"Suspecting that no one at the Australian Electoral Commission would scrutinise the application to change his address, [Jared Hyams] scribbled a caricature of a penis in the box that asked for a signature. 'I thought it would be a laugh; they would approve it and next year I would sign something different,' the 33-year-old said. 'But when I did this signature all of a sudden the shit hit the fan. I was receiving letters and phone calls telling me I couldn't have it. I thought, that's interesting, why not?' And so began a five year battle with state and federal government agencies over the question of
what constitutes a legitimate signature...."
"'What a signature is comes down to the function, not the actual form. Generally, it's a person putting a mark on a piece of paper by their own hand. As soon as you start defining what a signature is you run into problems - if it's meant to be someone's name how do we define that because most signatures are just illegible scribble.'"
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34 comments:
Would the bureaucrats down under accept a crudely drawn vagina any more quickly than this crudely drawn male appendage? Because if not, SEXIST!
The Egyptians beat him to picture writing. A Phallus was also a standard Greco-Roman Street identification of the Power of a Man in that house. Will we have to do a feminist ISIL iconoclast and smash the Greco-Roman statuary at the Metropolitan?
Decibel is abbreviated as dB with a capital letter just to defeat doodlers.
Penis signature, you say?
Looking at the official photographs of him over time, one is obliged to conclude the five years haven't been kind to him. But maybe it's strategic. Now his signature is the least offensive thing about him.
That guy is wasting everyone's time. Life is too short to deal with every joker who comes along, that is why we have conventions.
Absolute Garbage!
He needs to shave.
@bob
Great!
@Bob
You have a best selling T shirt right there.
;-)
The bureaucrats may have a point. The drawing also resembles the dog toys I saw this morning, and thus allows room for confusion. More detail and shading?
He could've pulled this off if he'd changed his name to Oolong.
How does it hold the pen?
You have a best selling T shirt right there.
Agreed. Totally. But I'm curious if Obama could sue for the profits. Is someone's signature their property?
(IANAL)
MadisonMan, I doubt it, although for something like this, I'd bet he would try (frankly, just like anyone who is being held up to ridicule like this).
Five years, eh? The hills some people are willing to fight for ...
There are pen names, and there are penis names.
The signature, I think, has to be the same on different documents. And what might legally qualify as a signature (anything used by an individual as his distinctive mark) dies not have to be accepted by someone else, but they can ask for another thing if they don't want to take it. Why is this very complicated?
That's nuts.
"Get him out. Take him out. Get him outta here."
Lena and the dyke soccer world champion are in Portsmouth tonight supporting Hilary.
Portsmouth is fab just 30 miles from Boston on the border.
Should we go?
The US has been at this for over 20 years. I have often been told that my signature on a chart was not acceptable as it was not what the bureaucrats desired. Their point was that they could not read it. My point was that it was typed underneath and all over the chart, and that history would allow me to simply put an X if I desired. What allowed me to win was the fact that none of them got paid until they relented, so they back off. As to being the same on all document, wrong, there are multiple signatures and once when the government was investigating something a bad guy did, they asked me to provide 30 signatures for comparison.
This reminds me of Zug's Credit Card Prank, which involved signing credit card receipts with increasingly ridiculous signatures including fake names and various artistic efforts even more elaborate than our "friend" here. The vendor is supposed to verify that the signature on the card matches the receipt, but, if I remember correctly, every vendor happily accepted the outlandish signings except for one. (The implication was the vendor only checked because the amount to be charged was very large.) Sadly, I cannot find a link to it; the original prank dates back to 2001 and the follow-up in 2005, so it may have died with zug.com's demise.
I think Prince went by this for a period of time.
I keep picturing Crocodile Dundee saying "that's not a penis, . . . "
Pandering to the freak show. Not a good way to start the new year.
I wonder if he watches a lot of Top Gear? I have never seen a hand drawn penis until we started watching Clarkson, Hammond, and May.
Imagine if a black person did that. It would fill the whole page!
There are signature moves and dick moves. Sometimes they overlap as Bob has shown.
So all sentences begin with 'so'.
Ah, found Zug's Credit Card Prank II on archive.org.
http://web.archive.org/web/20130124043324/http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit_card/
Did he write a book called, "How the Irish Curse Saved Civilization"?
Amusing story and I love Bob's link.
But on a more serious note, I'm wondering if older folks realize that the current generation isn't being taught cursive writing at all. I guess signatures will soon be obsolete?
I'm sure it's a life-sized representation.
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