The picture to go with this is one I have not yet taken.
Today's thoughts are about signs. Those with an unintended duality.
I've been suffering from a lack of wind. In my tyre. It keeps, unpredictably, deflating. A week or so ago, I had it fixed. Or so the man said when he took my money. Days can go by when it's perfectly okay, then another day, I'll come out of work and find the tyre almost flat.
So I keep pumping it back up. (I'm going to buy a new one, and fixing man was twenty miles away, so going back and arguing involves a forty mile round trip and fuel etc.)
So. I stop off, buy some diesel, head over to the air pump "Digital Tyre Inflator" it says.
Damn. How will I know if my tyres are digital ones? can you fill analogue tyres with digital air? I mean, analogue air is obviously all fluffy-shaped and nebulous. digital air is bound to be pixellated, all square cornered, little blocks of it. It's the corners on those discrete units of air that worry me, because they could cause damage to the inside of a tyre designed for analogue air.
Hm. The tyre has a note telling you how many square inches of pressure it can take. Digital air would be cubes, but.....
I think digital tyres probably have a kevlar liner.
This week, I've been travelling to a different work site than my normal one. I pass a discount climbing/hiking goods store which has a sign proclaiming "free undercover customer parking"....
I look around. Spy vs spy. I'm looking for those furtive folk, collars turned up, hats pulled down, dark glasses, skulking from shadow to shadow, the undercover customers.
When I see a sign that says "wet paint" I wonder whether I should pee on it or go find a bucket of water.
And then there are those cringeing doors you see all over the place, those doors who quiver, and let out panic stricken shrieks. We've all seen them, they have a sign.
"This Door is Alarmed"
wow, glad to know that 'wet paint' means unzip your fly and let loose!
ReplyDeleteThat's the difficulty, Gary, obviously the sign is instructing you to wet the paint, but there's no indication of how urgent that need is. If you have no bucket or bottle of water with you, then you'll just have to use whatever means you have.
ReplyDeleteThe danger is that a police officer might misconstrue your actions.
Of course, once you pointed out the sign I'm sure they'd release the cuffs and apologise politely.
My dad had long story he liked to tell us about the "Watch out for falling rocks" signs you see along mountain roads. It involved an American Indian Lad who got lost in the mountains.
ReplyDeleteI think it quite odd that a hiking/sporting goods sTore would have undercover parking. What? are their customers afraid to get wet? Not very rugged (?) sporting types. :)
Rita: I never thought of that.
ReplyDeleteHikers afraid of the outdoors.
Where I work, one of the buildings is a gym. The gym's customers mostly arrive by car and are very reluctant to park anywhere other than right up close, we have three car parks, and get complaints "There's nowhere to park!", if the spaces near the gym are full, yet if I go into the gym, those reluctant-to walk-a-hundred-yards gymgoers are to be seen pounding away on treadmills.
Those signs are funny. I really liked this post. I think you should consider making a collection and posting updates occasionally.
ReplyDeleteMax, I'm too disorganised, I think. There are already a few sites that do such stuff, the Telegraph newspaper has a signs section with pics from around the world... I'll post a link, also Engrish.com, which is mostly from Japan where translations get mangled.
ReplyDelete