Essays in Idleness

A correspondent reminds me that we have too narrow a definition of “noise.” As we had been discussing roads, and were considering traffic signs, and as Donald Knuth was mentioned (who once refused to move into a town whose signage was typographically revolting) the need to erase traffic instructions was raised. My correspondent also included photographs of a selection of street signs, very numerous, and viciously ugly, from around the city of London, Ontario. There were many satanic touches, such as a wretched clash of competing illegible signs, replaced by the moronic bureaucrats who run that city with a single large sign incorporating all the little signs in every detail, so that the clash could be fully appreciated. These people, and many of the other functionaries in that town, need to be prosecuted, vigorously.

One of the advantages of closing down all public streets and highways, is that we can make a clean sweep of all the road signs. I suggest melting them down before randomly distributing the remains in junk yards. Alternatively, the wise riflemen of the remoter Ontario districts already use them for target practice, and they rust much faster when they are full of holes. No one needs to be reminded of this age of slavery to crude automotive and pedestrian commands, once we have been freed of them. And of course not just visually appalling road signs, but radically evil. For they constitute an assault of aggressive bullyings that abridge our freedoms.