January 21st, 2010, 4 Comments »
These are signs from a paint store near our apartment. Maybe I’m just a tree-hugging leftie, but I’m not sure I would have gone with this slogan or image for my signs in eco-friendly Vancouver:
August 18th, 2009, 2 Comments »
I recently spent some time in a government office. While in the usual back and forth through the front door, to the bathroom and so forth, I observed that they had a surprising number of signs that stated the obvious.
They seemed, like so many preventative measures, to attempt to indemnify the government against potential legal action. They amused me a little, so I snapped some photos. Each one is really mundane by itself, but the volume of them was a little overwhelming.
This one was on the inside of the mens’ room door. I wonder how I’ve survived the hundreds (thousands?) of sign-free swinging doors I’ve confronted in my life.
Ironically, I had to hold the door open to snap a photo of this one:
Here’s one more photo from the same office. These packages were attached to the underside of each desk in the conference room:
I gather they’re individual disaster preparedness kits. I didn’t look too closely, but they contain a filter mask, a little bottle of water and whistle, among other things.
I only discover them because I accidentally kicked one under the desk. I’m not sure I’d like to be reminded of my potential doom every time I took a meeting.
January 13th, 2009, 9 Comments »
Why do we label objects?
I think these two examples–from two different public bathrooms–definitely fall in the #3 category. First we’ve got a faucet from UBC Robson Square:
In case you can’t read it, here’s what it says:
BASIN OPERATION
TURN HANDLE IN COUNTERCLOCKWISE DIRECTION
FOR WARM WATER
I’m trying to imagine the circumstances that led to these signs (there’s one behind every faucet). A lot of complaints from frosty-handed MBA students? A lawsuit from a computer science professor with bad circulation? And, for the record, calling a sink a ‘basin’ is so twee.
Next we visit a different bathroom (I forget where) and find this label on the toilet fixture in a stall:
The text is like a little poem:
If sensor is blocked,
use manual flush button.
This unit features
a 3 second flush delay.
This begs all sorts of questions: why would the sensor be blocked? How would I know if it were blocked? And why do I care about the flush delay? Most importantly, why is the flush delay a ‘feature’?
Next we’ve got a tissue box with a spot for a youngster to write his or her name:
This is for really poor kids, who own so few things that their Kleenex box is precious to them.
I’m kidding. Someone pointed out that this is probably for daycares and schools, where each kid has their own tissue box, but it still struck me as a little funny.
Finally, I snapped this photo of a sign on one of the newest ships in BC Ferries’ fleet. I thought the artwork was oddly evocative.
“No High Fives Allowed.” Or maybe “Cylons Only Beyond This Point”?
September 29th, 2002, No Comments »
Last week I actually saw Swimfan and Signs last weekend, but didn’t bother to comment on them. It’s been a busy week, and, frankly, neither of them really struck me as particularly comment-worthy. The former is a forgettable teen Fatal Attraction that’s not even as good as guilty pleasures like Wild Things and Cruel Intentions while the latter doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable. It was predictable, unsubtle and a bit self-indulgent. I was dissapointed, because The Sixth Sense in particular was so inventive and surprising.
Regarding Swimfan, I read this hilarious bit of dialogue in a review by the Filthy Critic, which pretty much sums up how lame the movie is. This is how the imagined pitch meeting went: