Really?

I don't understand vanity plates. I mean, I understand what they are, the name pretty much sums it up. What I don't get are the things people put on them. I mean, the concept of vanity would be that you want to get noticed and, one would think, preferably for something cool, nice, sparkly, whatever...something positive. But I would have to say that the majority of the vanity plates I have seen in my life time usually fall under 2 categories;

A) unintelligible= some odd combination of letters and numbers - the occasional O with the diagonal strike through it - that even after driving behind and staring at it for several minutes only results in you looking confusedly at your passenger and asking, "Do you think it's in Hungarian?"
B) lame/cliche proclamation = "hot stuff", "cougar", "sexxxy"...you know the kind of crap that when you look at it makes you think, 'Well somebody's trying to compensate for something'.

I just don't get it! If the plate falls under column A, it's probably some inside joke that few people get which means that the rest of the world just thinks the driver is a moron with major spelling problems. And if it falls under column B, the person has some ego issues and is generally unimaginative. Also with a vanity plate on there, if you do something stupid one the road or with your car in general, you just made it THAT much more recognizable.

But now, to the picture. I took that this past Sunday afternoon. I had pulled over in the Eagan Regal cinema parking lot to contemplate with my friend George if we wanted to see a movie - we'd just come from a wedding in Apple Valley - when I looked up and saw that. No one was in the vehicle, so I took the liberty of taking the photo. I like taking photos of weird stuff as I'm sure most of you readers know very well.

Just so we are all on the same page, to me, that translates as, "extra large for god 7". Now given that within the same parking lot of the cinema there is a Taco Bell, my first thought was 'I think God would want you to put down the Gordita sir...no need to go that large unless you think God wants you to have a coronary or something.' But then I thought about it a second; I can read it so it doesn't go under category A (the unintelligible) it goes under B (the lame proclamation). I am not saying that I think proclamations of one's religious faith are lame, that is a person's right and their own thing and I can respect that. I will say that, being a more spiritual than religious person personally, I usually find such proclamations -especially those made via t-shirt, bumper sticker and other such things- to be a bit unnecessary and excessive since I don't think any one but the proclaimers really cares all that much. As it turns out I found this vanity plate to be extremely excessive. Why? Because I looked up the cost of getting personalized plates in MN;
Fees
Initial $100
Duplicate Replacement $14.00 double plate/ $10.00 single plate
A $8.50 filing fee is due with each application

So this guy (and yes it was a guy, about middle-aged, Caucasian, balding but with a mustache, got into the driver seat and what I presume was his teenage son got in to the passenger) spent at least $108.50 just so he can let everyone know that he digs god? The hell?! I mean, I'll go out on a limb here and assume he was some variety of Christian; polo-shirt wearing Caucasian guy with his athletic/preppy looking son, driving a newer SUV in the upper middle-class suburbs of Mpls/St. Paul with a plate about God...the evidence seems to point that way. So this guy, to prove and proclaim his faith, smacks down a nice chunk of cold hard cash not to a charity, not to his church, not to aid starving children in Africa, India or even here in the US, but instead to the DMV so he can have personalized plates on his shiny, gas-guzzling SUV. Yep, that is lame folks.

In the end, we decided not to catch a flick and just go home and rest from our weekend adventure in weddings. And I'm pretty sure there will be a blog about those once I'm done with the one this weekend. :)


And now that I have brought this topic up in a public forum, I am seeing these things EVERYWHERE! Here a just a few...