The Glade 4.0

I loved my vacation, and said a lot of good things about I-75 in the General forum.
Now I'm going to comment on something I found very strange --let's start with billboard evangelizing. You can't turnaround without some jackass shoving Jesus in your face. That started in Ohio, but got even worse in Kentucky and remained that way all the way down into Florida. But that's not strange, I suppose. That's just why they call it the "Bible Belt," i guess. But what really made it seem strange was when traveling through Georgia and southern Tennessee, the ads were interspersed, almost intermittently, with smut ads, side by side. These are giant, tower-sized billboards lit at all hours, visible for miles, spaced so closely you can see a dozen at a time on either side of the Interstate.

Billboard 1: "Strippers! Girls girls girls! Need we say more? Next exit!"
Billboard 2: "You will meet God when you die. Have you made your peace with Jesus?"
Billboard 3: "Adult XXX Superstore! Next Exit!"
Billboard 4: "Mommy, please don't kill me. Abortions make Jesus cry!"
Billboard 5: "Adult entertainment! Spa is Trucker Friendly! Next exit!"
Billboard 6: "Is your life headed the wrong way? Jesus allows u-turns!"
Billboard 7: "Personal Injury Lawyers! We can change your life!"
Billboard 8: "XXX! We can satisfy you! Best Prices! Next Exit!"
Billboard 9: "Jesus is the only way to find God!"

It was unbelievable. Jesus **** Christ! Errr. Yeah, Something like that.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Welcome to America.

Yeah, that whole freedom of speech thing can be confusing.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Maybe it's a competition thing. I'm convinced the easiest way to find a Home Depot is to look for a Lowes.

Yeah, we've got that freedom of speech thing, too. But people somehow find more variety of things to talk about, with a somewhat lower degree of tackiness, than sex, Jesus and a side order of litigation.

(Hey, I'd accept the tacky billboards if it meant our highways were as nice to travel as I-75.)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Yeah, but your Human Rights Commissions may not. Being hauled before a Human Rights Commission because you intend to publish a cartoon, or the Human Rights Commission will publicly excoriate you because you do not publish someone's "rebuttal" in your magazine, or because your website espouses white supremacist beliefs and your tattoos "testify" to your "deep-seated racist and hateful beliefs" - back to jail for you!

So Freedom of Speech in Canada - not so much.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Bible Belt you already figured out.

The adult entertainment is because I-75 is one of the most major freight routes in the country. Truckers = guys who spend a lot of time away from home. You do the math; the guys with the billboards already did, and probably profiting pretty well off their math.

Actually, that's probably a contributing factor (truckers spend a lot of time away from home) in the evangelism, too.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Up here in the non-bible belt, I've never seen such a billboard.

When I lived in California, I would see billboards for strip clubs sometimes. Never saw any "God loves you" billboards, though. I don't see either up here in Idaho, though. Driving through Nevada you see a lot of adult entertainment billboards(not surprisingly). I always found it kinda funny.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Vermont doesn't allow billboards...it's nice.

Beat me to it, Timmit. I love the no-billboard policy back home. Not so great from a libertarian property rights perspective, of course, but oh well!

A long time ago Joyce Kilmer. 1886–1918, wrote

TREES

I Think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Some time later, an American wit by the name of Ogden Nash. 1902-1971, wrote something more pertinent to this thread.


I think that I shall never see
a billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

One of my favorite Strip club signs from right here in AZ

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History of the Condom
In 1272, the Muslim Arabs invented the condom, using a goat's lower intestine.
In 1873, the British somewhat refined the idea, by taking the intestine out of the goat first.

I don't see how evangelical billboards are "shoving Jesus in your face" any more than motel billboards are shoving Super 8 in your face. Frankly I consider them more indictive of the need of some people to call attention to their own beliefs than serious evangelism, but whatever.

As to the contrast with strip clubs, that's just part of the Interstate. Truckers = porn and strip joints. Contrary to popular belief, the Bible belt is not populated exclusively by fundamentalists; in fact nt even mostly. Just more than elsewhere, and they tend to be louder. Regular old rednecks are not in short supply there at all.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

But motel billboards ARE shoving Super 8 in your face DE...

I once saw a double billboard with a pretty raunchy looking strip club and a Super 8.

My first thought was "ewww".

The lapdance is always better when the stripper is crying.

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Hahaha that's pretty good!

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Only very rarely see any billboards for strippers in PA, and I don't think I've seen any for religion. Disclaimer: Despite living in western PA for about a year, I never really traveled in western PA. The midwest starts somewhere in central PA and it seems a very different world over there! So trying to lump my entire state into one statement may be a bad call.

I did stop in a restaurant on route 15 in Maryland, however, that could've used some religious advertising if only to let people know what they're getting into. It seems all typical from the outside, but was crazy religious on the inside. We're talking all the servers being all girls in what seemed to be 19th century clothes, all the tables were community tables instead of split apart seating 4 or 6 each, and so on. Even though all the people there were pleasant enough it was almost a bit unnerving.

Sounds Amish. Dude, there's a ton of that in PA. Where ya been?

Yeah, I was going to comment that it was probably a place that caters to a local Amish or Mennonite community or something. Then, it struck me that that could certainly qualify as "crazy religious" to some people. It's a tame kind of crazy, though, for them.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Would this be considered confirmation bias?

We could use a lot more of this kind of "crazy". Amish folks don't really bother anyone.

I agree. Although they do leave a lot of horse-crap on the roads up near my in-laws place.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Are you referring to me holding that opinion, or to them engaging in that behavior?

I don't know if it is, but I think it is a case of people wanting to feel they are evangelising without real thought as to whether it works, and without putting in real effort to understand either their own message or who they are conveying it to. Sort of like people thinking internet posting is activism.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."