License plates are just as bad.
[Addendum to previous postage: After my blessay about bumper stickers, I was driving up the Tonkin Highway and was overtaken by a car with a sticker saying "My other ride is yo mama". That man gets massive points. I love a yo mama joke.]
Given the fantastic response to my last article (four comments! Woooooooooooooooo!) I thought I would follow up with an investigation into my hatred of another, similar topic - license plates. Let it never be said that I don't pander to my audience. I have largely the same problems with license plates as I do with bumper stickers, but with several... addendums? addenda? Extra bits. Firstly, that unlike the bumper sticker, which costs bugger-all, vanity plates cost upwards of two hundred dollars. Speccy ones can be three or four. That's an awful lot of scratch to be laying out on something so retarded.
I mean, sure, there are some good ones out there; there's someone driving around with the rego "LYSDEXIC" which is wicked. I've seen another that said "NCC-1701" and that's cool, in a nerd kind of way. There are some subtle ones too; the other day I saw "II-688". That seems like nothing, unless you know that the Los Angeles class attack submarine is colloquially referred to as the 688 class, and II indicates a captain's bars. Just saying.
Oh, or the one kegzilla and I saw at the local HJs in Armadale. It was a small hatchback and the license plate said "LAS VEGAS". Pretty dumb, right? Nothing funny about that. Until you notice, below and to the left of the plate, the brand of car.
It was a Holden Viva.
The ones that most shit me, on the other hand, are those really shit plates where the owner of the car has shelled out good money to tell you exactly what kind of car he drives. Case in point would be the BMW Z3 roadster I saw the other day; the plate said, funnily enough, "BMW Z3". Or the sports Falcon I've seen around with "XR8 GT" on the plate.
IS IT?
IS IT FUCKING REALLY?
Here I thought the guy was driving a Holden Barina, turns out it was an XR8 GT. Wow. Good thing he cleared that up by having it written on the license plate since it's NOT FUCKING WRITTEN ON THE BOOT OF THE GOD DAMN CAR NOT TWENTY CENTIMETRES ABOVE THE FUCKING PLATE. Thank you SO much for clearing that up for me. AND that cantering fagpony shelled out hundreds of dollars for that privilege.
The other awful ones are where they try to tell you how awesome their car is. "XR82NV". "AWSUMXR". "BOW DOWN". (I'm not joking about that one, it was on a shitbox old gemini driven by a massive cocksmoker who smelled like death in a hot dog bun and ate like a council woodchipper. I hated that fucker.)
Or the people who declare ownership of their car. "JANS CAR". "MY FIESTA". "MYNARO"... OK, that one's not so bad, since it was a Holden Monaro, and, see, he's replaced the o with a y so it indicates that he, in fact, owns the car. Not you. It's not for you. It's awful nice of those people to indicate that they are the ones to whom the car belongs, not anybody else. It saves on confusion when I'm in a parking lot.
"Hmm, let's see, where is my car. White Lancer, white Lancer. Ah, there's a Commodore over there, I wonder if that's actually my car. Oh, wait, the plate says 'MY SS GT'. Can't be mine, someone else clearly owns it."
That said, on reflection, that is kind of confusing, because if I'm reading out the plate then I'm going to say "my ss gt" and that's implying that I do, in fact, own it. Hmmm.
All that said, for quite a while, before donating my old red rustbucket falcon to FESA I toyed with the idea of getting custom plates for it. Possibly, since I'm the kind of rampant toolbox who names his cars, a set with his name (HK-47, named after an assassin droid from Star Wars). Or I thought I might make a joke on the whole brand-of-my-car plates and get a set that said "911 GT". Turns out that's already been done; I saw an old corolla the other day with plates that said "MASERATI".
Fucker.
Finally, I wish to bring to your attention a worrying trend; that of the gradual encroachment of retarded internet habits to license plates. The insertion of 1337-5P34K is bad enough (JAMI33 L33, I'm looking at you, not to mention M0N4R0), given that not only does it make me more stupid through having simply looked at it but it also means that some other unoriginal cockslave had the idea for a vanity plate with your FUCKING name on it before you. Worse, however, is this trend I've been seeing on plates, mainly those belonging to total ricers. Now and then you'll see people with internet handles, commonly on LJ, that go something like xXhate_you_dadXx. The Xs on each end make it, fuck, I don't know, edgy or some other colossal bullshit. Well, I've seen them on license plates now. "X WEAPON X", stay behind after class.
Wankers, the lot of them. Basically, there are good plates out there, but there are a lot of shit ones. Funnily enough, a lot of the shit ones are duplicated, meaning that the owners have to resort to ever-more-complicated methods of ensuring the plates are unique, whereas the clever plates are usually funny, subtle and singular. I have nothing against vanity plates as a general idea, but c'mon, people. Make them good. Don't waste your money.
