viz. - America

I Made America, You're All Welcome!

Rachel Schneider — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 00:00:08 +0000

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one person to distract herself from work, Facebook provides. Through the The Second City Network I found a video entitled “Founding Fathers History Pick-Up Lines.” Clearly, I couldn’t resist. I was deeply amused to watch Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, and John Adams seduce modern women with such lines as “It’s not the Louisiana Purchase, but it will double in size,” “Never leave for tomorrow what you can screw today,” and “I take the virgin out of Virginia.” The full video below features many more salacious lines, some of which might not be SFW:

More delightful than the video itself was discovering that it is part of a much larger undertaking. I Made America is a transmedia project that relies on multiple media to tell one story: how Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and John Adams were kidnapped from the past, brought to 2012 Chicago, and the adventures that followed. Transmedia, as described by Henry Jenkins, “represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.” This scattered content then “offers backstory, maps the world, offers us other character’s perspectives on the action, or deepens audience engagement.”

Image Credit: Screenshot from YouTube

In I Made America’s case, a series of videos shows how the Founding Fathers adapt to their new circumstances after being abandoned by the American Revolutionaries for Freedom and Family Super PAC, who brought them to the present to endorse conservative causes. Their modern lives include keg stands, romantic intrigues, drunken bar brawls, open mic nights, and even enhanced science-fiction dioramas. Yet the videos can’t contain the whole story—as the Founders wander about Chicago, their activities are recorded on various social media platforms, which are collated and archived on the series’ website. Fans can thus follow their favorites from Facebook and Twitter into real life interactions with the characters at birthday parties and Cubs games.

Image Credit: Screenshot from It is better to be alone than in bad company

Transmedia thus makes possible new kinds of personalized fan experience. An I Made America fan can watch the first episode, then check out Franklin’s video blogs, read Hamilton’s Tumblr, download Jefferson’s music, and follow Madison’s Twitter feed. The series’ heavy social media presence, however, means that fans can not only produce fanart but also share it with the objects of that art directly.

Image Credit: Polks

Their interactions even have the power to solicit new content: as Benjamin Franklin often eats Pop-Tarts during the episodes, one fan texted Franklin to ask if he had ever put a whole Pop-Tart in his mouth. He then attempted to do so on video, challenged others to respond, and then George Washington posted video of his officemate Caroline attempting the feat. The audience can move from passive reception to active participation.

Image Credit: @GoingMadison

However, what is the purpose of such transmedia projects? If transmedia allows audiences greater interactivity with texts, what kinds of experiences does this make possible? And what distinguishes I Made America from earlier (and more conventionally produced) projects like The Blair Witch Project? According to the original video pitch, I Made America is “not about selling a product, but about telling a story. A story of fiction, reality, comedy, politics, and America.” While comedy predominates, its bent is frequently satirical; we can laugh at the sheer silliness of Benjamin Franklin saying “You’re welcome for French ladies,” but Hamilton demanding “Why don’t you vote?” points out the consistent failure of Americans to participate in the political process.

As the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence remain central to American political discourse, remediating and reimagining the Founders through embodied performance calls into question what we understand America to be. Right now, it’s not just fictional groups like A.R.F.F. who feel like they best understanding the Founding Fathers, it’s also political movements like the Tea Party and legal practitioners of originalism that imagine 2012 America should be governed like its 1788 counterpart. I Made America challenges this by imagining how Thomas Jefferson might answer Newt Gingrich’s assertions of what Jefferson might do, as well as suggesting how inadequately the Founders might be prepared to deal with twenty-first century realities.

At the first season’s end, I Made America’s initial light plot turns serious as John Adams begins a presidential re-election campaign and as viewers learn that A.R.F.F. holds Madison captive. What will happen next can only be predicted through another founder’s words: in this case, I Made America’s creator Mark Muszynski, who planned the series to run “alongside the upcoming election so it can respond in real time to things that are actually happening in our world.” So far, Adams has made a campaign stop at Occupy Chicago and received his former Vice President’s musical endorsement. As fans continue to spread the word about I Made America, I can only wait to see what happens next. Perhaps Hamilton, Adams’s campaign manager, can learn some Chicago-style savvy from @mayoremanuel. I don’t think he needs help with the cursing, though.

