Sometime over Thanksgiving weekend, someone tagged the back door of the OnMilwaukee.com world headquarters on Murray and North Avenues.

Problem is, I can't read his or her writing.

Around the proverbial water cooler here at the office, some of us are taking stabs at what the graffiti "artist" was trying to say. One of us thought he scrawled "Wisher." Another saw "Wi$er, Chem M." I, for some reason, saw "Cheney" or "Chewy." Another suggested that Mr. Tagger uses the neighboring door to translate the grafitti, which at the very least, would be kind of funny.

I once heard a guy speculate that the reason all graffiti looks basically the same is that the tips on spray paint cans serve as a font, in and of themselves. Sort of like how using a calligraphy pen makes everything look the same. But, having spray painted a piece of furniture or two in my day, I can say that the results didn't look much like graffiti, albeit sometimes drippy.

(Side note: the one piece of graffiti around Milwaukee I can read is the "FCR" that pops up in the weirdest places. That, I'm told, is an homage to a guy who died a few years ago in a tagging accident in the Menomonee Valley. The "FCR" stands for "Fat Chicks Rule." Stupid but funny. But I digress.)

As for the OMC door defacing, I remain puzzled. Mildly annoyed and puzzled.

I mean, what's the point of tagging your name or message if no one can read it? Or can people read it -- just not us? Is there some sort of wallet-sized decoder out there that I can use to translate this gibberish?

At any rate, our landlord tells us that weather-permitting, this little nuisance will be painted over tomorrow, and this cowardly act of vandalism will be but a faded memory.

But hey, tagger, do us a favor. Next time you deface our back door, try to make your "art" a little more legible. It seems like the least you can do.

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