Given the fantastic response to my last article (four comments! Woooooooooooooooo!) I thought I would follow up with an investigation into my hatred of another, similar topic - license plates. Let it never be said that I don't pander to my audience. I have largely the same problems with license plates as I do with bumper stickers, but with several... addendums? addenda? Extra bits. Firstly, that unlike the bumper sticker, which costs bugger-all, vanity plates cost upwards of two hundred dollars. Speccy ones can be three or four. That's an awful lot of scratch to be laying out on something so retarded.
I mean, sure, there are some good ones out there; there's someone driving around with the rego "LYSDEXIC" which is wicked. I've seen another that said "NCC-1701" and that's cool, in a nerd kind of way. There are some subtle ones too; the other day I saw "II-688". That seems like nothing, unless you know that the Los Angeles class attack submarine is colloquially referred to as the 688 class, and II indicates a captain's bars. Just saying.
Oh, or the one kegzilla and I saw at the local HJs in Armadale. It was a small hatchback and the license plate said "LAS VEGAS". Pretty dumb, right? Nothing funny about that. Until you notice, below and to the left of the plate, the brand of car.
It was a Holden Viva.
The ones that most shit me, on the other hand, are those really shit plates where the owner of the car has shelled out good money to tell you exactly what kind of car he drives. Case in point would be the BMW Z3 roadster I saw the other day; the plate said, funnily enough, "BMW Z3". Or the sports Falcon I've seen around with "XR8 GT" on the plate.
IS IT?
IS IT FUCKING REALLY?
Here I thought the guy was driving a Holden Barina, turns out it was an XR8 GT. Wow. Good thing he cleared that up by having it written on the license plate since it's NOT FUCKING WRITTEN ON THE BOOT OF THE GOD DAMN CAR NOT TWENTY CENTIMETRES ABOVE THE FUCKING PLATE. Thank you SO much for clearing that up for me. AND that cantering fagpony shelled out hundreds of dollars for that privilege.
The other awful ones are where they try to tell you how awesome their car is. "XR82NV". "AWSUMXR". "BOW DOWN". (I'm not joking about that one, it was on a shitbox old gemini driven by a massive cocksmoker who smelled like death in a hot dog bun and ate like a council woodchipper. I hated that fucker.)
Or the people who declare ownership of their car. "JANS CAR". "MY FIESTA". "MYNARO"... OK, that one's not so bad, since it was a Holden Monaro, and, see, he's replaced the o with a y so it indicates that he, in fact, owns the car. Not you. It's not for you. It's awful nice of those people to indicate that they are the ones to whom the car belongs, not anybody else. It saves on confusion when I'm in a parking lot.
"Hmm, let's see, where is my car. White Lancer, white Lancer. Ah, there's a Commodore over there, I wonder if that's actually my car. Oh, wait, the plate says 'MY SS GT'. Can't be mine, someone else clearly owns it."
That said, on reflection, that is kind of confusing, because if I'm reading out the plate then I'm going to say "my ss gt" and that's implying that I do, in fact, own it. Hmmm.
All that said, for quite a while, before donating my old red rustbucket falcon to FESA I toyed with the idea of getting custom plates for it. Possibly, since I'm the kind of rampant toolbox who names his cars, a set with his name (HK-47, named after an assassin droid from Star Wars). Or I thought I might make a joke on the whole brand-of-my-car plates and get a set that said "911 GT". Turns out that's already been done; I saw an old corolla the other day with plates that said "MASERATI".
Fucker.
Finally, I wish to bring to your attention a worrying trend; that of the gradual encroachment of retarded internet habits to license plates. The insertion of 1337-5P34K is bad enough (JAMI33 L33, I'm looking at you, not to mention M0N4R0), given that not only does it make me more stupid through having simply looked at it but it also means that some other unoriginal cockslave had the idea for a vanity plate with your FUCKING name on it before you. Worse, however, is this trend I've been seeing on plates, mainly those belonging to total ricers. Now and then you'll see people with internet handles, commonly on LJ, that go something like xXhate_you_dadXx. The Xs on each end make it, fuck, I don't know, edgy or some other colossal bullshit. Well, I've seen them on license plates now. "X WEAPON X", stay behind after class.
Wankers, the lot of them. Basically, there are good plates out there, but there are a lot of shit ones. Funnily enough, a lot of the shit ones are duplicated, meaning that the owners have to resort to ever-more-complicated methods of ensuring the plates are unique, whereas the clever plates are usually funny, subtle and singular. I have nothing against vanity plates as a general idea, but c'mon, people. Make them good. Don't waste your money.