Off-Kilter

Signs and Wonders Department: People looking for a sign from God might want to visit Florida, which seems to have an abundance of them--literally. According to the Orlando Sentinel, billboards and bus signs bearing messages from the Creator have popped up all over Broward County this month, bankrolled by an anonymous celebrity.

The mildly irreverent communiques, all signed “God,” include: “Keep using my name in vain, I’ll make rush hour longer,” “What part of ‘Thou Shalt Not’ didn’t you understand?,” “Loved the wedding, invite me to the marriage” and “We need to talk.”

Another suggests that Florida’s tropical weather is tame compared with the temperatures in a certain afterlife destination (“You think it’s hot here?”).

Andy Smith, whose ad agency concocted the $200,000 campaign, said his anonymous client wants people to stop and think about God, and possibly visit a church or synagogue. Smith also said that if the signs ever go national, one message would work in any city: “That ‘Love Thy Neighbor’ thing . . . I meant it.”

Weird Crime Bureau: The FBI keeps saying violent crime is down, but that’s a bit misleading because weird crime is up. Way up. Here are just three examples from local police blotters, sent in by readers Laurie Kemp and Susan Barrett:

* On June 5, a bus driver said a “spaced-out” barefoot woman was stomping around Cal State Long Beach claiming to be Godzilla, according to the 49er newspaper.

* On July 10, a Cypress man phoned police to say he had just killed his family with his fist and had them wrapped in his shirt. He was referring to a family of ants, according to the News-Enterprise.

* A similar call was placed to Seal Beach cops on July 19 by a man who overheard his neighbor saying, “I cut my finger beating the bastard to death.” A subsequent investigation revealed that the man had slain a bug.

Odd Products Inc.: While our judges are evaluating the heap of entries in Off-Kilter’s invention contest, we decided to tell you about a couple of other wacky contraptions that actually exist.

NCR has devised a combination microwave oven, television and voice-activated computer, in case you ever need to send e-mail or watch TV while cooking dinner.

And an Arkansas man is marketing a Foul Language Filter that automatically bleeps out offensive words and phrases from TV shows. The $199 device works by reading the closed-captioning signals encoded in most shows and then muting the sound briefly when it detects distasteful language. If the TV’s closed-caption feature is on, the filter will substitute a less-offensive word, such as “cripes.”

However, the device doesn’t always work perfectly. When the company tested a prototype on an old “Dick Van Dyke” sitcom, the title came out “Jerk Van Gay.”

Candle Extinguishing Department: Wile E. Coyote and the Rev. Robert Schuller celebrate birthdays No. 49 and 72, respectively, today.

Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: “Titanic Was Sunk by a Space Alien Sub!” (Weekly World News Online)

Hey, we don’t care how it happened, as long as Leonardo DiCaprio still dies in the end.

* Roy Rivenburg’s e-mail address is roy.rivenburg@latimes.com.

Unpaid Informants: Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Hartford Courant, Wireless Flash News Service, Valerie Marz, https://www.tvguardian.com.