Five Places I’ve Lived …
1
For a couple of weeks some years ago, my home was a culvert under a highway in Huntsville, Alabama. I drug in a reinforced plywood sheet so I could sleep on a plastic bag full of my old clothes over the drainage water that, according to the rainfall, trickled or streamed through. At night the traffic was like a lullaby, though sleep was never deep or peaceful. A block away the Salvation Army served lunch, usually a cup of soup and a cheese or peanut butter and jelly sandwich; I was always grateful for it.
When one lives in a culvert, he eventually vanishes. Sometime during the second week I realized I had become invisible. For all my size, I still am.
2
As a teen I lived in Kadena, Okinawa. There was a street off-base lined with bars and nightclubs—many lacking the official red “A” approval of the United States military—where working girls would grab my arm and tug me toward a doorway, saying, “You cherry boy? I make you feel supergood.”
Once I strummed my guitar and sang “Hey Jude” to an adolescent Japanese girl wearing a blue high school uniform over a white blouse with a little blue necktie. Without a doubt she remains the most beautiful human I have ever seen. She was exquisite, from her dark doll’s eyes to her Cupid’s bow mouth to her gracefully fluttering hands. Though I went back a hundred times to the place where we met, I never saw her again.
3
In Decatur, Alabama, I lived for a while in a house nicknamed the Bus Station. My then housemate remains one of my very best friends.
One night we had invited a couple of women to the house after the lounge we frequented closed. To our surprise they accepted the invitation and we chatted and played music and drank something—I think it was either Kool Aid or iced tea. When one of the women asked about the ladies’ room, my housemate pointed down the hall. She entered the small closet and promptly shrieked the way Janet Leigh screamed at the moment Anthony Perkins brought down the knife in “Psycho”. She and her friend hurried across town to the Texico station so she could pee. The last thing she said to us was, “Look, we like you boys a lot. And we’ll be happy to come back any time you want. But you must clean your toilet.” That was the first time I noticed something slimy and green growing around the water’s edge in the porcelain bowl.
When I stumbled out of bed the following morning, my housemate was already busy in the bathroom, vigorously scrubbing every cleanable surface to within an inch of sandblasting.
4
Once I spent the night on the hardwood floor of a beautiful blonde woman. We folded over several quilts to make a crude mattress, and I slept under a single sheet. She gave me a pillow from her bed. The pillowcase was scented with her soap and perfume.
“The sofa makes a bed,” she offered. “You’re more than welcome to sleep there.”
But I insisted the floor would be fine. I had a romantic notion that she would get out of bed at two in the morning, wearing her loose hippie nightgown, and she would climb under the sheet with me and we would make love until sunrise. I lay awake in anticipation, staring at a chalk statue of Marilyn Monroe. It never happened. The blonde padded barefoot into the living room at nine and asked, “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
5
On vacation when I was eighteen I lived for a week in a pup tent with a close friend, two weight ounces of marijuana, and a case of Yago Sangria. We pitched the tent in the back yard of a family with seven daughters, ranging in age from 21 to 3. My friend had known the family all his life.
Every night the older girls would come into the tent one at a time to drink wine or smoke pot with us. They were gorgeous, each more lovely than the last. I’m pretty sure my friend was involved with one of them, though like me he might have been hot for all of them.
Eventually one of the sisters necked with me in the woods behind the house. I touched her breasts inside her bra, but she wouldn’t let my hand creep higher than mid-thigh, insisting, “I’m a good Catholic girl.”
The last night of vacation we had to finish up the wine and pot. A lot remained to be polished off. The next day, driving home in a gray Volkswagen Beetle, my friend often pulled off the side of the highway so we could vomit.
6
Unless prompted by God or forces outside my control, I will never again live in Anchorage, Alaska. Never.
21 May 2008 | Comments [0]
Festività
Had “Roman Holiday” been produced according to modern corporate media standards, Gregory Peck would have grabbed Audrey Hepburn during the handshaking scene, lifted her into his arms, and as Eddie Albert ran interference, clipping guard after guard, he’d have whisked her away to his waiting Vespa scooter and they’d have sped off into the Italian sunset. The resulting chick flick would have made millions at the box office.
And a bittersweet classic film would have turned into just another Hollywood turd.
