license plates Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Sunday Stealing — Meme Schmeme

Milky Way

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

Cheri is a blogger from the beautiful state of Georgia who didn’t often participate in memes but stole this one because “for whatever crazy reason” it appealed to her. Let’s see how you like it.

Meme Schmeme

Complete the thought:

I AM that kid who used to write his address with way too much detail, adding North America, Northern Hemisphere, Western Hemisphere, Earth, Milky Way galaxy, and probably other markers.

I LIVE by some basic mottos: the Golden Rule, helping others when you can, sharing information, listening to music a lot, and trying not to be an @$$4013.

I THINK I am a klutz with even the simplest physical tasks. We had to put new license plates on a vehicle this weekend. So I unscrewed the old plate on the back and put on the new one. Then I went to the front and unscrewed the plate. Where’s the replacement plate? I managed to attach two plates to the back of the car; they seem thinner than the ones I used to screw on, which was probably a half-century ago.

Fred MacMurray

I KNOW an inordinate amount of useful and more than occasionally mundane info. Just this weekend, there was a Facebook conversation about the television show My Three Sons. Someone wrote that they had a crush on one of the sons, Robby. In response, another asked if he was the oldest. I jumped in: “Originally, there were three bio sons, Mike, Robby, and Chip. But Mike got married and left; the dad then adopted Ernie. So if you were watching in 1965 or later, Robby was the oldest. Simple question, but complicated answer.” Except for the year, I KNEW all of that.

I WANT to declutter the house, and occasionally, my mind.

I WISH people would stop believing comments, often made by political figures, that are, to my mind, clearly lies. Also, the rationalization of bigotry by JD Vance, over “jokes” about gas chambers and rape, approving of slavery, and sneering about “watermelon people,” among other comments, reflects a moral bankruptcy.

I PRAY that people recognize that climate change is real and act to slow its progression since it is apparent that we are beyond reversing it.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

The B-word license plate

What does this mean?

unions.afl-cio.2013 A few weeks ago, my wife parked the car in our neighborhood. She ended up behind an old, dark SUV with what appeared to be a New York license plate. The plate “number” was the B-word.

Of course, it wasn’t a real license plate, as it lacked some of the accouterments, and the font wasn’t quite right. But it was white with blue lettering, with the word “New York” on the top. At a passing glance, it looked close enough. My wife was offended.

I was curious. What is the message here? Was the driver trying to say New York is a terrible place or that life is a terrible thing? Is it a comment about women, or does somebody think this was women’s empowerment?

Moreover, I’m puzzled why they would replace their license plate with it instead of putting it on a bumper sticker.

We saw it a second time about a week later.

You can’t do that!

A few days after that, I was being dropped off near my house, and the driver noticed this same plate. They said, “You can’t do that!” This wasn’t a question of what the messaging was. It was that, by law, you can’t replace a New York State DMV plate with this phony item. BTW, there was no front plate; NYS has plates on the front and back of the vehicle.

In the city of Albany, code enforcement will not allow a car without proper plates, even in your driveway. If not addressed, the car could be ticketed and eventually towed.

My friend looked at the registration sticker on the windshield with the real license plate number and immediately called the police on their cell phone. As a public service administrator with years of experience, they have a strong sense of what’s right and wrong. (I’m not a car person, so it would not have occurred to me to look at the registration sticker.)

The next morning, the car was gone. I don’t know whether the owner moved the vehicle or it was towed. A week later, the car returned with the faux plate, slightly crooked because it wasn’t screwed in very well. This has now become fascinating to me. I tell my friend that the car is back, they call the cops, and the car disappears. I haven’t seen it even with its correct plates since.

Call Me Mr. Versatility

I play license plate math. I see a plate, and it’s usually divided into two parts. I try to calculate down to a more common factor. Since there are so many letters, I assign them values. The Roman numerals stay the same.

My goodness. I’ve awarded one of those blogging award things, this one called the “Versatility Award” from Jaquandor at Byzantium Shores. This is because I guess I’m a versatile blogger. Surprising since I write about the same thing every day. Anyway, the award is GREEN, so I MUST accept it.

As is usual with this type of thing, I’m supposed to provide seven facts about myself and then give the award to several other bloggers. I’ve often skipped these steps, but I’m feeling agreeable. The problem is, after six-plus years of blogging, it’s difficult to find facts I still can ‘reveal’ about myself that aren’t either common knowledge to those who read this blog, or things I don’t feel like revealing. So a couple of these are rather arcane.

1. I play license plate BINGO. I’m always looking at license plates, not just on long trips. I saw two from Kansas on a Sunday morning within a block of each other in Albany, NY this month. Other ones I’ve seen this summer I’ve found unusual in these parts: Idaho, Wyoming, Texas, New Mexico. Plates I’ve seen recently that are not that unusual: Florida (not surprising; probably a snowbird) and California. I see California quite regularly. Not as common as an adjacent state (or province, such as Ontario), but regularly enough.

2. I play license plate math. I see a plate, and it’s usually divided into two parts. I try to calculate down to a more common factor. Since there are so many letters, I assign them values. The Roman numerals stay the same. Then I attribute values to other letters as needed. Example: ABC 12345 becomes ABC=12345. C is 100 so AB(100)=12345, AB=123.45; B kinda looks like 13, so A(13)=123.45, which is some number less than 10, but greater than 9. (It’s actually 9.49615385, but I’m doing this in my head, so I’m guessing A=9.5.) Yeah, scary.

3. I’ve never had a job that makes me the civil rights, or diversity guy, though I am the Black History Month guy at my church, somehow. For instance, there was an unpaid position for the city of Albany’s Commission on Human Rights and I didn’t apply for it, even though I was actually interested in it.

4. Truthfully, the specific reason I didn’t apply for that commission was that I had previously applied for this unpaid position earlier this year, was even interviewed, but was turned down. I wasn’t brokenhearted about it, but going through the rigamarole AGAIN so soon, for a volunteer job, just wasn’t my cuppa.

5. Sometimes when I type, I leave off a letter or syllable, especially if that letter or syllable has repeated letters that show up earlier in the word. The second I in liaison, e.g. Or Denders instead of Defenders. I spell well, but my typing, not so much.

6. The word I see misspelled most often, besides the homonyms (its/it’s, there/their/they’re) seems to be ‘definitely’, often spelled ‘definately’. And I often read that misspelling as ‘defiantly’.

7. My Twitter name, Ersie, is in honor of a stuffed monkey I used to have, which my ex has held onto, even though I had had Ersie before I had met her.

Who to honor? Guess I’ll bug some of the ABC Wednesday folk:

Meryl at Departing the Text who is “a parent with a Ph.D. in Educational/School Psychology…currently an instructor for Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth, and author of Teaching Content Area Graphic Novels (2012). My next book will be one for parents on kids’ graphic novels and literacy.”

Lisa at peripheral perceptions: “As a kid, I was never happy with the box on only 24 crayons. I was more of a 96 crayon box kid. Still am.”

Leslie at The Pedalogue, from BC, Canada: “I retired from teaching in ’06 and did some traveling in Europe and the UK before settling down to do some private tutoring…I’m a happy, optimistic person and I love to travel and through that believe that life can be a continuous learning experience.”

Amy at Sharp Little Pencil, who is a poet, singer, and a bunch of other stuff, growing up not far from where I did, albeit a few years later.