Four questions, actually, all simple, all based on photos from the past year. Free subscriptions to this blog to anyone who answers all the questions correctly. (For legal reasons, I should probably point out that subscriptions to this blog are always free.) Okay, here’s the first:
QUESTION 1: What did the deceased former Treasury secretaries call for?
Ready for number 2, which my friend Don sent?
QUESTION 2: Do employees check whether the kids really have gas before handing over free food? If so, how?
Moving on:
QUESTION 3: Can we ever trust Dovere’s pool report again?
Last one, which I admit is somewhat personal because I wrote the book on the left:
QUESTION 4: What logical thread unites these three items?
As the pandemic grinds on, it’s increasingly tough to answer simple questions like who? what? and where? — questions these signs unsuccessfully attempt to answer. Take a look at this sign, which was posted in the window of a math-enrichment center:
Where are the instructors, exactly? In your home? I guess you should be glad that your home provides comfort, and you should be REALLY glad that they’re live. The last thing you need is a deceased teacher in your living room.
Then there’s this one:
I wouldn’t mind a Manicure & Pedicure, but HOME CALL makes me think of ET, as in ET phone home. Yeah, I know, I’m being pickier than usual. Maybe I should be pleased that the nail-tender understands that we all need comfort these days. A homecall is comfier than a house call.
I don’t think it’s picky to question this sign, though:
Are we talking actual food or virtual? Until yesterday I would have thought that actual was the only possible answer. Then someone paid almost seventy million dollars for “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” a “nonfungible token” (NFT), which is an artwork existing only on a computer. Until the computer crashes during the next update, that is. Then it exists as a hole in your bank account, though as I understand it, the payment was in virtual currency, so nothing real was paid for nothing real. I should find the symmetry comforting, but somehow I don’t. Back to the sign: I hope they collected cans of tuna and whatnot in a physical pantry, because real people can’t eat icons from a pantry file.
In closing, this grammarian in the city offers one NFT of her own: a wish, existing here on my computer and speeding wirelessly to yours, that you stay safe and well.
A year in, it’s become clear that symptoms of Covid-19 include well intentioned but poorly executed signs. I have collected quite a few, so I’ll spread them over a couple of posts. The first one is a bit late, but I’ll post it anyway because Valentine’s Day should last as long as possible this year, which has been sorely in need of good feeling:
Here’s another emotion-packed message, not quite as upbeat as the previous:
This was on the window of a doctor’s office. I was tempted to call to say that I’d agree to STOP!!!! if the doctor would agree to drop three of the exclamation points. Well, four, because the one after NAME isn’t necessary. Maybe it can be recycled into an apostrophe for CANT?
The previous sign is a little rude, but at least it asks you to control yourself, not others, as this one does:
I have great sympathy for the struggling restaurant industry, but I don’t see myself (or any diner, in fact) pushing people apart who venture too close to each other. It’s my responsibility to MAINTAIN A DISTANCE OF 6FT from OTHER GUESTS, not BETWEEN. Nor should this responsiblity fall to the waiters. Diners, you know the rules. Please follow them. Or, as the person who fashioned the second sign in this post would put it, BEHAVE!!!!
Shopping season, in altered form like everything else in 2020, is upon us. It seems appropriate to warn you that the appearance of certain words automatically raises the asking price, though not necessarily the quality. Take a look:
Describe anything with a British-sounding word, such as bespoke, and you can add at least 20% to the price. Even after deducting 10% for spelling (dissapoint), the store still comes out ahead. Same with this photo:
Chemists can charge much more than pharmacists, and this store has both. The chemists are presumably in Britain and selling their products in a Manhattan pharmacy. Or something like that.
Old-looking words also up the bill:
The shopkeeper (not shoppekeeper) thinks you’ll read this sign and picture yourself wearing a hoop skirt or a tricorn hat. (I’m betting the store owner, like me, is a little fuzzy about history.) Back to language: Double the P in shop and the prices double too. The E probably adds another 5%.
My pet peeve (one of about a million, I admit):
Purveyors? Somebody memorized a vocabulary list and by golly is going to use it! If sellers get $1 for whatever the specialty is, a purveyor deserves $2, right?
Last and maybe least (though it’s a race to the bottom):
Curated? I’m happy to have an art museum curate its collection. But if our favorites in the snack-food category are curated, they’re overpriced.
Moral of the story: Buyer beware. You beware, too, of prices and most of all, of Covid-19.
Although a number of pet birds have flown around my living room through the years, I tend to divide avian wildlife in New York City into two categories, as this sign does:
Why single out pigeons? Here’s my theory: if you have one or two pigeons, they’re beautiful — a feathered palette of grays and whites with touches of black. But that’s never what you actually have. You have a flock, a megaflock, many megaflocks! You have a pigeony exponential growth-curve akin to the one Covid-19 has, unfortunately, made us all too familiar with.
Pigeons also make an appearance in this sign, which a reader spotted in a park:
The reader remarked that she “would have thought NYC already had plenty of these without anyone having to breed more.” I join her in rejecting this imperative sentence.
Still another pigeon, because, as I said, you really can’t have just one:
You can read this sign two ways. (1) You’re not required to feed a pigeon and clean-up, but doing so would be nice. (2) You’re not supposed to feed the pigeon, but you’re going to do it anyway, so could you please remove the inevitable end product? It’s the law. Which surprises me. I know there are all sorts of laws about snow removal — how much time may elapse after the last flake falls before you must shovel a path for pedestrians, for example. Is there also a time limit on poop? Do you have to sit around staring at the pigeon you’ve just (illegally) fed, so you can scoop the end product? Asking for a friend.
