Book of Ratings: Hobo Signs
This is a two-part post — I found a very funny website, and I’m pretty sure that I must have been living under a rock to have not seen it before now. I also couldn’t choose just one thing on it to post, so I’m doing something completely unheard of, and posting two things. HA! Enjoy.
Lore Sjöberg takes lists of things — anything from ” Pasta Shapes” to “Aspects of Santa Claus” and rates them on a grading scale. He gives out a lot of Cs and Ds, a few As, and practically no Bs. And he’s really goddamned funny.
Given our penchant for hobos ’round the old Junkyard Clubhouse, I couldn’t help but love his rating of Hobo Signs, the chalk symbols hobos used to communicate what they knew about a town to the hobos that might come after them. They’re a sort of Hobo Fodor’s. Here’s a sample of Lore’s assessment:
The Owner Isn’t Here
This doesn’t seem very good. Unless the owner is thoughtful enough to erase the symbol on his way back in, this is about as useful as a symbol meaning “it’s six-thirty.” I suppose you could carefully inscribe it somewhere where it’s going to get concealed whenever the ower gets home, maybe by putting it in his driveway or writing it in dust on the welcome mat, then spreading some dirt around the walkway so that the owner wipes his feet when he comes home. But that doesn’t seem like the sort of things that hobos do. When you’re playing word association, “hobo” is rarely followed by “elaborate plan.” D-
Lore’s three-part series on Hobo Signs can be found here, here and here. You can find all his ratings at, appropriately enough, Book of Ratings. And of course, there is a book, if you want to take your ratings reading on the road. [via Spectre Collie]
[…] This is my second post in a row about Book of Ratings — Part One, about Hobo Signs, is here. […]
posted on April 13th, 2007 at 10:36 am