Bock the Blup? Really, Tampa?

So, Tampa, what are you going to do about that eye sore of a street mural in front of the police headquarters?

Seriously, y’all can probably see it from your office window, staring back at you in all of its black, white and blue hideousness, mocking you with all of its verbal ambiguity.

Bock the Blup? Bork the Bluf?

If pro-cop organizers wanted to honor their beloved men and women in blue, you’d think they could have taken the time to come up with a design that didn’t look like a dog’s breakfast.

I suppose it’s not entirely your fault, Tampa employees and Mayor Jane Castor’s administration. After all, the apparently talent-lacking “artists” didn’t even bother waiting for their permit to be approved.

But what are you going to do to get rid of this literal stain on the road?

As of right now, it looks like not much. Castor offered a statement condemning the group painting the mural without the proper permit, but didn’t say whether anything would be done about it.

“Any tribute to honor their service is welcome. It’s unfortunate they didn’t see the permitting process through so that our community could participate in showing their appreciation for the brave men and women that service our residents every day,” she said.

Ignore for a second the political debate behind the ”Back the Blue” movement. There are plenty of reasons why such a street mural basically undoes the Black Lives Matter one so many celebrated the administration for approving. (I know, I know, not everyone.)

Let’s also ignore the street mural rules this catastrophe breaks by covering street markings critical to public safety on roads.

Let’s just focus on how absolutely ugly this thing is.

Comments on the Facebook post promoting it came with a healthy dose of WTF.

Some were simple in their critique.

“Ew.”

“Cringe.”

“Yuck.”

“This looks ugly.”

Others resorted to the barf emoji to express their disapproval.

One commenter wrote that it “looks like it was done by a blind chimpanzee.”

It hasn’t yet, but I imagine this will go down in the ranks of “WTF Florida?” headlines. I can already see the John Oliver skit next weekend as an angsty Brit mocks the mural by coming up with some sort of creative interpretation of what “Blup” even means.

Fun fact: A Blup is any animal other than a cat or dog that has its tongue stuck out for an extended period of time.

Politics aside, I’m sure that’s a movement we can all get behind.

Maybe as you contemplate what to do about the train wreck of a mural, you’ll consider an image of an Alpaca sticking its tongue out as an alternative. Perhaps you could conjure the blind chimpanzee allegedly behind this atrocity.

In the meantime, we’ll be waiting to see how viral this thing goes. There’s already a twitter page in which user T. Greg Doucette has given himself the middle name “Boek the Blup” and changed his cover photo to an aerial shot of the aesthetic equivalent of a squished Smurf.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go peruse internet images of animals blupping to replace the image this mural left on the back of my eyelids.