Normative Signs: The Poetry of "Ought"

I usually stick to original content, but this is too good not to share: Rules Just Begging to be Broken

I’m amused by normative signs that include graphic depictions of serious physical injury. I guess they’re intended to be persuasive by means of the scare factor. But I find them amusing.

This one is from a swimming pool — a uniformly shallow swimming pool — at a hotel in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

This message is written on a garage door in Toronto.

Hard to tell if it’s a hand-written normative sign over graffiti, or the other way around. But I walk by it regularly, and I kind of love it. I believe the home-owner has written over the graffiti. But I love that the owner’s message is only barely more “official” looking than the graffiti. The net result is art.

Is this a normative palimpsest? Or a pentimento?