Tie One On

I am as nugatory as an 8-track tape or anything uttered by Charlie Sheen. Ever.

Tony Orlando started it. “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree,” one of my top ten favorite songs from 1973, which sounds all treacly and vapid now, told the story of a convict who hoped to see a yellow ribbon tied to the town oak tree, indicating that his girl had waited for his release and still wanted something to do with his criminal ass. Apparently she really, really, really loved him because there were 100 yellow ribbons round that ole oak, and the whole damn bus was cheering, blah, blah, blah, as if a busload of strangers would actually rally around a fricking felon and give a shit whether he still had a girlfriend. Hell. He was the girlfriend in the pokey. But anyway. The point is that the color yellow and ribbons have been associated with support for loved ones away at WAR (not incarcerated, people) since the 19^th century when naïve girls wore lemon ribbons in their hair to prove that they were not in fact old maids, but had lovers who would be home soon from the front.

The awareness/support ribbon craze started in 1986, but really took off in ’90 when Jeremy Irons wore a red ribbon to the Tony’s to show his support for AIDS awareness. So technically we have gay men to blame for the fact that every white trash bumper and soccer-mom-mobile in the country has a rainbow of meaningless symbols haphazardly adhered to its fading finish. Who even knows what any of the colors mean besides the pink breast-cancer ones? Who even fucking cares? There are currently 101 awareness/support ribbons, including black-and-red atheist solidarity streamers and silver zombie awareness bows. Come on! Atheist solidarity? Zombie fucking awareness? At what point do these things become so diluted that they no longer have meaning? (Hint: already.)

Of course in our land of plenty where we must milk to death every goddamned opportunity to make a buck, reputable businessman and clearly-never-doped-up cyclist, Lance Armstrong, jumped on the yellow bandwagon, promoting those ubiquitous silicone Livestrong/UseSteroids armbands to raise money for cancer, and I just want to point out that he could have avoided the testicular kind had he not stuffed his nuts into a rigid, leather seat for most of their tender lives and also if he did not have a soul blacker than the ribbon for remembrance of the Virginia Tech massacre. The bracelets, which are fugly and become irreparably filthy in a surprisingly rapid manner, now suffer the same flaccid, empty purpose as all those ribbons. No one even notices the bows or bangles or bumper stickers any more. We need some new fad, some new made-in-Taiwan cheap piece of shit on which to throw away money, some new EMBLEM to show we care.

I’m thinking plastic replicas of the organs or body areas affected by disease. That would get some attention. I mean if we really mean it when we say we support something, then we should have no problem dangling a pair of rubbery testicles—with realistic hair and texture!—from a neck chain. Or we could wear a stick-on single boob to show support for breast cancer surgery survivors. Or a sheet of faux skin to advocate skin-cancer awareness. Or a bloody, hacked-off penis pin to encourage all the youth who were molested by priests. Well, you get the idea. And not only would we be championing important causes. Just imagine how many Vietnamese children we’d be helping! No more eating out of garbage cans for them! They could actually get off their bony asses and do something productive instead of swatting flies and whining. Every little bit helps! I’m really getting behind this great idea. I think I’m going to go put a brown support-the-sweatshops ribbon on my car right now.