Monday, December 17, 2007

Please Help to Save the Poor Triceratops from Re-Extinction in Arizona!

I know what you're thinking. When is this guy going to stop writing
about billboards and roadkill? Well, not in Arizona, that's for sure.
Arizona boasts some of the most, let's say, creative advertising to
get travelers to stop and purchase authentic Indian jewelry 40% off.
I drove through this strip of Americana with my family back when I was
10 and, since then, the billboards don't seem to have been so much
upgraded as just embellished. Dinosaurs are a big theme east of
Flagstaff because, I guess, the Petrified Forest is here and petrified
kind of rhymes with fossilized, and, well, DINOSAURS! It starts with
childlike paintings of prehistoric reptiles mingling with the
childlike (and kind of unfortunate) drawings of Native Americans,
morphs into large, rudimentary replicas of dinosaurs that resemble
Barney's distant cousins, before culminating in enormous, realistic
statues of the ancient beasts--and here is my problem...the
triceratops is always on the ground being shredded like a Texas
roadside deer, not by a passing automobile, but by a frighteningly
authentic looking Tyrannosaurus Rex. Arizonans clearly have no regard
for the loss of their plaster Triceratops population to what seems to
me to be a veritable plague of toothy Rex's. Now, for me, the violent
death and dismemberment of a fake dinosaur won't get me to purchase
authentic Indian jewelry 40% off--but, of course, that's just me...

Aside from the overly obnoxious 70s era kitschy billboards, Arizona,
like its neighbor New Mexico, is incredibly beautiful. The sunset
tonight reminded me of melting into someone's eyes. California here
we come...

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