From Mindspillage
There is a Chinese restaurant in the shopping center near me called "China King", with a sign in glowing red letters. Well, mostly glowing. It's a rare occasion that I go by and the sign is fully lit. For a span of several months it happened to be mostly unlit in ways that spell things:
CHIN_ K___
I'm surprised they left that so long before they fixed it. Perhaps they didn't realize... Perhaps the repairperson should have waited a bit longer, though, because almost immediately after it was fixed it read:
CHI_A KING
Which brought to mind lovely mental images of a Chia Head with a little plastic crown and furry cape. It then read:
____A KING
I'm waiting for them to fix it again and have the "A" burn out again. I also wonder now about other local business signs that spell amusing things when letters die.
When I was growing up, my mother's best friend was also divorced and had a daughter also who was two years younger, and the four of us would spend a huge amount of time together. One night, when I was about 11, we bet each other fifty cents on being the last one to laugh that night, doing anything to get the other to laugh except touching. After an evening of abysmal jokes, gruesomely contorted faces, and silly pranks, I caved first, when I wasn't even paying attention to her. In the car on the way to dinner I saw a sign with one letter burnt out... the Publix grocery store was now proudly proclaiming itself to be PUB_IX. ("Where shopping is a pleasure.")
1. It was worth the fifty cents. 2. My sense of humor has really not matured that much.
As it happens, I think we were going out to eat Chinese food.
(GreenReaper points out that CHI__ KIN_ would be pretty funny, too.)