Category Archives: Signs of the Times

For Cooking Big Green Ham

Posted on September 8, 2010 by Kelson

I saw the “Big Green Egg” sign from across the freeway and immediately thought, “Do they have big green ham, too?”

Of course, since the Big Green Egg is a barbecue, if you find some big green ham, it’s the perfect way to cook it!

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BRB K THX

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Kelson

Favorite license plate sighting of the day: “BRBKTHX.”

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Goin’ On a Typo Hunt

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Kelson

NPR has an article on The Great Typo Hunt: Two friends cross the country with a Sharpie pen, correcting grammatical and spelling errors in road and shop signs. And there’s a book.

I may need this.

When I was in college in the mid-1990s, I kept a “Bent Offerings” newspaper cartoon on my bulletin board. One person was scrawling “I before E…” on a wall. Another was correcting a menu, muttering, “It’s Brussels Sprouts, not Brussel Sprouts!”. A third was examining someone’s T-shirt, disapprovingly asking, “Is that how they taught you to use an apostrophe?” The strip was captioned, “Roving Gangs of Rogue Proofreaders.”

The appeal hasn’t stopped. You may have noticed I have two categories on this blog devoted to weird/funny signs and mistakes in signs.

Yeah, this sounds like a good bet.

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Prophetic Plate

Posted on July 1, 2010 by Kelson

The parking lots at The District in Tustin, and the streets that run through them, are just plain horrible. They’re bad enough, in fact, that the last time we were there*, it wasn’t clear at first that the reason traffic was moving so slowly was that it was working around a car accident.

As I slowly drove past the crashed Lexus, we both looked toward it…and burst out laughing.

I felt awful for it…but the license plate was DIMWIT1.

Bonus in-joke: Katie asked me where the other two were.

*June 13, for the record.

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Marmaduke Killers

Posted on June 21, 2010 by Kelson

Movie marquee spotted a couple of weeks ago:

Quick, someone call the ASPCA!

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Landscape Under Renovation

Posted on June 18, 2010 by Kelson


Landscape Renovation, originally uploaded by Kelson.

Irvine is dreadfully afraid you might think the dead grass is the result of poor maintenance.

Apparently, they’re also concerned that the old Grass Under Renovation signs might not be inclusive enough.

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Your MOM was Photoshopped!

Posted on June 6, 2010 by Kelson

Door: This Is Not A Door. So, remember this photo of a door labeled “This is not a door?” Last year, someone else sent a picture of the same door to FAIL Blog. Then a week ago, someone submitted mine to Friends of Irony, where Katie spotted it a few days later.

Here’s where things get interesting.

On both sites, people were absolutely convinced that it was “obviously” photoshopped.

*headdesk*

No, it’s real. It’s in a small business complex at the corner of Newport Ave. and Irvine Blvd. in Tustin, California. You can go there and look if you want. And of course there are the two photos taken from different angles.

The obvious conclusion is that people don’t really know how to tell whether a photo has been manipulated. At least on FAIL Blog, some of the doubters had reasons, even though they amounted to not understanding perspective.

I was tempted to post a comment linking to this XKCD strip (My hobby: insisting that real-life objects are photoshopped), but settled for requesting a photo credit instead.

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Vanity Plates

Posted on June 3, 2010 by Kelson

If you’re going to get a custom license plate, be creative. What’s the point of putting “WHITBMW” on your white BMW? I can see that! At least say something about your car. Even something like “I♥MYVW.” (No, I haven’t seen this one specifically.)

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The Cheese Cupid

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Kelson

A flier picked up at Sprouts, all about how to find the perfect drink to go with cheese. There’s a website, too: CheeseCupid.com lets you start with either a type of drink or a type of cheese, and find its perfect mate.

They even have an iPhone app. 8-O

I guess the Cheese Information Center just wasn’t hitting the target.

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I Don’t Think That’s Soda Bread

Posted on May 22, 2010 by Kelson

Grocery store sign: Irish Soda Bread. Above it: a cucumber.

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