fine whine

Just as I was pondering the fact that I didn't see very many interesting vanity plates lately*, I found two, marginally connected, that struck my fancy.

The first was   EA71NN  . Sound advice, it seemed to me. Eating out is rather expensive, unless you eat cheap food.

Hence the second plate, probably issued from the same office (certainly the same city**):   EA78AT  . I don't know what the going rate for bat meat is these days, but it can't be too pricey.

* In a similar vein, I thought, tangentially, that I'm not seeing Honda Odysseys everywhere; upon which I was met with two almost immediately on the other side of the road. Observation changes the subject.

** There are only so many readable variations of the EA series, but there are certainly enough of the plates rolling around, around here. I've mentioned one I'd seen many a time, a while back. I'm not in that neighborhood very often anymore, and I do miss it. The area, not the car.

It has occurred to me that I haven't mentioned any vanity license plates lately. Today while we were out driving, I happened to see quite possibly the ultimate one again, VAN T PL8 in amongst the ones named for the cars (CMBENZ), their drivers (LEX N ROB) or their hobbies (XBOX360... I kid you not). Every time I see VAN T PL8 I think about writing about it, but only now am I remembering to do so. Sorry about that.

I can't remember everything, after all.

There comes a time in every American's life* when he or she stops watching Saturday Night Live. I can't remember when it happened for me, but I know that it has happened, and that the new cast is over half unfamiliar to me. The humor hasn't improved all that much since I stopped, but as always there's the random funny bit scattered between too-long-and-unfunny skits (any sketch that starts out introducing a home video is a bad one, and now there too lazy even to add the fake camcorder viewfinder stuff to the frame. Tsk,tsk) that makes finding the pearls a question of patience.

Then again, my plan otherwise was to watch half an hour of some bad movie tonight, so, for the sake of research, let's call it, I watched SNL. But I can't really say anymore that I watch it, know what I mean? Because I don't and even though I did for a bit tonight, I won't.

Now, if I could somehow acquire a DVD filled with all of the Smigel cartoons over the years (and yes, I mean every single one) that would be a wonderful thing. The show itself lends itself more to the random rerun or best-of compilation episode, but it wouldn't work well as a full-season DVD set (my TV delivery method of choice). I've enough other DVDs to watch already, anyway.

* Well, almost every American. I may be overgeneralizing. I finished Walter Kirn's excellent Mission to America and its protagonist is a boy who grew up in a secluded Montana town surrounded by religious doctrine but no televisions. I can only assume that, given the fully realized characters and their believable foibles, that the story was a thinly-veiled autobiography. Bravo, Walter, for telling the true tale of what you did before becoming a jet-setter seeking that million miles. If you don't know what I mean, read his Up in the air. You should probably read it anyway, because it's a good book.

I saw quite possibly the greatest statement about consumerism and car culture today.

It was affixed to the bumper of one of those (Toyota) Scion xB boxes.

Of course it's also possible the driver was a fan of television...

It was IDIOT BOX.

Enough damn haiku
cold March days make me cranky
I want to complain.

I want to complain about a whole bunch of stuff. I want to whine, and rant, bitch and moan. I want to get it all off my chest and then get the sun to rise and everything be happy.

So bear with me.

My cursed computer still won't hibernate, and it still crashes at random when I'm playing Vice city, particularly when I've worked at something for half an hour and could not save my progress. This is only a minor complaint.

Also minor is a complaint directed at myself: haikus? Not just haikus but highfalutin' "seasonal" haikus? For a week? I have to admit that I'm still torn about yesterday's (Snow falling on roads / who forgot to tell the sky / that this is mid-March?), wondering whether it should in fact be "clouds" and not "sky" in the second line. And then I realize, it's just a cheesy haiku. So on to the real meat and potatoes of this whole beef, as it were.

Speaking of beef, why haven't we heard anything new about mad cows and CJD? I doubt all of the prions or whatever they're called just up and disappeared. Dave Louthan is the only source of new information that I've bumped into in my searching, but so far that "searching" has only been confined to occasionally checking his pages. That said, I'm pretty much off the beef until I can figure out how to get me some prime Kobe cuts imported right to my dinner table. Then, Mr. Steak, we will have some words.

But it is not with words but sometimes a horn that I should express my displeasure with fellow drivers. Sure, I get a laugh when I see a license plate bearing  BLSS GOD  (isn't he the one supposed to be handing those out?) but I almost reach for that magical spot in the center of my wheel when I see something moronic like what somebody did in front of me just a block from my apartment. This guy, who had pulled out rather suddenly further down the road, turned right, as I did, onto a street with two lanes each way. He chose the lane closest to center; I took the closest to the curb. For a long time I was a big proponent of the school of Corresponding Lane, but lately I've given up on everybody else on the road. So to see him do that was not surprising in the least, but what he did next sure was. Within ten feet of the corner he slowed down and lumbered across my lane into a parking lot to the right of both of us. Of course my horn is only used in times of extreme frustration and accidental bumping (the wheel, not other cars) so I did nothing to show him my displeasure, but it irked me nonetheless. After all, had I been dialing a phone or checking my hair or eating a beef burrito at that very moment I could well have plowed right into the moron. I guess it's a good thing I've been avoiding the beef, no?

Now Spain. I'm not in the "I don't want to hear anything more about the train bombing" camp but fall more in with "I haven't heard enough but don't particularly care to search for it". I'm curious to know if this American War on Terrorism that has been waged is solely for terror against Americans, as I have not heard about any help being sent over the Atlantic to help track down these bombing bastards. That said, just because I haven't heard it doesn't mean it hasn't happened; my complaint is that I don't even care to check what's happening in the world outside of my quaint little city.

My quaint little city that devours so much of my car's gasoline, that is. Tonight I ended up doubling back not twice but a third time (well, part of a third) due to some bad planning and nasty weather. I dislike doubling back, even if I do get to do the majority of it around 70 MPH. It's the principle of the thing.

And what is the point of standing for principles when it really just means being stubborn? For this site to exist I pay very little to the friendly folks over at Digitalspace and have for more than several years, but all that time I've been putting up with the fact that I do not get a certain bit of information in my usage logs: namely the referrer field that shows what links, google searches and whatnot lead to my pages. For who knows how long I have just sat idly by, not wanting to cause a fuss or put too much into what is a minor matter, but have only now found out that by doing so I've missed out on that very information. By my doing nothing nobody's known that my account just needed to be reset. I wasn't sticking to any principles, per se, but just settling with a less than optimal situation. For that I am complaining.

Also on this site I've been getting more and more comment spammers, leaving their porn and growth hormone links and whatnot. They're bottom-feeders and they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel (to mix metaphors) to do it to my site, but still it bothers me to need to delete and ban them. One left today, though, made me chuckle somewhat:

Imitation is the sincerest form of television.

Whatever that means.
I am tired and cranky.
It's cold, too. Bedtime.

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 .

Driving around today I saw two interesting license plates. First, on a Porsche Boxster (complete with the generic Ohio logo)   WRKFLO. I don't know about you but to me that just screams "my work is my life and I don't deserve this car even though I can afford it". And without commentary, allow me to present S AND M, on an Oldsmobile.