Absurdities on the Road

A couple of interesting points grabbed my attention as I was driving back to Springfield this afternoon. First was a billboard, which I imagine was advertising some sort of concrete sealant, but the only words which could be read at a high speed were "A Dry Crack is a Happy Crack." Naturally, after 6 hours of driving in the middle of a July afternoon, I believed in their message. Ironically, if not in a disgusting way, about another couple miles on I spied a restaurant I hadn't noticed before. No joke, the name of the place was "The Feed Lot." Ok, so a play on farming lingo is fine for a midwestern restaurant (which appeared as though it were part of a chain). However, do Americans really need a feed lot? And midwesterns, at that? An animated version of Animal Farm comes to mind in which Snowball and Napolean slowly morph into humans while a couple human businessmen slowly morph into pigs, the two species meeting as a very unfortunate looking hybrid between the two. And finally, again with the midwestern theme, is the milemarker discrepancies. See, I exit I-44 at 82A (for those who don't know, as I've noticed this appearently isn't very common knowledge, exit numbers corrospond to mile markers). As such, every milemarker I see tells me how many miles I have left through simple subtraction. But then, as just one example, I'd see signs that said "Springfield - 153 miles," or "Springfield - 134 miles"...but these two signs were not 19 miles apart as measured by the similarly governemnt-installed milemarkers. Assuming, of course, that they're measuring the same Springfield, either 1) the government workers of Missouri can't subtract or 2) at least one of these government workers is a crow.