The Time The Loop Got Herpes

There's a lot to be learned here. It's about making sure your message is clear, and that the person seeing it can digest it properly.

So I was rollin' into the show about 4 a.m. last week and I saw an electronic billboard that caught my eye. As you may or may not know, Lubbock has insanely strict laws about billboards. The lack of billboards is also one of the reasons why Lubbock looks so flat; because there are just so little variances to the Lubbock skyline.

Anywho, these regulations cause the billboard companies to be very creative with what they got.  Sometimes this works, and other times it doesn't.

One of the less effective ones is an electronic billboard on your left when you're heading south on The Loop, kind of by that McDonald's on University Ave. In short, you have to look across the other half of The Loop in order to see it.

I have misread this billboard a number of times, but it was a whopper this week. I looked up, and in giant letters it said "HERPES," except the "P" was smudged out. There was also some smaller writing that I couldn't quite make out.

I thought to myself, 'well, they probably smudged out the P so parents with their kids in their car wouldn't have to explain what herpes is.'

Fortunately, there was adequate time on this message for me to get a better idea of the message on the billboard. Often times, these things flash to a new message before you can even digest what it says.

When I got right up on the message, just for a second, I was able to see that it was not "HERPES" with a smudge over the "P," but "HEROES" with some dog tags over the "O."

Yeah, that's where my mind initially took me, but maybe they can make the graphics a little better or the message a little clearer. I'm all about honoring "HEROES," but I don't have much to say about "HERPES".