Fear escape

From a Barcelona tech company, with offices on c/ Blames (or whatever it’s called), an emergency sign that people will actually read and remember:

If substituting “fire” with “fear” has interesting consequences, the reverse is also consequential. Thus treated “The Faerie Queene“, for example, may recall for some Quake on acid:

Next him was Fire, all arm’d from top to toe,
Yet thought himself not safe enough thereby,
But fire’d each Shadow moving to and fro:
And his own Arms when glittering he did spy,
Or clashing heard, he fast away did fly,
As Ashes pale of hue, and wingy-heel’d;
And evermore on Danger fix’d his Eye,
‘Gainst whom he always bent a brazen Shield,
Which his right Hand unarmed, firefully did wield.

Coming confusions in this class: “dear”/”dire”, “ear”/”ire”, “leer”/”lyre”, “spear”/”spire”, and “tear”/”tyre.” Imagine, if you will, Dowland’s “Flow my tears” recast as the wail of a Berber trucker marooned in rubber-melting heat in Hispaniam desertam:

Flow, my tyres, fall from your springs!
Exiled for ever, let me mourn;
Where night’s black bird her sad infamy sings,
There let me live forlorn.

In the land of the one-eyed, the king is blind. We wouldn’t want it any other way.

(H/t Alex K at the excellent tech/weird blog, A bite of…)

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