Arkansas still suck
So last week my wife and I did a road trip as a kinda of seeing if we could make this work sort of thing. We drove down to Memphis Zoo, one of only 4 zoos in the nation that has Pandas. Unfortunately, I had to drive through Arkansas again.
The basic trip was across Illinois to St Louis, then down the Mississippi going through Missouri and Arkansas. Drive over the river and inot Memphis and their zoo. The trip was mostly fine and pretty uneventful really. I mean honestly, it's downstate Illinois. There were hundreds of miles of cornfields. How much can you say about corn? It's tall. It's green. It makes a good joke in AMV Hell. That's about it really.
We didn't actually go through St Louis, didn't want to deal with the traffic. Instead we took 255 around St Louis. I did notice something that kinda made me think a little. From parts of 255 we could easily see the St Louis arch. I haven't looked at a map to be exact, but the closest we came was probably ten miles from the arch. I've been to St Louis several times and have done the typical tourist arch visit thing, although last time I went we didn't even bother. It's just a building. Not even a useful one, just this metallic lump. Basically an overgrown modern art piece, the type metal crap you see outside any civic center in North America. It's supposed to speak to you about soaring dreams or linking past to future or whatever the hell the artist was trying to say, but really all it makes you think is "damn, someone got paid for that? I shoulda become an artist."
However, if you stop and think about it, in the not so distant past a trip of 10 miles would take half the day. Most people would never travel that far. It wasn't uncommon to live your entire life within a few miles from the small town your were born in. We have stamped the very skyline with man's imprint. Nature rarely does this. From 10 miles away you don't see the Mississippi River, the largest in North America. You can't see Lake Michigan from 10 miles away when driving around in Chicago. For the most part neither the Pacific or Atlantic oceans are visible from 10 miles away. You can pass within 10 miles of the Grand Canyon and not even know it's there. But by god, 10 miles away from St Louis and you can see the Arch and know that mankind has been here.
Then I got stuck in construction traffic and any cliched philosophical thoughts were driving out of my mind. What fucking dumbshit turns a highway into 1 lane either direction for fifteen fucking miles? God dammit, it's summer, the time when people take vacations and drive. Fix the shit ass highways in winter when no one wants to use the things anyway. But no, instead they have to fuck everything all up at the busiest driving time of the year. Cocksucking bastards.
Anyway, eventually I get past the miles and miles of fucking road construction. The rest of Missouri was uneventful. Some pretty countryside, at least it's pretty when you see it flying past your window at 85 MPH.
Then we hit Arkansas. I loudly yelled 'FUCK' as soon as I saw the sign saying I was entering the state. However, I had learned something from last time, so I tried to not stop in the shithole. Once you enter Arkansas you're torn between two conflicting urges. The first urge is to see if your car can do 110 MPH just to get you out of the state as quickly as possible. The second urge is to drive 35 MPH because with how bad Arkansas roads are, you can't safely drive faster. If you go above 35, there's a real chance you might hit a pothole large enough the it acts like a ramp and your car actually achieves some airtime. You end up sitting in your car while it's soaring like a bird and you're yelling "WHERE THE HELL IS THE GROUND? SHIT! FUCKING ARKANSAS!" Although I did notice parts of their roads have improved. Ever so often you'd come on a mile or so of road that has been paved within the last twenty years. OTOH, there are almost no signs in Arkansas. You know those signs that tell you how far a city is, or where gas is, or whatever? Arkansas doesn't have them. Perhaps the sign budget was used to pave that 1 mile of road every so often. So you have no idea where you're at or how far you have left to go, but every so often you can manage to drive a mile without your car vibrating more than a sex toy. It's a fair trade off I guess.
We eventually hit Memphis. It's late enough we get a hotel, a bite to eat, and go to bed. When I travel I like to visit restaurants that are not available in my home town. Why drive 8 hours if you're going to end up eating at McDonalds? If that's what I wanted, I could have gotten to a McD's with a 5 minutes drive instead. I asked the person checking us into the hotel if there is a decent restaurant in the area. She gives me directions to Denny's. Great, instead of driving 8 hours and hundreds of miles for a double quarter pounder, I could get a Grand Slam breakfast instead. Because, apparently, in Memphis the damned Denny's is the only decent restaurant around. We noticed there was a McDonalds across the street, so...
The next morning was the zoo. Most of the zoo has the same things every other decent zoo does. Bald Eagle, check. Wolves, check. Bears, check. Lions, tigers, and monkeys, all checked. The real attraction was the Pandas. Which were very nice, we were there in the morning on a weekday so it wasn't crowded and we were able to spend a good hour or so sitting there watching them.
