Pancake City

“Don’t blame me. I voted for giving all our money to carnies.”

“Don’t blame me. I’m an adorable wittle baby.” [photo of baby]

“Rigged the election and on the run.”

The most popular bumper sticker today is a ribbon, usually yellow or red, white, and blue. with the inscription “Support our troops.” Occasionally, someone will mix things up with a “Support President Bush and our troops” sticker, but the strain this Venn diagram puts on the minds of patriotic souls everywhere has limited its popularity.

I admire these people for taking a stand against the strong anti-troop movement that has arisen in our country and threatens to tear apart the fabric of our nation. Our troops need to know that we support them, and if putting a bumper sticker expressing this sentiment on our cars isn’t the best way to let them know, then we might as well rename America “Terrorist Land” and get it over with.

I fear, though, that having become ubiquitous the message will get stale and lose its effectiveness in supporting our troops and combating dissent. So I made up several alternative messages that will soon be appearing in The Pancake City Troop Power Pack (9 stickers, $69.95. Five percent of profits will go towards a fundraiser to buy the troops a $14 million MX-140 missile. If we don’t raise enough money, I will instead send the troops a dozen Hostess cupcakes, laid out in the box in the shape of a giant thumbs up.)

Alternative Slogans

• Support our troops…our drama troupes!
• Do you support our troops…or are you a child molester?
• Something NAMBLA and the NRA can agree on: supporting our troops!
• It’s not enough to support our troops. Support supporting our troops!
• Support our girdles.
• Vote Yes on Prop. 182. What’s Prop. 182? Supporting our troops!
• Say no to the sewer people who are recruiting a zombie army to attack the surface dwellers that have lorded over them for so long. Say yes to supporting troops!
• Do troops eat babies? No! So why don’t you support our troops?
  
• Stützen unsere Truppen!
  

And it’s just in time for Chrisanukah.

Every day, along one of my dog routes, I walk by a car with a “Bush in 2000″ bumper sticker and, next to it, “I Believe In Angels”.

Whether the fact that these stickers are still on the car is a testimony to her devotion to President Bush and angels or to the bonding properties of glue, I do not know. I suppose the former, barring an angel tripping her and pushing her down the stairs since she affixed the sticker. Although it is hard to get a good look at the person pushing you down the stairs, and the angel could have taken on a deep voice and said “I’m the devil!” before planting his soft hands into her back.

But that is besides the point. The two slogans made me realize an interesting property of bumper stickers. Multiple bumper stickers can change the response one has to the idea in one of them merely through association with the other. To be specific, I would have rolled my eyes if just the Bush sticker were on her car, or thought nothing if she just had the angel sticker on her car. But with their might combined, now I think she is a dumb ass.

Neither sticker promotes the dumb-assiness of the owner by itself. Rather, the two stickers are taken together as a whole to produce a response too strong for just one of them to create.

My idea is to use this property for political warfare. What we do is put bumper stickers supporting President Bush on our cars and affixed next to it a sticker expressing an idea the Bush campaign would be embarrassed to be associated with. Like “Bush: 2004″ and “I Hate Black People!”. Or “Support President Bush And Our Troops” with ” Nazis Are People Too”.

Actually, to save time, we should just find cars with pro-Bush stickers on them. Just to save time. And if anyone wants to be extra clever, why stop at a total of two? “Bush 2004″; “Bush 2008: F*CK The Constitution!”; “Bush 2012: I Now Feel Better About Saying Fuck.”

I think when Jesus said “Love Your Enemies” he probably meant don’t kill them.

I would like to see this on a bumper sticker:

(i’m a rebel with a cause, but no one has heard of my cause and i got tired of explaining it so i just call myself) REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE

I saw a bumper sticker that said, “I brake for kids and animals!” I think this should be the start of a new series of bumper stickers:
“I PEE IN TOILETS.”
“I feed my children food.”
“No Thanks: I wipe my own ass!”

I’m going to start a company called Sweet n’ Sour n’ More Sweet. Those sauce bastards at Sweet n’ Sour are going down.

My dream is to make a cereal called Grape Nuts Sr. Ingredients: grapes and nuts. And I’m going to put them next to boxes of Grape Nuts and draw sad eyes on them, like a parent disappointed at its child.