What is it with joke car stickers?

I was driving along the other day and I saw this car with a blue, diamond-shaped card hanging in the back window saying “Cheeky Monkey on board”. Now, I’m sorry, but just what on earth is that all about. Who, I mean who???, would put a sign up in the back of their car saying “Cheeky Monkey on board” and … why? For the love of mike, why?

I mean someone actually spent good money on buying that and then went to the effort of putting it into their car. Why?

No, I’m not going to go into the old cliché about signs that say “Caution! Baby on board!” Obviously they are pointless – but I presume that the parents involved seem to think that other people might pay the blindest bit of notice to them. But, if this is the case, then surely the sensible thing would be for the parents involved to take the sign out when the baby isn’t in the car – boy that cried “Wolf!” and all that sort of thing – but they never, ever do. Those poxy, stupid signs just hang there for years.

Don’t they realise that even if these signs could work in theory, they invalidate them in practice by their own idleness. If emergency service vehicles had the blues-and-twos going the whole time, people would pay far less attention to them. It’s the same principle.

The only thing I can imagine is that it’s some sort of self-aggrandisement thing. “Oh, look, we’re responsible parents. We care enough about our child to hang some crappy piece of tat in the back of our car. Bow down, oh ye unworthy mortals!”

(Oddly enough and as an aside, someone did tell me the other day that “Caution! Show Dogs in transit” signs do serve a useful purpose because people with show dogs on board will drive more slowly and more carefully than “normal” drivers and therefore when you see a “Caution! Show Dogs in transit” you know to expect that that car might act a bit unusually.

Ok, well that’s fair enough, but the flaw in the plan is that the only people – apart, now, from you, dear readers – who know this are other show dog owners. The rest of the world remain blissfully ignorant. Surely it would be far more sensible and effective to have a sign that says “Caution! I am liable to drive erratically and irritate the fuck out of other road users!” Then we would all know where we stood.)

But, where the heck did “Cheeky Monkey on board” come from? It’s not a warning. It’s not a joke. It’s just some sort of advertisement that the owner of the vehicle is really, really, really sad. I mean, what do they think other road users are going to do? Put on that face and tone of voice one does when looking at a bunch of baby baa-lambs bouncing about in a meadow and say “Awwww! How sweet. Oh, look, she calls her child a ‘cheeky monkey’! What an endearing way of referring to the little darling’s spirit of adventure and individuality. Ah, she must be a super mum. Bless!”

Give me strength!

And this brings me on to the whole subject of joke stickers in cars. Listen, if you have a so-called joke sticker in or on your car, then unless you invented it yourself, it simply labels you as a sad-act. Ok. This is a rule.

Joke stickers on your car say one of two things about you, and neither of them are good.

Option A is that you have the sticker on your car because you personally still find it hilariously funny. Every morning you come out of your house, see the “love thy neighbour – but don’t get caught” sign and burst once again into fits of uncontrollable giggles over the unrestrained hilarity of it all. Ok, this is not good. Jokes are funny once, or maybe a couple of times, but once you’ve heard them, they stop being funny – unless you are seriously devoid of intelligence, humour or both – in which case don’t advertise it by putting a damned stupid joke sticker on your bumper.

Option B is that, deep-down, you know that your are seriously devoid of your own wit and humour and you are trying to cover it up by putting a joke sticker on your car in the desperately vain hope that people will somehow assume that you invented the joke and that therefore you must be a really funny and interesting person whom they would really like to get to know.

Look, it’s a mass-produced bumper sticker, ok? Unless you have a vinyl printing press in your house, we know you didn’t make it up, ok. Give it up. It’s someone else’s joke, not yours. You aren’t funny. Live with it.

The exception to this rule are the people who do make up their own bumper stickers (it does happen) or who adapt bumper stickers or use them in new ways that put a different – and original – slant on the humour.

A case in point was a bumper sticker that was popular way back when that you used to see on old bangers that said “My other car is a Porsche”. Simply hilarious. However, I did give a wry smile when I saw someone driving around with that sticker on a Porsche. That person had taken the old “joke” and inverted it –giving it a bit of originality.

However then a year or so later, I saw someone driving around in a Porsche with a professionally made sticker that say “My other car is also a Porsche”. Totally failing to understand that by adding the “also” they had completely killed any originality that might have been in the idea and turned it into a straight “The owner of this vehicle is a self-satisfied, smug, humourless wanker” notice.

Joke bumper sticker are crap. Don’t do it.

Here endeth the rant.

It's perfectly natural...

I do get slightly narked at young women who get all righteously outraged at older men for finding them attractive.

You know the sort of thing:

20 year old girl: “Eww! Yuk! This old guy started hitting on me in a bar. Jeez! He must have been, like, you know, over forty or something! He’s old enough to be my dad! What a pervert! People like him should be locked up! Freak!”

Look, it’s perfectly natural for you not to fancy old people.

BUT, it’s also perfectly natural for old people not to fancy old people either.

You don’t have some switch in your head that clicks on automatically when you are thirty five and suddenly changes the way your libido has worked for the previous two decades.

You do not suddenly go: “Wrinkles? Phwoar! Saggy boobs? Wow! Cellulite? Give me more of that stodgy, dimpled goodness, baby!”

It just doesn’t happen. (Ok, there may be a small proportion of people who get off on “old” as a concept, but they are very much in the minority.)

This is why page three girls, and indeed most porn stars, are not in their thirties, forties and fifties – even though most of the people who look at them are. So, why aren’t they? Because young, toned and pert that is what (nearly) everyone fancies – no matter how old they are.

Yes, as you get older, you start to appreciate that older people can also be attractive and stimulating in ways that you cannot appreciate when you are younger. You also start to realise that many young people are incredibly shallow, vacuous, inexperienced, naive and downright boring to talk to.

You also start to realise that if older is all you are going to be able to get, then you might need to lower your standards a bit.

But you don’t stop fancying younger people.

“Ooo—er. Look at her. 34-26-34? Perfect complexion? Toned body? How disgusting! Who could possibly want to shag that? Why doesn’t she let herself go, eat a bunch of cream cakes and grow some facial hair? Then she’d look like a real woman…”

I don’t think so.

So, whilst it may indeed be a bit odd if young girls want to sleep with some old codger, there is nothing unusual about old codgers wanting to sleep with young girls. Fifty year old multi-millionaires do not hire fifty year old bunny-girls and this is not because there is some law of the world that means that only perverts can get rich.

So, there is nothing perverted, freaky or gross whatsoever about old guys fancying young chicks. That is perfectly normal. Everyone does it. There is only something a bit sad about the ones that still think that young chicks would actually want to be pulled by them.

And, I can guarantee you this, girlies. You may think that beer bellies, hairy ears and baldness are not attractive now – and you will still feel the same way in 20 years’ time. And you’ll look back and say “M.A.D. knew what he was talking about”.

Count on it…