Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Bumper Stickers

Driving down the highway I love to read bumper stickers. People find so many interesting ways to express their patriotism, political views, passions or sense of humor.

My other boat is a Sunfish. No - that's not a bumper sticker but I suppose it could be. I mention it because my Sunfish trailer has various flat surfaces ideal for decorating with bumper stickers. Over the years I've collected a few. Some are the usual sailing stickers handed out at trade shows or sent by vendors every time you order some parts through the mail. Others are ones that just struck me as funny.

Here are a few....

evildoer - this was acquired at a time when it was the most common word in the president's speeches. I bought it to commemorate the time when after an awful start in a Wednesday night race I accidentally said out loud "General Recall". I was just thinking, "I hope there is a general recall". Honest. Anyway half the fleet thought it was the race officer that had shouted out the recall and stopped racing. Oops.

APS

BEWARE OF DOGMA - has a scary picture of a fierce looking doggie

HARKEN Black Magic

Bike - It's Patriotic - is it? Never quite understood this one. Maybe it's about not driving around in gas-guzzling SUVs?

So Many Christians - So Few Lions

SAIL - from SAIL Magazine

Q104.3 CLAPTON ROCKS

Don't Pray in Our Schools and I Won't Think in Your Church

North Sails

Get your MOJO working - a reference to Colie Sails MOJO Laser rigging package

Team Vanguard

Atheism is Myth Understood

Team McLube

Old European on Board - this one is a reference to Mr Rumsfeld's speech where he dismissively talked of old Europe. As I really am an old European it seemed appropriate.

LASER Other boats are just practice - this came with my 2005 Laser class renewal. Just about sums up my view of the Sunfish these days. As some of my stickers seem to be designed to piss off the religious right, I might as well piss of Sunfish sailors as well.

SF - this one of those national letter plates that you see on European cars. In America they always seem to be referencing Long Beach Island or the Outer Banks as if a barrier island connected to the mainland with bridges is really a foreign country. I suspect 90% of the people that see this think it's something to do with San Francisco - but there is a Sunfish logo if you look carefully.

EAT.SLEEP.SAIL

"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully" - G W Bush 09/29/2000 - this one has a cute little picture of Mr Bush looking a lot younger than he does now. I never quite knew the context of this profound expression of our president's political philosophy. Perhaps he was expressing his personal support for the US Sunfish Class Association? Anyway it's a reminder of those innocent days pre-911 when he had the luxury of talking about fish.

WHY BE NORMAL? - Exactly.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Atheism is fraught with its own dogmas and intolerant episodes. Not to mention, it takes as much faith to believe that Ockham's Razor is true as it takes to believe in a deity.

Atheism is as much about narrowness, arrogance and intolerance as a conventional religion. Frequently, I look at atheists, as an ex-atheist myself, as simple-minded, hate-filled chronic depressives who don't know how to think clearly. Why not try to be a skeptic about atheism, or is it you are too narrow-minded to question your atheist dogma?

Here's a little Chesterton for you ignorant minds to handle:

"the most characteristic current philosophies have not only a touch of mania, but a touch of suicidal mania. The mere questioner has knocked his head against the limits of human thought; and cracked it. This is what makes so futile the warnings of the orthodox and the boasts of the advanced about the dangerous boyhood of free thought. What we are looking at is not the boyhood of free thought; it is the old age and ultimate dissolution of free thought. It is vain for bishops and pious bigwigs to discuss what dreadful things will happen if wild scepticism runs its course. It has run its course. It is vain for eloquent atheists to talk of the great truths that will be revealed if once we see free thought begin. We have seen it end. It has no more questions to ask; it has questioned itself. You cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves if they have any selves. You cannot fancy a more sceptical world than that in which men doubt if there is a world. It might certainly have reached its bankruptcy more quickly and cleanly if it had not been feebly hampered by the application of indefensible laws of blasphemy or by the absurd pretence that modern England is Christian. But it would have reached the bankruptcy anyhow. Militant atheists are still unjustly persecuted; but rather because they are an old minority than because they are a new one. Free thought has exhausted its own freedom. It is weary of its own success. If any eager freethinker now hails philosophic freedom as the dawn, he is only like the man in Mark Twain who came out wrapped in blankets to see the sun rise and was just in time to see it set. If any frightened curate still says that it will be awful if the darkness of free thought should spread, we can only answer him in the high and powerful words of Mr. Belloc, “Do not, I beseech you, be troubled about the increase of forces already in dissolution. You have mistaken the hour of the night: it is already morning.” We have no more questions left to ask. We have looked for questions in the darkest corners and on the wildest peaks. We have found all the questions that can be found. It is time we gave up looking for questions and began looking for answers."
Besides, if you happen to be an American, the U.S. Supreme Court defined a "religion" in the