20 May 2008 | Comments [0]
A Matter of Taste
Though I meant the whole ”Three Bad Habits ...” entry jokingly, tongue planted firmly in cheek, Jim took up the gauntlet and is answering all five questions on his site. I was surprised by the first response, partly because of its seriousness, but mostly for this statement, which almost exactly mirrors my own feelings:
I thought long and hard on it, and found it odd that I have a stronger aversion to killing someone than eating him. Killing is hard; eating is easier.
That sentiment has upped my respect for Jim about 30 notches.
And I liked the guy pretty well before I read it (though in researching cannibalism, I understood rump meat was the choicest cut).
16 May 2008 | Comments [2]
Three Bad Habits …
“I procrastinate."
“I interrupt people.”
“I don’t call anyone.”
Oh, waah!
This is the very reason I dislike most memes: The questions are soft and those answering them tend to do so while viewing themselves in a most flattering light. In all honesty, if your worst habits are not calling people, interrupting conversation, and procrastination, get in line for a halo. My bad habits eat those for breakfast. Please don’t take offense. If Jeffrey Dahmer had written a blog, and if he’d been answering the question, he likely would have said, “I’m not punctual.” Not, “I lure homosexual men into my apartment, kill them, and eat them.”
That’s why, if I should ever write five questions for a meme, the first will be:
1. If you had to kill and eat someone, who would it be and why?
Right away I’ll know whether or not I’m on the menu. I’ll also have a better answer than, “He seemed like a quiet, friendly sort to me,” when I am interviewed about the respondent’s behavior by CNN after they find the chopped up bodies of victims in his (or her) back yard.
You’ll notice my first meme question is interrogative and ends with a question mark. It’s also an essay question, requiring the participant to provide more than a simple two-line response. It engages the respondent and asks her (or him) to reveal something about themselves outside their comfort zone. Sure. There will be the usual stupid answers. Brad Pitt. Because he’s hot. But for those with even a shred of imagination, it’s a challenge.
It isn’t like asking, “If you could kill someone and get away with it scot-free, who would it be and why?” because it adds another weird dimension to simple murder. Gone are the political figures who might be first responses in the simpler inquiry. Who would want to eat them? (Most, like the legislation they pass, would be full of pork fat.) Gone, too, are many, many celebrities, because you just don’t know where they’ve been.
I can think of at least one person I’d like to eat—and right this minute. But I wouldn’t want to kill them. See? It’s a challenge. Even to me.
Meme questions ought to assume things about the people answering them. Like the second question on my list:
2. What is the weirdest fantasy you’ve ever had while (before or after) masturbating?
Everyone does it. Some of you reading this are thinking about hooking up later via the Web and having a mutual wank. And you know this is far more interesting than what’s on your to-do list. Otherwise reality television wouldn’t have an audience. I can hear the excuses now: “Who? Me? Never!” “Married people don’t do such things!” The question alone eliminates a whole community of holier-than-thou fundamentalists who’d lie in their answer anyway. Only the truly brave, the truly honest, and the truly adventurous would accept the challenge. And how revealing! Imagine the answers! The protagonist of John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces imagined his pet collie a moment before orgasm. You’d have to go a long way to get weirder. But what fun trying! Such a question would make even lying answers more interesting.
Meme questions ought to pave the way for storytelling, and not make the respondent stretch to do it. This one, for example:
3. You catch your significant other in bed with a(nother) man, a(nother) woman, a sheep, a chicken, and three eels. Which arouses the most jealousy in you and why? Which is most titillating? Why? (Extra points for narrating the dialogue and series of events occurring in the first fifteen minutes after your initial discovery.)
If unique sexual situations are the mother of all sorts of invention, then sexual scenarios involving livestock and fish are the Thomas Edison of imagination. How, exactly, one responds to such an outrageous event gets at the heart of who he (or she) is. One might call it a meme with testes.
But beyond prurient curiosity, we’d like to get at the political leanings of our blogging subjects (since politics is generally the hot topic of the day, unless one is discussing photographs of Miley Cyrus or the latest antics of any of a host of fallen teen idols), so we offer the following:
4. You’re sitting on the commode in a public restroom when the person in the stall next to yours starts tapping their foot and waving their hand under the partition. Because they are wearing cufflinks given only to U.S. Senators, you realize you are being propositioned by a prominent political figure, most likely a Republican. How do you respond? Who is the first person you telephone following the proposal? Do you involve Fox News? CNN? The New York Times? The National Enquirer? Does blackmail cross your mind? Does it make a difference if the political figure is a Democrat? Do you vote for the individual in the next election?
