Monthly Archives: November 2022

Light-Hearted Questions

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Holiday season is upon us, so I’m assuming that you, like me, need an antidote to the tension that comes with it. Hence this post of silly signs and light-hearted questions about them.

First up is this earnest appeal:

Questions: Is the sign-poster a fan of knocks or a hater of bells? Is it so difficult to ring the bell that customers have to be warned about attempting to do so? Does anyone attempting to ring the bell fail?

Next is this command, posted on a fence:

Questions: How many people, in a city where theft is not unknown, simply lean or tie their bikes? And how does one post a bike? Why doesn’t the sign mention “park,” “lock,” or “chain” — what bike riders in New York generally do with their vehicles?

Now to the gym:

Questions: What goals could 1 have? To grow up to 2? To find a soulmate and become 11? To add some muscle and reach 10 or 100? And how does one — er, I mean 1 — refine those goals?

Last up is this sign:

Questions: How do you drop off a shoe shine? Can people pick up what they dropped off, or is the shoe (or pair or shoe shine) gone forever? Has there been an increase in shoelessness around this shop?

After enjoying (or at least surviving) your Thanksgiving meal, feel free to send me answers.

This Is Not a Post

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It’s a promulgation, the fanciest near-synonym of post I could find. Fancy, by the way, is today’s theme. Here’s a paragraph from a catalogue mistakenly delivered to my mailbox:

I leafed through the catalogue but didn’t notice any serpentine candlesticks or large-scale hummingbirds (and I definitely wouldn’t buy any if I did). Instead I focused on expressive materiality, which means . . . well, what does it mean? I’m thinking quadruple pricing, but maybe that’s just me.

Onward and upward to this sign on a recently completed apartment building:

To protect the guilty, I try not to include company names, but I will tell you that the building has “Manor” in its name, a word equal in snootiness to Sculpted in Stature. All sorts of construction machinery littered the site for a year or so, but no stone-sculpting tools with which to carve Stature. And how does one carve Stature? Does that even have a meaning?

Skip the misspelled word on line three and go directly to the fourth line of this sign:

All this to describe paint! If only one person is making it (the sign says craftsman, not craftsmen), small wonder that the product is made only in small batches. Then there’s formulation and curated collection — words I reckon cost an extra hundred each, per can. Or jar, or whatever they sell curated paint in. Grecian urns? Space capsules? Something expensive, that’s for sure — unlike this completely free promulgation about snobbery.