The Reds Go Green!!!

So I was cruising down one of the main streets of the Midwestern city that I frequent, when I saw a stop sign. Following the usual protocol, I stopped my vehicle. As usual, the stop sign cordially thanked me, in a Victorian-inspired English accent. But, not per usual, this sign had an......accessory, if you will. Attached to the top of this sign was a pole with a solar panel on top of it. Now, I'm as "green" as the next guy, in that my eyes and some of my clothes are green, but I am not sure about this particular energy saving move. I would like to remind those reading that this is not a stop LIGHT, like those that have bulbs and other electrical parts. This is a flat, octagonal piece of metal painted red and white.

Now, as I am an educated man (I went to a school, you might have heard of it....Hard knocks!!!), I was hit by the obvious concerns. First, I wondered how people would know to stop on cloudy days, or at night. I then reasoned that surely the city government must have though of this and created a way to store this power, or have a substitute means of power, like a hamster or a small man operating an even smaller underground machine. That concern aside, I became fearful that perhaps the panel was not at all for the Stop sign. A stop sign, no matter how technologically advanced, could never use as much power as this panel was unjustly stealing from the sun. I immediately came to the conclusion that there must be a darker motive. The first thing that came to my mind was the Soviets. Let's be fair though, usually when something is amiss, my first thought is the Soviets. However, the stop sign is RED. The stop sign is also a COMMAND, while the Soviets utilized a COMMAND economy, complete with central planning. Also, there were 8 main heads of state during the Soviet Era: Lenin, Stalin, Malenkov, Khruschev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and Gorbachev. There are how many sides on a stop sign? 8!!!!!!!! I don't think I need to go any further.

So, I must applaud this small Midwestern city for being clever enough to hide their shady alliance with a dead superpower by using such a benign piece of traffic furniture. However, I cannot stand by and allow the Soviets to steal power from the Sun to fuel their communist comeback before the U.S. does. I mean, they already beat us into space, and we had to fake a moon landing to get them to stop that madness. If there are two things I learned from growing up during the Cold War, it's that A) the U.S. is number one, we have the shirts and trucker hats to prove it B) we will not lose another technologically themed race. So here is my call to arms for America: It's time to get solar. Take out your calculators, and smash them. Remove the solar panels from them, glue them together to form one big solar panel, and tape them to everything; your roof, your car, your dog, your shirts. Even if the panels are not configured to power anything, they'll be visible. Remember, as we learned from the arms race, we're not concerned about things working or being practical, we just want to show the Soviets that we mean business! Until next time, stay vigilant. This war may be Cold, but the Sun is certainly heating it up.