Geek of All Trades

Independence Day has come again, and this year, Coloradoans are thinking more about fireworks of a different sort.  The ongoing challenges of multiple fires has meant loss and tragedy for many. To the firefighters who are working in extreme conditions to preserve lives and property, “thank you” seems to fall far short of our gratitude, but, it’s a good place to start.

Why We Need to Assemble the Vacation Force

This week we celebrate the birth of our fine nation, and this year is one of those that illustrate exactly how little consideration our forefathers had for our long-weekend needs.

Sure, commemorating the actual date of the event is all well and good, but, it’s kind of a cruel joke to go to work for two days, get a day off for late-night frivolity, and then drag our sorry selves back to work for another two days? Yes, it beats going to work, but it would be much better to have built in some sort of federal regulation that states, “Should Independence Day fall on days prior to and including Wednesday, the holiday will include all business days preceding July 4^th. Should the holiday fall on Thursday or Friday, the celebration shall include all dates prior to the weekend.”

In this fashion, the holiday heretofore only celebrated on July 4^th will be not shorter than three days, and up to a delightful five-day weekend. This is how a world power shouldcelebrate.

It seems ridiculous that we should be forced to contain our festivities to a single day. Shouldn’t American excess have gotten us something useful?

I know, I shouldn’t complain. There are starving children in Africa who have to work on July 4^th.  Hunger doesn’t take a vacation.

I’m whining about a decidedly First World problem, and yet, don’t we want to inspire the other worlds to adopt our ideals? Wouldn’t having a five-day weekend go a long way to instilling the American Dream into the hearts and minds of every person in a polyester uniform who has to work over the Fourth of July Holiday anyway?

On second thought, maybe we shouldn’t tell them. I don’t think it will bestow hopeful aspirations, and I am not a fan of burgers with that extra-special disgruntled food service worker “sauce.”

Maybe Independence Day can join forces with the other non-compliant holidays, and they can form a super hero team like the Avengers, and fight the forces trying to keep us away from the long weekends we deserve. We’ll call them the Vacation Force or the Justice League (yeah, I know that one’s taken, but, let’s face it, non-weekend contiguous holidays are clearly an injustice), or the Weekenders. The Vacation Force will be the powerhouse dream team of Christmas and Thanksgiving, Halloween and New Year’s. Independence Day will round out the team with the special persuasive force of explosives.

The Vacation Force will win the day with their ability to induce powerful waves of nostalgia and sentiment that will crush even the most cynical Scrooges. They’ll tear away the resistance of hardened humbuggery and win us our freedom. Clearly, the time has come.

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This week, life handed me baby skunks, so, like any good writer, this means I had something for this week’s column.
When Life Hands You Skunks

I had never imagined that my life resume would one day include “baby skunk wrangling,” but, I admit, I have been woefully incorrect about most of the things that would appear on this ledger, so this should no longer surprise me.

For many months it has become apparent that one of my neighbors has black and white fur, four legs, and could be mistaken by really, really, blind people for a cat.  This neighbor has been leaving evidence of its presence in the form of holes under my fence, an occasionally strong body odor, and attracting the attention of my sister’s trusty canine.

It was on returning late one night, that my sister and I spied a peculiar wriggling mass of black and white in the middle of our street, in front of my house.  Cautiously, we inched closer to home, and realized that my neighbor had, apparently had a visit from the stork.

My sister didn’t want to get out of the car.  I asked if she had a camera.

She did.  I took some pictures of the critters and chivvied them out of the street.  Their mother was not to be found, and we had no idea what to do with her little bundles of joy.

As I stood on the street trying to figure out what to do and whether there was any reason to bother with this brood, a few of the kiddos fell into the sewer.

I recalled that a few months ago, nearby, a skunk had been killed and I imagined that that dead critter had been the father of these adorable stinkers, and that they were being raised by a single mother, who had no job, and had been widowed while in the “family way,” and now had seven mouths to feed. I  figured her house had probably been repossessed, and that’s why she was living under the neighbor’s shed, with nothing to eat except scraps from the dumpster. Plus, now three of her children were trapped in the sewer.

