Monday, December 13, 2010

All-Embracing Tackiness

This past week, the ELCA Temple of Tackiness in my neighborhood has been advertising the following lighted-sign slogan:

A HUG IS THE GREATEST GIFT--
ONE SIZE FITS ALL

One couldn't ask for a more all-embracing platitude: bland, banal, generalized to the point of meaninglessness, and above all, amazing to see on the campus of a "Lutheran" church during the Advent season's celebration of God's greatest gift: His incarnate Son.

I meant to share this earlier, but every time I drove past this church sign in the past few days, my train of thought was broken by an instance of Municipal Tackiness: A "Left Lane Closed" sign, propped against a row of orange traffic cones taking up half of the right lane, just where I always need to turn right off the main drag. So everyone in the right lane, including those of us who are immediately turning right, have to swerve into the left lane in order to avoid a reminder that everyone in the left lane has to merge right.... Yes, St. Louisans, "Duh" is spoken here!

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