Horsey Beginnings: Setting the Stage

Steven J LeMieux — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:34:28 +0000

Image Credit the Bureau of Land Management

In George Lucas's Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo rides a tauntaun out into the frozen wastes of Hoth; he needs to find his friend, Luke Skywalker. In George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones, Deanerys Targaryen, a princess in exile, takes center stage in a ceremony for the sake of her child-to-be. She has to eat a raw, fresh horse heart. In Washington County, a Portland woman and her friend buy a near dead horse, shoot it in the head, cut it open, and take pictures, lots of bloody pictures. The following post does not contain these images (a future post will, though).

Image Credit Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Han Solo has to find his friend. He saddles his tauntaun and rides out into the rapidly freezing night. He's told that he won't get far. His tauntaun will freeze before he reaches the first marker. Han doesn't care. Han doesn't care about his tauntaun, and there's no real distinction made, on his part, between this living transportation and his normal mechanical means of getting around. The tauntuans are pretty strange; they look like a kangaroo-dinosaur blend. What almost instantly endears them to the audience, though, is that he saddles the animal; it has reins. Han's a real space cowboy now. He, for a moment, has a real live horse. These tauntauns, too, have perhaps the most pathos filled utterance of any creature in Star Wars. They are filled with emotion. Well, that's the case until Han cuts his now dead tauntaun open and we see that it's filled with guts. Han, as he stuffs Luke into the tauntaun, notes its stink. The tauntuan--dead, sliced open, and stuffed with Luke, is left without a shred of dignity.

Image Credit Game of Thrones via Nerdy Gamer Girl

[A slight note to the reader. While I didn't feel terrible about spoiling a thirty year old movie Game of Thrones (show and book both) are slightly more recent. So, (slight) spoiler warning.]

Deanerys, still pretty much a child, is married off to an older man, the leader of a people dependent on horses. He frightens her, but she learns to love him, and she learns to love the horses. When she discovers that she is pregnant she is taken to some elders and told to eat a horse heart to prove that she's woman enough bear her husband's child. In the book, Martin doesn't spend terribly much time describing the horse eating, but in the show they give us a lavish scene. We don't see the heart cut from any horse, and in some ways it's presented as its own object, free of any horsey connections, much as you might buy from a store. Well, not quite store like. The heart is still, seemingly, full of blood, and as Deanerys works her way through the several pounds of flesh she gets covered. The scene is hard to watch; she, covered in blood, shiny and slimy, nauseous. She chokes down every bite.

Image Credit The Searchers via Gone Movie

We don't, as a general rule, eat horses in the United States. Wikipedia has a nice run down of various historical reasons horsemeat is taboo in different cultures, but one of the most convincing reasons that I have heard for the American distaste of horse meat is that horses are looked at less as beasts and more as companion animals. People talk about cowboys and their relationship with horses as fundamentally ingrained in an American imaginary. And while I don't know if there is any particular research to back up these claims, having grown up watching westerns as a little boy they strike a chord with me. But the horse, the cowboy's companion, is always still an animal. It can be killed, but its killing, while not a damning act is at least worrisome. Horses occupy the curious double space of both means of transportation and friend.

Image Credit Lonesome Dove via American Bedu

[My post is full of spoilers today. Both Lonesome Dove and True Grit are pretty old, but with the new True Grit getting released recently I thought that I'd give a heads up for anyone that is about to watch it.]

They have personality when the story demands and none when it doesn't, and these switches seldom need justification. In Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove there are named horses and unnamed Gus cuts his unnamed horse down and uses it to hide from gunshot--neither McMurtry nor the reader skip a beat in killing the animal. A good portion of the first chapter, and throughout the rest of the long novel, Captain Call interacts with a horse; he has a relationship with the Hell Bitch. She's as tough, tougher maybe than he is.

