Signs Of The Times

Apropos of Laura’s post this weekend at Larvatus Prodeo where she asked if anyone had seen any crimes against grammar in the great world of advertising, I thought I’d share this picture that I took with my camera phone earlier this week.


Okay, it’s not advertising or even a grammatical faux pas, but this Post-It Note was on a lift door in a University building housing the offices of Humanities and Social Science scholars. Is it deliberate? At first I thought not, then I thought because of the context it had to be, now I can’t decide.

At any rate, I was wondering whether, with a few judicious insertions of some punctuation and an extra letter, it might become the universal sign for signalling that you’re taking a rest from blogging?:

Out; Off Other[s].

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Speaking of judicious changes to signage.

Do you remember my post about the glorious artwork on the old Ice Works at Paddington in Brisbane? The building has long been knocked down and work has begun on some ‘exclusive’ apartments. Here’s the banner that currently graces the fence to the building site:


The positioning of the sun in this photo is fortuitous, because I couldn’t see the picture I was taking at all, but it seems appropriate to me that ‘all’ includes the sun.

Anyway, if I were more of a risk-taking social activist, rather than of the arm-chair variety, I would have gone out and bought myself a can of spray paint and inscribed the following on the banner:


As you can see, in keeping with the manner of arm-chair activists everywhere, I’ve used Paint, a Microsoft program to communicate my disapproval of the sentiment expressed by the developers.

I don’t know that I want to live so close to people who feel entitled to demand ‘everything’. There’s so much that’s wrong with this attitude, I can’t begin. Well, maybe I can: we live in a world of finite resources people; this kind of in your face consumption is socially irresponsible; why don’t developers devote more of their resources to ‘inclusive’ housing, especially in these times of exorbitant rents?

All I can say to the future owners is that I hope you demand top-of-the-range sound proofing and security too, because living down from Caxton Street and across the road from Suncorp Stadium, amid the detritus left every weekend and after every football game by the alcohol fuelled mobs is not going to be quite the experience that the marketing promises.

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Here’s a far more pleasing example of bill posting:


I found this example of stencil art on Melbourne Street at South Bank whilst walking between the Cultural Centre Bus Station and past the Convention Centre; it was on the same side as The Fox Hotel.