Of course, a number of other questions spring to mind. How dirty is the stall you’re in? Is there graffiti on the wall? And will your mother take your telephone calls after your face has been plastered all over the media from one end of America to the other? Inquiring minds want to know.
While we’re in toilet mode, let’s consider our subject’s larcenous proclivities:
5. You’re sitting on the commode in a public restroom when you realize the person in the stall next to you is dead. At their feet are sixteen tiny rubber balloons filled with a white powder. It could be anything from talcum powder to powdered sugar to rat poison to a half-million dollars worth of uncut heroin. No one else is in the room. What do you do? Scream? Phone the police? Call a friend? Take some (or all) of the balloons? Why or why not? Does it make a difference if you know the white substance is, indeed, a half-million dollar stash?
See? What we need are questions that require the respondent to use their imagination and answer at length. Believe me, if you’re in a stall next to a corpse, your last six jobs won’t mean a thing to you. Unless they involved either the capture of drug offenders or the distribution of narcotics. Either way, you probably won’t be blogging.
To be fair, I’d better answer the question at hand. Name three bad habits.
- I am an ass.
- I don’t care that you think I’m an ass.
- Fill in the blank.
15 May 2008 | Comments [1]
Five Things on Today’s To-Do List …
The following are five “sticky” items on my to-do list, meaning they get repeated every day.
- Commune with God
One morning I stepped from the shower, hair and beard streaming water, toweled off, pulled on jeans and a polo shirt, turned to a companion, hair still dripping, and asked, “Who am I?” Her eyes widened. “Oh my God!” she said. “You look just like Ted Kaczynski!”
I struggle moment-by-moment to remain sober, sane, and productive. At heart I am a misanthrope, and left to my own devices I could quickly retreat into a very dark place and never emerge. This is not hyperbole. Unrestrained, I envision myself becoming the bitter twin of Ted Kaczynski. After all, I have the hair and eyebrows for the job.
So at some point in every day, either literally or figuratively, I kneel down, lift my palms to the sky, and say, “I am yours. Do what you will.” And I mean it. I’m not even sure with whom or what I commune. It doesn’t matter. It is painful to me when humans try to encapsulate God or put God in a box. Any definition of God seems supremely arrogant. The closest I can come—and this is both haughty and hopelessly inadequate—is to imagine God as the Infinite Power of Imagination. God’s, not mine. Every day I surrender to That, to Something Other than me, and I put Mr. Kaczynski’s twin behind me. You’ll understand why this is important when you read the rest of my to-do list.
(Please don’t view this as an opportunity to (1) engage me in theological discussion, (2) explain why your faith is superior to all others, or (3) express your concern for my immortal soul. I’ve been down all those roads before and they only make me sad.)
- Piss off a Republican and/or a Democrat
I consider myself a citizen of the world, and I firmly believe two tenets. First, that every human should have proper nourishment, adequate shelter, and minimal healthcare; we should all have meaningful work that empowers us to earn these things in a dignified manner; and we should be able to pursue them in peace. Second, since the first tenet seems an impossibility, I believe in the socialist principle, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
That said, I love the United States passionately. Outside my back door I reach down and touch Tennessee soil, American soil, and it thrills me. I feel about the United States Constitution the way most people feel about holy scripture. It stirs me, gives me hope, and challenges me to be a better person and a better citizen, both of the nation I am fortunate enough to call my own, and of the world. It is a document and a set of principles for which I would gladly lay down my life.
For the past seven years—at least—I have watched greedy, unscrupulous men and women wipe their backsides with the Constitution. I’ve seen them prey on human fear to enrich themselves, broaden their power, and marginalize the civil rights of ordinary citizens. I liken it to being tied to a chair and forced to watch the brutal gang rape of someone I dearly love: my mother, sister, daughter or lover.
Four of those seven years, Republicans controlled the House, Senate and Executive branches of government. During that time they regularly marginalized the will of “we the people.” When Democrats gained the House and Senate they did nothing to stop the process—or even slow it. They have let the most unpopular president in the history of the Union have his way with them.
