WALLOP!!! - In Memoriam

Waiting for the train back home from work, I noticed that the opposite platform was lacking the above ornament. It used to send a cartoonish KAPOW!!! message to the worker objects passing it on their way to a day at the office, but how many of them were equipped to handle this message (pardon the language, I'm studying Object-Oriented Programming at the moment).

The KAPOW!!! has been scrubbed away to a mere ghost, something slightly distorting our vision of the "real" surface underneath. And for what? For what has someone's hastily-scribbled artwork (artwork vs. vandalism = freedom fighting vs. terrorism ?) been deleted, taxpayers' money been spent? To semi-restore the -ish coloured tiles (-ish as in an unidentifiable and purposefully characterless brownish-yellowish) to their former bland glory.

I can understand conserving beautiful, pleasing or interesting things against defacement. Were these walls part of a larger scheme encompassing the whole of the station, I would understand. As it is, the station is one of the ugliest I know. Not only is it ugly, it is slowly but clearly deteriorating and its design is a failure. Hence, our dearly departed KAPOW!!! was a freedom fighter attempting to liberate us from this oppressive ugliness. As is usual with such things, it is only when such occultation by the dominant order (here represented by the scrubbing service) of alternative, occasionally better, realities, was made clear to me that I noticed the numerous other ghosts on the stations walls, turning the place into a veritable graveyard of better futures aborted in the name of an unnameable colour.

Similarly, if someone were to blow the Palais de Justice to bits on aesthetic grounds, I would approve.