Wednesday, June 30, 2010

It Depends on the Question

Driving home yesterday afternoon from the supermarket after assembling today's lunch salad (rabbits should be half as organized as I am on this stuff), I was behind a car with a bumper sticker reading, "War Is Not the Answer."

Sorry, but what if the question is "what band was Eric Burdon in after he left The Animals?" (and is that a purse EB is dragging around? Good Lord!). See? It could be the answer....or how about "what does raw backwards spell?" (Who wants to tell Randy Orton, Eric's purse brings out the blood in his eyes?). It's not as simple as a bumper sticker, though when you watch most of our elections for the last lifetime or so, you can be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

Truth to tell, the bumper sticker and our current political malaise help me understand why the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound: many people look intelligent until you hear them speak. It's up there with "Live simply so that others may simply live." Oh yeah, the car bumper I saw that one on was attached to an MB Gelandewagen (btw, I find the use of the Outcast song harder to grasp than the complexity of the expression, Good Human. And who decided smugness was a positive character attribute?).

Years ago a NYC radio station heavily promoted the slogan "Love is the Answer" until a cross-town rival offered the missing question, "What can you fall into that doesn't stick to your face?" Such are the wages of sin for a PBS mind in a Fox News World. Yeah, and did you see the moon last night, hung like a Chinese ball?
-bill kenny

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