Found roadtrip wisdom

Just flew in from Baton Rouge -- spent today driving down there, leaving a car at my parents' house, and catching a plane back to Dallas. Three things I saw on the road today:

1. A printed sign outside the Billy the Kid Outlaw Museum, in Canton, Texas (home of Rawlins' sister!):

Go to Hell Bin Laden, You and Your Devil Beheaders

2. Prison trustys wearing striped, "O Brother Where Art Thou" get-ups, doing roadwork in tiny Port Barre, La. -- near a sign outside some joint that sold "Live Bait -- Crickets and Shinners. Hot Boudin"

3. Driving west on Hwy 190 over the swampy land just east of the Atchafalaya River, a fiftyish man walking on the opposite shoulder, wearing a backpack, leading a white dog on a rope, shouldering a massive wooden cross, with two wheels on its base behind him.

4. A billboard advertising a lavish buffet at a Shreveport casino, advising the herds swarming to the trough, "Grab your stretchy pants!"

Watch out for devil beheaders, is what I say to you. But if you must be beheaded by Bin Ladenist devils, make sure you're wearing clean stretchy pants.

You know, that billboard advising gamblers to come to the casino prepared to eat so much fried crap that they'll need pants capable of handling their expanding mass strikes me as so ... I dunno, of the cultural moment, or something. Remember that contest some UK newspaper had not long ago, asking readers to come up with a motto for Britain? ("Mustn't Grumble" was my favorite). Well, I think that billboard might have offered an appropriate motto for the land that we love: "Welcome to the USA: Grab your stretchy pants!"