And before you tell me this is simply politics and I shouldn’t take it so seriously, bite your tongue. This is no game and the Constitution is no ordinary document. I am appalled by the cavalier attitude of those who pooh-pooh the decline of our Democratic Republic. If this were happening in France, the streets of Paris would never be empty of protestors. Because the French, for all their faults, understand something Americans don’t: for democracy to thrive, citizens must be on guard against runaway government, and revolution must be an ongoing process.
In America we get no revolution. Instead we are offered Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain.
If Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain are the best and brightest America has to offer, we should be ashamed of ourselves. And if they are the the two-party system’s finest, the parties deserve to be pissed off.
Or pissed on.
- Gently
It is hard to be very young, very old, lonely, scared, sad, poor, grieving, exhausted, broken-hearted, disillusioned, or infirm. Those who are deserve patience, kindness, warmth, and hearing. As a man who is big, bearish, scowling, clumsy and hard by nature, I must constantly remind myself to resist instinctive tendencies. Go gently.
I know. It makes no sense after that last thing. And please consider the following said in my gentlest voice: Sue me.
- Stop being self-destructive
I’d call this one pretty much self-explanatory.
- Let someone in
Dropping barriers is dangerous, but the rewards can be great. I have a teacher who reminds me every day. I should listen.
My teacher says let everyone in.
She’s out of her mind.
13 May 2008 | Comments [1]
Ten Years Ago …
“I don’t think there are any Russians
And there ain’t no Yanks
Just corporate criminals
Playing with tanks”
—Michael Been
We were innocent.
I sat with a gargoyle under a stone bridge out of the rain, watching a thundershower grouch across the sky from west to east. The storm was a grumpy old man, darkly gray and full of electric invectives, stumbling from his bedroom into the kitchen for his first cup of coffee, stopping along the way to lash out with a static bolt at whatever displeased him. Like any curmudgeon, he was amusing at first blush, trailing a string of curses and pyrotechnics, but in time even these grew tiresome; I gradually tuned him out and turned to study the bridge and my gargoyle companion.
Constructed of round gray stones, the bridge had arched over the Flat River for as long as anyone could remember, perhaps long enough that those inhabiting the river valley knew why they named it the Flat in the first place. In the twentieth century it was anything but flat. It swirled, eddied, boiled, swelled and tumbled over rocks, dipped down falls, and in late spring, when sudden downpours engorged it, the river surged into a ruthless torrent, sweeping away everything in its path from its source until it emptied into the Mississippi. Other bridges, some made of wood and some—engineering masterpieces—made of iron and steel, succumbed to the wily Flat. Only the stone bridge remained—stubborn, intractable, determined to bear its load through the river’s fiercest onslaught. It made only two compromises with the elements: Along its parapet the uppermost stones were bleached from their usual slate gray to the color of brushed aluminum by the sun, and its abutment had been lent a green and brown patina by lichens. Otherwise the bridge showed no signs of age.
Underneath the arch, on the thin strip of land between abutment and river’s edge, the bridge sheltered various frogs, newts, spiders and lizards that gathered to dine on swarms of mosquitos, gnats and flies rising almost magically out of little pools and puddles. During the summer months fish hovered in the water under the arch, seeking shade from the sun. An occasional muskrat drifted down from the marsh to eat a frog or fish; rarer still, raccoons were seen rinsing their food in the river. While we hunkered under the bridge waiting for the storm to pass, a five-lined skink crawled up my gargoyle companion’s leg, mistaking him for another stone. Pip (for that was the gargoyle’s name) threw the lizard twenty-two feet down the riverbank with a casual thump of his foot-long, taloned finger. Then he stared at the clouds with his gray hawk’s eyes and took a drag from an unfiltered Camel cigarette before exhaling a cloud of smoke with a long sigh.
He was fourteen feet tall, which made him difficult to disguise in a crowd, especially since his thirty-foot bat wingspan wouldn’t fold up under the overcoat I found in the Mens, Boys and Giants Department of the local Wal-Mart. And if hiding those leathery wings were somehow possible, not even a pandemic of Botox could have erased the permanent scowl from his beak-lipped face. From the devil’s horns cropping out of his forehead, to the granite scales of his skin, to the iron claws that were his feet, his species could not be mistaken. So we traveled mainly at twilight and dusk, when humans were inclined to blame his appearance on tricks of the crepuscular light. We were headed to Gotham, because my companion could not believe a city of 8 million individuals housed in thousands of buildings included only a handful of gargoyles.
“What protects them from devastation?” Pip asked in a voice that sounded like the marriage of concrete to steel. “What keeps them from falling down like houses of straw?”
“Science,” I answered. “And human engineering skills.”
“Pfft!” Pip responded, dismissing technology with a wave of his enormous hand. “The Egyptians were greater engineers, and they kept their talismans against destruction. And what of evil spirits? Who protects this city from Baal?”
I shrugged. “Educated humans no longer believe in Baal. They consider it superstitious folly.”
Pip drew the smoke from an entire cigarette into his lungs with one mighty, red-ember inhalation. When he exhaled, it seemed he was expelling all the steam of hell from his body. “Humans are stupid,” he declared flatly.
A few minutes later the storm passed, and with it the threat of electrocution. I climbed aboard Pip’s shoulders. He stretched out his wings and we lifted into the sky and above the thinning cloud cover. Resuming our journey northward, we stopped only after the sun set and the light of the moon failed. We spent the rest of the night outside Richmond, Virginia, sleeping on the sweet grass under the stars. In the wee hours of morning I walked a couple of miles to a diner, where I bought a donut, twelve breakfast specials, and a gallon of coffee. On the way back I ate the donut and drank a little coffee; then I watched Pip devour the dozen breakfast specials—styrofoam containers, paper wrappers and all—before we set out again.
From Washington northward the journey was all a matter of ticking off cities. Baltimore. Wilmington. Philadelphia. Trenton. Edison. New York! With each passing milestone I felt more and more exhilarated. Pip couldn’t understand my enthusiasm. “Bah!” he spat. “Who can tell where one city ends and another begins? It all feels like New York to me.”
But the Manhattan skyline impressed even Pip, its solid mass of skyscrapers rising out of the water like an industrious child’s steel, stone and reflective glass Erector Set. I pointed out buildings I recognized: Bloomberg, Citibank, Chrysler, MetLife, Conde Nast, the New York Times and Empire State. And, looming over all, the towers of the World Trade Center, great spikes of human achievement and industry. Pip ascended to the top of the North Tower and perched there, brooding over the skyline and listening to the stones of the tower’s foundation. What he heard saddened him.
Before proceeding I should explain about the relationship between stones and gargoyles. All the world’s stones know the mind of Gaea; yet none of them, not even quartz, has a concept of time. Time simply doesn’t define them. So all stones—even the smooth flat ones skipped over lakes on lazy summer afternoons—not only recall the past, but also tap easily into the future. And since no living thing on Earth has a more intimate relationship to stone than a gargoyle, they are able as a species to sense the future of human shelters constructed of stone—especially those rendered of steel.
The moment Pip roosted atop the World Trade Center he started communicating with it; and as their exchange continued his face grew darker and gloomier. The building cried out for him to remain and guard it against an evil future, though both of them knew such a thing was impossible. Pip could not abandon his post wandering the earth, and the Trade Center would never house a gargoyle. It was, after all, a monument to human science, not magic. No gargoyle would long survive in such a nest of human arrogance.
I hunkered, napping, on the roof for two or three hours, waiting for their communion to end. At last Pip lit a cigarette, turned to me and said, “Ten years from now this place will not exist.”
“You’re mistaken,” I responded.
“Steel doesn’t lie,” Pip insisted.
“Then you misinterpreted what it told you. Or it doesn’t know the meaning of destruction,” I said.
Pip reared and his eyes blazed. “Are you calling me a fool?”
I held up my hands, palms out, a sign of conciliation. “No, Pip. Not at all. I would never call you, of all people, a fool,” I said. “I am saying you surely misunderstood. Human engineers have determined this building will withstand great floods. Earthquakes. Hurricanes. It will remain as long as the Pyramids.”
Pip’s scowl deepened. “It will fall.”
“No,” I said quietly. “Why, scientists say a jet can crash into this building and it will remain.”
“It will crumble,” Pip averred. He lit a cigarette. “And hundreds—no, thousands—will die.”
A cold shiver passed down my spine, but I still shook my head.
