Tag Archives: push/pull

Recommendations

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Today’s post offers recommendations for ordinary people, all levels of government, and the US military. The first is for those seeking entry to this shop:

Should you PUSH or PULL? English generally reads from left to right, so the bi-color message DON’T PULL / PUSH ONLY makes sense. But because the colors create columns, you can also read it as DON’T PUSH / PULL ONLY. I recommend you stand nearby until someone exits. Then simply slip through the open door.

Different store, same problem:

Which takes precedence: the official blue AmX sticker telling you to Push or the green-paper Please DO NOT!!! PUSH THE DOOR? As with the other sign, I recommend you wait for someone else to solve the problem. I also recommend a tax on exclamation points. The first one would be free, with a $10 charge for each additional point. It’s a win-win situation. Either the deficit will plummet or public discourse will calm down. Government officials, are you listening?

Here’s a risky sign I spotted eight years ago. To this day it remains in front of the United Nations:

Obey the wrong sign and you risk a ticket (if you’re lucky) or a crash (if you aren’t). I recommend you park your car and walk.

This recommendation is for the military’s newest branch:

Space Force, we need an investigation into satellites being held above Midtown.

I’d like to end this post on a positive note. Here’s a clear, polite sign sent by my friend Constance:

My final recommendation: send me all the silly signs you spot!

Pandemicked

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Podding up with my son’s family in Seattle, I’ve been thinking a lot about the language that has emerged during this dire period. Some terms I love: Quarantini, anyone? I’m also very fond of pod, a repurposed word now applied to the group you’ve chosen or been stuck with as quarantine-mates. I especially like its verb forms, “podding” and “podded.” Ditto for “pandemic,” as you probably guessed from the title of this post.

But not all pandemic vocabulary is helpful. My word-alarm rings when I see something like this package label:

This bit of literary nonexcellence describes a cloth mask, and was written, I imagine, with a translation program that lost its way, if it ever had a way. I’m assuming that carry is “wear” and, because the mask was folded in half, that divide the opposite side means “unfold.” Did the manufacturer really have to explain that? Would anyone wear a folded mask with both loops hanging over the same ear? (Don’t answer that. These days, the absurd seems all too possible.) Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to deciphering anti-external will stick dust power. I am similarly stumped by wash the poison. Both must have something to do with the virus, because in 2020 everything circles back to Corona. Pun intended.

Here’s a pre-pandemic sign that caters to the anxiety and ignorance far too often attached to physical well-being:

First there’s the phrase itself. I’m not a medical professional, but isn’t all health based on what’s going on at the cellular level? Can you have a disease or condition that doesn’t involve cells? Then there’s the location of the sign, the window of a spa. No offense to the hard-working employees, but I really don’t want anyone but a doctor to mess with my cells.

One more, also pre-pandemic but more important now than ever:

This is what we all have to do to get through to the other side of our 2020 nightmare: PULL a little harder. Remember that! Also, wash away the poison once a day, and look for kindness, compassion, and duty within yourself, as far down as your cellular level.