Slow News Day

The commute to work today was mostly uneventful. No traffic, no pile-ups, no drawbridges, no hoods flying off of my car (yeah true story). About a mile away from work though, the bizarre shit started hitting the wacky fan.

As I eased onto Rt. 80, I saw a oddly-shaped vehicle ahead of me. It was like a cube truck, but a little taller. I noticed some stickers of birds on it and immediately became jealous, for I am still a few eclectic stickers short of making it all the way across my bumper. The bird would have fit in nicely next to Torrential Downpour's two headed dinosaur.

I pulled up a little closer and saw not one, but six giant bird stickers. And then the big reveal: RACING PIGEONS. Racing Pigeons? WTMFFWT? I would've taken a picture with my cell phone, but that's like illegal and stuff and I only advocate law-abiding activities here on BaTR like Wikipedia Vandalism. (FYI, I was at a red light when I took the picture of the MATTRES SPICALE sign). I kept the Racing Pigeons in my thoughts as I pulled into the parking complex, knowing that I was going to march directly to the aforementioned internetionary once I got to my desk and waited the exciting twenty minutes that it takes to boot up my fucking PC in the morning. Yes, I'm still using a Commodore 64.

Load "*",8,1
Ready
Run

(Side note-Do you remember the good old days when the SHIFT key didn't toggle between a letter's upper and lower case?)

Before I got out of the parking lot, I saw yet another sign of the impending apocalypse--a Pennsylvania license plate that had a picture of a tiger on it and the phrase "Save Wild Animals." Did I miss something? Are there tigers roaming free in the jungles of Pennsylvania? If so, I am pleased that these big cats and other assorted wild animals have yet to swim cross the Delaware River. Unfortunately there is no toll to cross the Pennsie bridges to Jersey, so there would be nothing to stop them. The burbs would turn into that movie Savage Harvest, an idea that scared the shit out of me as a youngster.


Ok, smarty pantses. Yes, I know that the only tiger in Pennsylvania is the one at the Philadelphia Zoo. I've seen it in person (and I saw it again in Rocky 2 on Saturday when Rocky is proposing to Adrian "I was wonderin' if you wouldn't mind marryin' me very much?"). In fact, I used to have a hat with the Philly Zoo tiger on it back in the day. But Pennsylvania, let's not pretend that you are The Tiger State.

And while we're at, I am again calling out Ohio, the so-called "Birthplace of Aviation." Remove this claim from your license plates or I will start vandalizing the Wikipedia pages of the Wrong Brothers.

Ok, back to pigeons. Apparently, Pigeon racing has been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Basically, pigeons are driven far away from their home base and tracked to see how quickly they return. It's a strange sport, though I believe I have more respect for it than for Horse Racing. While it still seems like these animals are being brainwashed for human amusement, they're at least not in danger of being seriously injured or euthanized. They would just get lost, and possibly homesick. Due to the great distances the birds travel this is hardly a spectator sport, so seeing the Pigeon Wagon on Rt. 80 is probably as close I'd ever get to witnessing the competition. Once place you'll certainly never witness this Pigeon Racing phenomenon: Chicago. It's the only city in the US where it's illegal to race and/or feed pigeons.

All right, I gotta go kill a baby tiger and feed it to a pigeon in Chicago, and blame it all on descendants of the Wright Brothers, inevitably starting a war between Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Here tiger, tiger....