Daily Decrees

Beginning January 1, 2011, your all powerful yet benevolent despot will make one decree daily that will become instant and unquestionable law. Though it is said that absolute power corrupts absolutely, it is yet unkown whether absolute imagined power corrupts. Perhaps it merely corrupts the imagination. We'll find out as Marisa, the newly ordained Queen of the World, attempts to change the world for the better by making 365 unilateral decisions. Ultimately though, it doesn't really matter whether you agree with her decisions or not. So feel free to comment as long as you understand your comments are in vain. In all honesty though your queen is hopeful that you will consider the vast majority of her decrees to be the kind of decisions you wish your previous leaders had made years ago. The best part of being the supreme ruler of the world is that changes can be made easily. There are no agreements to be reached, no protocols to follow, and no bureaucratic red tape...and that is the whole point.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

February 25, 2011 – You Aren’t Special Part V: Oh the Vanity!

Vanity plates.  They never seemed like an important issue to me until I moved to a state where vanity plates are inexpensive and therefore seemingly more common than regular license plates.  The problems I have with them are three-fold.  First off, they violate the main purpose of having license plates, which is identification for law enforcement purposes.  Normal license plates will follow a pattern like 3 letters followed by 4 numbers, or something similar.  That way when you have numbers and letters that look alike such as 0 and O, 1 and I, 8 and B, or 5 and S, law enforcement can easily tell what they are looking at based on the pattern.  Vanity plates, by contrast are often quite confusing because people will interchange similar looking letters and numbers when the words they want (spelled the right way) are already taken.  Like “I M BOSS”, “1 M 8055”, “I M B0S5”, “I M 8O5S”, “I M B055”……… you get the point.  My second problem with these plates is that some of them are confusing and when I am driving behind someone with a vanity plate that I don’t understand I get frustrated.  It’s like 1337 speak except you’re the only one who gets what it means.  It’s super annoying.  One person for example had the license plate “STFU-PLS”.  Honestly, that plate is so awesome I would totally let it slide but when the state made the owner change it because they thought it meant what you and I thought it meant the owner said it meant “stay true for you”.  It just proves my point that abbreviations are problematic.  Finally, vanity plates need to go based on the simple definition of the name.  Are you so vain that you need to broadcast something about your life on your license plate?  Do you really feel the need to force the traffic behind you to read your plate and ponder its meaning?  There are other avenues for self-expression.  Let’s let license plates identify our cars and leave it at that.
Vanity plates are strictly outlawed.  All license plates must follow a specific pattern for the state/region/country the vehicle is registered in.
As always I remain your all-powerful and benevolent Queen of the World,
Marisa
PS.  Mike, I’m sorry that you will have to give up your license plate.  It’s nothing personal.
Posted by

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)