You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.
I'm not really sure why I feel the need to share this in an e-mail but I'm going to so just bear with me (or ignore it, I will probably never know the difference).
I HATE vanity plates. I always have. They bother me in a way that I cannot adequately describe in words (though I am going to try). Do people think it makes them special to have dopey, usually misspelled/truncated words that only sometimes make sense to the general population? Are they too good for the randomly arranged combination of letters and numbers that the rest of us make due with?
Today I was particularly perturbed (even irked) by two that I saw on my way to work. The first one said 'punk'. Now, I give this person credit for having a correctly spelled word. However, this license plate appeared on a brand new Saab. That I saw in the parking lot of a Starbucks. In Darien. I can only hope that this person was taking a stab at being ironic. (Although a license plate is certainly not the place for irony. But I digress...) Either way I feel that 'tool' or 'douchebag' would probably have been more appropriate.
The other license plate didn't offend me as much, I just thought it was dum. (See how I left the 'b' off of the end of the word. Because I know how to spell it, but it's so dumb that it's dum. Get it? Look at how clever I am. Ok back to my point.) This one said 'burger'. Once again, spelled correctly (bonus points there). I just couldn't figure out why someone would want that as a license plate. Does he/she like to eat burgers? Does he/she want to be a burger? Does he/she work at McDonald's? Was this person called a cow in high school? Does this 'burger' have some deep, inner meaning that mere mortals (such as myself) are unaware of? Is it some sort of riddle? (Although let's be honest, license plates are NOT the place for deep thinking of any sort). Perhaps he/she wants to piss off the people that are stuck behind him/her. In which case, mission fucking accomplished.
So there. I feel much better now. Happy Friday.
~L
P.S. A note on Starbucks: I am an addict. What the hell do they put in their coffee? Crack? I literally cannot stop drinking it.
Lisa really likes encyclopedias and Jane Austen novels.