I had a near death experience today.
Yes. You read that correctly.
Near. Death. Experience.
How the heck, you are wondering, did you almost DIE, Feve?
I’ll tell you!
There I was, complacently munching on some couscous, when all of a sudden one of the tiny little grains I was ingesting decided to stop and to a tap dance in my throat.
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If you’ve never experienced this particular fright, let me break it down for you:
Feve is breathing. Breathing, breathing… Suddenly NOT breathing!
SHIT.
Can’t swallow, can’t swallow!
Eeeeeep!
*
So I coughed… And coughed… And coughed and coughed and coughed. And my eyes watered and there was (caution: eeeew alert!) snot, and I couldn’t breathe, and my pets were all gathered around me with curious little expressions on their faces (I need to teach the little buggers CPR; they were absolutely useless in my time of plight), and I coughed some more, and I thought to myself Holy fuck! I can’t die today. I’ve never had my palm read, but I *know* I have too many lines on my hands for my life to be this short. So I coughed as hard as I possibly could, and just as that cantankerous little cuss of a couscous came spewing forth unto my kitty’s forehead, I said to myself, If I get out of this alive, I *must* get around to writing that blog post about bumper stickers.
Bumper stickers! WTF?!?!
I thought impending death was supposed to conjure visions of one’s life flashing before one’s eyes. Not so, me. Apparently, the visions that flash before my eyes while choking to death have to do with not leaving things undone… ???
I know not the whys or the wherefores. All I know is that my brain was working like crazy to get some sort of DO eet! Do eet noooow! commandment across to me. Like a little mental message in red flashing neon (maybe *that’s* what they mean by ‘walking toward the light’): Leave No Blog Unwritten.
Gah!
Far be it from me to ignore curious communications from the beyond, so…
If there are any choke-to-death-ologists out there who can give me some insight into my bizarre desire to write a blog entry (again: WTF?!?!) as a result of my Death-By-Five-Minute-Meal experience, have at it. In the mean time, I’ll just go ahead and write.
About bumper stickers.
Oky-doky then.
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So here’s the thing about bumper stickers: I can’t stand ’em.
Can’t.
Stand.
Them.
Point Number One: The body of a car ~ much like the body of a person ~ should be naked. At least when it comes to my car. And my body. N-a-k-e-d. Bumper stickers are just… Unnecessary. (Like panties.) Uncomfortable. (Like bras.) They leave behind a sticky residue. (Like cheap condoms.) And, more often than not, they reveal information about the driver that falls into the TMI category (see point number two for expository notes on this subject).
Even if the message on your car’s booty (well, what ELSE do you call a bumper?) seems innocuous, it probably isn’t. It’s obnoxious. And ~ not to put too fine a point on it ~ it’s ugly.
Point Number Two: TMI. Too Much Information. Waaaaaay too much. I don’t care what radio station you listen to, how many guns you have, whether or not your mother-in-law is a witch, or if your child is an honor roll student. If I was in your shoes (or, more accurately, in your car), I wouldn’t want anyone to know any of that information. I especially wouldn’t want to advertise how many children I had and where they could be found. (Have you SEEN some of these bumper stickers? They’re a child booster’s dream! Proud Parent Of Child’sNameHere, 8th Grade Honor Roll Student at ComeStealMyKid Middle School. *shudder*) But that’s just me. I don’t think it’s safe to advertise too much about who you are. Or who your kids are. Then again, I have a thing about security. I prefer not to invite people to disrupt mine. But I am not you. Maybe you want someone to take your car/truck/guns/kids/mother-in-law off your hands.
(Insert contemplative pause here.)
Come to think of it… If I had your mother-in-law, I might feel the same way.
Ahem.
Anywhoo…
Back to TMI: Security issues aside, too much information is just too damned much information.
Take, for example, the jacked up 4×4 with the little sign in his back window (I realize a window and a bumper are two different things, but the same concept applies; work with me people, I almost died today) of a spike-haired cartoon dude pissing on a Ford/Dodge/TruckOtherThanTheKindIDrive symbol. What does this tell me?
The answer, my friends, is obvious: JackedUpTruckDude is into water sports.
