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| NOBODY FREAK OUT (photo by rachel wright, 2010) [mucked around with by me, 2011] |
This has been my favorite phrase for a while now. It all started one day, with my family riding in the car down a highway in Israel. To our right: desert. To our left: desert. Ahead: desert. Behind us? Yep, more desert, and an occasional mountain or two. And lo and behold, a road sign approached us from the right. It looked just like the kind that tells you to slow for an upcoming curve, or to watch for falling rocks - only this one was rather existentially challenged and/or challenging (we haven't really decided yet.) I wish{!} I had a picture. It was a simple triangle shaped sign, trimmed in urgent-red, with a single, large, black exclamation point in the middle. That's it. No words. No other supporting imagery.
Considering the signs intrinsic *emphatic-ness*, we felt it was probably in our best interest to figure out what, exactly, this sign could be warning us about; and with the hope that we'd do it before the thing we were being warned about found us:
1. warning: falling punctuation - be careful what you say and hear, as random commas, semicolons, question marks and such could insert themselves into the conversation creating severe communication chaos; for example: Pass me! that bag of rasp-- berries oh a camel where's?! the cam;era, when you need. it oh! i never! lik,ed camels raspberries. are too seedy?
2. warning: rampant paranoiac activity ahead - entering an area, or vortex, where anything and everything could happen - so just watch out, you know, generally - for everything and anything; you have been warned. be warned. go forth in a constant state of being warned. may the warning be with you. the warning is strong with this one... {ad nauseum}
3. a road-sign makers cruel cruel joke - maybe they sometimes sit further down the road just to watch people's perplexed faces as they drive past; wringing they're hands and laughing maniacally 'mwah ha ha'
4. Or maybe it was a simple piece of advice - that in a world of uncertainty (the proverbial, infinite-in-scope, exclamation point that we all live in) - one should remember to keep calm. Know that there will be exclamation points around you, and the best thing one can do - is to not only remind yourself, but everyone else (in an !emphatic! tone of voice):
NOBODY FREAK OUT
Which brings me nicely to two of my favorite songs of late - that juxtapose so nicely as to completely refute what I've just said, that I felt it necessary to post them here - because it reminds me, to never be too serious about anything because once you think you've figured something out, the opposite of that thing will present itself to you... rather boldly... and wearing a smirky grin.
{warning! contains some strong language}
and because the funny thing about writing a blog - is that there's no one to stop you -- I'm going to negate myself again:
1.17.11, update
Found a pic of the sign:
And found out that it means: "dangerous place"
So our musings still apply.
But more intriguingly, is this new perplexity of a sign:
Notice, though, it's not a dot, its a hexagon.
Beware floating hexagons!
or... 6-sided things in general!
or... you are now entering the 6th dimension...
I'm glad we didn't see this sign; though it would seem to connote less possible danger - it's exactly that discrepancy between something seemingly innocent, yet required a warning sign all it's own, which makes this sign truly the more nerve wracking of the two.