While I was busy imaging this tragic tale, an older lady, driving slowly, pulled up. She asked me if I had seen a cat. I told her, “no, but I have some skunks.”

The random-passer-by called her daughter, who had a thing for rescuing critters. Now, there was no getting out of the situation, I was now responsible for helping with the rescue effort.  Within a few moments, “She-Who-Rescues-Things-From-Sewers” arrived with a kitty carrier and a pitchfork.

Sure. A pitchfork was just what we needed.

I can only guess that she heard “zombies” instead of baby skunks. Maybe this is why I’m not known for feats of rescuing, because I don’t own a pitchfork.

The two of us hefted the sewer grate up, and while I held it, “Rescue-Critter-Ranger” jumped in and put the three babies into her carrier.  We gathered up the remaining babies, and released them to my backyard.

Now, of course, as their particular odor wafts into my house through the open window, I’m wishing I’d come up with a better idea, and taken them to an open space area miles from my house.

I suspect I was caught up in the drama of the widow with seven babies, and no food, and no home, so it seemed the best solution at the time. They are my neighbors, after all.

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First off, Happy Father’s Day to all those men-folk out there who make a difference in the life of a child. Thanks for doing what you do!

This week, I take you to one of Colorado’s strangest roadside attractions. Since 1969, Jim Bishop has been making his very unique perspectives known from his one-man building project, a castle made of stone. If you ever find yourself just west of Pueblo, stop in for a visit. Just don’t ask Mr. Bishop about his views on the government.

One Man’s Crazy is Another Man’s Castle

In my next life, I’d like to come back as someone who makes something tangible. Maybe I could build zombie traps, you know, ‘cause I’m sure by the time I came back the zombie apocalypse would be the new normal. Or maybe I could build flying cars or cyborgs or the jars they fill with nutrient fluids to keep the heads of celebrities going long after their bodies died.

With all of these are things, I can take a moment at the end of each day, and survey the work space, and see, with my own two robotic eyes, the physical output of a day. I can nod with satisfaction at seeing 100 brain jars, and say, “Yes. I did that. It was a good, honest day’s work.”

Seeing the fruits of such a job seems like it would be much more gratifying than looking in my e-mail “sent” folder to count how many e-mails I managed to pound out in a day. How ridiculous is it to measure productivity by the number of times I sent a handful of electrons shaped into pixels to someone who’s simply going to delete it about 12 seconds after getting it. How unsatisfying is it to spend day after day shuffling non-existent paper around and pretend to look busy by clicking the “Compose” button for the hundredth time that day?

In 40 years, will the only evidence of how I spent my time every day be a bunch of replies to people asking for TPS reports?

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately, after returning from my second visit to Bishop’s Castle in about 20 years. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s the work of one man, whose surname happens to be Bishop. He’s been working alone since 1969, building a gigantic stone castle about an hour west of Pueblo.

The first time I saw it, the first hints of towers were just emerging, and there was a scaffold leading to a wire frame dragon chimney. Rough framing of the foundation arches was in, but, it was hard to see it as much more than a squarish collection of large rocks mortared together. It seemed like, if it took him 20 years to barely get as far as this, that he was wasting his time on something that he would never finish.

Now, it’s undeniably a castle. There’s two towers, just like in the movie, and the larger of the two is over 100 feet tall. This huge structure was built by one guy, who has hauled large, very large, very hand smashingly large rocks up wrought-iron death spiral staircases, one at a time, and glued them into place. Today, you can easily see where the labor of more than 40 years has gone. It’s made a real monument.

And while a few decades ago it would’ve been easy to dismiss as some childish, crackpot dream of having a castle, today, it’s a crackpot adult accomplishment that can’t be undone with a few minutes and a delete key.

This all means that I’m starting to wonder if it’s me that’s the crackpot, and I’m looking around for evidence of my years of labor, and there’s less to see than a squarish collection of large rocks.

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In this week’s episode, I complain about the heat. It tends to bring to bring out my inner grouch.  It’s not pretty. You wouldn’t like me when I’m sweaty.