Here are just a few, the Massacre of 40,000 Catholic peasants in the Vendee during the French Revolution, countless beheadings in the name of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. The mass murders of clergy during the atheistic Paris Commune of 1871. The mass murders of Christians under the Bolsheviks, the imprisonment of clergy during Ceaucescu's rule in Romania in the name of ending religious bigotry. The mass murders of Catholic clergy in Spain under the pre-Franco atheistic Republican Regime and the mass murders of Catholics under the atheistic regime following the 1910 Mexican Revolution.

Atheism is about one thing, self-loathing and hating Christianity, that's it. Don't kid yourselves because maybe you could learn something if you opened your minds. Congratulations for your bigotry.

May God forgive you for your arrogance, and May God Bless You and Keep You.

Anonymous said...

To the anonymous above....:

Are U from Texas??

http://web.knoxnews.com/silence/archives/jesusland.jpg

LOL...

Tillerman said...

How sad that a couple of amusing bumper stickers could provoke such vitriol.

Peace brother.

Anonymous said...

It's interesting that you think "so many christians, so few lions" is funny. What if it said "so many Jews, so few Hitlers" Or "so many blacks, so few clan members", "so many capitalistic-pig americans, so few 9-11s"
I suppose the list could go on and on for intolerant "funny" messages but I do not believe you or many other people would find them funny, besides the hatemongers who would find their own feelings so humorously described on a bumper sticker.
You just show your own hypocrisy by putting that particular sticker along with your athiest sticker. I am guessing you call yourself an athiest because you wouldn't want to identify with "narrowminded and judgemental" Christians.

You say its "sad that a few 'amusing' stickers provoke such a vitriol response" But somehow feeding christians to lions is funny, not vitrolic. If you really were not expecting or prepared for responses like chesterton writings, or this post then you sadly have not thought through putting such a hateful, and hurtufl message on your trailer, as well as writing a message to point out how "funny" it is.

My guess is that you were hoping for responses like the previous one and this one so you could further feel some false sense of superiority knowing that you had hurt others with the message's hate you drive around with on your trailer.
I find it further interesting you end your response to Chesterton quoter with "peace, brother." That feels really sincere coming from someone who thinks its funny to joke about feeding people of a certain religion to wild animals. If you really want "peace," brother, maybe you should find a better way of expressing your arrogant opinions without so much hate and bitterness. If you had ended your response with F**k you, mothaf**ka I could have at least thought you were just angry and bitter and not angry, bitter, and the perpetrator of the worst kind of hypocrisy.
I hope some day you can admit to yourself that your hate towards Christians is only an extension of your own self-hating bitterness.

ILMATAR said...

Wow...instead of puking your religous beliefs all over a simple forum, how about thinking for yourself and shut up!!! Last time I checked, this is a free country and you can say whatever you want...even if it is stupid...like your argument for christianity. Once again, are you from Texas?

Anonymous said...

http://www.PeaceBrotherStickers.com

Anonymous said...

Okay, first of all, great bumper stickers! Also to the spazz who responded to a fun little blog with FAR TOO MANY paragraphs about how atheists are narrow minded for not thinking there's a god: WOW! Don't you think you're narrow minded? Because you're certainly not open to the idea that there ISNT one? Of course not right? And atheists are hate filled? You're the one going on about how stupid someone is because they don't believe in the same things as you. Talk about intolerant. I hate how all you people think you're SO righteous because you believe in god. I mean really, get a grip. I'm most definitely a LOT younger than you, but even I can see that you're a first-class hypocrite.

Anonymous said...

I don't think they are from Texas, even ours are not usually that bad.

Post a Comment