Anyone seen the clever little stickers like these that activists place on stop signs?
True confession: I’m feeling too lazy to run down to a nearby corner, so I borrowed the sign and photoshopped it to suit the needs of this blog post. No, I didn’t add the “EATING ANIMALS” sticker. What the sign actually looked like was this:
A little busy, no?
Regular readers know how I feel about animal rights, but I’m not sure that a stop sign is the right place to be debating that issue one way or the other. A stop sign is not a public debating forum at all, but a safety measure. When people start putting political messages on them, they’re distracting drivers from the signs’ primary purpose — which is to make sure drivers stop so that people don’t get killed in the intersection.
The problem is, there are too many of these annoying messages, and they invite more “contra” messages. (Which I admit, are a lot more entertaining, and more artsy.)
Like these:
* Collaborate And Listen
* Defacing Stop Signs
* Drop And Roll
* Hammer Time!
* Is The New Go
* It
* Me If You’ve Heard This Before
* Stickers
* Walking
* With All The Patchouli
If I were in the business of selling “counter” stickers, I’d probably add a few more:
* Leftist Drivel
* Socialism
* Nanny Statism
* Animal Rights
* Hillary Clinton
* Intestinal blockage
I’m sure you get the idea. But again, is a stop sign really where we want favorite causes debated?
If you feel so strongly about eating animals, you why not just buy one of the “EATING ANIMALS” stickers and put it where it belongs — on your car bumper!
Hmmmm…. Maybe that’s not a bad idea. You could buy them by the gross and hand them out at beef industry conventions.
I realize that complaining about the stickers does not solve the problem, but I think there is a simple (and probably quite legal) solution. Just take a razor blade and remove the defacing sticker from the stop sign. If you get stopped, tell them that the sticker is not only defacing taxpayers’ property, but as an unwanted and inflammatory message, it constitutes a dangerous distraction, and a public hazard, and that you were just doing your part to clean up your community.
I don’t think anyone would be arrested for that.
UPDATE: My thanks to M. Simon for linking this post, and for his insightful comments:
Some need heroin, some don’t.
And some need blogging instead. Should we imprison bloggers for their “addiction”?
Comments
5 responses to “You’ll brake for my slogan!”
I can’t wait for bioscience to be able to grow muscles and tendons in vats. Then they would not be connected to brains and eating a nice juicy steak would have no moral value.
Me? I went through a “you must all eat the right foods just like me” phase. I was insufferable. (not that I’m any different now, just not about food 🙂
Then I figured out that generally you are hungry for what you need. You can smell it. You can taste it. (which is almost the same as smelling it)
Animals are vast chemical factories. The skin is leaky. You can smell fear. Why not food?
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This is what makes our drug laws such a mess. People are different. Some need heroin, some don’t.
Me personally? I have nothing to say about what people put in their mouths, smoke, drink, etc. I assume they are doing what they do because they need to. The rest of us out not interfere (Politically with laws – personal intervention is fine, free speech and all. But no means no.).
So I hate the coming fat laws and the already here anti-smoking laws. Tobacco is an anti-depressant. Maybe the folks smoking it need it.
Hundreds of stop signs in Berkeley and Oakland have the word “DRIVING” spray painted on them. These 2 cities have spent over $1 million on stop sign grattifi abatement. Zachary Running Wolf, who just ran for mayor of Berkeley and lost, has been convicted of spraying “DRIVING” on stop signs, but there may be others doing it also. Apparantly, these arrogant knuckleheads believe that people will stop driving cars if stop signs are altered to say ‘STOP DRIVING.’
I’ve often fantasizing about carrying small stickers with the phrase “depends on your family” to attach to cars with the bumper sticker, Hatred is not a Family Value.
PETA: People for the eating of tasty animals.
Where do I sign up?
PETA: People for the Eating of Tasty Animals.
Where do I sign up?