STICKER THIEVES a vote for Bush is a vote against yourself...

So my band played a gig this weekend at a really swank deer camp in bum-fuck this weekend. After traveling 10 miles (more or less) on perilous muddy red dirt roads that were built up out of the cotton fields they cut through, we arrived at the remote location.

Of course, with the topsy-turvy way things are today, what with 9/11 having ripped a hole in the space-time continuum and what have you, when you go out in the middle of nowhere in Yazoo County, Mississippi (home of big fat "governor" Haley Barbour), you know people are gonna worship three things (besides a lily-white Jesus): 1) guns 2) more guns and 3) the Republican party.

So I pull my muddy van down the muddy hill and leave it there for the duration of the 5.5 hour gig. That's right, five hours and change we played for these moonshine-swillers, who were actually very cordial. To our faces.

Where's John Kerry?

So during a break I had to get something out of the van and notice that my giant John Kerry sticker has been removed. There is also "fuck" written in the filth that I recently acquired from driving through the mud above where the sticker had been, as though some mischievous soul thought it would simply be enough to have people (mainly me, I guess) read my back window as "Fuck John Kerry." But one of the bolder ones probably decided that wasn't enough and then ripped the sticker right off my window.

They also removed my "Bush Lied, Thousands Died: Impeach Bush" sticker, and then later, my "Rock Against Bush" sticker. And then, they drew the Grateful Dead's "Steal Your Face" logo. Which strikes me as odd--while I don't know of the Dead ever really taking a political stance, I have a feeling they didn't and don't vote Republican.

Well anyway, I didn't really appreciate the removal of the stickers, but I do like the fact that at least these fellow Mississippians aren't illiterate--they knew enough to realize my stickers didn't say "George W. Bush." And it's also a nice thought that the stickers bothered them so much that they couldn't just leave them there, they had to take them off.

What the removal means

If it's true, as everyone seems to be saying now after the Republican convention, that Bush has double-digit leads in the polls and is all but invincible, why bother taking off the stickers?

I mean, if Bush is so kickass and so clearly dominant, why take the trouble to peel off some John Kerry stickers? And that's another thing--the stickers were peeled of very cleanly (except for the "Impeach Bush" one--they left a little corner). Wouldn't it be better to let me drive down the road with a giant loser's name attached to my car? Wouldn't that be more of an insult to me since Bush is going to win without question, and I'm shilling for the obvious loser with my sticker there for everyone to see and therefore I'm a loser by association?

Well, the reason they had to take the stickers off is because none of that is true. Bush is the loser, he's the one with no credentials, he's the one on whose watch 9/11 occurred. He's the one who sat endangering children's lives on that day, "projecting scared-shitlessness" (I mean, "projecting calm"). He's the one who was too chickenshit to shoot out his eardrum or volunteer for service in 'Nam.

Fuck him. And fuck anyone who votes for his sorry ass, because they're the ones who are voting for the downfall of this great country. And I hate to say that, because there are some people in my family who are voting for him, but they have got to wake the fuck up. Bush and the Republicans are jerking them around, taking them for a ride, whispering Bible verses like sweet nothings in their ears while stifling science, redistributing wealth to the rich, letting more people go without health insurance, and slowly but surely erasing our civil liberties.

OK, that's enough...

A great name for a metal band: GRINDSTAFF. Apparently that's someone running for some office in Yazoo or perhaps Madison county.