Monday, June 19, 2006

Stop, Stop, Baby 

BoingBoing post about this flickr pool of stick figures in peril got me thinking about street signs obscure, obscene, and in particular that o-so-tempting negative space all red and low-hanging on the bottom of your average stop sign, like in this over-worded example.

But not for me the "Stop War" sign, nor the political "Stop Bush", truly. My humor tends towards the wry and the minimalist. Perhaps "Stop...Looking At Me Like That". Or even "Stop...Collaborate and Listen."

My brother brought a "No parking" sign home when we were kids, erased letters, fixed it up to say "No s fer at u" with only a bottle of white paint. From there I learned to blot words off newspaper columns until a poem was left. If you use a nice fat marker, what's left slides down the page like a rockfall.

I've always envied his visual sense. But I want no less to bring joy to the randomness of the universe.

It's the same inner drive to giggle, I think, that causes me to pay double tolls "for the guy behind me" on the Turnpike once in a while, just to see the mayhem begin in my read view mirror as the unknown beneficiary tries, valiantly, to pay for his rightful share. The same that makes me want to add an asterisk to the Yield sign, and footnote it, so that all might know that, if you say the word "Yield" a couple of times too many, it sounds really weird.

posted by boyhowdy | 8:44 PM |

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