Excellence in advertising

This sign is on display in a Dublin city centre car park. I love it. It’s like a little lost puppy that has so much wrong with it – bleary eyes, matted fur, hideous funk – that you want to take it home and fix it up. Just look at it. Quotation marks have been added, mysteriously, but the concluding question mark has been excised. This odd combination lends the whole thing the air of a Zen koan. But it’s the lack of a proper sales pitch that really tickles me. What if my answer is yes, now that you mention it, my car is filthy? What am I supposed to do? OK, I admit that the car cleaning service isn’t far from this location, but still. The effect is downright unsettling. I half suspect that if you peered very closely at the bottom of the sign you would see, in tiny letters, ‘DIRECTED BY DAVID LYNCH’.