BOX POPULI

Rice Krispies Against Putin

Corn Pops against autocracy

High school students in Chicago are attempting to break two Guinness World Records by creating a mosaic of the Ukrainian flag from nearly 5,000 cereal boxes.-UPI

Dear Chicago Children United for Ukraine:

Wow! Thank you so much!! We Ukrainians don’t know how to respond to this. It’s kind of difficult, actually. The responding.

Let me see if I got this right — a bunch of Midwestern kids assembled a giant flag of Ukraine on the floor of a bank out of 5,000 cardboard boxes. Which are full of cereal. That you eat at breakfast time. Rice Krispies for the blue and Corn Pops for the yellow. Put them together — Ukraine! Yay!

And you built this really big Ukraine Rice Krispies flag to raise money for us. Because we’re being invaded. And you feel bad. And you want to do something nice. Sure, yeah, I can see that.

But also, by making this giant blue and yellow thingie out of food containers, you guys get your names in the Guinness Book of World records. Yes? Everyone has that book and everyone will see your name written in it. High five!

This whole thing is so…what is the word in English, bizarre? No, that’s French. Creative! That’s it! This whole thing is so creative!

Maybe I’m a little confused because we don’t have an old Ukrainian tradition where we make giant flags out of cereal boxes.

Our flags tend to be just flags. And our cereal boxes tend to be just cereal boxes. We are old school.

Since we got invaded by Russia, we haven’t given a lot of thought to arranging our cereal boxes into geopolitical statements, much less trying to get in the Guinness Book of World Records. So, it’s a good thing we’ve got you guys taking care of that, yes?

I can just see Putin’s face now, damn those Chicago high school kids and their meddling breakfast cereal mega-flags! How am I supposed to compete with that?

The flag looks awesome, by the way. Lucky for you Rice Krispies come in a blue box and Corn Pops come in a yellow box, right? If we had a flag like Jamaica you’d be so screwed!

I’m curious about the thought process. Were you guys sitting around watching our cities being shelled on TV and then someone named Taylor or something like that said, I know how we could help these people? What if we made a Ukrainian flag out of 5,000 cereal boxes? And the rest of you said, hey, Taylor, that’s an awesome idea, we’ll get in the Guinness Book of World Records for that and also raise money for Ukraine.

We could use Rice Krispies for blue. And Corn Pops for yellow.

You are soldiers in a worldwide propaganda war. Someday if someone asks, what did you do for Ukraine during the war? You can lift your heads up proudly and say, I stacked boxes of breakfast cereal on the floor to look like the flag of Ukraine. Someone had to.

I’m sure people are seeing this flag in the American media and thinking to themselves, yes, Ukraine! I must re-commit myself to their noble struggle!

And shortly after that, they’ll be thinking, milk. We’re out. And do they still make Count Chocula? Because now I want those little chocolate marshmallows.

You kids could have just raised some money the normal way, gone door to door or something, but your way is definitely better. No one beats America for turning other people’s tragedy into a fun, weird thing for yourselves!

Bless you and thank you, Chicago. You are the city of big shoulders. And big hearts.

And if I can leave you with one last thought, kids, you also need fruit and milk to make your giant Ukrainian cereal flag a delicious part of a complete breakfast.

Go Bears!

Fedir Bonarenko

Ukrainian Citizens Alliance

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Thanks to Toni Crowe!

The T. Kent Jones omnibus never closes. Free Parking!

There’s so much comedy behind this blue-eyed cat.