Smile, You're About to Die

There are smiley faces drawn on the bags of coffee beans at my favourite cafe.  I looked up, saw them and for a brief moment there was a smile on my face too.  There's nothing that can't be improved with a smiley face.  I'm surprised they aren't employed more at funerals.  The military should paint them on their tanks.  A tank is sixty tonnes of fire spitting death machine but with a great big smiley face on it it becomes an armour plated goodwill ambassador.

Even the worst situation can be made marginally better if the tank currently destroying your home has a great big smiley face on it.  As the last bits of rubble come crashing down in a cloud of dust and asbestos fibres I defy anyone not to smile at least briefly as they see a big yellow smiley face lurching towards them out of the murk.  After that you can go back to more appropriate feelings of loss and fear.

What else could benefit from smiley faces?  How about police cars, prisons, schools and abattoirs?  These are all things that could do with a little cheering up.  With some judiciously placed smiley faces we could have the happiest society on earth as well as the most annoying to outsiders.  Because, let's face it, there is nothing worse than seeing a cheery grin when you're in a bad mood.  The day has been hard, your personal situation sucks and on your way to drowning yourself in the local duckpond one of those fucking smiley faces appears.  OK, if its on a tshirt you can simply punch the person wearing it but if its painted on the side of a building of some sort there really is nothing for it except to go on a killing spree until the police marksmen finally put an end to your misery.

Tourists from other nations will see the huge smiley face on the airport runway and will feel a little uplifted while at the same time deeply sympathetic with their infuriated pilot who has just aimed his airliner directly at the yellow target presenting itself.  Survivors will gaze upon our smiley face bedecked rescue vehicles and feel a little better about the fact that their hideous injuries are soon going to remove them from this earth.

Eventually other nations won't be able to stand it any longer and they will take drastic action to remove us from the face of the globe.  As the bombs and missiles tear our civilisation apart it shouldn't be beyond our abilities to arrange for the rubble to fall in the shape of a series of smiley faces; a sort of final "fuck you" and "have a nice day" to the rest of the world.