Here's Your Sign...

I’m a connoisseur…a connoisseur of stupidity.  I kinda love it.  I love to see how silly things can get, and I enjoy it most when it plays itself out on signs.  Sometimes it’s just a spelling error, and I wonder why they just didn’t use spell check, but other times it's so much more, and that makes me laugh all the harder.  When I see stupid signs, my mind always goes to ‘Why?”  Why do they feel like they need that sign…if they’re warning against something, have they had a bad experience previously where they got sued or something?  “Let’s put up a sign so we never get sued again.”  That’ll work.

Really?  You need a sign for that?   I wonder what would happen if it said GO.

I was in a mall recently, and I walked past those shopping carts for rent.   They’re the ones where you insert a dollar or two, and borrow the cart to walk around the mall for the day do you don’t have to haul your bags on your back like a sherpa.  An excellent idea.  I don’t know what drew my attention to the basket on the back where you can stash your treasures, but when I looked at it, I was delighted.  A sign.  A notice.  A real warning:  Do Not Put Child In Bag.   I’ve decided that this is why we have cameras on our cell phones.  So we can capture all this brilliance.

Got it?  No kids in bags.

So what must have happened to this supplier of buggies that would cause them to emblazon this warning all over their carts?  Did some non-thinking father (cuz a mother would never do that kind of thing) stash his crying kid in the bag?  Worse, once he stashed the kid there, did he forget the child, and next renter of the buggie found somebody else’s kid in the bag when they went to put their own child there?  Wow.

One loser puts his kid in a bag and it ruins it for all of us.

I have been known to take a picture of a sign while driving.  I know that breaks a whole bunch of laws and rules and whatever, but sometimes you just need to take a picture.  One I wish I took, but didn’t, was in the US south a couple of years ago.  It was a horrible sign, put up by the Tea Party, or some radical group (I hope).  It was right around the time that President Obama’s health care bill was going through the congress.  We were heading down to Florida, and we were in the Carolinas or Georgia or somewhere south, and along the side of the interstate was a sign, with huge letters that said KILL OBAMA, and in tiny little letters, in a colour that blended in with the background of the sign, the word ‘care’.  The sign really read KILL OBAMACARE, but at 70 miles an hour, you got their real point.

It's almost as bad as Sarah Palin's advertisement with the gun sights, except one of those congresswomen wound up getting shot

Another less horrible sign that I took a picture of while driving was painted on the side of a truck.  I have to wonder how the driver feels every single day when he (or she) gets into a truck that says Canada’s Favourite Wiener.    I guess sometimes the people that paint these things on the trucks don’t stand back and look.

Please.  Let me drive the wiener truck today.

If you’re not from Alberta, you may have never heard of the Wild Rose Party…they are to Alberta what the Tea Party is to the United States.  More or less.  Their leader is a feisty chick called Danielle Smith.  As with all political leaders during an election campaign, she had her face plastered all over the side of a bus.  What nobody noticed until it was way, way too late, was that her face was plastered right above the rear wheels.  When you look at the bus, the wheels are in the exact position where her northern-most lady parts  (the boobs) should be.   You would have thought that it would have been somebody’s job to approve the proof before they bussed it up.

Seriously?  Nobody noticed this before they wrapped the bus

One of my favourite signs is very clearly done on purpose.  It’s the name of a store in Myrtle Beach.  It’s called the Stupid Factory.  And here’s their sign.

Finally...a store for me.

And in another shout out to South Carolina, we were down on holidays a few years ago and came across a bizarre sign at, of all places, KFC.  I guess it’s wrong to assume that all franchises carry the same product, or perhaps this franchise has a cowboy owner or manager.   I had no idea that livers and gizzards are something that people would ever think to eat at KFC, but apparently they’re a fairly popular menu item.  A delicacy even.

Imagine how fast I slammed on the brakes...Gotta get me some of that...

A year and a half later, Laura and I shot down to Myrtle Beach for a week alone.  We were out for a drive, and we drove by a KFC.  Not only did the sign say that they had Livers and Gizzards, but that they were BACK!!!  Who knew Livers and Gizzards were like the illusive McRib at McDonalds…it’s only available for a limited time, so get ‘em while we got ‘em.  Who knew?

Who knew they left?  And where did they go?

Earlier this year we were in Ohio for a weekend of shopping.  One of the kids’ fave places to eat is IHOP.  Yep, the International House of Pancakes.  Now they have red velvet pancakes with cream cheese frosting on the top, which is Haley’s favourite, so it’s a must stop.  Whilst in Ohio, we rolled into the IHOP, parked the car, and as we were going in, I noticed a sign…it seemed as common as one of those No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service signs that you often see, except this one was No Guns.  At the IHOP.  Who’s packing at the IHOP, and how do you keep a gun stuck in the waistband of your sweatpants anyway?

Please...leave your handgun in your pickup truck

Driving home from work the other day, I came up to a stop light, and I was looking around, and my eyes came to rest on some kind of trailer box sitting in the parking lot of a warehouse company.  Stenciled across the box was a sign that said “Do Not Hump”.  I’m not sure whether that was some kind of public service announcement, or if it’s some kind of technical term used in shipping.  But it made me smile, and it also made me drive around the block a few times so that I could hit the red light again and take a picture while I was waiting.  I briefly thought about parking and jumping out to snap the shot, but I thought that would look a little silly.

So is that No Humping here, or no humping anywhere?

There’s a comedian I enjoy watching called Bill Engvall.  You may have seen him on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour with Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy and Ron White.  I think those guys are a blast.  They speak to me.  Where Jeff Foxworthy has his famous bit, “You know you’re a redneck when…”, Bill Engvall’s signature bit is called “Here’s your sign…”  Every time I see a sign that makes me laugh, or that makes me want to take a picture while I’m driving, I think of Bill Engvall.  Here’s your sign…

Click here to see Bill in action