MYSTERIOUS

Today's sign lesson is short and sweet. Kinda like me. That's because this sign is so mysterious, it could take us all the whole entire day to figure out what the heck it's trying to say.

Here's what we know:

None of the words are crooked underlined BIG or bold, so I don't think it's an angry sign. There's nothing about Caution, Danger or Hazardous so what it's saying might not be all that important. And it doesn't seem to care if or where we p-i-s-s, pee or P.

It's like a government sign, but better and worse all at the same time.

HUMAN: I think the big state-looking thing is Texas.

ME: that doesn't look like Texas to me.

HUMAN: well, the star in the middle could definitely be Austin.

ME: but if the thing on the outside isn't Texas, the thing in the middle can't be Austin.

HUMAN: (silence)

Suki, if you're out there, can you please tell my human just because you put a star in the middle of something, doesn't make it Austin, TX?

And if anyone else has any idea what the heck this sign means, please tell us.

I won't be here tomorrow because my human came up with the genius idea to let Dutch hijack my freaking blog be here on Fridays from now on. I'm working on an even more genius idea to make that idea go away, but until then you're stuck with Dutch.

See you Monday!

HUMANS IN WRITING

Since signs are really just humans in writing, there are like a million different kinds out there. 

Exhibit A: nice

There are NO PISSING ON THE BUILDING PLEASE! kind of humans. And then there are this kind: 

Now I don't know about you, but I'd feel reeeeally bad about peeing on the nice plants. The angry building? Not so much. Not like I'd pee on a building or anything. But still.


Exhibit B: helpful 

And just like humans, some signs are supereasy to understand... and some are not. This one is painted on a busy street near our house:

If my human and her gimpy brain was in charge of of saving the world from oncoming traffic, we'd all be squashed by now. But whoever made this LOOK sign knew exactly how to save us. Superhelpful, right?


Exhibit C: huh?

Uhm. Anyone know what this sign is about??

My human says a circle with a line is like universal for NO. I get that. But I still have no idea what the sign is trying to tell me. I guess it could mean No Pee, but it seems kinda weird to be so worried about pee you paint a great big giant sign on the front of your house. 

Dutch said it could mean No Pugs. Or even No Puglet. Whatever. I say if a sign is too lazy to spell stuff out, you shouldn't have to worry about doing or not doing or whatever it's kinda-sorta-but-not-really telling you.

Exhibit D: government signs (aka, all of the above)

This is the smoking sign I didn't show you yesterday. The city put them all over our neighborhood so it wasn't hard to pose with find one.

I guess this sign kinda makes sense. If you read it four times. But even then it's still kinda confusing. Google says government stuff is like that. I guess the government isn't exactly human, but you'd think it could hire one to put words on signs. I'm just glad the government isn't in charge of keeping us from getting squashed.

PS: I totally agree that I deserve/need/MUST HAVE some bacon, asap. You think there's a sign out there for that?!? 

ANGRY SCARY & CONFUSING

So there's this building between our house and a whole bunch of other places we go. It's pretty much like every other building, except it's got signs stuck all over it. Angry signs. Scary signs. Confusing signs. 

We can learn a lot from this building...

Angry signs

You know a sign is angry when words are underlined, crooked and bold in BIG LETTERS with a ! thingy at the end. My human says these are a sign's way of yelling at you. 

I guess I would yell too if I was getting, uhm, peed on. And I guess the sign is being kinda nice by yelling PLEASE! But don't let the yelling fool you. Aways remember: signs are just human words written down. Just because you're getting yelled at, doesn't mean you have to listen. 


Warning signs

You should probably pay at least a some attention to any sign that starts with WARNING. Trust me on this. You don't *have* to do or not do or whatever the sign says, but bad things might happen if you're not careful. 

Think: cliff. 

Or the c-word and reproductive harm? I don't even know what that is.

You might also want to think twice about any sign that says entire State of California knows something. Or at least thinks it does. 


