Published on: 17 Jan 08:00

Aha. A mind worm has been hooked. A pungent brain fart has received the lit match of enlightenment. It's been over two years and it's finally occurred to me what American road surfaces remind me of. They remind me of jellyfish.

Here's what the hell I'm talking about. Here's a typical New Zealand road:

It's surfaced with asphalt. It's my normal. I might look at that and think "yeah that's a road".

And here's a typical USA road:

It's surfaced with concrete. I look at that and stand perplexed at its albino-ness.

But different strokes for different folks, right? Is this really such a big deal? Nah, not really. Takes all sorts to make a world. But when I was in California a couple of years ago, this gnawed at me. For the life of me I could not figure out why. The paleness reminded me of something. No idea what.

And ten minutes ago it hit me. You get all kinds of fantastic creepy-crawlies in caves, and in deep ocean, and in places where the light of day seldom penetrates. You get nocturnal eldritch horrors, with soft milky hides, and tremulous weepy underbellies, they wobble, they fright, they quiver, they squirm, they slap you with tentacles and slime and horrible beaks and chitin and attempt strangulation and drip horrid ectoplasm upon your perineum. The Grotesques of the deep.

That's honestly the vibe I get from American roads. They're too pale! They're underbaked!

Then again, I hear this is the same vibe a ton of darker-skinned peoples and cultures worldwide experience towards ethnicities like moi.

They've got a point. I get sunburned from fireworks.