Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Oh vanity, thy plate is so sweet

People confuse me. There is a reason why I like numbers more than people. 2 + 3 always equals 5, except in those odd instances when I decide to work in base 4 and then 2 + 3 equals 11. But there are rules and expected outcomes. Nothing can really surprise you when you work with numbers. People, on the other hand, tend to operate in a world that avoids all sense of normality.

This dawned on me as I was driving to work this morning. I was late as always though I at least had the excuse that I voted. (I cast my vote for Mike Gravel. I figured he should at least get one vote.) While driving on the flooded streets because despite five years of my protests Kansas City has still not been convinced that sewers are a good idea I saw what has to be the most amazing vanity plate of all time.

The car had a plate that said ENVY ME. The guy was driving an Acura.

Now I’ll have to say it was a nice Acura. Even had tinted windows because that is cool if you’re like seventeen. But I’m supposed to envy someone driving an Acura? There are some cars that would make me go “Man, I wish I had that car” but this wasn’t one of them.

What type of person puts ENVY ME on their license plate? Seriously, how fucked up do you have to be to decide to place that on your car? People call me an arrogant bastard but I have never proclaimed to the world that everyone should want to be like me. It would be a nicer world if that was the case but I’m not openly advocating it. I sure as hell wouldn’t use my car as a billboard for that opinion.

I’m just trying to figure this one out. This isn’t a rash decision like a t-shirt purchase. You have to fill out forms to get one of these. Whoever did this has to think so highly of themselves and their life that they truly feel that they are the ultimate in human evolution. We are beyond the realm of confidence. We’ve even left the world of douchebaggery behind. This is a level of insanity that I have never before encountered. Especially when any rational person would think that putting this on your car would be tempting fate in such a way that you’d expect an asteroid to land on your car.

(It’s also horribly false advertising. You live in Kansas City, why the hell should I envy you?)

I’ve been trying to think of equivalents to this in my life. I remember seeing a car with CMYVET as its plate but that was a Corvette. There is at least some justification for that in a white trash sort of way. The best example was from one time walking to the train station in downtown Chicago. It was a Friday in May, one of those first nice days where you are happy that summer is finally near. Right in front of Union Station was a guy, balding, slightly over weight and smoking a cigar, in a red convertible with the top down and the radio blaring. I looked at him, paused for a moment, and almost yelled “Dude, how small is your penis?”

That’s all this is. Envy Me? If you have to ask the answer is no.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I saw a vanity plate that said LIQUOR. Ok, so it was at a nice liquor store, and I assume it was the owner's car, but I imagine if you were to drive that car around at night you'd get pulled over a lot.