Update 2: Nebraska

Nebraska smells. No, seriously, it does. In fact, lengthy sections of my trip reeked of cow, pig, and I think I may have passed a lemming farm along the way, which you'd really have been amused by the sign for. Sadly, I brought no digital camera, which I may very well have to rectify sometime while I'm here in Denver, as we do have Tarzhay stores here. Sure, they're all inconveniently located, not unlike their placing of super-size bottles of laundry detergent on the top shelf.

Anyway, Nebraska stinks. It's a lot easier to tolerate driving through in the dark, as the sheer boredom generated by the scenery isn't quite enough to make one want to drive into the Platte River, which is apparently pronounced "plat" as opposed to the pronunciation rules given me during my days of working at Starbucks, which explains why they were looking at me so funny when I was buying a bottle of Mountain Dew in North Platte.

I'm currently only a short drive from the west end of Route 34, which is, oddly enough, not marked with annoying signs denoting that it is indeed Ogden Avenue. Perhaps the local children are stealing the signs and putting them in their basements next to their black-lit Grateful Dead posters.

I'm typing this across the street from a Renaissance Hotel that looks nothing like something one would expect out of the architecture of the renaissance. I say this because it looks like the Contemporary Resort of Walt Disney World fame. Of course, it's entirely possible that it may be a relic of the renaissance, as I only ever studied the High Renaissance, which was Shakespeare's creative low-period, when he supposedly wrote several now-lost comedies to star Cheech and Chong.

Coincidentally, Denver is known as "the mile-high city." As a point of fact, all of the official information about the city does indeed say that its elevation is 5,280 feet, but it is my firm belief that the mile was originally to be set at precisely 5,000 feet until Denver's powerful and well-funded altitude lobby got to the first continental congress, who wrote that "the length of a mile shall be 5,280 feet on the back of the Declaration of Independence." Watch the movie National Treasure, it's right there. No, go watch it; I'll still be here when you get back.

By contrast, the capital of Nebraska is Lincoln, as we all learned from the "Big Jim Slade scene" in Kentucky Fried Movie, and it is otherwise a completely unnotable city, with neither a clever nickname nor any crime, the latter of which is likely due to the fact that the city recently abolished all of its laws in favor of total anarchy (which is actually preferable to partial anarchy). Something that you won't find on your AAA map: The next city west of Lincoln is indeed Tire Town.

The Denver Airport has a roof that's built to look like the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, or that's what they say. In reality, the roof is actually a casting of the last settlement of an American Indian tribe made up completely of giants, wiped out in the 1930's by rogues from the backwoods of Wyoming. Eventually, the settlement was discovered and moved to Denver after spending a short time as a covering for the world's largest flea market. It was cast out of steel and then painted white to evoke the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, which will be quite the joke in a decade or two.


AIM: therbmcc71