The stout-hearted (and -waisted) people of Northeast Ohio are proud of their Left-wing pieties, and are surprisingly willing to display their silly ideas publicly. I say surprising because you'd think they'd understand by now that they're putting the region's economy in the crapper... But I digress! What has always fascinated me is the bumper stickers people attach to their cars -- gratuitous offerings to an indifferent world of some keen insight into the driver's normally-marxist worldview. Most often the message consists of some environmental nonsense or a general condemnation of America's national defense.

But just now, driving back from the supermarket, I saw something different. On the tinted rear window of a black Ford Explorer, I saw a decal that said "As I Lay Dying."

And I thought to myself, "Imagine that -- in an area where most people still haven't scraped off their repulsive Kerry-Edwards stickers, this guy is driving around displaying his affinity for the timeless work of modernist American author William Faulkner."

How odd. And yet how refreshing!

As we drove, it happened that we both had to stop at a red light on Bagel-y Road. His car was stopped right alongside mine and I noticed his windows were rolled down. I actually considered rolling down my own window, pumping my fist in the air and yelling "Faulkner rocks!"

Turns out it's good that I didn't. I may as well have called out "Absalom, Absalom!"; he would've been just as baffled.

Eh, thrash metal never appealed to me. I suppose it never will. Driving the rest of the way home I was passed by another car sporting a Hillary '08 sticker. I guess we're all out of touch around here, in one way or another.