How logo can you go?

If you get the toilet humor in this entry from Xu Bing’s Book from the Ground, you must be from—anywhere.

The artist, who was born in China, lives in Brooklyn, and is obsessed with the way things get lost—and found—in translation, chronicles a day in the life of the blocked-up Mr. Black in a language of his own invention, derived from an the icons found on the airline safety manuals he collects.

The novel, in the works since Xu Bing showcased his pancultural pictograms in a software chat room in MoMA’s “Automatic Update“ back in 2007, is now being printed the old-fashioned way, by Eslite Gallery in Taipei.

Meanwhile it’s unfolding on Twitter, at @sign_story. Understand?