The water has receded revealing that the channel of the White River has changed. There used to be a broad shoal dividing the stream in two at the bridge in Martinsville. The shoal might be there yet, the water is still high, but now there is a sizable sand bar deposited in the lee of that cofferdam the construction people built. The shoal was coarse. From the distance of the bridge like it looked to be made of rocks and pebbles, clam shells and debris. The sand looks fine and clean. There is one obvious piece of debris though: a huge tree trunk got caught by its roots on the edge of the cofferdam. The sand is inside the dam too, almost to the same level as outside, so I guess they're going to have to dig it out again. Today was the first day that I've seen them back to work.
Oh, that last post? Yes; another drunken ramble. I wasn't trying to be clever, but I sure imagined myself so. It's really nothing more than stream of consciousness, and its only purpose was to put something beneath the title, which is actually what I like. Perhaps I should clarify something though: I am no Tea Partier; heavens no. In my estimation their brand of fiscal discipline is irresponsible; liable to bring down the whole house of cards; throw the baby out with the bathwater (after its been saved from abortion of course). I best be careful what I say.
I think that I shall never see a billboard as beautiful as a tree. Why are there so many billboards when a third of them are simply advertising available billboard space? Oh, then you have the high tech billboards made of lights. They have multiple messages on them. I can't quite figure why though, it must cost more to advertise there. I guess people figure their ad looks better in lights but it's irritating because the ads change so quickly. I see something and don't quite get the message, look at the road, then look back to figure it out and the ad has changed. It's very effective.
Most billboards are just a nuisance but there are a few that I truly hate. I suppose someone thinks they're designed well but they disgust me. There's one on old 37 outside of Bloomington. I don't even know what it's advertising, I always look away. There were several that affected me that way sprinkled around the country when I was over-the-road.
There were billboards that I liked too; like when I was tired and almost out of hours, looking for a place to park. Give me a billboard advertising a truck stop ahead and I'd be very grateful. I could imagine a better way though. Take down the eyesores and put up transponders with a display in every vehicle. The driver could choose which messages they wanted to receive.
There's a billboard on I-70 over toward Terre Haute that's hawking advertising space. It says something like, “24 hour visibility,” only I noticed that it doesn't have any lights. It must be talking about some of the other available spaces.
There are other signs that I like. Mostly the old school ones without a current tenant. There might be several layers of ads all peeling off at different rates. It's abstract; it's beautiful. Then there are the empty boards that look to be made up of an older sign cut up into strips. Usually the strips are alternating right side up, upside down. For what reason that's done I can only guess but it's visually interesting, like an assignment in freshman design school or something. I saw a current add the other day that seemed to made of strips, contrary to the way its usually done nowadays. It wasn't that the add read as if it were done in strips, but a strip from an earlier add had come loose and fallen to rest on the workman's walkway. What was interesting about it was that the fallen strip looked exactly the same as the current ad displayed. I was traveling down the highway at high speed and wasn't at luxury to ponder it but didn't see any difference in the lettering. I wished that I could pass my cursor over it to reveal the old ad underneath.
Nowadays they print the ads onto a sheet of plastic and stretch them across the board. It looks cheap to me, the way that vinyl siding looks cheap on a house, and if they get messed up in the wind it's not so much interesting as untidy.
Bitch, bitch, bitch.
