This Means Uh-oh

Something that may be helpful for your semiotics lecture is the book,This Means This, That Means That: A User's Guide to Semiotics, that Donna David recommended to students during her lecture on Communication Theory and Semiotics. Would that I'd known about the book before BTD contributed a logo to a professional organization last Spring. Recently, the org's current president diplomatically posed a problem: the logo is inciting unfortunate responses. Although an implied Rorschach was intentional, other interpretations were unexpected. Members of the org use words such as "jester," "whimsy," and "Groucho Marx" to describe their interpretations of the logo. Maybe extreme abstracting has become majorly distracting. Possibly, the problem is more executional than conceptual. Next step: review and rework. In the meantime, I'm keen to know your take on the no-go logo below.