Pip smoked two, three cigarettes in deep contemplation. Then he said, “That isn’t the worst. After it falls fear will blanket this land, and humans will barter their birthrights to wicked, soulless demons for peace and safety. The demons will come as sheep and feast as ravenous wolves. All these buildings agree. Darkness is coming.”
For a long moment I felt enveloped by darkness so thick and bilious it left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth. But an instant later I heard an airliner soar overhead and I realized human enterprise would always triumph over magic and superstition. Humans could fly without Pip’s batwings. I walked to the center of the roof. The concrete was firm under my feet. I bounced up and down on tiptoe. Solid. Pip was wrong. Dreadfully mistaken. This place would stand forever.
I strode confidently to my companion and climbed aboard his shoulders.
“Let’s go to Florida,” I said. “I feel like a swim.”
“Good,” said Pip. “This New York gives me the heebie-jeebies. Too few gargoyles.”
He lifted his wings and we flew south.
12 May 2008 | Comments [0]
Meme This
As a rule I don’t do memes. I don’t even like the word; and if I met Richard Dawkins on the street, I would gladly knee him in the gonads and gloat as he crumpled to the ground and writhed in agony.
But in this case I was tagged and one of the questions intrigued me, so I agreed. In retrospect I should have eaten green bottle flies. They’d have been more appetizing and less demanding.
Anyway, these are the rules:
The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about himself or herself. At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
And here are the questions:
- Ten years ago I was ....
- Five things on today’s To-Do list ....
- Things I’d do if I were a billionaire ....
- Three bad habits ...
- Six jobs I’ve had in my life ....
You’ll notice right off the bat these aren’t interrogatives. They don’t end in question marks. They’re also dull. Anyone who cares what is on my for-real To-Do list should get a life and a To-Do list of their own. Also, I’m so far out of the loop of the so-called “blogosphere” that, unless Sister Katherine, Dr. Fred, Cousin T or Ms. Bobbi should take up the challenge, the thread will probably die here at the Whistle & Fish. Rest in peace. Does this make me a poor blogging citizen? Probably.
That said, I liked what my carny pal did with the challenge, and I decided to bend the rules to suit my own warp. For the next few days I’ll tackle them one post at a time, beginning with ten years ago, when I was still naive. Enjoy. Or not. Your call.
12 May 2008 | Comments [5]
Reptilian Sunday
Here it is in a nutshell: Because of a challenge from another maker of words to the Web, I have been wrestling for days with an alligator of a piece, one that seems destined to drag me under and roll me until I drown. I need to go Tarzan on it, reach down its snout and rip out its lungs, but every time I try, the beast takes me under again. Tomorrow for sure. Or the day after. How the blazes do I know?
I’ll get you for this. You know who you are.
11 May 2008 | Comments [1]
Both Eyeballs
“Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning hath made thee mad.” —Porcius Festus, procurator of Judea from about AD 58 to 62, to the apostle Paul.
At least once in nearly every episode of the Three Stooges films, Moe Howard uses the first two fingers of his right hand to poke the eyeballs of Larry or Curly (or Curly Joe or Shemp); the attack was so popular that a Stooges defense emerged, wherein the victim quickly lifted a vertical hand in front of his nose, and Moe received a between the fingers web bruise.
I mention this only in passing, because I’m going to Moe eye-poke the very next fundamentalist who attacks my use of intellectual sources outside those commonly touted among the Chosen by quoting the second of these two semicolon-joined sentences without acknowledging it was directed at the apostle Paul, who was the Much-Learned One—and yet remained a Christian.
You’ve been warned.
04 May 2008 | Comments [1]
Sea Change
This afternoon, approaching a white Cadillac stopped at a traffic signal, all my preconceptions were dashed, one by one. From a distance I first noticed a University of Tennessee sticker in the window, a bold orange “T”. Certainly a football fan. A little closer, and blue block lettering stood out against the back of the trunk lid: U.S. Air Force Retiree. Military type. Probably a wing nut. I searched for a yellow ribbon. There was none. Instead, a slightly smaller bumper sticker read “DEFEND THE NATION” in black Helvetica Extrabold Condensed. Underneath, a red script font spelled out, “Fire the Republicans.” Finally I saw the Obama ‘O8 tag.
Sometimes I think the tide may be turning.
01 May 2008 | Comments [1]
