Pigs in a brain-klet

Last Saturday we headed down the 405 to visit the Orange County Fair. We last went in 2007, just after I got my new camera. That day I was still figuring out what to make of adjusting the aperture and exposure, taking many shots. This time, with two years of shooting (and a slightly greater understanding of how to work the camera—slightly), and having never really finished processing those original shots (this post on the photo site was as much as I got to sharing), I wasn't so inspired; pretty much the fair looked the same, so I found myself thinking I could just as well spend time working on the pics taken last time as I could work on new ones I might take this time.

"Al's Brain" was a worthwhile attraction, featuring a 3-D movie starring Weird Al Yankovic. It was a comedic take on a scientific exploration of the brain which aspired to tell the audience "everything there is to know about the brain"—that could be fit into about nine minutes. Being free with fair admission, it certainly proved an entertaining use of those nine minutes, although even with a catchy polka-rock song by Weird Al and his band I find that I don't remember learning anything.

The 32-ounce beer I'd had just before the presentation may have affected that.

And of course there was no photography allowed inside the exhibit, so I didn't have to worry about that. (There was an impressive sand sculpture outside promoting the show, and of that I snapped a few shots. See one to the left.)

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After leaving the movie something caught my attention that filled me with an undue amount of excitement.

It was the sign on the side of the information booth. That did make me point my camera and take a shot (which can be seen at the right).

In a list of recommendations, such as wearing comfortable shoes (which clearly was ignored by the women we saw wearing high heels) and applying sun screen, was this: "Drink a lot of water."

Prudent advice, certainly, but my excitement did not stem from being a fan of hydration.

One of the photos from the 2007 outing that I did process and post was used in this post. That shot was of the list of recommendations on the side of the information booth, focused on that same suggestion regarding drinking water. However, two years ago that line read: "Drink alot of water."

Seeing this year's sign I immediately knew: At some point in the intervening period someone involved with the preparation of signage at the fair realized that "alot" is not correct (or someone prudently ran a spell check) and split it into two words.

I'm not saying that I think my post had any influence on the situation. I am merely something of a fan of people paying attention (and, by extrapolation, of people actually using that brain that Weird Al sang about), whether I had anything to do with it or not.

So, hooray.

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A short while later we went into one of the large tented areas which was devoted to pigs (with the theme "Think Pig"). Pigs in movies, pigs in sand sculptures, "hogs" as a nickname for large motorcycles, and of course, pigs as livestock. Along one wall ran a mural-length timeline of the history of pigs. All right, more educational opportunities.

I took some photos, but not of what one would expect.

Not even a quarter of the way down was a note about how the man who would become our country's first president imported hogs 16 years before colonies declared independence.
Well, at least the picture above above it looked like the father of our country. The text, however, identified the hog importer as "Goerge Washington," so who knows?

While that seemed egregious, another 20 feet down the wall there was another "Goerge" mentioned (part of a radio duo with Gracie Allen), which sounds like George Burns, but in this alternate pig reality his last name is the same as Gracie's, so his first name could be spelled the same way as that hog importer. (We're overlooking the use of quotation marks here.)

There was consistency the writer of the text had going. I had to concede that.

Perhaps too much pork causes some mild dyslexia. However, look closely at the text preceding the name of Gracie's husband and you'll spot that Spam was a "sponser."

That wasn't the end of the photo-taking.


A note about 1922 indicated "insullin" was extracted from a pig, but perhaps that's what insulin is called in this pig-iverse with Goerge Washington. But a note about a 1976 Swine Flu scare stated that only "six doccumented [sic] cases" appeared.

There was no way I could spin that to be other than just sloppy proofreading.

Later it occurred to me: Perhaps the motivation simply was to see if they could get some poor sap who can't help but notice such details—who has the unfortunate tendency of using that thing inside his skull about which Weird Al sang (in 3-D, no less)—to talk about it on his site. Let's face it: There's little chance that a history of pigs without typographical errors would prove post-worthy.

And if so, I fell right for it.

There's no such thing as bad publicity, or something.

Oh, I should mention that I did snap a quick one of an actual pig, sleeping in a pen, but that was more of an afterthought, so I wouldn't feel guilty about taking nothing but pictures of typos.


When the writer part of the brain kicks in, the photographer part slouches off. Perhaps if we'd gone back to watch "Al's Brain" again I might figure out why my brain does that.

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And from the I-am-not-making-this-up department: Within sight of the pig exhibit was this sign:
Well, at least it proved inspiring to the photographer in me (and all the words in "chocolate covered bacon" were spelled correctly).