9 feb 2012

if you own or lease a car and live in chicago more than 30 days out of the year, you must have a city sticker on your car. this is according to the chicago city clerk's office. one presumes that a sticker is not necessary for a car owner to simply reside in the city -- one presumes that the sticker is necessary for the car itself to reside in the city. at any rate, city stickers. the city of chicago held a contest to choose next year's sticker design. designs were solicited from the children of chicago, hundreds of designs were submitted, and after online voting, one design was selected. on the verge of implementation, the winning design was deemed inappropriate, yanked, and replaced with the second place design. city officials claim that the winning drawing contained gang symbology.

i'm skipping the details because you can google this if you're interested. i'm going straight my conclusions because after all, this is my blog. firstly, the supposed gang symbols include ubiquitous icons such as a heart and the fallacious assignation of meaning to the simple placement of the elements. secondly, if the kid included gang symbols, perhaps it was inadvertant - perhaps he is so immersed in gang symbols that to him they are simply life symbols. thirdly, why waste perfectly good time tearing apart some kid's artwork looking for trouble... we have enough trouble as it is, simply taking things at face value.

the prize for winning this design contest was $1000 savings bond. when they took away the winningness from the young man and awarded the prize to a young lady, the city clerk felt compelled to provide the young man a prize also. according to what i heard on the radio, she was planning to pay for this additional prize herself. the young man's family are so appreciative of this solution that they plan to file a lawsuit.

see what happens when you open the can of conflict worms?