This morning I was walking behind an oxygen supply company’s parking lot. These half dozen valuable vans, parked in a poor visibility ghetto lot, are secured behind high fences, of course. I had never paid much mind to the place. But then it occurred to me to check it out, perhaps so I could use it as the model for an embassy compound in some dystopian future.

My eyes first came to rest on the obligatory ‘Beware of Guard Dog’ sign. Junkyards always have these, or variants that describe an ‘attack dog’. Being of the Genghis Khan School of Crime Prevention I believe, as comedian Red Foxx once said, “What you need is a Doberman that meows!”

I have always agreed with the long gone antichrist of comedy that the idea should be to rip the balls off an intruder, as a cautionary example to others of his nefarious ilk. However, just thinking aside, the pragmatic course is to warn off the criminals. Ideally, you just do not want visitors onto your property. And, you never know: perhaps El Fido has joined a Guard Dog Union, and is taking a mandated coffee break?

Although I do not like the idea of warning criminals that you have a dog, so that they can prepare some countermeasure before they breech your fence, most such criminals are probably low level types who will just be deterred by the sign.

Then, my eyes came to rest on a ‘Warning Barbed Wire’ sign?

Okay, I look to the top of the 12-foot fence and see three strands of barbed wire. I would have recommended razor wire. Then, I recall my last trip to a McDonalds to purchase a coffee, and the warning on the container that the contents were hot!

“Mommy, save me!”

Realistically, anyone able to read that label should be far smarter than required to realize that the contents of a cup of coffee would be hot. Then my mind flew back through decades of social decay to the recollection of a 1990’s CNN news story about a McDonalds’ customer burning themselves with hot coffee after pulling through a drive thru, and successfully suing.

Now the signs became clear to me, the amplified translation in my mind adjusting my perception in a silent voice over.

Signs such as these are a Message in the Bottle Insane that our sick womanly society has become so feminized that the first thing we have to consider when defending our property is to minimize the risk of a burglar filing what is essentially a ‘slip and fall while trespassing' lawsuit. Yes, this is unjust. But I do not believe in justice, so am not overly peeved about the complete erosion of your property rights. What really kills me, is that even our criminals—our Billy the Kids, Clyde Barrows and John Dillingers—have fallen so far in our estimation of their manliness and criminal fitness, that we have to decorate our property with warning labels. It will be interesting to see where this leads.

Perhaps, in my dotage I will be able to serve as a tour guide to burglars and home invaders in high crime areas, and walk them through in my hard hat, clipboard in hand, spouting advice such as, “Jamiat, that panel of glass is likely to break along a forty five degree line with jagged protrusions that might cut you. Before you swing that two-by-four, I need you to sign this waver. And remember, even though I have EMTs on call, 'it’s all fun and games until someone loses and eye'. So be careful. An X will do. Good—here and here too. Thank you. Okay: one, two—wait up dude, your goggles! Pull your goggles down.

“Oh, come on man. I didn’t mean it like that, I’m sorry—your manhood is flush. You need a tissue?”