Erm…
While this may be helpful to know if I was entertaining the idea of going on a date with JUTD (water sports are not my thing, but at least I’d know ahead of time that he’s into kink), it is otherwise completely irrelevant (and ~ some may feel ~ irreverent) to the casual observer.
Moving on.
Point Number Three: Just because a word passes the Spell Check examination does not make the phrase worthy of an A+. More often than not, bumper stickers get a failing grade in this department.
Case in point: I saw an SUV a while back with a bumper sticker that said something along the lines of Blahblahblah…I’ve Gone Rouge!
So I read “I’ve Gone Rouge” and thought to myself… Wow. Really? Um, *rouge* is a cosmetic. It’s used to color people’s cheeks. And lips. (Um, the ones on your face.) That’s rouge. So thanks for telling me that you’ve gone rouge. I have no idea what the hell that means, but I’m fairly certain (due to the bad-ass skull stickers that are adorning either end of this odd turn of phrase) that what you *meant* to say was “I’ve Gone Rogue.”
In situations like this, it’s best to take a look at the driver. If the driver resembles a circus performer, I may have a glimmer of doubt (perhaps I’ve Gone Rouge is a new slogan for clowns-in-training?) about the apparent misnomer, but most likely the driver has the build of an elephant. Or at least an ego the size of an elephant. If that’s the case (and it was, indeed, the case in the situation described in the above paragraph), I think to myself Rouge Dude needs to learn how to spell, followed by I need to write a blog about bumper stickers.
Which is a decision I was reminded of when I nearly choked to death today.
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So, to review:
- Leave no blog unwritten. Again, in neon: Leave No Blog Unwritten.
- Be careful of couscous.
- My pets do not know how to perform the Heimlich maneuver.
- Bumper stickers annoy me.
- Cars look better naked.
- Rethink that Honor Roll advertisement.
- I’m glad I don’t have your mother-in-law.
- Water sports. ‘Nough said.
- Rouge and Rogue are NOT the same thing.
Ummm… Any questions?
Dear Ms. Fever–Amen, and Amen again! What bothers me most about bumper stickers is that there are so many people who can define that one thing they want to tell the world about themselves. What would I want the world to know, if anything, about me? Next would be, as you indicate, their stupidities and inaccuracies. Like the one that says ‘Take my American flag off of your foreign-made car.’ What do they mean? Should we take it off of Chevrolets, which are ‘American’ cars, but built in Mexico? Or Toyotas, which are headquartered in Japan, but built in Tennessee? In the end, it’s just narrow and stupid, like most bumper stickers. But the one that kills me the most is the one that says ‘Co-exist,’ with the word is spelled out in a bunch of religious symbols, the irony being that the main reason we cannot co-exist is because we have conflicting and competing religions. We kill each other every day over our religions. As John Lennon said, ‘imagine no religion . . .’ So, yeah, I feel your pain.
Well, I suppose we should be grateful that it doesn’t say “Take My American Fag Off Your Four In Car.”
As for John Lennon: I cannot stand those little round glasses he wore. Did he not understand that they looked hideous? Or was he just trying to make a statement? These are the questions that keep me awake at night…
hmm, very cool
Hmmm… Very random.
While looking at and scanning for siblings, I noticed several pictures of my aunt and she was a ringer for John Lennon. My siblings agree, she had the little glasses, the hair looked right. It’s just that her photo was taken about 1950.
You left out personalized license plates. I saw one at a gas station that said “Pythagoras” When the driver came back out I asked him if he was a musician or a mathematician. A musician, he commented that most people don’t know who Pythagoras was. I told him I wasn’t surprised, and then I asked if he liked my dodecahedron hood ornament? Actually I’m lying there. The hood ornament was stolen off my car and I never replaced it.
I’ve never understood why people steal hood ornaments. It seems a bizarre compulsion. But then, thievery of any kind makes no sense to me.
There was a bunch of ornament thefts about that time. I had an 87 Cadillac and an 81 Cougar XR7. They got both of them. The Cougar one was the one I really liked. A cop friend of mine told me the kids like to make necklaces out of them.
I’ve been a hood ornament myself, a time or two…
Never been a necklace though. Unless you count all those times I’ve draped my legs around a man’s head. 😉