Weird America: Vacation Spots for the Intrepid Traveler

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Well, it's that time of year again.

The trees are blooming, the birds are singing, the sap is rising, and the minds of most Americans turn to thoughts of packing up the car, kenneling the pets (or getting a neighbor to come by and feed them), and getting away from it all for a few days. So, as we always do about this time every year, we bring you our guide to American's weirdest vacation destinations:

*Ramp festivals: I regret to say that, by this time of year, most of the South's Ramp Festivals have already taken place. But you can still make the one in Crossnore, N.C., on May 24 and 25.

What's a Ramp Festival, You may ask? It's where you go to eat a whole mess of ramps, silly. And what's a ramp? A ramp is a kind of wild onion, also known as the wild leek. They grow, according to Wikipedia, from South Carolina to Canada, and they've been a staple of the diet in Appalachia for hundreds of years.

The taste has been described as like a "garlicky onion," and there are all sorts of ways to prepare them Unfortunately, though, no matter how you fix them, there's one problem with ramps: They make you smell bad.

Now, it would seem to me that, if you were going to have a festival celebrating something like this, it would be to proclaim, "Thanks be to God that we have a modern food distribution network, so we no longer have to eat something that makes us smell like Satan's gym socks," but tradition is a powerful thing.

As for me, the only way I'm getting near one of these shindigs is to approach it from upwind.

*The Screaming Giant: If you've got a hankering to see a giant metal statue of a screaming bearded man trying to claw his way out of the earth, I'm afraid you're going to have to drive a little farther than you used to.

"The Awakening," a profoundly disturbing statue by sculptor J. Seward Johnson Jr., was originally placed in Washington's Hain's Point Park back in the Reagan years. Apparently the Park Service was never all that crazy about it. Go figure.

In February, a billionaire developer named Milton Peterson laid out 725,000 simoleons for the frantic colossus and moved it to his ritzy new development in National Harbor, Md., where it writhes in all its frozen, mute agony next to the marina and restaurants. Because, you know, there's nothing I want to see more while I'm scarfing down my crab-cakes than a titanic statue of a guy who looks like he's been buried alive. Rich people are weird.

*World's Largest Ball of Twine: It amazes me that, for all the years I've been doing this feature, I've never done a bit on the most classic of all roadside attractions: the world's largest ball of twine. Sisal twine, to be exact.

Well, wait no longer, and my apologies for the delay. It's in Cawker City, Kan. It weighs almost nine tons. It's not particularly interesting-looking. But it is an awful lot of twine.

* The Burger King Vampire Peacock Memorial: In June 2007, a real, live peacock wandered into the parking lot of a Burger King in Staten Island, N.Y., and was promptly beaten to death before a horrified crowd by an insane homeless man who announced he was killing a vampire.

Now, something that weird can't go without being memorialized in some way. So a retired shop teacher from Staten Island named Charles Johnson decided he'd carve a life-size peacock out of elm, decorate it with actual feathers from his own peacocks, haul it to New York from his new home in Virginia, and donate it to the Burger King.

And so he did, and there it sits, in the BK at the corner of Page Avenue and Amboy Road. You can see it to this day. Watch out for insane homeless guys. And the fish sandwich. That thing is nasty.

*The Martian Invasion Memorial: Remember when the Martians landed in 1938? The people of Grover's Mill, N.J., sure do, or at least they remember the hubbub caused by the Orson Welles radio hoax that convinced Americans that nasty Martians with heat rays had landed in their little corner of rural Jersey before being felled by the common cold.

So they've put up a plaque showing a pre-morbid-obesity Welles declaiming into a microphone while a terrified family cowers before the radio. Unfortunately, the water tower that local rubes blasted with shotguns after mistaking it for a Martian war machine has fallen to ruin.

OK, it may not sound like much, but what else are you going to do if you find yourself in Grover's Mill, N.J.?

Happy traveling!


Special question for blogreaders: Where's the weirdest place you've ever been on vacation?

Overlooked Books

Patricia Abbott, over at pattinase, asks me and a bunch of other authors about our favorite forgotten or overlooked book. Check it out, and follow the links for an afternoon's worth of fun!

Schadenfreude, Anyone?

Democrat Wins Mississippi Special Election:

House Democrats won a conservative northern Mississippi House seat in a special election tonight, a victory certain to send shock waves through the ranks of congressional GOPers.

The Associated Press called the race for Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers (D), shortly after 10 p.m. eastern time. With 81 percent of precincts reporting, Childers held a 51 to 49 percent edge over Southhaven Mayor Greg Davis (R).

The victory marked the third time this election cycle that Democrats have won a Republican-held seat in a special election and seemed to suggest that the national political atmosphere could significantly broaden the House playing field in the fall.

As Patrick Nielsen Hayden said via Twitter: "This is like Dr. Doom losing an election in Latveria."

Mississippi's 1st district had long been a conservative stronghold. President George W. Bush won it with 59 percent of the vote in 2000 and 62 percent in 2004. Roger Wicker (R), whose appointment to the Senate seat vacated by Trent Lott (R) created the vacancy in the House, had held the district easily since 1994 -- never winning reelection with less than 63 percent of the vote.

And the wingnuts are, as predicted, wailing and rending their garments in dismay. Check out this post at Hot Air, especially the clip from Alien....

Game over indeed.

What can I say other than HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!

Oh, I know what else I can say...we're coming to take our country back, assholes. Follow or get out of the way, because you've already shown you can't lead.

"How Do You Defend Those People?"

Over at The Graveyard Shift, Attorney Jessa Lutz gives one of the best-written explanations I've ever read of what it's like to be a criminal defense attorney. Definitely worth a look.

IT'S PSYCHOBILLY (MONDAY) !

Crimedog One: "IT'S SOME SORT OF TEXAS PSYCHOBILLY (MONDAY) FREAKOUT!"

Which means Anthony Neil Smith's excellent new one, YELLOW MEDICINE, hits the streets today.

Grab it.

That is all.

Best. Mother's Day Column. Ever.

If you haven't already, trip over to Murderati and read my good buddy (and sometime stalker) Toni McGee Causey's Mother's Day column entitled: Dear God... (the stick turned blue).

You will laugh. You will cry. Guaranteed.

Question for Senator Clinton

Clinton Supporters Send Last-Ditch Obama Attack Emails To Supers - Politics on The Huffington Post

Dear Senator Clinton:

it appears that numerous supporters of your are now e-mailing superdelegates saying that they will vote for Senator John McCain if you are not the nominee.

What about your policies makes you so similar to Senator McCain that your supporters would feel comfortable with this move?

What do you say to your supporters who cannot apparently find a substantial enough difference that they would feel comfortable voting for Senator McCain?

Thank you in advance for your answer.