Deep Thoughts by Lola Fitzgerald

Some ruminations on highway signage and language conventions: what’s up with “City Limits” and the perceived menace of landscaping? To elaborate, when approaching the end or beginning of a city, roadside signs tend to say something like “Blubbersville City Limit,” which I find to be perfectly reasonable--I mean a far as the word usage goes; I'm not so sure about the town of Blubbersville. It sounds like a very silly (or full of whale fat) place to live. So anyhow, in contrast to the signs, people in conversation or even in writing nearly always refer to city limits. Plural. This makes no sense. How can you have more than one limit to something? If you have more than one, then the first one really wasn’t a limit at all, now, was it?! A pre-limit? A probational limit that hasn't gotten it's official license to limit things yet? Hmpf.

And then there is my constant bafflement at the highway institution’s insistence that landscaping is something to be afraid of. If we have nothing to fear from artificially arranged vegetation, then what is with all those orange signs by the side of the freeway warning us direly that there is “LANDSCAPING AHEAD.” ??! Well, thank god they also have the follow-up signs letting you know when you can stop clenching the steering wheel in a death grip and begin breathing normally again--you know, the signs that say “END OF LANDSCAPING.” Whew! I always feel so much better knowing that my life is no longer in immediate danger from a bunch of hooligan shrubbery and misguided ground cover...

My last observation of the day is completely non-philosophical; it's pure amusement wrought by some poor well-meaning Christians whose attempts to spread holiday cheer went horribly awry. But in a really funny way. When I work at the brewery, I always drive south on the 15 to get home. As you go down the hill leading to Via Rancho Parkway, by Lake Hodges, there is a house all decked out in lights with their roof proclaiming in six-foot high letters “JESUS IS BORN.” Or at least, that’s what they are trying to say. Because of the angle of the roof, or perhaps due to something blocking part of the last word, it looks like it is telling you “JESUS IS PORN!” I’ve driven by it over seven times now and it never fails to make me laugh out loud and dissolve into a five-minute bout of snickering. Those poor people. If I didn’t have so much fun reading that every night on my way home, I’d find their house and tell them about the corruption of their spiritual message. I’m sure they’d be appalled. But honestly, they should be proud, and take heart in the fact that they are spreading good cheer and joy during this holiday season, albeit in rather a different way than they originally intended.