What is the lying down game? Imagine some kind of wiki travelogue version of Weekend at Bernie’s. The game itself involves lying face down in strange places, often in the midst of some thoroughfare or balanced on some mundane public structure like a  mail drop or litter bin, and having a chum shoot a picture of you. The awkward and vulnerable prone human forms are very amusing.

The project has been going for a couple of months now on Facebook. The constituency seems to be mainly British, but there are some American gamers as well. It first caught our attention back in July, and we’re happy to see the Facebook group is still humming along, with 15,000 photos posted to date. In fact, just last week the game popped up in the UK media when a group of doctors and nurses were suspended after their bosses discovered they’d been lying down on the job, as it were, and then posting shots online.

Here are a few infrastructure-theme samples:

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Oh my goodness, a Super Mario fire hydrant! Hi-lar-ious!

Yeah, well, it’s summer, and we feel draggy and not capable of much today except looking at lots of silly pictures on the internet. But fire hydrants do seem thematically appropriate for a lazy August day. Kids are probably playing around in one somewhere nearby, given the roasting weather here in New York.

They’re also just pleasantly iconic objects and fun to look at. We were reminded of that recently when our friends over at Urban Omnibus did a wonderful treatment on them, pointing out that an open hydrant spills as much water in 7 minutes as an average human drinks in a lifetime. (We’re hanging onto that little factoid for the next time we find ourselves in a conversational lull at a party.)

Actually, some of these treatments could be considered “street art,” which our high-minded friends tell us is dignified and high-minded stuff. Not the Mario hydrant, perhaps–but it’s still our favorite.

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In Cleveland sometimes they encourage painting fire hydrants. [Via]

Have you ever seen a leering street fixture before? [via]

This little guy’s just excited to be a hydrant. [via]

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Just to be clear: By “Congressman” here we’re referring to Ron Paul. Hard as it sometimes is to believe, he really is an elected member of Congress–because he’s also a weird old man with a blimp, more rabid fans than most rock stars, and lots of ideas that make you go “Hmm” (if not “Huh?!”).

One of Paul’s recent dispatches for blogworld is called “GM, Amtrak and an Increasing Fascist America.” Put on your brown shirts and your conductors hats, kids, hop in your Malibu and let’s go burn some books. Maybe? We’re not totally sure. Here’s what Dr. Paul says:

The promise that [the GM takeover] is temporary… is of little comfort to those who remember similar promises when the American taxpayers bought Amtrak. After three years, government was supposed to be out of the passenger rail business. 40 years and billions of dollars later, the government is still operating Amtrak at a loss, despite the fact that they have created a monopoly by making it illegal to compete with Amtrak.

So… the fact that it gets government subsidies makes Amtrak a fascist organization? YES! says Paul. “Comingling public control of private business is known as fascism. While today’s politicians may feel emboldened with all their new power, history will only repeat itself as all this collapses on itself.” Repeat itself like the Italian experiments in the 30s and early 40s, it sounds like he means to suggest. If that’s the case, in a few years we’ll need a liberating army to come in and break up the Amtrak monopoly and ceremonially blow up the GM headquarters (perhaps the French will do backsies).

More seriously, it seems odd to choose Amtrak as a primary example of intermingling of government and business interests. That phenomenon has certainly occurred in America and is disturbing in some cases, but the passenger rail company isn’t a very compelling case in point. For whatever reason though (rail reminds them of European-style “democratic socialism”?), critics fixate on Amtrak and turn it into this terrifying Frankenstein monster of state control and waste. The company and its service could certainly be better — but it’s crazy to suggest that Amtrak is some insatiable beast devouring massive amounts of America’s wealth. Over nearly four decades, Amtrak subsidies are a pittance compared to the taxpayer money that’s been blown on almost any other societal enterprise you could name–including other modes of motorized transportation. Actually, one could argue, our little fascist rail company has been quite a bargain.

Earlier this week on Politico, we saw this amusing list of Judge Sotomayor-themed ringtones. Since we were getting tired of that annoying doorbell ring on our own phone anyway, we took mobile music site mSpot up on their offer to pull together an Infrastructurist-appropriate list.

As a traffic flow phenomenon, gridlock sucks. As a Pogues song, it just might be the kind of thing you want more of in your life.

“Crumbling Land” by Pink Floyd
Sample lyric: “The Ford production line, then a man appearing like a mirage on the sand, In his hand a moving picture of the crumbling land”

“Potholes” by Randy Newman
Sample lyric: “God bless the potholes down on memory lane”

“Gridlock” by The Pogues
Instrumental

“Concrete Jungle” by Black Label Society
Sample lyric: “In the concrete jungle, it’s the well of the damned…”

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What’s funny about this compilation of bridges getting blowed up to opera music is that is it seems to be an official government production. Having a bureaucratic logo attached to this kind of gleeful id — how often does that happen? And is it us, or does it seem kind of like it’s trying to hook into the same vibe as this classic scene in a Clockwork Orange?

From an entertainment perspective, it suffers from being too repetitive. (There ought to be more build up to the demolitions and less recycling of clips.) But it’s still an amusing document.

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We’ve been deeply into highway interchanges here recently — immersed in the task of identifying double trumpets and whirlpools and many other specimens in satellite photos. After seeing our pieces on the subject, a tipster sent us these more whimsical and theoretical examples of exchanges from the very clever comics site XKCD. The “Rotary Supercollider” is deliciously evil.

More after the jump.

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The folks over at Gizmodo have been collecting some very amusing examples of hacked construction signs. Drivers in Austin, Texas, were warned about zombies. Motorists in Indiana were told to beware of prowling dinosaurs.

Funny thing is: it’s remarkably easy to do! Not surprisingly, authorities are starting to get concerned.