Throughout the history of this country, each state in the union has existed in its own separate space; a space which usually more or less exists all in one piece. That all changed last week, though, when the east coast state of New Jersey was struck by a particularly nasty bit of flatulence and shattered into approximately 8,536 individual chunks (results rounded to the nearest 194).
As a result, pieces of the garden state have been showing up everywhere, as towns from Maine to Montana are suddenly finding themselves belonging to New Jersey, a state which now appears on the map not as a single mass, but as a series of small dots scattered haphazardly about the lower 48.
Needless to say, this has posed particular difficulties for the cartography business–a profession that hasn’t really had all that much to do in the way of actual work ever since they discovered the Pacific Ocean–as mapmakers around the globe are being forced to redraw their depictions of the United States for the first time in hundreds of years.
“Dammit, you made me screw up Lake Michigan!” said Rand-McNally employee Paul Goodman, after Clunkline barged into his office without warning, causing him to inadvertently scrape a jagged line across Wisconsin. “You know, before this whole New Jersey thing happened, all we ever did was change around a few of the colors on last year’s map and call it a day. I don’t even remember how to use half of these tools anymore.”
After we admitted that no, we don’t know what a Vernier Scale is either, he continued. “We always used to say ‘hey, it’s not like any of the states are going anywhere, right?’ I guess we’re kind of eating those words now.”
Chunks have been discovered in a wide variety of sizes, with some being large enough to engulf entire towns while others are small enough to fit inside a house. Just ask Barry Johnson, who recently discovered a small chunk of Newark in his basement. “I knew there had to be something weird going on when I went downstairs one day and thought ‘boy, it really sucks down here all of a sudden.’”
These events will not have a significant effect on the election, however, as New Jersey’s 15 electoral votes emerged intact.
Content was originally created by FooTay and published by readme.