In the aviary was the most annoying little bastard kid. The fat little cumstain would go 'Look, a boid!' Then he would go to the next exhibit and go 'Look! A boid!' Time after time, it was always 'Look! A boid!' Usually accents don't bother me. I generally barely notice them unless they're very thick. For some reason, this kids was annoying the shit out of me. I wanted to grab him by his damned throat and yell "NO SHIT IT'S A FUCKING BIRD! We're in the god damned aviary! What did you expect, flying monkeys? This isn't the Wizard of Oz you worthless proof that forced sterilization is a good idea! Of course there are birds in the aviary, that's the entire god damned point of having a fucking aviary! And the word is bird. BIRD! B - I - R - D! There's a fucking R in the word, say it. SAY IT!" On afterthought, perhaps it's a good thing I've never become a father...
Anyway, I promised pics so here they are.
Before the pandas, here, have some monkey tits. The scary thing, this monkey is male. You can't tell from this shot, but it most definitely had the male bits. And huge monkey tits.
I have a dozen panda pics, but I'll only bore you with two. The first is the Panda eating. The amusing thing, and it doesn't seem to come off nearly as well in the picture, is that you could only see the top of panda. He had piled all his bamboo on his lap. The picture clearly shows this, but it's impact isn't nearly as much as sitting there going "Does he have legs? Seriously, I've been sitting here an hour and I haven't seen his legs yet. Did they get an amputee panda or something?" The panda was leisurely picking a piece of bamboo up, sniffing it, then eating it. I have no idea why he sniffed each piece. It's not like he rejected any of them after sniffing them. There was a zoo official around answering questions and someone asked her about it. Her response was that she has no idea why he sniffs each piece, he never rejects any of them after sniffing them. The woman probably went through training to learn that answer, nice to know isn't it?
Eventually my concerns about amputee panda were answered, here's another picture of the same panda. Clearly it does have a lower body. Which is good, I was starting to wonder if I had fallen for some animatronic panda or something. The picture looks like the panda is emo and crying or pouting. Really it's just taking a drink, it's water fountain is designed so that's how it drinks. He just leans over the whole thing and puts his mouth right on the spigot. Kinda like a gradeschooler at a drinking fountain.
If you want to see a lot more pictures of animals, half of which are blurry as all hell because I suck at the whole camera thing, they can be downloaded here. There are two pandas at the zoo, but the other was asleep the entire time so you'll have to download all the pics to see it because I don't really see the point of posting a sleeping blur in my journal.
And that's my zoo trip. Cursed out Arkansas. Had a lovely dinner at McDonalds. Proved my wife and I can still spend time with each other without committing homicide. Saw some pandas. The end.
The basic trip was across Illinois to St Louis, then down the Mississippi going through Missouri and Arkansas. Drive over the river and inot Memphis and their zoo. The trip was mostly fine and pretty uneventful really. I mean honestly, it's downstate Illinois. There were hundreds of miles of cornfields. How much can you say about corn? It's tall. It's green. It makes a good joke in AMV Hell. That's about it really.
We didn't actually go through St Louis, didn't want to deal with the traffic. Instead we took 255 around St Louis. I did notice something that kinda made me think a little. From parts of 255 we could easily see the St Louis arch. I haven't looked at a map to be exact, but the closest we came was probably ten miles from the arch. I've been to St Louis several times and have done the typical tourist arch visit thing, although last time I went we didn't even bother. It's just a building. Not even a useful one, just this metallic lump. Basically an overgrown modern art piece, the type metal crap you see outside any civic center in North America. It's supposed to speak to you about soaring dreams or linking past to future or whatever the hell the artist was trying to say, but really all it makes you think is "damn, someone got paid for that? I shoulda become an artist."
However, if you stop and think about it, in the not so distant past a trip of 10 miles would take half the day. Most people would never travel that far. It wasn't uncommon to live your entire life within a few miles from the small town your were born in. We have stamped the very skyline with man's imprint. Nature rarely does this. From 10 miles away you don't see the Mississippi River, the largest in North America. You can't see Lake Michigan from 10 miles away when driving around in Chicago. For the most part neither the Pacific or Atlantic oceans are visible from 10 miles away. You can pass within 10 miles of the Grand Canyon and not even know it's there. But by god, 10 miles away from St Louis and you can see the Arch and know that mankind has been here.
Then I got stuck in construction traffic and any cliched philosophical thoughts were driving out of my mind. What fucking dumbshit turns a highway into 1 lane either direction for fifteen fucking miles? God dammit, it's summer, the time when people take vacations and drive. Fix the shit ass highways in winter when no one wants to use the things anyway. But no, instead they have to fuck everything all up at the busiest driving time of the year. Cocksucking bastards.
Anyway, eventually I get past the miles and miles of fucking road construction. The rest of Missouri was uneventful. Some pretty countryside, at least it's pretty when you see it flying past your window at 85 MPH.
