Bumper to Bumper

Now that I’m a recumbent trike fiend, I’m at just the right height to view an awful lot of execrable bumper sticker messages. Such as:

1) I’m Raising My Kids Right

The graphic is of a mama red, white and blue elephant, followed by two toddler red, white and blue elephants.

No. No my poor deluded, vapid neighbor, you are not raising them ‘right.’ The current Republican party’s mind set is ‘I’ve got mine. Screw you’ You’re indoctrinating them with an unthinking, cold, nasty disregard for their fellow man. Capisce?

Oh and what's with the single parent elephant? I thought single parents were the root of gun violence in America. No? That only applies to Democrats?

2) I AM PROUD OF MY BOY SCOUT!

My, my. That sentiment, screamed in caps on your bumper, comes off just a wee bit defensive now, doesn’t it. Did anyone imply that you aren’t or shouldn’t be? Did you just replace your ‘I’M ASHAMED OF MY CUB SCOUT’ tag?

3) TEA PARTY PATRIOT!

Again with the yelling at me all in caps. Why not just have a sticker that reads ‘I’LL VOTE FOR WHOEVER THE POWERFUL, WEALTHY, WHITE GUYS TELL ME.’

4) Baby on Board

That’s nice. One would expect the driver of this car to be très careful and observant of all traffic laws and customs then, right? Eh, not so much.

Maybe this is more of a warning? A la ‘I’ve got a screaming kid in the back seat. I get negative amounts of sleep each night. I just worked a full day with bitchy co-workers and a boss breathing down my neck. AND I just noticed a big blotch of baby puke on the shoulder of my best wool suit.’

Kind of hard to fit that on a bumper sticker I guess. Probably just best to steer clear as the driver’s having a hard life right now.

I don’t care for bumper stickers in general but here are a few that I've seen and liked:

1) Don’t like gay marriage? Then don’t have one.
2) It’s my party & I’ll cry if I want to. (next to a line drawing portrait of Lincoln)
3) We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap. - Kurt Vonnegut 

4) After the rapture, can I have your car? (In response to the sticker saying that In case of rapture this car will be unmanned)

These are the Seven Most Annoying Bumper Stickers according to the Man in the Woods.
And 11 more from Richard Connelly at the Houston Press.

Then we have those little oval decals -- why do they exist?

back in 1969 the United Nations got together to create an easier way to identify the origins of different vehicles traveling in Europe and elsewhere, since so many license plates used overseas looked the same no matter what country you were from.  With that in mind they came up with the idea of adding a sticker to your vehicle with a country code so officials could identify your point of origin.

So, why do we see them all over the place here? Bragging rights mostly. That may just be me being all cynical though.

What I see the most are the ‘Oh look where WE went on vacation.’ You know ACK for Nantucket. Why ACK? It’s the International Air Transport Association (IATA) for Nantucket Airport.

From the Nantucket visitor page :

       It is not for Ackerly Field, which is really a mythological name to justify using A-C-K.  The US government uses “N” for military airport installations. Thus, Nantucket and Washington’s National Airport use ACK and DCA rather than NAN or NAT.

        ACK has become shorthand or slang when referring to Nantucket.

There’s MV for Martha’s Vineyard (at least that’s one that you don’t have to be part of the wealthy IN club to understand), IRL for Ireland (Boston’s basically a suburb of the entire country so I see this one a lot), CC for Cape Cod (or is your car close captioned?) and HN for Hough’s Neck (AKA Home!).

And then there’s the cutesy, smug stick figure families.

Mom, Dad, sister, brother, baby, dog, gerbil — every member of the family is represented by an adorable stick figure, and the whole lot is plastered across the back window.
“Look at us!” the decals scream. “We’re such a big family! We have all these kids and pets! Isn’t that something?” I have never seen stickers with just one child or just one parent. For the stick-figure-family crowd, bigger is better.

Read Anne Marie Valinoti’s full rant here  -- it’s fab!

I’ve never, ever seen stickers representing Zombie families. Discrimination? Marginalizing a significant percentage of the population? Judging by the number of Zombie themed books I see at my local Barnes and Noble -- yes.

What would their family decals look like? I’m thinking you’d have Mummy and Da Zombie with little Violet and brother George Zombie chewing the heads off a lovely family of stick figures from Dover, MA. You know, the ones with the annoying ACK sticker and the Proud Parent one as well. Spot and Fluffy, the Zombie pets, would be smilingly sitting to the side, politely awaiting their treats (oooo, I hope Violet throws me a finger or maybe even a little smackeral of brain!)

Oh look -- the good folk at Think Geek have a Zombie sticker! It’s on sale this week too -- mega awesome.

Baker Street -- Gerry Rafferty