That’s it for pigeons, you’ll be glad to know. But not for birds. Below is one of the first signs I spotted when I started this blog:
Then, as now, I smiled to think of how you would sit . . . birds. Bend their little legs? Offer a chair? I’ll leave you with that image, hoping it cheers you, and any pigeons you’ve befriended.
I think and also hope that what these signwriters think they said is different from what actually landed on the page. Or screen. Or metal sheet. Wherever! Take a look at this one, courtesy of my friend Don:
Someone killed 3 Pedestrians for my own Safety? Please let that not be true. Also, what will Repeat to cross other side? Homicide? And don’t get me started on the green man’s activity.
Another, which I spotted while obsessively checking apartment listings in my building to find out who’s moving:
I’m wondering which hairdresser the apartment owner went to for Coiffured Ceilings. I have to admit that my own ceilings have never been cut, dyed, or curled. However, they are coffered by support beams. Does that make me stylish enough?
Probably not. I do sometimes shop at a fancy grocery, where the food is better than the accuracy of the “best if bought by” date:
True, time is relative and certain portions of 2020 have seemed endless, but September 31st? Nope. Well, maybe if there’s a recount . . .
We all know that 2020 presents a long list of dangerous situations, the pandemic being just one. But I haven’t read much about Food Danger: not what you eat, but the danger of being eaten. Take a look:
I’m not attending any event offering entree choices of beef, pork, or child. I wonder how many people took the last line seriously and listed“human flesh” as a dietary restriction.
When I couple the card above with the sign below, I fear cannibalism is becoming a trend:
Call me picky, but I don’t want a restaurant to serve me, as in serve me on a plate, or to serve anyone else, for that matter. Better to take care of each other! With that in mind, perhaps we should veto this plan:
I must admit that the above signs seem attuned to the mood of this awful year. Maybe the problem stems from too much disinfectant:
Please don’t satanize anything (or anyone, no matter how tempting). Do stay safe, and keep those around you as safe as possible, too.
Before autocorrect, I’d sometimes proofread my work and find hte. “C’mon, computer,” I’d think in exasperation. “You know I meant the!” Autocorrect has brought its own problems, of course, but it certainly would improve these mangled expressions:
I can think of a lot of reasons to swing open cell doors, but criminalizedonion relish isn’t one of them. Side point: Is Prime topside a real cut of beef?
Next is a sentence a friend found in a concert announcement:
We’re excited to open the series with a performance featuring renounced vocalist. . . .
I’ve omitted the name of the renounced vocalist, who is innocent, I’m sure.The copywriters, on the other hand — let’s just say that if we weren’t already in pandemic lockdown, I’d recommend they serve detention.
Whoever wrote this should do serious time for Crimes Against Language:
The spelling mistakes don’t bother me. If I can type hte, I can forgive becarse and unassemboed. Ditto for the odd capitalization and punctuation. What gets me is the last sentence. Is there really a correct way to cause a series of problems? Extending the point, is there an incorrect way? Just thinking about this is enough to make the screws loose.
Keep your screws tight, try not to renounce anyone, and don’t criminalize condiments. And stay fsae. I mean safe. Thanks, Autocorrect.
Lately I find myself thinking of 2020 as a real-life version of Ghostbusters 2, the one with a bubbly river of pink goo that makes everyone snarl and fight. Reinforcing that feeling are some signs that have a markedly defensive tone. Here’s one:
Pardon the bars. I took this photo during an early morning walk, so the store was closed and the gates were down. Nevertheless, the implied dialogue was easy to imagine: “Whadda ya mean, out of business? Yeah, the laundry has been shut for a while, but we still do dry clean.”
In the same vein, from the same walk, but in the window of a different shop:
More gates, more imaginary rebuttal: “I don’t care what the clerk said. I’m the owner and we do press duvet cover, sheets, pillow cases. So there!”
Last one:
The supermarket attached to this announcement is undergoing renovation, so it makes sense to proclaim, “We are still open.” But I don’t get the but. That word generally signals a change in direction or an exception to a rule. I can’t build a logic bridge from pardon our appearance to we are still open with but. Can you? If so, please let me know.
While you’re thinking, get defensive: wash your hands, mask up, and social-distance. And please, go on the offensive: fight the pink goo. This awful year needs all the kindness we can muster.
A side effect of the pandemic is the flood of deliveries pouring into our homes — that is, pouring into our homes IF the package-deliverer figures out how to get them there. It’s not enough that these essential and surely underpaid workers have to deal with Covid while lifting heavy stuff. They also have to decipher signs like this one:
Why the quotation marks? Is it “we call it ‘door bell’ but it’s really an ejection button” or “that guy calls himself ‘Door Bell‘ because his real name is Mgkysdn”? Maybe door bell is meant to be a verb, what any package is supposed to do. I’m going with the last interpretation because picturing a package in the act of door-belling makes me smile.
Here’s another sign giving life to packages:
I removed the address to avoid embarrassing the sign-writer, who appears to think that packages will be eager to elope with the doorman.
Not every sign is bad:
I’m all for anything done graciously, a quality in short supply these days. And the fate of deliveries . . . graciously received appeals. It’s bound to be better than packages treated as this sign requests:
I hope no one’s in that yard, ever. Head bonks hurt! Plus, you end up writing a sign like this one:
Final thought for today: Wherever you or your packages land, I hope you’re safe and well.
