The Daily Swarm

Palestine Herald:

Last weekend a group of friends and I traveled to San Antonio for a day at Six Flags Fiesta Texas. It’s a trip we had been planning for quite a while, and as I am a huge roller coaster fanatic, I was ecstatic. After getting our tickets, we headed for the entrance gates. I placed my wallet and cell phone in the basket on the other side of the metal detector and walked on through. No alarms went off, no armed security guards came running at me to take me down, but the woman manning the gate simply stood in front of me staring at my shirt.

Let me give you a visual. The shirt I was wearing was for Oh No! Oh My!, a local indie-pop band here in Austin. The art on the tee features two cartoon girls each taking a bite out of a cartoon kid. A joint thought bubble extends from each of the kid’s mouths, saying the band name, with Oh No! facing right side up and Oh My! upside down. There is some red droplets falling from the mouths of the eaters, which I suppose is blood. Either way, it is nowhere near as violent as it sounds and the design is clearly cartoonish and in no way resembles real life. Right, continuing with the story.

The woman, after what seemed like ages of staring at my shirt, said, “What’s that?” I informed her that it was for a band, and she replied with a simple “Mmmhmm.” I tried to walk past her but she stopped me, saying “If that’s what I think it is, I can’t let you into the park.” My heart sank. I had visions of missing out on all the roller coasters and fun that I had been looking forward to all week. Here’s where it gets Cops-esque. She calls over a security guard and tells him, “Look, they’re eating kids.” The guy doesn’t seem to want to make a call but eventually says that yes, it’s too offensive to be allowed into the park. As irritated and upset as I was, I nearly burst out laughing when the woman then said, “Plus, it says ‘My Ho’ on it.” I politely informed her that what she was reading was simply “Oh My” upside down, and asked her when her last eye exam had been performed. That last part may or may not be true.