Then we hit Arkansas. I loudly yelled 'FUCK' as soon as I saw the sign saying I was entering the state. However, I had learned something from last time, so I tried to not stop in the shithole. Once you enter Arkansas you're torn between two conflicting urges. The first urge is to see if your car can do 110 MPH just to get you out of the state as quickly as possible. The second urge is to drive 35 MPH because with how bad Arkansas roads are, you can't safely drive faster. If you go above 35, there's a real chance you might hit a pothole large enough the it acts like a ramp and your car actually achieves some airtime. You end up sitting in your car while it's soaring like a bird and you're yelling "WHERE THE HELL IS THE GROUND? SHIT! FUCKING ARKANSAS!" Although I did notice parts of their roads have improved. Ever so often you'd come on a mile or so of road that has been paved within the last twenty years. OTOH, there are almost no signs in Arkansas. You know those signs that tell you how far a city is, or where gas is, or whatever? Arkansas doesn't have them. Perhaps the sign budget was used to pave that 1 mile of road every so often. So you have no idea where you're at or how far you have left to go, but every so often you can manage to drive a mile without your car vibrating more than a sex toy. It's a fair trade off I guess.
We eventually hit Memphis. It's late enough we get a hotel, a bite to eat, and go to bed. When I travel I like to visit restaurants that are not available in my home town. Why drive 8 hours if you're going to end up eating at McDonalds? If that's what I wanted, I could have gotten to a McD's with a 5 minutes drive instead. I asked the person checking us into the hotel if there is a decent restaurant in the area. She gives me directions to Denny's. Great, instead of driving 8 hours and hundreds of miles for a double quarter pounder, I could get a Grand Slam breakfast instead. Because, apparently, in Memphis the damned Denny's is the only decent restaurant around. We noticed there was a McDonalds across the street, so...
The next morning was the zoo. Most of the zoo has the same things every other decent zoo does. Bald Eagle, check. Wolves, check. Bears, check. Lions, tigers, and monkeys, all checked. The real attraction was the Pandas. Which were very nice, we were there in the morning on a weekday so it wasn't crowded and we were able to spend a good hour or so sitting there watching them.
In the aviary was the most annoying little bastard kid. The fat little cumstain would go 'Look, a boid!' Then he would go to the next exhibit and go 'Look! A boid!' Time after time, it was always 'Look! A boid!' Usually accents don't bother me. I generally barely notice them unless they're very thick. For some reason, this kids was annoying the shit out of me. I wanted to grab him by his damned throat and yell "NO SHIT IT'S A FUCKING BIRD! We're in the god damned aviary! What did you expect, flying monkeys? This isn't the Wizard of Oz you worthless proof that forced sterilization is a good idea! Of course there are birds in the aviary, that's the entire god damned point of having a fucking aviary! And the word is bird. BIRD! B - I - R - D! There's a fucking R in the word, say it. SAY IT!" On afterthought, perhaps it's a good thing I've never become a father...
Anyway, I promised pics so here they are.
Before the pandas, here, have some monkey tits. The scary thing, this monkey is male. You can't tell from this shot, but it most definitely had the male bits. And huge monkey tits.
I have a dozen panda pics, but I'll only bore you with two. The first is the Panda eating. The amusing thing, and it doesn't seem to come off nearly as well in the picture, is that you could only see the top of panda. He had piled all his bamboo on his lap. The picture clearly shows this, but it's impact isn't nearly as much as sitting there going "Does he have legs? Seriously, I've been sitting here an hour and I haven't seen his legs yet. Did they get an amputee panda or something?" The panda was leisurely picking a piece of bamboo up, sniffing it, then eating it. I have no idea why he sniffed each piece. It's not like he rejected any of them after sniffing them. There was a zoo official around answering questions and someone asked her about it. Her response was that she has no idea why he sniffs each piece, he never rejects any of them after sniffing them. The woman probably went through training to learn that answer, nice to know isn't it?
Eventually my concerns about amputee panda were answered, here's another picture of the same panda. Clearly it does have a lower body. Which is good, I was starting to wonder if I had fallen for some animatronic panda or something. The picture looks like the panda is emo and crying or pouting. Really it's just taking a drink, it's water fountain is designed so that's how it drinks. He just leans over the whole thing and puts his mouth right on the spigot. Kinda like a gradeschooler at a drinking fountain.
If you want to see a lot more pictures of animals, half of which are blurry as all hell because I suck at the whole camera thing, they can be downloaded here. There are two pandas at the zoo, but the other was asleep the entire time so you'll have to download all the pics to see it because I don't really see the point of posting a sleeping blur in my journal.
And that's my zoo trip. Cursed out Arkansas. Had a lovely dinner at McDonalds. Proved my wife and I can still spend time with each other without committing homicide. Saw some pandas. The end.