No Signs

No signs are kinda everywhere. My human forgot to take a close up of the NOs, but I'm pretty sure you'll know a NO when you see it. This building has two of them: one for smoking and one for something called trespassing. 

Of course smoking is a NO no-brainer, but I have no idea what trespassing is. I'm guessing it's probably not too terrible because all the letters on that sign are tiny but Dutch does not agree. 

He thinks a lot of tiny letters are just as serious as a few underlined, crooked bold BIG LETTERS, but I'm not so sure. Thanks to Miss Gimpy, I can't see what the stupid sign actually says so I have no way of being right knowing the truth. 

Arrgh.

So for now, let's say NO signs are somewhere between serious and... a suggestion? If anyone out there knows more about this, please speak. Especially if what you know makes me right.

SIGNS

So, I think I might know why it took an entire freaking week to tell you about falling off a cliff. I kinda really want to blame Dutch's princess bladder, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly because my human's brain is still waking up and everything she does takes longer than forever. 

Because I'm a nice pug (and am trying to negotiate more thumb time for comments) I'm going to make things easier on her this week by s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g o-u-t everything I want to say out. In big letters. Like the ones you see on signs about dangerous cliffs.

And electric fences (more on that in a minute). 

Speaking of signs, ever notice how much humans like to stick words on things? DO this. DON'T do this. Leash. Danger. Caution. Beware. Seriously? Life would be soooo much easier if they just peed on stuff like we do. I mean, with so much to read it's kinda hard to tell what is important and what is just... words. 

Am I right? 

It's superconfusing, even for me and I'm practically a genius. Imagine what it must be like for, say, Dutch?!? Now I'm no sign expert or anything, but I *think* I'm starting to understand how to tell a good sign from a bad one:

Signs that say CAUTION and ELECTRIC are bad.

Uhm, yeah. I learned this yesterday. My human thought she knew more about electric fences than the sign and I didn't know anything about fences at all.  I don't have a picture of what happened when I touched the electric fence with my face, but trust me - touching an electric fence with your face hurts more than falling off a cliff. 

How bad does it hurt? So bad you will run off into the woods, hide behind a tree and refuse to come out - even for cookies. So bad you'll make a hideous scary noise that COMPLETELY freaks out your human and all other humans within a two mile radius. 

Both of these things might get you loads of sympathy (+/- cookies) but I swear it's not be worth it. Repeat: touching electric fence bad. Especially because you won't even be able to *look* at a sympathy cookie until like two minutes later. Maybe three. 

Now we both know not to mess with signs about electric fences. Tomorrow we'll talk about peeing...

THE CLIFF, THE END.

Holy Cowpies. It's taking longer to tell you about falling off a cliff than it did to get rescued from it. I don't know about you, but I fell asleep before the dude on the bike came back with the rope. Last time I let Dutch tell a story!

(totally not my idea, by the way)

So, back at the cliff... 

My human's tied to one end of the rope and the other end is tied to everyone else. I don't know any of this because I'm on the side of a freaking cliff and can't see anything but ocean, sky and the side of the cliff. 

Oh. And did I mention that every time I move, the cliff falls apart and I go with it? SO awesome.

By now, I'm pretty sure this might be my first not-near death experience. But just as I'm about to really freak out, I see my human and, uh, "Kim" coming down from the top of the cliff (from where I was it was mostly Kim). 

Now. Remember the thing about the cliff falling apart every time I move? Well imagine how the cliff must feel about my human and Kim. Who are muuuuch bigger and heavier than me, even at my most tubiest. 

Uhm, yeah. Not good.   

As soon as my human touches the side of the cliff, it totally falls apart. She starts sliding, then I start sliding and if it wasn't for the scary rope and the four dudes it was tied to, we probably would have ended up like this:

You can probably guess we didn't fall into the ocean and drown. Dumb Idea #3 didn't exactly go as planned, but the rope didn't break and the four dudes were strong enough to pull us to the top. I got a few cuts on my feet, bits of cliff in my eyeballs, and a cool story about the time I fell off a cliff.

THE END!