Five Man Electrical Band – "Signs" (1971)

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

Blockin’ out the scenery

Breakin’ my mind

Recently the Washington Post ran a story about a yard-sign battle that had broken out in a residential neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia.

Duelling yard signs

The sign that started the whole thing read as follows:

IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE: BLACK LIVES MATTER, WOMEN’S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS, NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL, SCIENCE IS REAL, LOVE IS LOVE, KINDNESS IS EVERYTHING.

That person’s next-door neighbor responded by planting the following sign in his yard:

 IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE THAT SIMPLISTIC PLATITUDES, TRITE TAUTOLOGIES AND SEMANTICALLY OVERLOADED APHORISMS ARE POOR SUBSTITUTES FOR RESPECTFUL AND RATIONAL DISCUSSIONS ABOUT COMPLEX ISSUES.

Soon after that, another neighbor started display this sign:

IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE THAT USING SNARK AND SARCASM AND PEDANTIC, OVERLY COMPLEX LANGUAGE TO RESPOND TO OTHERS’ SOMEWHAT MEANINGLESS VIRTUE-SIGNALING IS JUST DIVISIVE AND TROLLISH BEHAVIOR, BUT HEY, SIGNS ARE FUN.

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I’m not sure which of the three people who posted those signs is the most annoying.

[NOTE: If you’re not a regular reader of 2 or 3 lines, you may not know that we now have a policy of using “it” as our third-person singular pronoun when we’re not sure whether the person we’re referring to is male or female.  Some people would use “they” in that situation, but “they” is a PLURAL pronoun – not a singular pronoun.] 

The first one is obviously a sanctimonious putz who just had to tell the world how virtuous it is. 

The person who responded by displaying the second sign is no better than the first person – it’s smug and self-satisfied, and thinks it is oh-so-clever, but it’s just a shmegegge.  (By the way, it didn’t come up with the wording on its sign – it bought the sign on Etsy.)

The third sign poster is no doubt very pleased with itself because it thinks its sign demonstrates that it’s so much cooler than the other two sign posters.  But its sign is totally lame, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s just a shmendrik.  

(Sorry for all the Yiddish terms, but I’ve been reading Portnoy’s Complaint.)

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In the 1994 movie The Paper, Robert Duvall – who was portraying the grumpy editor of a big-city tabloid – expressed his dissatisfaction with his newspaper’s many columnists thusly:

We reek of opinions. What every columnist at this paper needs to do is to shut the fuck up!

If you ask me, that sentiment applies to all three of the homeowners who posted the signs that were discussed in the Washington Post article.  They all need to shut the f*ck up!

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“Signs” was a big hit for the Five Man Electrical Band – a Canadian group that originally called itself the Staccatos – in the summer of 1971.  

I heard it many times on the jukebox at Nina’s Green Parrot, a bar in Galena, Kansas, that was  inhabited almost entirely by teenagers because back then it was legal to buy 3.2% beer in Kansas once you were 18 years old.  Click here to read my original post about “Signs” and Nina’s. 

Click here to listen to today’s featured song.

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