Don't you just love them?
I do. I really love danger signs, telling me to not go near this, not to climb on that, not to touch that, danger of death this, alligators that, deer crossing, potentially dangerous, contains battery acid, men working above, poison, hidden cable, high voltage, flammable, 480 volts, asbestos, noise, hard hat area, gas, danger of suffocation, do not feed the birds... and my personal favourite, sudden drop.
Why Sudden Drop? Whats so good about it? Well, threefold. Firstly, they know that there's a sudden drop, but instead of, you know, putting a barrier up and thus ruining the fun of the danger, they've just stuck a sign up telling people that the floor might just disappear at any point, sending them plummeting to their deaths. The 'sudden drop' sign is like the 'man eating tigers around here' sign; its obviously been put up by someone who just can't be arsed to do the job properly. And I respect that. There's too much mollycoddling of the public nowadays for us to not respect the guy who goes 'fuck the public, if they can't see the drop and they ignore the sign they can bloody well fall to their deaths. Not my problem'.
Secondly, the words 'sudden drop'. They just remind me of trapdoors. ie Trapdoors in villain's lairs a la James Bond. It is one of my wishes that I could just create trapdoors under people just using my mind. I can just imagine it. I'm walking along the road in my happy way when OH NO some pikeys come and ask for my mobile. Well, not ask, demand. I just look at them and BAM the road comes away under then and down they fall. Where do they end up? Nobody knows, but a half-eaten Burberry hat would be found three weeks later in the middle of a poisonous killer flesh-eating ants nest in Brazil. So, great.
Thirdly, the sign itself. You don't see too many 'sudden drop' signs about nowadays, and so seeing one is a rare oppurtunity, and photos must be taken. There is one such masterpiece outside the Tate Modern, and I love it to bits:
Fucking brilliant. Seriously. The drop was so sudden, the guy's head fell off. And you can really SEE the panic that going through this guy's brain. The slow sensation of 'ohh, shit' that we all get after falling off a square platform. Also, brilliantly, they haven't shown the BOTTOM of the drop, so he could very easily be falling to his death. And all because he ignored a simple safety sign. For SHAME.
Actually, that makes me ponder. Why do all safety signs show people blatantly disregarding the message that they're trying to purport? For example, Danger Alligator signs have a guy poking the alligator in the eye. Strong Acid has somebody burning a huge bloody hole through his hand, Flammable Liquids has A FIRE, and, my personal favourite, sudden drop has somebody falling to a painful, short, and messy death. All because they ignored the signs. In my humble opinion, this is NOT a good example to set to the younger and more impressionable generation, who may be inclined to think that the signs show that which they are SUPPOSED to do, not SUPPOSED to NOT do. See how confusing it is?
Therefore, in my opinion, the 'danger acid' sign should show somebody with goggles carefully placing the glass into a cupboard, then leaping out of the way in case it suddenly explodes. The 'danger alligators' one should have somebody dynamiting an alligator, from afar, perhaps with a rocket launcher or grenade lobbing device. Flammable should have something not on fire, and as for sudden drop... somebody standing well away from the drop. In fact, you shouldn't be able to see the drop, they are that safely away from it.
But, I still don't think there are enough safety signs about. I was walking through Kingston yesterday, chewing gum, when I bit my tongue. Really badly. It was PAINFUL. But was there a sign saying 'Danger- Do not walk and chew gum'? Was there HECK! I could have bitten half my tongue off. And then I ate some spicy food, and it made my tongue wound sting a bit. Was there a sign saying 'Danger- Spicy food can make a tongue wound sting'? NO THERE WASN'T! There should be a sign for EVERY conceivable event. And they should be liberally sprinkled everywhere, like cocaine on Kris's FACE. It's the only way that the children can be made safe. And then the older and more mature of us (ie me) can get on with happily ignoring them as we always have and always will.
Case in point: After the spicy food, I decided that a bit of gymnastics was in order, and I decided to run across a bunch of bike racks. In the dark. While tweaked on spicy Japanese food. Needless to say, I fell off. Well, I didn't fall, I sort of mis-timed my stride and slipped off. Now, it could have been much worse. I could have landed full body weight on my testicles and, like, popped one. I just realised that I made every male reading this wince and feel his own balls. As it happened, I managed to bruise the TOP of my leg. Don't ask me how, I don't know myself. But was there a sign saying 'Do not leap across these hard slippery metal bars'? NO. There wasn't. I mean, if there had been a sign, I still would have jumped on them. But at least it would have been nice to be warned that high speed nigh bike-rack running was dangerous.
Hmm. I finish with what is, in my opinion, the best bloody danger sign ever. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the French Airport fire warning sign:
Utter class. Say what you like about the French; they make wicked fucking fire warning signs. It must have been the coffee, but we had a twenty minute laughing fit when we first saw this baby. If anybody can come up with some good captions for it, please post a comment. Fucking brilliant.
Vote for me for a danger sign on every pavestone!
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