! Back where I’m from in Syracuse this is like flurries. We got 18’ of snow in December 3 Christmases ago.
Right. Which is yet another reason why I don’t live in Syracuse.
Middle-aged dude in need of friends: All they need to do is prep the streets with salt and get the rotation going. And where do you get your salt from? Salt City, USA. (dramatic pause) SYRACUSE!
What are you, a Syracusan real estate agent? And if you are, you suck at your job. So far your major selling points have been 1) we’ve got salt 2) we’ve got God-wrath amounts of snow and 3) your sorry ass. You can’t pay me to live there.

Then, moments later, douchebag in the aisle holding up the whole flight.
I know for a fact that you’re only allowed to bring one carry-on bag. They tell you fucking anywhere you look in an airport. This fact is incontrovertible. But somehow, this guy gets onto the plane with 3 fucking bags! He’s pushing a rolling bag in front of him, pulling one behind him, and has a massive backpack strapped to his back. But it wasn’t the number of his bags nor was it the fact that it took him 10 minutes to realize that he couldn’t fit 3 great big bags into an already crowded overhead compartment that told me I wasn’t going to like him. No, I knew I wasn’t going to like him from the moment I saw that the straps of his backpack were clipped together three inches below his chin like he was ready to go absailing in a fucking canyon. That was enough.

Dickhead shuttle bus driver
After this debacle, I had to grab a train to get to my final destination. I had roughly 30 minutes to catch the shuttle to the train station, pick up my ticket, and get on board. When I got to the curb to grab the shuttle, there was already a mass of people waiting there. One guy was yelling as loud as he could as if that was the signal to get a shuttle driver to show up. I did not hate that idea.
I noticed about 100 feet away three shuttles were idling instead of, you know, shuttling. I walked ahead of the pack and waved to try and flag one down. In response, the shuttle driver in the front turned his lights off, presumably to prevent me from seeing the giant white bus parked under row upon row of artificial light. Or maybe just to be a dick. I would be less offended if the latter was his motivation.

There were many other fine travelers out today, but I’ve been en route for over 6 hours now and that much travel combined with all this anger has really worn me out.