At Least it’s a Dry Heat

I am done with summer. Yes, I know that “technically” it hasn’t started yet, but technically isn’t doing anything to keep my eyeballs from sweating.

I am not fond of warm weather.  And by ‘warm” I mean anything over 75 degrees.

Ok, I lied. I mean anything over 70.

You’re making fun of me, aren’t you? I sense terms like “pansy” being tossed about. You can do better than that.

However, you’re going to feel bad when I tell you this all stems from a significant medical condition that means that anytime the bus goes over 75 miles per hour, I explode and everyone dies.

That might be something else.

The truth is I’m allergic to hot.

No, that’s a lie.

The truth is that I have a different thermal tolerance from normal people because of my undisclosed, but very amazing, super powers. Or, I just grew up in a place where 75 was hot, and that’s where my internal thermometer is calibrated, and so, I get whinier about the heat at lower temperatures than most people.

And, I do realize that whining just makes me feel hotter, so, I’ll just try and say something cool.

Wow! I wish you could’ve heard that. It was awesome, and I do think I am feeling a bit cooler. You should try it!

Yeah, it wears off pretty fast, and in the heat of the computer’s glow, I’m having trouble thinking of more cool things to say.

You don’t have to agree with me so quickly. You try being funny when it’s fifty billion degrees outside, and there are bits of bus shrapnel still smoldering only a few feet from where you are sitting!

I’m sorry. That whole heat-induced tirade was unworthy of me, and probably raised my internal temperature four degrees.  Let’s be friends.

I have heard a theory that if you move more slowly, you don’t notice the heat quite so much. It’s why everyone moves and talks more slowly in the South. They’re really trying to let the hot air just go right on by them. I’m starting to suspect their efforts simply redirect it straight at me.

When it’s hot in Colorado, everyone will console each other with the oft repeated phrase, “well, at least it’s a dry heat.” Sure, I prefer a dry heat, too, but, it doesn’t make feel any cooler. It makes me want to invite the speaker to sit in my oven for a few hours, where I can annoy them with the same phrase. “I know that 200 degrees seems really hot, but, at least it’s a dry heat…”

I can follow the phrase with an insincere little laugh, and a broad grin while I shut the oven door to keep the heat from escaping and making my house unbearably hot. For the record? I would never put anyone in my oven. It’s far too small for that.

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It’s Memorial Day Weekend, and I am away from my home, but, thinking of all those who gave of themselves to protect our nation.

A word of warning, there is much reference made to TV this week. Extensive Googling might be needed. Send me an e-mail and I’ll provide footnotes.

How To Become Quirky Enough for TV

I’m claiming credit for the current trend of single-gal comedies that every TV network has decided is the “must-have” show type. Because, I am single.  And, I am funny.

I am funny, right?

I had expected that, after launching this new writing project that I’d instantly be chosen to be the standard-barer for the single women who don’t spend their entire lives shopping or having lunch at the trendiest restaurants.  I would be riding my new-found popularity straight into TV deals, untold riches, and, possibly, sainthood.

But while the era of the “quirky, single-lady” has clearly arrived, not one of them is me. I mean, I’m not just quirky, I’ve got the ability to tell it’s raining outside without having to ask my Siri. This implies a basic “look out the window right behind you” logic that “The New Girl” apparently lacks.

Though, maybe it’s not that she’s lacking logic. Maybe her “quirkiness” is actually some sort of mental illness, and I’m being insensitive to her and all the mentally ill, and advocates for the mentally ill are now going to be sending me angry e-mails.  I’m sorry I didn’t know she was mentally ill.

While I ponder her mental illness, I realize that I’m *actually* wondering if I’m jealous because I don’t have a documented mental illness.  Maybe a touch more mental instability will make me “pleasantly off-kilter” enough to become famous and have a TV show.
It gets worse. Now I’m wondering if being jealous of a probably imagined mental illness gives me that little extra push into primetime.