Image Credit True Grit via The Diplomacy of Kasey Driscoll

Han's search for Luke and tauntaun sacrifice mirrors Rooster's race to save Mattie's life in True Grit. Throughout the story (equally held up in both films, and I assume the novel) horses are front and center. They're haggled over, argued about, praised. And though different characters approach them with different intensities, Mattie’s care and affection for the horses isn't played off as a little girl's whims. Her strength, throughout the story is apparent, and her relationship with her horse Little Blackie is presented as genuine and admirable. But Rooster sacrifices Little Blackie--sacrifice cleans things up too much. He brutally rides him to death. In the more recent film this point is amplified. Rooster rides Little Blackie as far and fast as he'll go, then stabs him to push him further. Once Little Blackie falls Rooster shoots him. But Mattie is saved. The climax of the film revolves around this horse. The characters are forgotten and we feel for the horse; Rooster disgusts us. Minutes after the horse is dead he is forgotten, though. The film ends firmly focused on Mattie and Rooster, neither are disgusting.

That horses are disposable and relatable for many people raised on westerns and American horse culture is why the story of Jasha Lottin is so strange. In next week's post I'll be focused on her actions and pictures.

The City upon a Hill at Halftime: Detroit, Unions, and the USA

Rachel Schneider — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 22:43:30 +0000

Image Credit: Screenshot from YouTube

While baseball is more my sport, I haven’t missed watching the Super Bowl for the last couple of years. If nothing else, I enjoy analyzing the Super Bowl commercials—and this year’s Chrysler commercial featuring Clint Eastwood presents an irresistible opportunity to discuss some interesting controversies. Both conservative critics like Karl Rove and the Wall Street Journal’s Steve Goldstein and liberal ones like Michael Moore and Charles Mudede have read the commercial as promoting Obama’s reelection campaign. The ad’s copy and visuals directly connect the fates of Detroit and the auto industry with larger economic and political trends, as you can see:

One of the commercial’s early phrases, “It’s halftime in America,” sounds very similar to the phrase from Reagan’s famous ad, “It’s morning again in America.” However, the commercial’s tone is not nearly as triumphal. While both ads feature morning scenes, Chrysler’s surrounds theirs with images of a grizzled Clint Eastwood walking down a dark alley, his face only visible at the commercial’s end. The bright daylight surrounding a man sitting on the edge of his bed is juxtaposed with a commentary track that declares, “People are out of work and they’re hurting, and they’re all wondering what they’re going to do to make a comeback.” The commercial attempts to play on the kairos of both the Super Bowl halftime and America’s economic recovery. And while the Giants and Eli Manning managed to come back after the football game resumed, I want to think about how both the commercial and the conversation surrounding it think through the “comebacks” of Detroit and the American automotive industry at large.

Image Credit: Screenshot from YouTube

The Chrysler ad’s argument invites America, in the midst of economic crisis, to look to Detroit and companies like Chrysler for inspiration. The commercial’s copy makes the argument explicit:

The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together. Now Motor City is fighting again. I’ve seen a lot of tough eras, a lot of downturns in my life, times when we didn’t understand each other. It seems that we’ve lost our heart at times. The fog of division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead. But after those trials, we all rallied around what was right and acted as one, because that’s what we do. We find a way through tough times—and if we can’t find a way, then we make one. All that matters know is what’s ahead: how do we come from behind? How do we come together, and how do we win? Detroit’s showing us it can be done. And what’s true about them is true about all of us.

The visuals double the words: instead of a waving American flag, we see a flag for the city of Detroit. The images of happy industry are those of African-American men in a plant, wearing safety goggles and manufacturing shiny cars. At the commercial’s end, we see all of the people who were getting ready for the day now relying on Chrysler cars to transport wood to construction sites or children to school.

