The Frist package guy keeps a mini-fridge among his personal effects behind the desk at his eponymous office.  Exactly two bumper stickers decorate that fridge.  One says SOUTH OF THE BORDER and the other says NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS: WITHOUT ‘EM IT WOULD JUST BE SLEEP.

Let us first consider each sticker separately, and then the remarkable incidence of the stickers in concert.

?I. SOUTH OF THE BORDER

South of the Border is a theme park right off I-95 in Dillon, South Carolina.  It includes restaurants, shopping, hotels, and an amusement park with three arcades.  This assemblage of recreation and hospitality establishments is Mexican-themed, and Pedro, its namesake-cum-mascot and quite possibly its patron saint, wears a moustache and a sombrero and speaks Spanglish on billboards. The facility boasts two fireworks stores, a leather shop, several brands of gasoline, and a nightclub that opens daily at 5 PM.

While several internet accounts gloss South of the Border as king-kitsch and intentionally campy, I don’t buy it. The pointy-headed intellectuals and vague hipsters who populate the internet are simply all too eager to dismiss a cultural phenomenon they don’t understand. 112 million people have visited South of the Border…

Whether or not a visitor to South of the Border smells the kitsch on the 200-foot sombrero…

The issue at hand is the potential kitschiness of posting a bumper sticker from the establishment at your place of work. God forbid the Nass be out-kitsched.

II. NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS: WITHOUT ‘EM IT WOULD JUST BE SLEEP?Once my brother had a job and they gave him a pamphlet called “Is This a Career-Limiting Move?” and I think that posting any bumper sticker about semen is probably deemed career-limiting.  This iteration is particularly vulgar, as it fails even to advertise sexual prowess – it seems to feature sperm for sperm’s sake. It makes you think for a long time about whether adult males have wet dreams – and if they do have wet dreams, are they good enough to celebrate in a bumper sticker? It has been suggested that masturbation-to-completion counts, too, but I’m not sure that it makes much difference.

Regardless of the specific definition of a night-time emission, suffice it to say the human resource people would probably prefer it wasn’t posted.  It constitutes some sort of harassment.  It’s probably offensive to women, and maybe to men, too. The sticker is vulgar, unfunny and self-deprecating to the point of indignity – maybe to the point of anti-dignity, where it actually takes away your dignity – where the model is generally along the lines of vulgar, unfunny, and braggartly.

?I have just been informed that the bumper sticker may not be about semen at all. It might be about farting.

Mr. Frist Package Guy, I want to tell you a few things, in case you’re out there – in case you’re sitting on the toilet in Brown Hall, like the rest of the Nass readership. If I could make a beer commercial it would be about you.  It would say: we salute you, Mr. Frist package guy.  This is a profile in courage.