Monday, May 25, 2015

road trip

4 comments:

Michael Haz said...

Wall Drug of South Dakota. Been there, bought crap.

john said...

Isn't that on Interstate 40 at the NM - AZ border? I always stop and pee there.

Chip Ahoy said...

We stopped at lots of those things. They're irresistible. One had a viper pit, and I thought, "That's odd. Vipers look exactly like snakes." Rattlesnakes. I never did know the difference.

I still don't.

Except in hieroglyphics. There is a distinct difference. Both are in category "I," of course, for "amphibious animals, reptiles, etc. and they are both very common symbols. You see them er-were, they're imbickweus.

I-9 the asp, the horned viper, is a short stubby desert snake. A very common hieroglyph for the sound "f" and a lot of other things besides, prepositions mostly and tons of things relating to fatherhood.

The second common hieroglyphic snake is I-10 a "dj" sound and sometimes just a "j" sound. The transcription symbol for it is a d with a line under it and that tells you it's 1 of 4 "d" sounds available, and available in a few forms just as our own J is. I think of the sound in Jiffy pop and Jiffy peanut butter and Jeff who's deaf. All those would be designated by a d with a line under it if they were transcriptions for the long corner-taking snake hieroglyphic.

See? You need me to tell you these useful things because who else will?

The second is a better snake, frankly, because it gobbles up a whole rectangular cell, a space to draw a ligature, a combination of two or more signs. Like Asian symbol writing they have their own kerning, you want them to artistically fit. Whereas the I-9 asp is horizontal and can always use something above it to fill the negative space, the 1-10 wraps around the top and corner sometimes dropping beyond its own space. It's a cool snake. It also leaves a lot of negative space. In Asian writing it would be a symbol that wraps around another partially framing it.

But then, the I-9 viper has two little Martian-like antenna and that's something.

The little kids at the museum sure are cute. They're fun in the comfort of their parental units. We were standing in front of a Horemheb carving with a lot of words and the boy said, "That zig-zag line means water, doesn't it," declaratively and I said "yes it does."

"When there are three of them stacked like a patch then it means the idea of water just as you say and when there is only one then it means the sound "n" like a bunch of n's connected.

"Oh. They sure did like birds, huh," declaratively.

"They sure did."

And that's what you get out of such roadside places with attractions the likes of which you do not see other normal places like viper pits containing snakes that take you to thoughts about the differences between hieroglyphic asps snakes vipers and vocalized sounds. Because you just know those authentic YellowHorse family of Navajo indians have their own snake sign that mean something and their own similar symbol for water but I doubt they would have a symbol for sounds "f," "dj," "j," or "n."

Trooper York said...

This reminds me of this place called "South of the Border" on I95 on the way to Florida from New York. A bunch of people told us it was a great place to stop on the 16 hour drive.

Not so much.