Ramblings of a Sarcastic Asian: vanity plates

Showing posts with label vanity plates. Show all posts

>> 14 January 2009

I've only got one guess for this one, but I don't want to say it.

Your guess is as good as mine.

>> 18 December 2008

"I's Hit, Ha!"

Guesses, anyone?

>> 05 December 2008

I hate traffic. Hate it. Like Michael Scott hates Toby. The only thing that elicits more profanity from me is watching BYU football games.

Last year I wrote about my attempts to stay entertained in the car. In Virginia, the best way to do this is attempting to decipher the overabundance of vanity plates that drivers decide to hang on their cars. Recently, I found this CNN article, which claims that 1 out of 10 vanity plates in America belong to my fellow Virginians.

After two years of being a VA driver, I have found there are three types of plates, and that I have three distinct reactions to each kind:

--Type 1 - The Paris Hilton Plate: It is obviously a customized plate and grabbing for/needing attention. Its message is -- 99% of the time -- oversimplistic, annoying, and of no benefit to humanity. The only redeeming quality is that its message is clear: You don't need to think deeply in order understand what it's trying to say. I can tolerate these. Did I just semi-compliment Paris Hilton? I sure hope not.

Example: Remember that "Seinfeld" where Kramer gets "ASSMAN" as his license plate because the DMV accidentally swapped his plates with a proctologist's? See, those kind of Type 1s make this type tolerable.

--Type 2 - The Kanye West / Tom Cruise / Rosie O'Donnell Plate: These plates are obviously customized, so you know the owner wants attention. But unless you know the owner, the message they are attempting to convey is complete drivel. Incomprehensible gibberish. These annoy me to no end. I just don't understand why you would put such an esoteric message in so public a place. It's like preceding a speech with "What I am about to say is of importance" and then delivering the speech in Klingon.

--Type 3 - The Normal Plate - These are the ones that were randomly assigned numbers and letters. There is no deeper meaning or hidden message.

The problem is, thanks to Type 2, I already KNOW these have no meaning, yet I still look for them. And then I'll start conjuring up crazy things to make them fit.

Example: I saw a plate, "KBL-6602." I thought to myself "Oh, I see. The guy probably lived in Kabul from 1966-2002, then he moved to the US." I KNOW. I told you. CRAZY. This whole looking for non-existent clues, coupled with my interpreting of messages that aren't there, reminds me of why I was perpetually horrible at "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?"

Therefore, I am enlisting your help. I need your help with the Type 2 Plates! I will try to get pictures of what I see on the road and provide my best guess. I need you to provide your best guesses in the comments -- decipher the meaning.

"Dented Jeans"? I have no clue.

At least this should provide some amusement.

VNTY-PLTS

>> 15 August 2007

I seem to be spending more time in the car now that I’m out of Provo. When I get sick of NPR, music, or feeling like trying to sort out my thoughts is going to induce some sort of premature insanity, I start focusing on what’s going on outside. It’s a two-edged sword. Sometimes I’m rewarded with beautiful scenery like waterfalls. Sometimes I’m punished with seeing a shirtless man in his Jeep with more back hair than that guy that Ben Stiller plays basketball against in “Along Came Polly” (a sub-par movie at best).

Anyway, my point is that I notice things I wouldn’t have before – like the ridiculous amount of vanity plates in the DC-area (sources tell me Cali drivers hold their own in this department). They helped occupy my time at first when traffic was bad, with me trying to figure out what the owner was going for; kind of like those psychological tests proving that your mind is capable of reading a passage smoothly as long as the first and last letters of words are the same, even if the letters in between are scrambled. (See how much my Psych minor has helped me out at www.in-absolutely-no-significant-aspect-of-my-life.org). Here are a few I’ve seen, with what I assume was the meaning the owner was going for. Some are pretty easy to decipher, although ultimately useless:

<-- Pretty obvious: "Kicking Tail”

“Redneck Love”. Not necessarily something I want to think about, but pretty obvious. -->

Others aren’t so obvious:

<-- “Log Jammin’ ” ?? (I can only surmise that this is a Bob Marley song about clear-cutting forests)

??? I really have no clue here.------->

The novelty wore off after seeing the first five or so. Now they just bug me. I don’t really see the purpose. If you want to convey a message that bad (the fee and hassle of waiting time to get customized plates) in order to say something meaningful, you would think you would want more than seven characters to do it.

But perhaps I misjudge my fellow DC’ers / Northern Virginians, and I need to be objective and try and see things from their perspective. Maybe they’re not going for anything profound, but something short and concise, so that they can remember their plate # for some reason (I can tell you right now, I can’t remember mine). That makes sense.

Then again, if you do something stupid and / or illegal, the plates make it that much easier for the people who saw you to remember your plates when they call the cops on you.