Image Credit: Screenshot from YouTube

While both Eastwood himself and Chrysler’s marketing chief Olivier Francois have explicitly denied that the commercial promotes Obama, the copy and accompanying video do implicitly argue that Detroit’s rebirth—enabled by the auto industry bailout—presents a good model for the rest of the country. The warmly-lit unionized auto plants are directly contrasted with images of television news talking heads and protesting Wisconsin union members, in which cold colors predominate. Even the black-and-white pictures of families and firemen visually set these people apart from the others, turning them into models for the rest of us. Detroit thus takes from the rest of America its role as “the city upon a hill.” It is the reborn economy that America can follow, through the purchase and support of American labor and American-built cars.

Image Credit: Screenshot from YouTube

However, this message contrasts strongly with common images of Detroit as a ruined and ruin-city, and conservatives are reacting strongly against it. Clint Eastwood, the paragon of a rugged, silent conservative American masculinity, is now being attacked as “a spokesman for welfare queen Chrysler.” While Chrysler’s slogan, “imported from Detroit,” attempts to play with the stereotype that imported cars like Toyota and Honda are superior, some commentators are reading it as “the signature Obama haughtiness” which prefers a European socialism to American capitalism. In a political moment where Republicans reject unions as anti-American (despite a long history to the contrary), this commercial directly challenges these scripts.

Image Credit: Screenshot from YouTube

It’s interesting to contrast this year’s commercial with the 2011 Chrysler Super Bowl commercial featuring Eminem, which also embraced this slogan, incorporated some of the same images of Detroit’s ruin, and also boldly proclaimed Detroit’s identity as “the Motor City” where “this is what we do.”

The important difference here, I speculate, is that the older commercial merely tries to reverse an association between Detroit and cheap cars—pairing the language of “luxury” with images of grand old Detroit buildings—this year’s commercial dares to proclaim Detroit more than just “a town that’s been to hell and back,” but a model for America’s future progress. The language of American exceptionalism is frequently and commonly invoked in advertisements, but what makes American exceptional and what parts of America can be exceptional or “American” is always heavily negotiated and contested during an election year. This commercial and its connected visuals (like the map on YouTube which shows people watching the ad across the country, drawing lines of connection between the viewer and the USA) argue powerfully for “the values we hold in Detroit … and the values we think our customers identify with,” but those values implicit can’t be uncritically accepted during an election year when Republicans are campaigning against a President they call “almost un-American.” Likewise, a commercial that seeks to conflate the “they” of Detroit with the “we” of America can’t be accepted by politicians who explicitly rejected the auto industry bailout. This commercial—unintentionally or not—signals the beginning of not just the Super Bowl’s second half, but also the contentious election season ahead.

From Sea to Shining McDonald's, and Other Americas: Critical Cartography II

Jake Ptacek — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Image by Stephen von Worley

Last week, I wrote about the power of cold-war era maps when it comes to visualizing Western attitudes towards the Soviet bloc, and, in the work of William Bunge, visualizing themselves. This week I want to continue my trip down critical cartography's rabbit-hole with an overview of maps that attempt to locate forms of the "American experience." How can aspects of daily life in America be represented visually? The following maps try to answer that question, in playful, political, and subversive ways.

The image above, Stephen von Worley recounts on his website, is one attempt to answer the question, "How far away can you get from the world of generic convenience?" Transforming each McDonald's in the contiguous 48 states into one dot, von Worley redraws the US as an enormous network of lights. (The answer to the question, by the way, is 145 miles, by car, in southwestern South Dakota.) The map makes a compelling, if simple, statement about the prevalence of corporate experience throughout America.

Image: New York Times

Jumping from the corporate to the political, this 2008 map from the New York Times charts a single voter's relative political influence in the US. States have been resized based on a comparison of state population with the number of electoral votes allotted (it should be noted that the state population does not accurately reflect the number of acutal voters). The larger the state, the larger the influence. The size of Wyoming and the Dakotas should come as no surprise to anyone, but one thing the map handily reveals is the relative power of voters in Washington, D.C., Vermont, and Rhode Island. As the commentary that accompanies the map suggests, visuals like these help reveal the "one-person one-vote" myth that's prevalently held on both sides of the ideological divide; the truth, as always, is much more complicated.

