This is a sign inside the grounds of the Grand Palace in Bangkok. Cannon climbing must a be a problem in Bangkok, and I admit, if I were a kid, I would have been tempted. Well, climbing on them might have been tempting. So, shouldn’t the sign tell you not to climb on them? Who are these assholes who are standing on cannons?

This is another sign from Bangkok, this one just outside the Grand Palace. We saw this sign after some guy had tried to convince us that the palace was closed and that he could give us a personal tour of the city. He claimed some emblem on his shirt proved he was “official”.

This sign is outside a church in Seattle, right across the street from where Amazon.com is located. I love the idea of a priest trying to explain to a herd of Sunday-morning zombies how transubstantiation, when priests say Abracadabra and turn a stale cracker into the flesh of Christ, is consistent with a world view that hears about stuff like this and pisses on it. (Though I’m guessing the Sunday homily was a bait-and-switch scheme, like instead of “physics” it was “metaphysics”, or the explanation involved a word like “communiate”. I picture some vague radiation-like process caused by overexposure to the Holy Spirit.)

This sign is on the platform of a Tokyo subway station. They don’t want to find any little girls lying on the tracks fried tempura style. I think that’s a fair aspiration to have.

This sign is on a Tokyo subway. I never did see anyone in Tokyo who agreed that “it’s an idea” to wear a portable ashtray around your neck. (It turns out that Zippo makes one due to a recent law against dropping cigarette butts.) I’m bummed that I can’t find my photo of the “No smoking while walking” sign I saw painted on a sidewalk.

This is an ad inside a bathroom stall at Schiphol airport near Amsterdam. The first thing I noted was the lack of agreement between pronoun (the second “them”) and antecedent (”flower garden”). I spent the next five or ten minutes in that stall pondering the exact purpose of this advertising campaign. Let’s say the poster gets you to (a) remember it and its connection to the airport, and/or (b) tell someone else about the ad. Yeah, so? Is the ad supposed to sway your decision about which country to visit or where you choose to make your layovers? I’m guessing the problem here is an ad agency with a very large, government budget. When you have too much money, you spend it on stupid things. A housewife gets botox. An ad agency does cutesy ads with no purpose.

This sign is above a urinal in a New York City Chinese restaurant. I’ve never seen or heard of a public bathroom with clogged urinals. What kind of customers must this restaurant have? And regarding the underlining, wouldn’t they want to underline “paper” instead of “urinal”? I mean, you’re standing right there at the urinal. It’s the people holding the paper that need to get the message, and fast. That’s the latest issue of Sing Tao that guy’s about to drop!

This warning message appears on the protective glass at the top of Victoria Peak in Hong Kong. It’s good information to have, in case you didn’t notice the big mountain you just scaled via a 48-degree-grade climbing tram (technically a “double reversible funicular system”). Who knows, maybe it’s possible that people who are willing to risk their lives climbing up glass walls on the edges of mountains can be scared off by plastic decals.

Whether you’re in the mood for a New York bagel or just an old-fashioned “appetizing”, you can get either at this Upper East Side deli.

Another bathroom sign, this one in a Vermont rest stop stall. I’m not entirely sure if the goal is to pacify bathroom visitors inexperienced with blue toilet water, or to brag about the state’s environmentalist tendencies. But my main question is: if you need to tell someone who would drink toilet water not to do it, would using terminology like “non-potable” be the most effective means of doing it? (There, now that I’ve used the terms “bathroom”, “rest stop”, and “stall” on the same page, this will be the most popular page on Google. All I need now is “sex” and “gay”. I can see the ad revenue already.)

This sign is on a NY subway platform. What caught my attention about this sign (and I assume everyone else’s attention except that of the homeless) is that if you wanted to show human dignity in a face, you’d probably pick this guy. If you wanted to show a homeless person, on the other hand, you should pick someone else. What compelled me to take a photo of this ad, however, was the subtle vandalism:

Someone inserted “noble” before “homeless” on the ad. I swear it wasn’t me, but if I were a jury member on the case, I’d vote that sarcasm like this deserves an acquittal. (If someone writes in to tell me that the guy is a real homeless person, and please let me know if he is, can you also follow up on whether the guy is still homeless now that he’s presumably getting paid to do ads for the homeless? Or did the photographer just give him a bottle of Thunderbird and a half-eaten sandwich?)

This last photo is of a sign at a Queens, New York DMV. (That’s “Department of Motor Vehicles”, for you naive and fortunate foreigners.) I’m not even sure where to begin on this one. Therefore, let’s start with the fact that it’s hand written. Don’t they have a printer to go with the Apple IIe or whatever two-decades-old piece of shit they’re using in that office? Next, the apostrophe before the “s” is an infuriatingly common mistake. I think it has less to do with poor education and more to do with remarkable levels of stupidity. An apostrophe has few functions, and if you’re adding it to a word, the reflection on what the primary function is surely must be something that automatically fires through your neurons. And I say “remarkable levels of stupidity” due to the couple dozen or more employees who must see that sign on a daily basis and think or say nothing.

“Was told to come back” is just absolutely brilliant. I guess, technically, you could call this “correct” given that “customer’s” is singular. On second thought, I’m deducting points twice.

And, finally, I really believe that the “Press” in “ExPress” was intentionally capitalized because the employee thought “express” was (a) some kind of compound word, and (b) some kind of special variety of compound word that requires both component words to be capitalized; sort of like “FedEx”.

Even though I already wrote “finally”, there is actually more to say on this masterpiece. (I will even give them a break on the use of “that” instead of “who”.) The sign’s mere existence is due to the mind-blowing stupidity of the bureaucracy that created the need for people to be sent away from a desk (an information desk) and then asked to come back to it. I actually had to stand on line just to obtain a form, which I then had to fill out. When I got in the ExPress line and went back to the desk, I was helpfully guided to the next of three additional lines I would eventually stand in. (Though, technically the last one wasn’t a line per se, since I was permitted the comfort of sitting down for a full hour while waiting for my number to appear on a board.)

Here’s an idea. If we’re going to have public schooling in this country (and we definitely should not), then wouldn’t it be logical to make remedial reading and writing lessons required by government workers? Does an educated politician never notice mistakes like this? The answer is obvious before I even finish the question. Someone should do a study on how many politicians, and which ones, actually have to wait in line at a DMV. I’m sure the officer who keeps an eye on the governor’s hotel room while he’s fucking the prostitute doesn’t mind renewing a driver’s license or two. And when he does it, he ain’t standing in no line, either.