Anatomy of a Phail Poster

Ahhh... the fire alarm. I forgot how they consistently alert me of my impending death by burning. The only problem is, in college more often than not, they're just overzealous bastards who just want to remind me that they still exist. They're like the Jack Russell Terriers in the world of electronic devices. You know, you stop paying attention to them for just a second and BAM! You have to start shopping for a new couch. Only instead of eating your couch, the fire alarm starts screaming at you and you just stand there blankly, wondering where you went wrong. NYU's fire alarms are particularly obnoxious. Not only are they freaking loud, they also have some added strobe light effect that kind of makes you feel like you're at a club. A weird anti-club where everyone's trying to get the hell out.

Anyway, the fire alarm went off a few days ago. Not too bad really, except that it was at 5 in the fucking morning. Adding to my displeasure, it was the morning of my neuroscience exam. Since I wasn't fully awake, I acted in a rather Pavlov-ian manner. I grudgingly got up and scrambled around for my glasses to evacuate the building. It was right around when I had my hand on the door handle that my brain started functioning properly. In addition to the alarm screaming, my own brain was now screaming WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING? GET BACK TO BED RIGHT THIS INSTANT!  And so I did. I recklessly returned to bed. I figured if this fire were real, someone would tell me. Or something like that.

Anyway the morning after the fake fire I found this curiosity posted to the wall by the elevator.

This poster is actually rather interesting and I think it merits a few minutes of time to contemplate its meaning.  First, what on earth does that last line mean? "Thanks for being such good sports last night." What was there to be a good sport about? If we didn't escape the building, we would have died in the non-existing fire. So if they really mean, "Hey guys, its nice to see that none of you want to burn to death...KEEP IT UP!" then yes, I agree. Self preservation is a good quality to have though apparently I lack that quality.

 As a final point, I'm confused by that rather interesting picture of a snowman holding a flaming broom. Is that supposed to represent us college students? Because if it is...what is NYU saying about its students? Is it A) that we are creepy snowmen with arsonist tendencies? Or B) Snowmen expressing surprise and cursing our lack of foresight while watching the alarming rate at which the flame is moving down the broom close to our equally flammable twig arms?  Thought provoking? I thought so.