These things need to stop being so bossy.

Everyday I drive to work there are like a million signs(I started a count and by the end I just estimated) everywhere I look.  Sometimes while I drive I get so busy texting or reading my email that I don’t have time to look up and ignore them, but the number of them are just mind boggling(or is it mind blogging?).   Signs are there for decoration and we should enjoy how they look with the enviroment.  Who doesn’t love how the yellow and black blend with greens and greys of the rain and green trees of Seattle?  But signs are becoming too much and they are starting to make me bitter.

How does this guy expect us to stop when he doesn’t even have eyes?

First of all, when did signs become so bossy?  Signs can’t talk so they have to communicate in words.  Take this sign for instance.  The stop sign.  It is red so it can get your attention.  Also the letters are all in uppercase, so if we are to take anything from internet and email ettiquette that means that the STOP is screaming at us.  That is just not polite.  I don’t tell stop sign what to do, why does he think that it is okay to scream at me?  I’m going to get a complex.  And if it doesn’t stop screaming at me, I might start feeling bad about myself and start stopping everytime I see it.  How is that safe?

The one way sign is a little schzophrenic and closed minded.  Which way is it?

How about the one way sign?  I think that sign is being very single minded and bossy about which way things should go.   Take a philosphy course, one way sign, and learn about the world a little.  Or perhaps a creative writing course.  This will open your eyes up to new avenues and perhaps you might see things going another way.  Just think outside the box and maybe another way would be even better.  I hope that your life will turn around in a way where you might someday see that there are actually two ways.

Is it this?

….or this?

Then there is the Speed Limit sign.  You know, the one that can’t seem to make up its mind?  In a manner of several miles, the so called trusty speed limit sign changes its mind.  Over and over again.  One near my house says the Speed limit is 25.  So I never go over that speed.  But as I cruise closer to main street all of a sudden the sign changes its mind.  Now I can go 30.  Okay, so what you are saying is that 25 isn’t the limit it is actually 30 now?  OKAY FINE.  (See that is me shouting in bitterness!) I will limit myself to 30, but that is it right? Nope.  Somehow it seems like every block or so the sign changes its mind and ups the limit then down again.  Soon I am on a freeway or highway or whatever these things are called and its up to 60 or 65.  Then back to 30. Enough of the emotional rollercoaster Speed Limit sign!  And by the way, just so you know the speed limit is not any of those.  I think the speed of light is faster and it is something like 186,000 miles per second.  So you are a little off.  So hopefully you don’t major in science when you go to school.

There are now signs that don’t even use words.  They just use symbols.  I am pretty good at reading things at 85 miles an hour when texting, but how about when I have to interpret symbols in the same dangerous moving vehicle?  Do I look like a race car hyroglyphic palentologist to you? Now I am supposed to interpret what this means while eating, checking the internet for ice conditions, the score of Spurs game and changing a song on my Ipod, all while trying to figure out what this silly sign means?

What are the hyrogliphyics on this sign trying to tell me?

or this?

This bear got the bitter bear face because he couldn’t figure out what the sign meant. I’d scratch it too if I were him.

One more thing.  If we as people are expected to obey signs, why don’t the animals have to?  If we run a stop sign (because it is just being so bossy..) or go over the speed limit (if it could just make up its mind I wouldn’t be so confused), or go the wrong way (is there really just one way to do things?) then we get pulled over and given a ticket or arrested, but if they animals want to go the wrong way, or go faster than 25 or not stop properly they never get a ticket.  Why the double standard?  So just because animals can’t read they are excused?  I can’t understand the symbols and I’m expected to obey whatever those things are saying.

So yes, signs make me bitter.  They should just be decorations as nature intended them to be, but no, we are just supposed to obey some arbitrarily placed sign, just because it says something on it.  I say we stop obeying these things until the animals also start obeying.  Or we could just continue being bitter like we always are.

Arrrgghhhh

Bitter Ben