Reminds me of Douglas Adams’s description of where the Aliens posted their plans to bulldoze Earth:
“But the plans were on display…”.
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
The indie book series Dungeon Crawler Carl, which is entirely unlike Adams' work in most ways but clearly takes some inspiration from the malevolent absurdity on display, uses a similar premise where the demolition-causing aliens let the pharaohs know 40,000 years ago and that serves as sufficient legal notice.
True, but later on we find that the aliens pulled the same trick with the notice to demolish earth.
It was hilarious what the city council did to Arthur, it was even funnier when a few pages later we find you that the Vorgons did the same thing.
this could have been quite likely since it wasn't until I was about 18 years old that I realised Kawaski motorcylces were in fact Kawasaki motorcycles!
Pretty much mostly unrelated, but this bit touched a spark.
I remember reading some, unknown book, ages past. And somehow related to the story was one of these Board of Directors meetings. The Board was obliged to publicly announce the meeting.
The board, indeed, publicly announced the meeting. In Chinese, in a small, Chinatown newspaper, nowhere near where the meeting was to take place.
Just one of those clever "letter of the law" gimmicks. Always struck me as funny. (The protagonists organized a massive campaign and managed to find the announcement, so the nefarious deeds were eventually punished.)