Reading The Onion's latest satire of the built environment is a bit like the experience it describes: watching as a crane moves a large object on a construction site, otherwise known as being easily distracted by harmless fun.
"Stopping dead in their tracks and pausing to take in the scene unfolding above them, the entire country reportedly came to a halt Thursday morning to watch an industrial crane move a massive concrete tube across a construction site," according to a satirical article in The Onion.
The absurdity of an entire nation watching such an event, much less one person looking up from their phone long enough even to notice such a mundane display of engineering prowess, is the crux of the joke. The scene continues:
According to reports, upon spotting the 9-foot-diameter cylinder suspended in midair, the nation’s 320 million citizens paused what they had been doing and placed a hand on their brow to shield their eyes from the sun, with many reportedly tugging at a nearby acquaintance’s sleeve to alert them to the sight above. Sources confirmed that, after several moments of gaping, a few million Americans opted to cross the street to get a closer look through the chain-link gates at the construction site’s entrance.
It is true that construction events like the crane activities described in this article do attract mainstream media attention from time to time, though not by the nation collectively gathered in one geographic area. February 2014's longest-ever concrete pour in Downtown Los Angeles comes to mind, but usually demolitions have more appeal.
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