Wonderful World of the Obvious

Sometimes you’ll be out and about and see some signs that defy belief, you begin to wonder if man is getting smarter or have some of us lost half our brains overnight. I saw a sign on the back of a long bed truck which read “caution: vehicle subject to reversing”, which no doubt was included with a reversing beeper. Now I hear your rebuttal, that the beeper is for the blind, first of all, just how many blind people do you see walking behind trucks and how many of them can’t hear the truck in the first place?

I’ve seen a new trend in signs warning you about fines for doing the wrong thing, for instance on the train, it warns you not to put your feet on the seat, if you do ‘you might be fined’. What kind of threat is ‘might’? Does a boxer threaten his opponent by saying ‘I might knock you out’, of course not because that shows weakness. Telling the public there is a chance they will get away with it, is enough of a reason for them to try.

Now there are people all over our country putting up signs saying they recognise the traditional owners of the land where their house is. But how much do they really care about those previous occupants. If that tribe where to come around one night in search of accommodation (as was organised by John Safran) would people allow them to stay. Considering you acknowledge their previous tenancy, you would think that its ok for them to come back wouldn’t you? Not so clean cut as that. There is a fine line between the truth and the image people like to portray.

One sign that is quite large and obvious but largely ignored is the sign asking people not to climb the Rock at Uluru. Now I think we should not climb it to be honest, my reasoning for this, Americans. They bring toilet paper, because who wants to come all the way to Australia and not dump on our rock, just another reason why their called septics. They think that a half day trip up and down the rock cannot be done without a bowel movement, so they bring toilet paper. Which means a jolly good number two and plenty of ones to flow down our rock. Now there is a simple way for this to be rectified. Don’t let them climb it! Now I’m sure they figure the climb is part of the lure to getting the tourists there in the first place, but I don’t buy that. You see after 9/11 the Statue of Liberty shut her doors to tourists going to the top, and it still received normal visitor numbers for years until it re-opened. It’s a huge tourist attraction, but that doesn’t mean you can let them defecate on it for the sake of the dollar.

‘Don’t feed the birds’ is a sign all too often ignored at a local park. What parent bothers to explain to their child why you shouldn’t feed the local birds. Instead they cop out on a vital educational moment for the ease of giving their brats food to throw at the wildlife. You see I used an important term there ‘wildlife’ more importantly the word wild. These animals are relying on the visitors for a very basic not natural portion of their diet: bread. They don’t normally have such a readily available source of carbohydrates, yet from us they can eat all the bread they like. These birds and water fowl have lived their quite happily before us and could do so after us, yet they come to rely on us if we bring them food, even teaching their young the importance of us over hunting. Your changing nature in a very dangerous way. But hey it’s only a sign, don’t feed the birds, maybe they mean everyone else except you, yeah that sounds right.