Mickey Rat Don't Drive No Dodge Sheep
America: This Space for Rent

By: Bryan Zepp Jamieson

San Francisco can be a civilized place, which is why right wingers hate it so much. A few weeks ago, when peace rally organizers nationwide decided the next big rallies would be on February 15^th, folks in San Francisco noticed that this would conflict with the Chinese New Year, a popular blowout celebration in a town known for its popular blowout celebrations.

So the peace march was moved up a day, to the 16^th, thus giving everyone TWO reasons to get out in the sun over the weekend and enjoy a companionable day with other folks. Could you imagine the NRA doing something like that? Some town is burying a bunch of their kids from a incident a few days earlier where moody loners with handguns shot up the local high school, and Charlton Heston wades into town with a big noise, "Let's WASTE those suckas!" rally for the gun nuts. Dead kids are not a good reason to inconvenience the NRA, nosiree. It's a matter of class vs. loonery.

There was another oddity about the New Years' celebration in San Francisco. This lunar year coming up is known throughout most of the world as the "Year of the Ram". But not in San Francisco, where the parade organizers are referring to it as the "Year of the Sheep". Seems that one of the parades' main sponsors, the Ford Motor Company, didn't like the prominent display of the word "Ram". They were afraid that it would put everyone in mind of a competitor's hyperadrenal pickup truck, instead of their own hyperadrenal pickup truck.

I was going to rear my head back indigently and start huffing about this corporate intrusion into the affairs of free Americans when, reading the article, I made an interesting discovery. The participants in the New Years' celebrations didn't care. Didn't faze them in the least.

The main reason was that the Chinese use the same ideogram for "ram" as they do both for "sheep" and for "ewe". They don't distinguish between male and female of the species, which leaves me wondering how they handle requests for breeding stock. With ruminants, including sheep, gender is of primary importance, not just for such things as birthing and giving milk, but because there are certain temperamental differences between a ewe and a ram. (This in turn leads me to wonder why the HELL Dodge would want to name their trucks after something that is noted for engaging in head-on collisions with anything it can, which just goes to show that thinking is bad for the brain.) The article wryly noted that NOBODY was calling it the "Year of the Ewe". Just as well, I suppose. You don't want San Francisco to be invaded by drunken, lonely Scotsmen. (Note to PC complainers: my last name is Jamieson. It is not Irish. Or English.)

Well, if the folks celebrating the New Year aren't upset, then it's certainly not a problem for me. Turns out it isn't even the first time this has happened. A few (Chinese) years ago, they decided the "Year of the Rat" should, at Disney's request, be called the "Year of the Mouse". Again, same ideogram for both. But one thing that Disney and I have in common is that we can discern substantial differences between a rat and a mouse. With my glasses on, I can tell the difference from forty feet away. Maybe China has hell'a big mice. Or maybe their rats are real small and docile. Chinese zoology is starting to strike me as being a bit slap-dash. I bet teaching evolution is not easy there. Not to mention bovine husbandry.

Still, it's pretty hard to complain about the attitude that San Francisco Chinese Americans have to the exigencies of corporate sponsorship. They have truly taken steps toward peaceful and constructive resolution of differing needs, and come up with a solution that is mature, responsible, and reasonable.

But when it comes to corporate influence on American life, I don't feel particularly peaceful or constructive, and while I'm open to mature, responsible, and reasonable solutions. Those solutions don't include allowing corporations to abridge my freedom of speech In fact, my general attitude toward the major international corporations is that they can go screw. (Note: I do not live in San Francisco.)

I always feel a slight sense of irritation when I hear about "Pac Bell Stadium" or "Staples Center". I often wonder how long it will be before they drop the fiction that the city name has any real meaning, and you start hearing about the Motorola Raiders, or the Greyhound Bus Dodgers. Smart companies might pick names that have something, however tenuous, with their product, so you might have the Irish Spring Celtics, or the Dewey, Scrooem, and Howe Sharks, but I'm guessing most advertisers will show their usual good sense and taste, so you'll have such oddities as Beverley Manor Wanderers, or the Laura's Fudge Packers. Most will simply change the team nickname, so you'll get the Dr. Scholl's Footpads (formerly the Boston Red Sox) or the Disney Mighty Ducks. Oh, wait...

Even sports awards have gone commercial. You have the Rolaids relief man in baseball, and eventually they'll specialize, and have the Tums Closing Relief award.

Sporting events are paying to include sponsors names in the official title of their event, which gives slavish corporate sportscasters something to say to fill the vast array of their vacuity. Bowl games are big on that; I think the Rose Bowl is about the only one left that is just the "Rose Bowl", and not the "Frito-Lay/Pepsico Rose Bowl". I can't be sure, since I've all but quit watching television sports. If I tune in next October to find myself looking at a promo for the Windex World Series, or in May for the Budweiser Stanley Cup, that will pretty much finish me off for pro sports. I know golf tournaments are doing it, because I see sportswriters in the papers using that silliness - probably at the direct order of their publishers, who probably are part of the same megacorp as the sponsor. I wonder how many news sources blow off more important events to give emphasis to those which are commercially conjoined?

Why stop at sports? How about national parks, or points of interest? You could have Dominos/Yosemite National Park, or Tastee Freeze/Denali National Park. The Right Guard Statue of Liberty would attract lots of tourists and inspire the world. Anusol/Mt. Shasta, anyone?

Maybe corporations can start giving expecting parents scholarships for their babies if they are allowed to put their name as part of the child's. You can easily envision Orange Julius Simpson, or Pepsi Martinez, but you could also pay parents to make the first name one of the characters in a TV series, so you would have Daphne Frasier Smith, or Guber Boston Public Jones. One thing's for sure: the kids would learn how to defend themselves early in life.

Imagine this libertarian paradise:

I was born 60 years too early. But for a simple twist of fate, I could have been Bryan Pabst Jamieson.

Of course, there would be a contract. If I had been born Pabst, my parents would have signed a form agreeing, in return for a scholarship to get me through grade eight, that I would never drink any other brand of beer, and if a non-drinker, to never criticize alcohol consumption. They would agree to turnover over insults made against me based on my middle name to company lawyers for legal consideration, and they would have never been seen drinking any other competitor's beer (beer made by the same megacorp would be OK, presumably.)

Just think: if you bought a Chrysler, they would toss in, for free, a years' worth of protection from the city police, who might happened to be owned by Chrysler. Insurance policies would result in reduced ambulance rates, and home mortgages could allow you half price driving on any highway in the state owned by that particular banker/lender.

Truly, a libertarian paradise.

And best of all, no rats. Or at least none wearing gloves and short pants with big buttons.