Unfortunately, now I’m not only “quirky,” I’m mean, because I made fun of the mentally ill. I’ve now become the untrustworthy  “B in Apt. 23.” At first this thought horrified me, because I don’t want to be a shameless, swindling con artist without morals. But, she also knows James Van Der Beek, so, maybe she’s not all bad.

I think I need to ignore the shows of this season and look to next season, where the “single-funny-female” offerings include “The Mindy Project,” and Mindy’s a doctor.

Great. Now I’m just feeling inadequate.  I was willing to overlook the glaringly obvious fact that the single women in all of these shows happen to also be,  well, “persons who fit Hollywood’s current standards of beauty,” much more closely than I do. I had just figured that when the time came for me to have my own TV show, we’d hire someone like Lisa Simpson to play me, and I’d just hang out in the writer’s room with incredibly witty people, and not have to appear in front of the camera.  I think of this as a “win-win,” proposition, and I’m very comfortable with being yellow.

Wait a minute. Maybe an inferiority complex is *exactly* what I need. That little touch of crazy, without being mean, might be my golden ticket.  I think I’ll take tomorrow off, and wait for the phone to start ringing.

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This week, I look into the prodigeous marketing might of the Cafe Du Monde. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. You might check for a mug in your employee break room.

I’m starting vacation this week, so, I’m sending you one of the stories I had available as a sample column, which, I’m certain, most people didn’t read. Until today, it had not been sent to the list, so, it’s new for most of you.

The co-worker mentioned in the story died a few months ago, shortly after he retired. In real life, he was firstly, a he, and secondly, he’d been there long before me. He was a true gentleman, in every sense of the term; a kind and gracious soul, who always went above and beyond to make sure the job was done right. The world is a pooer place without him.

When Does a Marketing Campaign Turn into a Case of Stalking?

Café Du Monde.

I’ve never been to this signature establishment of the wondrous city of New Orleans. In fact, I’ve never even been to the city of New Orleans. Or, if we’re really being hyper-technical, have I ever been to the state of Louisiana.

But, in over half of the seemingly millions of workplaces I have contributed the fruits of my wage slavery, the communal kitchen had a mug emblazoned with the Café’s prodigious marketing might.

Before I’d ever seen a mug, I had heard of the place, and knew it was famous for its beignets. I have never eaten a beignet.  I think I read about the place in some book that wasn’t an Anne Rice vampire novel.

The first mug I saw, had nothing more than the Café name and the address.  It tickled my memory of possibly having seen the name somewhere that wasn’t an Anne Rice novel, and for many days, I tried to dredge up what I knew about the Café Du Monde.

Eventually, I remembered.

I wondered why someone had put their cherished keepsake of a trip to the city that is not the capital of Louisiana casually in the kitchen *AT WORK?*  Maybe she secretly worked for the Café Du Monde, and her job was to place mugs in unsuspecting kitchens to entice people to plan their vacations to see this mug-place? If so, wouldn’t you put more than your name on the mug?

I wondered if this mysterious cup owner even still worked there.  Maybe she never realized her beloved mug was excluded from the single box of possessions she took with her when she was unceremoniously canned. Probably for drinking too much coffee.

The second mug was a vast improvement over the first, but just as random. It had not only the famous name, but, a café scene, with patrons relaxing on a nice patio. It reminded me of similar spots in Europe, or even like those along the 16^th street mall. It was a sparsely drawn piece, with very basic lines and some trendy colors. Those few lines effectively evoked “café” to me, and I thought again of going to sit there and eat beignets, simply watching the world go by. In daylight, of course. I understand there’s something of a vampire infestation in the city, and suspect it’s worse at night.

I became fond of using this mug, and like before, wondered why it had been banished to this fate.  One day, while cleaning it, one of my colleagues (who was new, and therefore was not the owner of the mug) noticed it, and, with a dreamy far-away look, sighed “Ah. The Café Du Monde. “ I nodded knowingly, and said, simply, “Beignets?”  She replied, “But, of course! And so good. And coffee brewed with chicory.”  I again nodded, relishing the sights and sounds of a place I’ve never been but whose mugs haunt me from job to job.

