This past weekend, Leah and I went up to visit her family and friends in NJ. Here’s some observations…
- We watched Children of Man. There’s a featurette on the disc showing how — at the risk of a spoiler, I’ll spoil you only this much: there is a baby in the move, and it was added using CGI, which is why it looks like Gollum — they did the baby. At one point, the caption said “Rendering the layers of baby.” Johnathan Swift would be proud.
- Friday night as I was going to sleep, something made my eye hurt. It was red in the morning, and has been watering ever since. I think I am allergic to New Jersey
- Many years ago in Maryland, there was a supermarket chain called A&P. They are now called SuperFresh. In New Jersey, I saw a “Super A&P”. It’s as if the name-change had just hit that town, and something caused it to tragically halt halfway through the transformation.
- There was a stretch of highway on the way home called “The Concrete Mile”. It was made of asphalt just like every other highway.
- We passed a shop called “Andy Ferrigno’s Equipment”. The jokes to be made may well be endless. I’ll start you off with “Don’t make fun of his equipment: you wouldn’t like it when he’s angry.”
- When you enter most states, there’s a big sign welcoming you. Often, the sign will remind you of local laws: on the Delaware/Maryland border, the sign reminds you that right turns are permitted on red after stopping. In Delaware, it reminds you that shopping is tax-free. In New Jersey, it reminds you that you need to wear your seatbelt. And right below that is a greeting from Governor John Corzine. I assume the sign was erected by the New Jersey Department of Irony.
- There’s a town, it seems, in PA called “Schrodinger”. I didn’t get a good look at the sign, because my brain insisted that the sign should say now “Next Exit, 10 miles on left”, but “The town will not exist until you get there.”
- Unrelatedly, I once took a class in public policy from Heisenberg’s granddaughter. The class was taught by Distance Learning, because, unlike her grandfather, she could not be in two places at once.
- Billboard: Close deals between laps
- There is a section of US 222 in Pennsylvania called “MIA Highway”, but we couldn’t find it.
- Sign by a dairy farm in PA: Registered Holsteins. Thank god PA has cracked down on illegal cows.
- A sign at a gas station gave prices for “Regular”, “Plus”, “Super”, “Deisel” and “Kero”. For just a second, I read that as “Karo”, and thought that it would be a truly wonderful day if we could make our cars run on high fructose corn syrup. Of course, the fumes would probably send me into a diabetic coma.
That is all.