So, Anyway...

On my drive to work - and on my way home as well, oddly enough - there is a huge, confusing pile of dirt just off of the highway. It’s not the fact that the dirt is there that puzzles me. Large, random piles of dirt are consistent with and even necessary to Indiana’s unofficial motto of ‘Build Where You Land, ‘Cuz Subdivisionness Is Next To Godliness!’ It’s not even the sheer size of the mound, although it is about four stories tall and roughly the same area as a football field. That makes me wonder, but more along the lines of “Who’s building an underground lair, is it evil, and how do I get me an invite?”

I could get past all this and ignore the mystery dirt if it weren’t for one glaring abnormality: there is a plane resting atop this urban alp. It’s as if the pilot was flying along, noticed the dirt and pressed the button for ‘mountaintop invulnerability,’ but it failed to engage. Whoops! I hate it when that happens. No, that can’t be right. The plane isn’t damaged in any way. It looks like it was put there. But that implies intent and meaning and other things that I don’t see. But that’s not all, because next we come to the proverbial cherry of bewilderment on this hot fudge sundae of confusion: the sign on the mountain right beneath the tail of the plane. Logical sign text might include “Yeah, it’s dirt” or “For Sale: One Plane, slightly used” or “Why are you looking up here? Keep your eyes on the road.” This sign, however, says in large red letters: PUBLIC WELCOME. Welcome to what? I’ve never seen any public there, unless ‘bulldozer’ is now a synonym for ‘general public.’

Maybe there’s something really amazing on the other side of the dirt, like an interdimensional portal to CareBear land or free pony rides. Or just more dirt, which seems the most likely. I really don’t know, and further investigation is impossible because as I mentioned earlier, I’m driving. One must pay attention when driving, and this is especially true in the city of Indianapolis, where the DMV declares themed driving days and tells everyone but me. I don’t know how to get on the mailing list to know when it’s going to be French Connection day, but I’d like to find out. Just the other day it was, evidently, Rev’n Screech! Day. Truckers have their Bring Your Blind Dog To Work And Sure, Let It Drive And Feel Free To Take A Nap Or Something Because You Can Be Ding-Danged Sure Everything Will Go Just Fine Day. Other popular days include Last One To The Fast Lane Is A Rotten Egg and Rain Has No Bearing On My Driving Ability Day, weather permitting, of course.

I find the horn to be such an imprecise method of voicing my extreme disenchantment with theme day participants. ‘Beep’ really doesn’t express just how strongly I feel that perhaps the fifteen-passenger van with a partially completed game of ladder-Jenga on its roof doesn’t belong in the fast lane. Or that I wasn’t leaving room for you to cut me off, actually you just invaded my ‘bubble of safety,’ a procedure I adopted soon after the last Rev’n Screech! Day.

Hey, Rev’n Screech! sounds like Reverend Screech. Whatever happened to Dustin Diamond? I suppose he could be a clergyman now, I can’t imagine there’s too much work for a guy who was and will always be Screech Powers. But enough about Screech.

No, wait. I just did some digging on Dustin Neil Diamond. Yes. His middle name is Neil. Yahoo for parents who are either huge fans of ‘Sweet Caroline’ or just have really sick, twisted senses of humor. Also, he dated Candace Cameron. That’s right, Screech dated DJ Tanner. What?! Dude, don’t be mixing up my beloved sitcom worlds like that! Come on, Bayside is about 300 miles away from San Francisco, anyway. On a related note, which would be sadder: looking that up to see if dating would have been plausible, or knowing it already because you think about sitcom conglomeration regularly? I had to look it up, for what it’s worth. But really, let’s not even go there. Next thing you know, there’ll be bizarre crossovers like Angela Bower leaving Tony Micelli to marry Danny Tanner, and Officer Carl Winslow busting JT Lambert for some hijink or another. And they can appear in Uncle Phil’s court for the hearing. No- I won’t go down that path. That way, madness lies.

So anyway. Weird stuff on the road. Later on my daily journey, we come to the giant sculptures. I call them sculptures, because I don’t know what else to call a 20-foot tall hammer and sickle-esque objet d’arte. Or why someone would have it in their backyard. Or any of it’s nightmare inducing bretheren, for that matter – giant French carnies? Why, I ask you, why? Then again, maybe it’s not a backyard. I suppose it could be a park. Or an invisible modern art museum. What else could explain the giant metal segmented insect carcass and the oversized immobile slingshot next to the yellow Communist pillar?

At least I can be fairly certain those monuments exist. I've been known to see things that, strictly speaking, don't exist. And I'm not talking about the Loch Ness Monster or George Clooney's acting ability. I haven’t managed to spot either of those, though not for lack of trying. An example, perhaps. Once when I was driving I saw an unidentified object on the road ahead. Having searched my mental image banks without finding a suitable match, I logically deduced that it was, in fact, a buffalo-headed man, come into existence through a curse, a leap in evolution, or perhaps the reemergence of a long-forgotten Egyptian god, the enigmatic Buffiris. Have I mentioned that it was dusk, when the sun plays tricks on your eyes? And that I have an overly active imagination?

That being said, I was mildly panicking and in the midst of plotting just how to escape this beast which would inevitably charge my car as I drove by. For that is the attack method favored by four out of five buffalo-headed men. I had decided on the 'evasion by means of undue clerity' technique. Basically I was gonna floor it and get the hell past this monstrosity. The advantage was clearly on my side; I mean, a buffalo head, by the laws of aerodynamics alone, is not built for speed. Surely I would emerge victorious with minimal damage to my paint job.

I approached as stealthily as one can in a large green SUV, and was preparing for the burst of speed when I realized that the buffalo-headed man was actually one of my neighbors riding a horse. I know, I can't explain it either. I blame the early evening sunlight filtered through the surrounding trees and the ancient god Buffiris wished to remain incognito. In any case, I floored it so as not to waste the adrenaline that was already pumping through my system and managed to escape the shapeshifting equestrian unscathed. I forget where I was going with that.

But anyway as I'm typing this, I'm realizing how absolutely disgusting this keyboard is. It's covered in caked on I-don't-want-to-know-what. Seriously, it looks like someone did some X-treem keyboardin' over at the public dirt pile to the point where I don't even like to touch the thing. In a misdirected attempt at retaliation, I've decided to move some of the keys around. Ha. Now I feel superior to all those unfamiliar with the home row.

Man, it's hard to end these 'let's see where this thought leads' writings. So in the interest of motley continuity, I'll sum up in with a limerick, undeniably the noblest of poetic forms.

On the road the distractions abound
What with bisontine gods running 'round
This keyboard needs bleach
And what happened to Screech?
Help yourself to the pinko dirt mound.

And as an added note, limerics are harder to write than I initially thought. That one can count for the time I was actually in Limerick for an entire hour, and much to my chagrin, I couldn't come up with an original limerick to save my life. Count it.