Image: The Big Picture

The map above comes from Frank Jacobs's Strange Maps blog, an excellent web resource for all maps non-traditional (you'll note several maps from this post there). It breaks down the American Gross Domestic Product (GDP) into the GDPs of each individual state, and then renames each state with the name of a country with a similar GDP. The result is a fascinating international picture. This map is rough, of course, and doesn't take into account a per capita GDP, but, as Jacobs explains it, "this map does serve two interesting purposes: it shows the size of US states' economies relative to each other (California is the biggest, Wyoming the smallest), and it links those sizes with foreign economies (which are therefore also ranked: Mexico's and Russia's economies are about equal size, Ireland's is twice as big as New Zealand's)." What emerges is a truly unique view of the American economy (check his website for a more detailed account of the map).

Image by Matthew Zook

By contrast, the maps above and below, created by the folks over at FloatingSheep, reveal a very different American experience. According to their website, the cartographers at Floating Sheep are "dedicated to mapping and analyzing user generated Google Map placemarks." While this can sound drily academic, the maps they generate are often anything but. As they note, Google Maps documents users "memories, feelings, biases, and reactions to places," and though the site is powered by serious analytic and academic work, the maps capture the "collective intelligence"--or maybe better yet the collective unconscious--of internet users. Above, the group has mapped Google Map references to bars versus Google Map references to grocery stores. More references to bars generates a red dot. More grocery stores, a yellow. Who knew that Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota would be bar central? (Actually, as someone who grew up smack dab in one patch of red and went to college in another, I did...) In the map below, data from the PriceofWeed website (sorry, it's an academic post, no link; I imagine you can find it if you want) is mapped onto the US, creating an interesting picture of high-productivity growing and import areas.

Image: FloatingSheep

Image: Strange Maps

To conclude, two maps that zoom in geographically, taking a closer look at America. The first map, above, was produced by Paramount in the late 1930's (several different dates are floating around on the internet) by a seemingly unknown cartographer. It's a map of studio locations and where they've stood in for--a geography of fantasy, or good ol' Hollywood wish fulfillment. It's sort of boggling to see Spain next to San Diego, or Sherwood Forest just north of the Red Sea. I find it a charming representation of global geography, and perhaps more proof that--as my Northern Californian friends would say--SoCal residents think they're at the center of the world.

I've saved my favorite map for last, a particularly evocative image from Denis Wood's ongoing Narrative Atlas of Boylan Heights. Long a kind of mythic cartographic project, Wood has been making creative, non-traditional maps of the Boylan Heights neighborhood in Raleigh, NC for over four decades. Parts of that project were recently published as Everything Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas, which is well worth looking into if maps interest you in the slightest. Wood, whose work has been featured on This American Life, makes maps of jack-o-lanterns, locations referenced in local papers, graffiti, and other non-standard ways of visualizing space. At their best, his maps challenge you to reconceptualize the world around you. The map below, simply entitled "Stars Map", is an attempt to situate Boylan Heights "in everything, that is, in the universe" according to Wood. I think there's something simple and evocative captured in the image, something I won't spoil with continued analysis. You can get a taste of some of Wood's other work here, and (as mentioned above) many of these maps have now been published.

Image by Denis Wood

Meat America - a photographic celebration by Dominic Episcopo

Cate Blouke — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:30:16 +0000

WTF, by Dominic Episcopo, from Meat America

Dominic Episcopo wants to explain to you "the indefinable adjective that is 'American'." And as far as he's concerned, the best way to do that is with meat. The images are funny, deeply ironic, and often ambiguous given Episcopo's purported mission.

Above, packaged ground beef shaped into the letters "WTF" is surrounded by a variety of fresh vegetables - one of these things is not like the other. The meat seems to be asking questions about processed foods and meat consumption.

Last semester Megan wrote a post about viewer expectation and food art, touching on how food as a medium can move audiences through both desire and disgust. Since Mike's comment on my post about Lady Gaga's meat dress earlier this semester, I've also been thinking about the relationship between images and appetite.

