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North Carolina License Plate Mix-Up - WTF?

Uncharted Territory

Yet again today I found myself reading one of those articles that is so foolish that it makes me giddy with the ways I can tear it to shreds. I feel like a pack of sharks must feel when there’s blood in the water – eager to sink my teeth in and kill something. Incidentally, I notice that many of these stories seem to originate with Fox News.

The story in question today concerns North Carolina’s offer to replace 10,000 license plates because they begin with the letters WTF. For those readers who are unfamiliar with the acronym – and I would be surprised if there are any of you reading, because if you don’t know it, you probably don’t even know that computers were invented – it’s commonly used to abbreviate “what the f#$k”.

Apparently this came as news to the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles. They were finally brought into the loop because:

A 60-year-old technology teacher from Fayetteville complained about the plate last July after her teenage grandchildren clued her in.

So let me get this straight, if I can take the three letters that begin a license plate and turn it into shorthand for some vulgar turn of phrase, the state will take all of the tags off the street with those letters? Let’s start with a hard one: JXQ – from now on, I’m going to use this to mean “BLEEP (starts with J and rhymes with fizz) X-tra Quietly. So how long till those license plates get pulled?

This is awesome. I can single handedly bring the entire transit system to its knees.

This is moronic. How about instead of wasting all of the money to pay people to research who currently has these plates, paying more people to type up notifications, print them all up, send them out, produce and mail replacement plates and pay some nose picking goober to issue press releases and public apologies, we instead tell a 60 year old woman to grow up.

Has this woman honestly lived to the age of 60 without growing skin thick enough to get past a quirky coincidence? What if I think of something stupid to say about Fayetteville, will she petition the city to change its name? Fantasizing About Young Easy Teen BLEEP (Starts with T and rhymes with cots)? Every Vixen’s Implication Leaves Lusty Eyes – F.A.Y.E.T.T.E.V.I.L.L.E. Took me about two minutes to come up with. In three days, I could ruin the entire country for everyone. U.S.A. – U Suck BLEEP. If you need a hint for the last word, this abbreviation applies to you.

I like how the DMV was unaware of something that it’s probably safe to say I’ve been using for the better part of the last decade. Now I understand why the roads and mass transit systems are abysmal – the power curve of learning at the DMV is almost straight.

Silly me, they’ll figure out all the obvious problems, it will just take them another ten years to understand the same things you and I understand today. In the meantime, they’ll be busy spending your money on frivolous things like this boondoggle in between booger mining expeditions into the great uncharted territories of sinus sphenoidalis.

North Carolina clearly didn’t intend for the license plate to carry this connotation that some semi-illiterate, but mildly clever teenagers have coined, so why should anyone be offended? This is the kind of absolute spinelessness that has led to the decay of almost every single one of the transportation systems in this country. We waste money kissing ass when we ought to be filling potholes and building rail lines.

Here’s an idea, if you’re offended by your license plate – you pay to replace it. Don’t waste the rest of our tax dollars because you can’t grow a sense of humor.

This week, the DMV officials got another surprise when they learned the same letters appeared on the agency’s own Web site on a sample personalized plate.

“I can’t believe it,” DMV Commissioner Bill Gore said Monday when told about the online glitch. “Obviously, I didn’t know it was there.”

Let’s be honest, if there’s a slogan out there for the DMV, WTF is probably the appropriate one. Leave it up there Gore, you weasel.