Orange Cones, Gallery 2:
Cones where you least expect them!

Kibo says:

Cones are everywhere. If you ever find yourself in a situation in which you think you couldn't possibly find a cone, look around, look high, look low, you'll find a cone tucked away in some bizarre place.

Cones are the "go-anywhere" object!

If you don't believe me, play "Kibo's Spot The Cone Game". While walking around by yourself, when you go around a corner, start counting to 30. If you can spot an orange cone (or cone-like object such as an orange barrel or yellow tentlet) within 30 seconds, you win! (I did this while walking to the supermarket today, and won 6 times, and lost 2.)

If you're in public with another person, you don't need to count to 30, just yell "Spot the cone!" and see which of you finds one first. (The adult version: Go for a walk with your mistress. She yells "Spot the cone!" and starts counting. If you don't see one within 30 seconds, you get spanked once for each extra second. See, cones can be kinky.)

"Spot The Cone" isn't a fun game to play indoors, unless it's the spanking version and you want to get spanked a lot.

And now, the gallery of cones in strange situations.

Look down! There's a cone.

(Especially if you lean over the edge of my apartment's balcony.)

Look up! There's a cone.

(This one's on the roof of a local drugstore.)

Cones can be made theft-proof.

Putting a cone on a pole makes it more imposing.

But putting a cone on a parking meter makes it even more so.

Of course, they forgot to put a cone in the parking space itself, so you can still park there. You just can't pay.

(I apologize for the fuzziness of these night-vision photos. Incidentally, these two photos are of different cones.)

Cones can defy gravity in their topsy-turvy world!

(I don't quite understand this Cambridge scene, but apparently they nailed the new telphone pole to the side of the old one, and then wanted people not to bump into it, so they hulled a cone and nailed its skin to the crucifix, I mean pole.)

Here's a rock on top of a cone on top of four trolley rails on top of the pavement next to the curb on top of which are the actual trolley tracks in Brookline.

I think the rock is there to keep people from stealing the cone. And the cone's there to keep people from stealing the rails before they install them.

DANGER! SANDBOX IS FILLED WITH QUICKSAND! OR CEDAR CHIPS! WE DON'T KNOW WHICH!

I suppose it's probably not quicksand. Because if it were, it would look more like this:

(The one on the left makes me expect a tiny Charlton Heston to stand in front of it yelling, "YOU MANIACS, YOU BLEW IT UP! YOU BLEW IT ALL UP!")

Occasionally cones venture indoors. Here's a cone guarding the corner in the men's room of the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers.

Notice that the cone above is fraternizing with a yellow "wet floor" tent for twice the warningness!

Aaaaaiiiieeee!!! They're cross-breeding!

On the bus today I saw three interesting cone formations flying past the window. They went by too quick to photograph, but fortunately I burned them into my memory and reproduced them with my artistic genius:

A restaurant parking lot in Chelsea. You get the feeling this is the end of a Shakespearean tragedy where they just killed each other with swords.

In Peabody, a very delicate parking job which avoided doing any damage to the valuable cone. (This is proof that cones don't deter parking.)

Know those suburban homes where the lawn is two feet above the sidewalk, and the driveway runs upwards? This one, in Lynn, has a two-foot-wide patty-shaped rock sitting on the sidewalk for some reason. I think the dented orange cone was there to say, "Do not crawl under this rock or you will be crushed."

On to cone gallery #3:
Death of a Cone

RETURN TO KIBO'S GALLERY OF THE QUIXOTICALLY EXOTIC