Defacing money is a national hobby

By braddock | May 11, 2008

For something we covet soooo much, it’s amusing just how shabbily we treat our currency. I’m not talking about coins, we all know they get the shaft. I’m talking about the humble green back.

Our mighty dollar gets wadded up, laundered, torn, and rolled up for use in all sorts of unseemly ways. The biggest enemy of our cash’s sanctity is ink.

Everyone has at one time or another jotted down a phone number, written an address, or signed one for posterity. I’ve seen them stamped with bible versus, omens of Armageddon, even inspiring bits of prose.

I’ve noticed lots of advertising on my bills over the past few years. There are ads for gambling websites, prescription drugs, and those telephone sex lines as well. It’s currency spam.

I do stumble upon some great bits of doodle art from time to time though. These rare artistic forms of defacement make handling all that sticky, nasty cash worth it. Here’s a Flickr set of some great money doodles.