Correction

Before I get into this, yesterday's bumper sticker thing generated an outpouring of reader mail. Well, an "outpouring" for me, which is "ten." And all of them had the same theme: I may have misunderstood the bumper sticker. But it's not my fault. See, the consensus is that the bumper sticker ("Don't let the car fool you -- my treasure is in Heaven" for those of you with short memories who are also too lazy to click on the "Previous" button) is supposed to be on a cheap car, so the message is "I may look poor, but I'm going to get my reward blah blah blah." And I agree that that's a more concise message.

Except that when I saw the sticker, it was on what looked to me like a shiny new minivan. It certainly cost more than my car. So regardless of the intent of the bumper sticker manufacturers, the intent of the person I saw still seemed pretty mixed. And anyway, who were the people demanding a sticker midway between "In Case of Rapture, This Car Will Be Unmanned" and "Don't Laugh -- It's Paid For"? There's plenty of room on the back of a car; I say you should splurge and just buy two stickers.

So I've been caught with my pants down here. Figuratively, that is. Yesterday's entry, what there was of it, was apparently all based on my misreading of a bumper sticker. And because I have a strict policy (based essentially on laziness) against going back and changing old entries, it's going to sit there forever. Or until the Internet collapses on itself. You know, whichever. And I feel bad about that, because it wasn't the weightiest thing in the world to begin with. I basically had one thing to say ("Hey! Lookit that bumper sticker!") and stretched it out just long enough that I could post it. So it makes me sad to find out that what was already pretty thin filler was also, at its core, wrong.

And now I'm devoting a whole day to correcting it. And the thing I'm really afraid of is that I'm going to get a second outpouring of mail correcting the previous correction. Not because I'm particularly worried about spending a third day on the same bumper sticker (because, no matter how many mistakes I may have made, I'm certainly not going to keep talking about this thing), but because I'd hate to think that the best way for me to get lots of reader feedback is to misrepresent a bumper sticker.

So anyway, here's my point: if you or anyone in your family was involved in the production of the bumper sticker I talked about yesterday, you have my sincere apologies. I guess. Look, I'm just really tired at this point, and I'd like to go to sleep, if that's okay.