fine whine

Just as I was trying not to pay attention to license plates and instead watch the rest of the cars around them, I noticed a parked Mustang that looked awfully familiar: good old EA75HT. Before that the best one of the day was A 73 OLDS emblazoning a car that wouldn't look out of place in a Sam Raimi movie except for being painted blue (purists take note: I don't know or care what year car Peter Parker's uncle and Ash drive). Giving me a laugh was a subcompact apparently boasting   43 HP  , which to me sounds like it would be a selling point for a lawn mower.

I probably wouldn't have paid so much attention to plates today had I not stumbled across Eric Meyer's list of interesting plates he's spotted in the Cleveland area. Odd coincidences abound as he and I both live in Ohio, in fact nearby the same highway. Whoa. Moreover I stumbled across his site looking for CSS information and only happened to notice his list of "platelets". If I put any thought into it I could probably knock off his design and have a nifty list like it all my own. Until then, though, I'll just list them here. Most of these I wrote down hastily on an old note of a phone number for which I have long forgotten the context (sorry David Smmmmaher, I'm not going to call you now and please write clearer next time).

It's great to live in Ohio for a person like me who sees words where there are really aren't any, so a state that sandwiches two numbers between pairs of two letters can at times strike gold, as with the Mustang's plate I mentioned before. Here are a couple more that I wrote down in the last two days:

•  DR01TY : droity's not a word but it sure sounds like it could be one
•  FB42GE : with a little stretch of the imagination this becomes "Faberg�" as long as the 4 becomes an A and the 2 an R. Bonus points for having The Answer in the middle
•  AM31XM : doesn't make a word but it's readable forward and backward, which is why it caught my eye in the rear view

  TJ 328   isn't really important for any reason that I've seen the guy's BMW (328i) two days in a row, once each way on I-670. Creepy. I've only seen   OE 603   once and I'm not even going to waste the time trying to figure out the significance of 603, as he was driving a Land Rover.

That same day I came across PSALM81. Verse eleven of Psalm 81 is the classic "I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. Open wide your mouth that I may fill it." Verse sixteen is more ominous, "Those who hate the Lord would tremble, their doom sealed forever." That's as an uplifiting message to spread with a flat chunk of metal as any I've seen. Unless of course there's the invisible semicolon and the driver was pointing me toward chapter eight, verse one which is rife with life-changing words: "For the leader: 'upon the gittith.' A psalm of David." Let us ponder that for a while.

I'm done pondering now, are you? Next up is a late-model Grand Prix bearing  PLYR 1 . Uh huh. Pimpmobiles are always Pontiacs.

Following up the winner trend is  CHAMPP , the guy who I can only hope isn't known for his spelling bees.

I mis-read  IM CZECH  as "in" and thought it was a pretty neat play on words.

And to leave you all with a puzzler, figure out, if you can,  BOSOX7 .