I suppose it's a symptom of living in Canberra that my attention keeps returning to what people put on the backs of their cars. After all the city's designers appear to be have been quite uninhibited by concerns about traffic minimisation. Thus, most of us who live in Canberra are condemned to spending plenty of time behind the driving wheel, staring at our fellow citizens and wondering about the things they choose to decorate their vehicles with.
Oh
not more bumper stickers - no,
not more bumper stickers. Today's puzzling phenomenon never appears on bumpers but always on back windows, usually those of station wagons (estate cars for English readers, I gather).
I've been noticing it for about a year now, I think, although possibly it's been there longer and I've been slow on the uptake. I don't know whether it's confined to Australia, whether we imported it from somewhere else, or whether it's a worldwide craze, in which case someone is making a great deal of money from it:
What I'm talking about is stick figure families. They're multiplying, they're hideous and, I realise, after noticing the individual stickers for sale in a newsagent in town, they're really quite expensive. Each time I see one of these dull little groupings, I feel alienated. I mean why on earth would anyone pay good money for something that is so ugly and unoriginal?
Once again, I'm confused by my fellow human beings and by life in general. As a contestant on the Great British Sewing Bee (my current all time favourite television programme) said, after sewing her skirt inside out to her bodice, 'I think I'll go and drown in a bucket of gin."
I haven't come across these figures. I can't really see their point, except to obscure the driver's rear view.
ReplyDeleteLast week I saw a sticker than was so crass, vulgar and offensive, I wanted to take a hammer to the vehicle. It read: "I'm driving this fast because I'm desperate for a poo!"
Why would anyone produce this sticker? Why would anyone buy it? I despair.
If it weren't a catchphrase, I'd say, 'I don't believe it'. The worrying thing is that the sticker would appeal perfectly to a four-year-old's sense of humour which must mean that there is someone with a four-year-old's mentality at the wheel.
DeleteSteerforth and Zoe -- I will assume, then, that you don't see what many of our pickup truck owners do over here. How shall I put it? They hang plastic, um, plastic replicas of particular male accoutrements from the backs of their rear bumpers so as to make the truck look like an un-neutered dog. Maybe that will make you despair less for your own locales? I will carry the despair for both of you...
DeleteSteerforth's all right because the English remain aloof from your country's follies for longer than us. Here though, I know it's only a matter of time.
DeleteI always imagine that moment...the exact moment at which the poo lady decided, "Yes, I want that on my car" or the moment a guy sees a barrel full of bollocks and thinks, "Yes! This is how I want to represent myself to people who don't know me!" I try not to feel superior...but they make it hard sometimes.
DeleteThat made me laugh
DeleteI think this sickness originated in North America. They've been around here for two or three years now, and they are endemic in the suburbs. I hate them. They are a clear indication that the vehicle is carrying people I would like to set on fire.
ReplyDeleteI am about to launch a new line of stickers, designed to disgust and alienate those who think the originals are cute. My initial series consists of little stick people hanging from gallows, perched on toilets, feasting on infants...
I think someone's pipped you to the post here at least. I think I'll launch a line which will just be strips of clear adhesive stuff you can stick on your back window and that bears no image whatsoever.
DeleteSadly, these are ubiquitous in the U.S., too. Though, I did see one that had the dad as Darth Vader, the mom as Leia, etc. I give that one a pass. Just because. (I think the dog was Chewbacca.)
ReplyDeleteI'm one of those weirdoes who has never seen Star Wars so I recognise the names, but am all at sea beyond that. I'll have to defer to you on their passworthiness.
DeleteSaw another today and would have taken a picture for you if I had not been driving: Large skull; smaller skull with a hair bow on it; even smaller skull with a hairbow on it. The McDeaths?
DeleteStar Wars ain't that great. But I applaud the semi-originality, at least.
DeleteI'm trying to construct a link in my mind with skulls on 17th century tombstones so that at least I can think that there's some kind of continuity or something going on there - but no, it's not working.
DeleteI like films about odd little place and rather dull individuals doing boring things, and I didn't think Star Wars quite fitted that bill, so I gave it a miss. Then it became such a big thing, but I still thought it sounded as though it might not interest me. Now I feel I've missed some important bonding experience. And yet I still can't bear the thought of wasting that amount of time in that way (I'm not saying I'm not quite capable of wasting time in many other ways - but ways that are enjoyable to me)
DeleteI have had many arguments with friends about this. My position is that the original films weren't great -- just new; and that guys of my age just identify with them because of timing. They just are not that great. I like them, but...meh. Strangely, Camille Paglia has called one of the last three films one of the greatest works of visual art in the 20th century. Considering how many Star Wars fans hate the new movies, it is quite a claim... But I think she is looking at them form the perspective of pure visual art; "painting". I guess I can see them being impressive in that way...
DeleteBut. for me, a film needs to either be spectacle with solid, if not complex, characters (like Indiana Jones) or real stories, like, say 12 Angry Men... Sadly, most movies live in that space in between: complete, vapid mediocrity.
Yes, and judging by the big audience a film like About Time - absolutely solid gold mediocrity - attracted, I fear many people don't mind.
DeleteThe car with the 'poo' sticker has become a regular fixture. For one awful moment I thought it was a new neighbour, but it doesn't have a residential permit.
ReplyDeleteI've been trying to imagine who the owner could possibly be (for some reason I imagined an overweight woman in her 20s).
The mystery was solved today, when I saw a rather depressed-looking woman in her 60s open the driver's door.
I think you should approach her, offering a roll of lavatory paper, next time you spot her, muttering something about how sorry you are about her digestive problems
DeleteHave you tried watching Jim Jarmusch? You might like Jim Jarmusch. I'm thinking of Down by Law, and all of the characters standing in thick fog staring at an invisible touristy lake.
DeleteI was just reading about his latest film and was very unappealed to. But then it's about vampires and I don't like vampires, especially at the moment as I have a fruit bad living in my fig tree and it's got Tilda Swinton in it and I'm never going to another film with her in it after I Am Love - Tilda Swindler for taking money for that awful dull self-indulgent thing.
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