When you don't need a thousand words...

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But, what if you don't need a thousand words? To take a specific example (obviously, this blog was motivated by this very example!), every so often you find restaurants or bars separating restrooms for men vs. women with creative props or pictures that no doubt make good dinner conversations. But, do you really need to be tested when you are either desperate or intoxicated to discern one from the other and make the right decision.

Even the seemingly innocuous stickman can sometimes take more than a closer look. Is that a skirt or just a guy with a fat butt? How does it work in Scotland? Is that a Scotsman in his traditional kilt? On the flip side, don't women wear trousers - why do women put up with such stereotyping?

Why not just make it dead easy and spell it out "Men" and "Women". How difficult is that? When just two words are not just sufficient but most effective, don't waste nine hundred and ninety eight other with a picture!

Twitter about a blog about a tweet about a...

I recently added a few fervent twitterers on LinkedIn, so much so that my first page is predictably filled with their recent updates on Twitter. It's quite amazing how self-engrossed some folks can get - were they like this even before Twitter came along or has Twitter pushed this nascent narcissism to the fore? There's an update every 20 minutes or so about what they are reading, will be reading, will be eating / cooking... when it's time to time to brush on both sides of the night and so on...

Switching to the other side of every tweet, who actually follows them? What if they are engrossed in their own tweets? Do you tweet about the fact that you are just about to read others' tweets or blogs. Say "just about to read 'Tweet from a twat', and then on to 'Electronic trash' before tweeting about all that".

Pushing this argument further, do I tweet about this blog before or after? Where does this chain ever end? Maybe until the next fad is in... wait until you hear about it on someone's blog or a tweet or a blog about a tweet or ...