Okay, this is something I've wanted to comment about for a while. First of all, the MTA has some of the worst advertising banners I have ever seen. It makes you wonder if they recruit their graphics department and designers from a fourth-grade painting class. Secondly, their slogans are absolutely retarded. I pretty much hate the MTA except for the fact that I rely on them to get around the city. But everything else they do pisses me off, as it should you.

This banner is the most classic example of their idiocy. I really have no idea if this is a joke or not, but let's try to go through this and see what, if anything, was going through their puny little minds when they came up with this nonsense.

The sign reads, "lose something on the subway or bus?" It then shows a bunch of stuff that people might lose on the subway. The first thing you might notice is a fucking cobra. First of all, who the fuck is bringing a poisonous snake on the subway? next we see one crutch -- as if the guy with a broken leg is going to forget his crutch on the subway and wander out. If he doesn't have a crutch, it means he can't fucking walk. Then you have some weird stuff, like a ball of string. Do cats ride the subway? And then my personal favorite, a set of dentures. Yes, there are old people on the subway who have dentures. But first off, how senile do you have to be to drop them on the ground or forget them on the seat as you leave? And secondly, for whoever does lose their fucking dentures, who the hell is going to put them back in their mouth after they've been left on the subway?

Then there's a peanut shell. While it is true that a lot of people eat peanuts on the subway and drop them on the floor, which is very rude and inconsiderate, I'm not sure how many of them are going to come to the lost and found to get those peanut shells they "forgot" on the subway.

I think tied for first place in the category of "shit nobody will ever forget on a god damn subway" is the cane and, I can't believe they’re serious, the prosthetic leg. You have to assume that whoever created this has a sense of humor and that this was probably a joke. But a lot of the things in the picture are reasonable, and there isn’t a hint of humor in the ad. Also, the MTA wouldn't even know how to budget in a sense of humor for fiscal year 2008 if they put together a committee to study the impact of said sense of humor on the union. So I can only assume this is a serious ad. But Jesus Christ, a prosthetic leg?

If I were on family feud, that crappy game show from the 80s, and they asked "what is something that people forget on the subway," I would probably guess an umbrella. There's no umbrella in this picture. Way to go MTA monkeys.

I think second place would have to go to the single boot. I can just picture that middle-aged, hard-working guy who just got off his shift and is now on the rush-hour train home. He sits down, puts his feet up, takes his shoes off, and cracks a cold one. Uh-oh, 79th St, that's my stop. And in his rush to get off the train he forgets a single boot.

And then, the huge stack of money. I didn't realize you could actually reclaim money at the lost and found. "Yes, excuse me, I left about $300 in singles and five dollar bills and a handful of change on the C. train at around W. 4th St. Who do I see about getting it back?” maybe that's why the MTA is losing so much money -- too many people are reclaiming cash at their lost and found.

And while food would be bad enough to leave on the train and then go to the lost and found to pick it up again, a completely exposed cupcake is probably the last thing anyone would ever want returned. I'd like to meet the poor, starving person who's going to go to the lost and found of the MTA to get that pink rainbow sprinkled cupcake they left on a stinky subway train three days ago.

The other stuff is just weird, but not completely out of the realm of believable shit people might lose. Although I have never seen a person use a boomerang in New York City, nor have I seen one of those old-school tops either. I feel like this was designed for people from the 1930s.

So keep up the good work MTA. Keep on putting out those horribly designed subway billboards and stupid slogans nobody reads. With this kind of incompetence on such a public level, it makes you wonder what's going on upstairs.