March 31, 2008
Discourse on Decals
Bumper stickers are a pretty crass form of communication, probably falling somewhere in between t-shirt slogans and marking territory with urine, but at least they’re used to convey a pretty wide range of ideas. They can tell you the profession or political views of the driver of the car in front of you or the radio station likely playing within. Those rear window decals, on the other hand, seem only capable of communicating a single, deafening message: I’m an idiot.
You’d think that since bumper stickers are often given out free whereas decals presumably required effort and money to obtain, the latter would tend to be classier. The opposite is true. Most of these decals exist for one of the tackiest purposes imaginable: to express one’s individuality. Their preferred method of self-expression? Minor variations on an irritating cliché. In fact, there’s apparently only a handful of decals you can choose from: 1) Calvin peeing on something, 2) Calvin praying to a giant cross probably while peeing himself, 3) Your family represented as stick figures differentiated only by size (i.e. age), hair style (i.e. gender) an an object like a guitar or a baseball bat (i.e. one single superficial interest that utterly defines them)
I’ve designed my own decal that’s sure to appeal to soccer moms and urine fetishists alike:
