viz.

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."