Friday, November 30, 2007


Every day on my way to and from work I pass this Petco with part of the "Supplies & Fish" sign burnt out. It's been like that for months, but it's still funny to me.

I heard somewhere that men tend to use wordplay humor more than women. Then again, women supposedly have wider vocabularies than men. Who knows. I like words. And puns. God help me, I like puns. I like that puns are both smart and dumb. No matter how smart a pun is, it's also kind of dumb, and vice versa.

I like when words get messed with in signs. A fast food restaurant across the street from my high school had a sign that read, "Looking for Openers and Closers" and someone took the "C" off. It's even better when it's unintentional, as if the universe has made a Freudian slip. I remember seeing a half burnt-out sign for a Ponderosa Steakhouse that just said, "PONDER." I tried writing that image into a bad short story in a college creative writing class, but it came off more pretentious than funny.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

At one time I actually considered starting a website dedicated to burnt out signs. I laugh even when the altered words don't make sense, such as "Jewel" becoming "ewel".
Also, the Wrigleyville McDonalds advertised the Big and Nasty for a long time.

Chris K said...

My all-time favorite was the dry cleaners, "Colony Cleaners," and of course the Y was burnt out. I suspect people were actively destroying it.

Innisanimate said...

I also love signage woes. I actually have a picture of a Dominick's with the i's both burnt out. I joked with my girlfriend at the time that it was blind. She didn't get it and/or didn't think it was funny. We are no longer together.

Anonymous said...

I used to live in Ireland next to a cafe called the Canal Bank Cafe. A few weeks after I moved there, it was renamed when someone stole the "c" from canal.