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AMERICANS for the FIGHT AGAINST IDIOCY  The official AFAI pin-on floral ribbon. The chartreuse petals mean you're against idiocy. The orange center means you've been sterilized, so you won't bring any idiots into the world. The blue is just there because it's pretty. |
Isn't this color-coding
deal getting out of hand?
By RISA WILLIAMS
of TheColumnists.com
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Recently, I was in a restaurant and our waiter was wearing a large yellow rubber band on his wrist. I had no idea why, nor did my husband, and we still had no idea when we saw three other men that day wearing large yellow rubber bands on their wrists. But we did come to the conclusion, after much debate, that it must have something to do with being fanatically religious. Because let's face it- fanatically religious people do fanatically ridiculous things. My other theory was that it might be some strange rubber band fetish because in second grade, I knew this kid who wore rubber bands all over his arms and he used to thwack them against his skin until he bled. Although he never wore yellow ones, he just wore the regular rubber ones. Needless to say, the yellow wrist bands did not have anything to do with religious cults or fetishes, as those of you "in the know" already know (and yet failed to tell me). No, I had to discover this from a barrista at the local coffee shop who explained that her big fat cheapo yellow rubber band was for LANCE ARMSTRONG because, in her words, "he, like, fought testicular cancer, and, like, he wore one in the Tour de France!" Still, I did not understand
why the hell everyone else was wearing them. Nor did I even understand
why surviving testicular cancer would make Lance Armstrong want
to wear one. So I pressed on in my rubber band inquisition and
was presented with this bit of information: Yes, they are yellow. Cute? I wouldn't call them cute, I'd call them a big yellow rubber band. And you just gave one dollar to charity but you also just gave one dollar to some person who sold you a rubber band for one dollar, you idiot. Not to mention, what ever happened to giving to charity for the sake of giving to charity? Not to mention that the rubber band is currently ripping all of the arm hair off of your arm if you hadn't already noticed. Besides, I thought YELLOW was for supporting the troops as in "Tie a yellow ribbon 'round the old oak tree"? So I asked her this. "No," she replied, "that's a yellow ribbon PIN STICKER. This is a yellow RUBBER BAND." Funny, speaking of that yellow ribbon PIN STICKER that has appeared on almost every other car I see on the freeway, when the hell did that happen? I can almost remember a year ago when every other car had so many American flags on it that it looked like the car would literally take flight and fly into the air. Once, while speeding down the highway, I watched an American flag dislodge itself from the top of a truck and slam right into the car behind it, blinding the driver who nearly swerved into the divider in sheer terror of the giant flag that was now completely blocking his entire field of view. Now if that's not patriotic, I don't know what is. So I can sort of see the rationale behind getting rid of the car flags, if only for the sole reason that after three days on top of your car, the flag will be soiled and tattered and that's probably the exact opposite of the message you are trying to convey by tacking a bunch of American flags onto your car. But PINS? And worse than that, PIN STICKERS? For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about because you are not American, I mean that someone went and made stickers that look like a yellow ribbon pin only about 50 times bigger. So when slapped onto your car, it looks like your car is wearing a yellow ribbon pin on its backside. Please do not be shocked, if, on your next visit to the States, you see cars wrapped completely in gargantuan yellow rubber bands ...because I have sufficiently warned you about the state of things in this country and you have no excuse. So, after this whole discussion about pins and rubber bands, and after me finally deciphering the difference between the two, this guy who works in my office shows up wearing a BLUE rubber band on his wrist. "What are we fighting today?" I asked him. "Troops or testicular cancer?" "No," he sighed at me like I was retarded, "That's YELLOW. This is BLUE." This was followed by his eyes bulging at me as if to emphasize the fact that I had not clearly been able to see that it was blue and that this was a different color than yellow. "And what is blue for?" I asked. "Blue is for AUTISM!" "Are you kidding me?!" I asked. "No, I just paid $2 for it to this girl who was selling them outside to support autism research!" "Jesus Christ. How many color rubber bands are there anyway?" "I dunno, but BLUE is for autism, YELLOW is for testicular cancer and, oh yeah, PINK is for breast cancer and...I think that's it." "No," interjected a co-worker, "There's a black one for some athlete whose mom has some other kind of cancer." "Red is for Aids," someone added, "Or maybe that's just pins not bands." "And WHITE rubber bands," said another co-worker, "This group in Canada sells white rubber bands for poverty." "WHAT THE HELL?" I screamed, "Someone is actually selling a rubber band that shows that you SUPPORT poverty?" "NO! That you HATE poverty!" he retorted. "So they are all for hating something unless it's the troops and then it's loving something?" "Er...yeah...right." That was the only answer I got. There was a pause. "GET OUT! NO WAY! You're kidding about the poverty bands, right?" I shrieked in disbelief. Sure enough, they weren't kidding, you can find the poverty rubber bands here: www.makepovertyhistory.ca. I'm sure you can find all the other colored rubber bands by simply going outside to some tourist destination and looking for someone selling them to mobs of people. I'm telling you right now, this color-coding situation is getting WAY out of hand. It's bad enough that along with the weather every day, my local "Action" news station decides to tell me it's going to be an orange day for terrorism. Now, I have to worry about red pins on orange days with yellow pin stickers and white rubber bands. It's getting so bad that you people out there who are purchasing these things--you can't even tell me which charities you're supporting and half of you probably think you are buying a rubber band to support Aids victims of terrorists with husbands in the army who are dying of breast cancer. Soon I will just have to start selling chartreuse rubber bands for $2 and I will tell each of you that you are supporting "Americans for the Fight Against Idiocy" and you will buy them and brag to your friends about how they should really join in the fight against idiocy like you have. That's it. I'm starting that company. You better peel some stickers off your cars because I'm designing a rubber band that wraps around your entire car and has flags and ribbons hanging off it. That way I've covered all the bases of appealing to the demographic. And I'll even throw in some Tweety Bird decals for good measure, although, for the life of me, I will never understand what the hell those are supposed to mean. Maybe they are for People in Support of Vertically Challenged Fowl with Speech Impediments? Yeah, that sounds about right. |
©2005 by Risa Williams. The drawing is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
This column first posted March 28, 2005.
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