Texas, by Dominic Episcopo, from Meat America

Episcopo's adventures in meat manipulation are ostensibly intended as a celebration of America. As he explains, his project "celebrates our [American's] appetite for insurmountable odds, limitless aspiration, and immeasurable success." Given that Texas holds by far the largest number of cattle (more than 13 million head of the nation's roughly 92 million total in 2011), the Texas-shaped steak makes a lot of sense. It's symbolic of a huge portion of Texas' industry and the immense pride of this state (we're a prime cut, not just ground beef). But, I can't entirely tell if Episcopo's project is meant to be read as ironic. And if meat is American, and America is meat, I'm wondering what exactly that means...

Love, by Dominic Episcopo, from Meat America

Perhaps the clues can be found in the details. In the image above, the ground beef "love" is paired with pretzels, coffee, some sort of packaged dessert bar, and placed next to a newspaper strategically folded to include only "& Death." The sticker's read "U.S.D.A. Choice Beef," and "Family Pak Buy More." Here, as in the image below, the meat industry is linked with mortality - perhaps a nod to the 400,000+ deaths each year from coronary heart disease.

An American Tale

EmilyBloom — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:41:13 +0000

Image Credit: Empire Movies

There has been some controversy—though less than might be expected—about the racial politics of the new Twilight movie, New Moon. I went to see the film the other night and while I was prepared for smoldering gazes, repressed embraces, and some retrograde gender relations, I was not prepared for its representations of race. While several critics have protested the casting of predominately non-Native American actors in Native American roles, far less comment has been made about the portrayal of Native American characters as bare-chested pack animals that morph into wolves when they become angry. The main character in this storyline is Jacob Black who falls in love with Bella Swan and then comes down with puberty-induced werewolfism. He and the other wolves are all members of the Quileute tribe, which long ago signed a territorial treaty with the vampires. Sound familiar?

Image Credit: www.newmoonmovie.org

The storyline reminds me of a 19^th century Irish genre called the “national tale” in which national identity is allegorized as the choice between an English and an Irish mate. The heroine or hero’s choice becomes an allegory for national identity: should the nation embrace its indigenous roots or reach outwards towards Englishness? In New Moon, Bella is seemingly rejected by her urbane vampire beau Edward Cullen and becomes increasingly attracted to Jacob. While the story is simple, or simply formulaic, enough, I wondered how allegorically we are meant to read Bella’s choice between the vampiric cosmopolitans and the animalized locals? To further complicate and more firmly allegorize this love plot, the final scenes of the novel take Bella to Europe, which appears to be the origin point of vampire culture and home to the Volturi vampires. Compared to the blood-sucking European monsters, the American Cullen vampires seem models of restraint and compassion. Wedged between the Volturi and the Quileute, Edward and Bella seem to articulate a particularly American version of the national tale.

Image Credit: Screen Shot IMDB

In Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s blog post, “The Politics of Wizards and Vampires,” she argues that Stephanie Myers’ Twilight books represent a particularly right-wing fantasy world. While Valdes-Rodriguez clearly articulates the religious components of conservativism in the novel, I would add that the story also demonstrates conservative values in its representation of national identity. As an American national tale that rejects both European and Native-American identities, the Edward-Bella romance is also a romance of American exceptionalism.

The United states of Nations: a juxtapositional reading

Nate Kreuter — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:15:48 +0000

Image credit: James Richards, via Strange Maps

The dark corners of the intertubes are populated by weirdly animated detritus. In one particular corner I found Strange Maps, an intellectual terra incognita. Here is one map from the site, in which map-author and vexillologist James Richards has filled in United States states with the flags of other nations with populations equal to that of the correlate United States state. What is the point of such a map? It takes us nowhere. It is trivia, contrived comparison, meaningless. Indeed.

This *is* an odd land, and there is perhaps no better way to understand, as a stranger in a strange land, the strangeness than that quintessentially American experience and myth, the road trip. "Buy the ticket, take the ride," someone screams in Jack's ear as he discreetly tries to fill in his fantasy baseball roster.

