those absurd Minnesotan anti-abortion billboards

I clearly remember my first moment of daylight in Minnesota (I'd flown in at night, so I'm referring to the next morning) because I walked outside and saw one of the many anti-abortion billboards littering the skies across the Midwest. I've seen many such ads since that rude encounter on my first day in Minnesota, all thanks to the incessant efforts of "the billboard people," and I would like to say that I'm just slightly less irritated with each one. It helps that they're so asinine.

This one, however, has always made me laugh with a mean, torturous cackle. The word, "what," of course, is not exclamatory, it's a question. Questions end in question marks. Not exclamation points.

Go ahead, try to say it. Say, "what!" Do it. Out loud.

You can't.

I've tried a hundred times, and you can't do it. It always comes out sounding like a question.

If you look at their stupid website, you'll see they have a multitude of billboards in the archives. An uncanny amount.

I'd always worried that they must have a lot of money here in the Midwest to be able to pay for such advertisement. Coming from San Francisco where my previous employer was an abortion provider, I think this fear is justified tenfold. L. keenly likes to point out that the photography and graphics are very rudimentary, so they might not have much of a budget and/or they're really dumb. I hope for both.

A science blog I read regularly yesterday wrote about these folks, and I thought it was kinda interesting. You can read it here. I love this statement about driving in rural Minnesota: "There is one thing I watch for — and this is a measure of how boring the drive is — and that's the anti-abortion signs. These are an institution on Midwestern country roads." One of the comments to the post alludes to the possible and hopeful fact that these folks don't really have that much power. Finally, good news!