In the Lonestar People's Republic of North Texorea . . . imagine it . . .

The high plains meth labs have been bulldozed. Justice remains swift. And decisive. The governor's call to secession has been fulfilled. President Rick Perry, in his paramilitary uniform of high commander, sings along to the Lonestar Republic's national anthem and reviews the People's Army, parading forth from Camp Mabry and into the Austin city streets. "Keep Austin Weird," the buzz-cut forces shout in unison as they pass the review stand. The death penalty endures, but the process has been expedited. The workaday Texicans have traded in their Pearl for Pulrosul (an alcoholic concoction bottled with a dead adder inside), and good ol' boys, no longer satisfied with whiskey and rye, swill the juice of the alcohol addled adders, and later bite their heads off. The mezcal worm has turned, into a snake. Our trip begins just out of reach of the center of State power in Austin, on Interstate 35. We drive north. "Keep the Weird in Austin."

The border crossing between North Korean Texas and Oklahoman Moldova is awkward, because our papers are not in order. Not wanting to allow the authorities of either nation state time to catch on, we speed further north. The Choctaw remain dispossessed, but the casinos still operate at full tilt.

Kansas, no longer safe harbor for Fred Phelps and his lolly-pop guild army of Westboro Baptist Church, is New Jamaica. One of the whitest states in the Union now caters to the cliches of Island tourist expectations. Bleached, Wonderbread whitened reggae is the new elevator music, and the tourists converge. But all is not well as Jimmy Cliff spins in his grave on the grain-fatted plain. "There's no place like home" and this ain't no island in the Caribbean, Dorothy. Home is not here. We can't flycast for bonefish in the New Jamaica. Definitely not home.

We spin across Nicaraguan Missouri. The Royals and Cardinals play futbol now. Jack is disappointed. We take in a few games, but the rioting is intolerable. A Pole is calling it the second soccer war. Back into the car. George Brett is not pleased, but he stays behind in Kansas City, and remains irregular. Or too regular.

Still bearing up I-35, we travel over the rich loam of Albanian Iowa. The border crossing is smooth here. There are no communists in sight at this crossing. The guards shake hands with each other and trade exotic brands of cigarettes. We turn a hard right on I-80 in Des Moines, which, because the Albanians are just happy to be here and the Iowans are such hospitable hosts, has been allowed to keep its neutrally French name.

East on I-80, and Illinois has become Zambian Illinois, not Kenyan Illinois, and right-wing conspiracy theorists continue to question the natal origins of President Obama.

In Paraguayan Indiana, Andes have sprung from the farms.

"Greek" Ohio is a wasteland. These are the wrong Greeks, frat boys. We don't stop, not for gas or even a quick piss.

We detour briefly into Guinea Michigan, and Detroit---the ~~metaphorical~~ literal coal fired asshole of American industry---has been replaced by the similarly coastal city of Conakry, population 1,857,153, and falling. There was never any auto industry here, just an unnecessarily malarial West African metropolis, population falling.

In Penn-Zimbabwe we turn south, off of I-80 finally and onto I-99, which brings us to State College and Penn State University, where "We are?!" is now met with resounding answers of "Zimbabwe!" when the call-and-response is initiated at random.

Back in North Korean Texas, immigration issues no longer rate, and across the Rio Grande Valley the Mexican nationalists are discussing the idea of a Great Wall to keep the riff-raff out.

Images like the map Richards has created have little immediate meaning, besides perhaps for the referential relationships they invite us to recognize or invent. Perhaps we do need the captions?

But this is all just silly, right? A silly series of comparisons, and rambling at that, invited by a silly image. Such comparison could not tell us much, or at least not much that is meaningful, about our more real world. Perhaps:

Kim Jong Il

Texas Governor Rick Perry

Texas Flag

North Korean Flag

Tunnel Under US/Mexico Border

Tunnel Under South Korea/North Korea Border