I am starting to suspect that this Café can’t possibly live up to the image I’ve built in my head, and when I do find myself in New Orleans, I should stay away from the Café Du Monde lest I ruin it. Then again, I could use a new coffee mug. I think I’ll keep it at home.

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Happy Mother’s Day! It comes but once a year, to remind us that we’re darn lucky to have mothers in our lives. With any luck, we remember to tell them this on a regular basis. Thanks, moms!

How Humor Complicates Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is hard on comedy writers.

No one likes to hear a joke that could, potentially, be about their mother. It’s a very thin line between “funny” and “enraged mob.”  I have too strong self-preservation gene (thanks, mom) for me to enjoy being on the business end of “enraged mob.”

Understanding that a mob triggered to ferocious anger by misfiring-mother-related humor is akin to wearing brain earrings while exposing my own pretty brain cleavage in front of a hoard of starving zombies, I’ve been losing sleep for weeks trying to figure out what to say on this day.

There was one horrible dream where the ghost of Erma Bombeck, looks at me over the rims of her glasses, shakes her head, and waggles her finger at me like I just tracked mud into her newly cleaned kitchen, and looking over my shoulder, yup, there’s the mud.  Wordlessly, I go to find the mop and bucket, where I end up just making it worse, spreading the prints into a muddy paint all over the white floor.  Things didn’t improve from there.

Another night, I dreamed that I sent out a lovely, sentimental essay, lauding the ideals of motherhood, and saying beautiful things with the best prose I’ve ever written. It was, however, seriously unfunny, and all my readers, in a fit of confusion, hastily unsubscribed, and I was now facing the proposition of continuing without an audience. Not at all cheery.

Clearly, whatever I came up with needed to do mothers proud.

After all, some of my favorite people are moms.  Having an angry, blood-craving mob at my door is worse when some of those in attendance actually know my address. Without Googling.

The rage so easily generated by a well-placed “motherly” insult is the key to understanding the power of the entire line of “Your mamma” jokes. It’s easy to see why they’re so effective as taunts by various sorts of ruffians and no-good-nicks, who prove the depths of their evil by taking pot shots at the one person their enemy loves most. Their mamma.

And, despite popular belief that comedians arrive on this planet in giant fibrous shells carried by space pterodactyls, or grown in cabbage patches sprinkled with rainbow jimmies, most of us actually do have mothers.

I know, it’s disappointing to learn that. I feel a bit bad for revealing it to you, but, as it’s less likely to get me lynched than a joke about you-know-who, well, I’m willing to make that call.

Nope, I think I’m safer avoiding that altogether.  I’m going to steer clear of the clichéd jokes made about mothers and motherhood, and I’m not going to make jokes about anyone’s mamma.

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I am earwormed by words.

I have my suspicions that this is a common affliction of writers, but, I also admit that I have never asked my writer friends if they carry phrases or entire speeches in their heads. I know that “Hearing voices no one else can hear isn’t a good sign, even in the wizarding world.” While that line of dialog came immediately to mind, I will point out that I’m not actually hearing anything, I’m not that far gone.

This form of the disease is worse than just being infected by some annoying song. It means that *in addition* to occasionally having songs stuck in your head for hours on end, I get phrases and words stuck in my head. When I hear just one bit of that phrase, my brain is forced to complete it.

If someone offers me a cup of tea? My brain hears Giles¹ answering “Tea is soothing. I wish to be tense,” even if I would like a cup of tea.

Poetry, scripted dialog, books; any and all of it gets trapped in my brain where it does its best to make me even crazier than I already am.  I hear the word “hole” and my brain goes straight to “In a hole, in the ground, there lived a Hobbit,” and it will not stop until the dwarves have proven they know more about the inside of Bilbo’s larder than he does himself, and will then offer selections from “Fellowship of the Ring.”

And, this affliction doesn’t stop with English. I have bits of “Wenn nur die Menschen Hiefische Waere²” that surface from time to time, and bits of “Rumpelstilzchen.³”  Latin makes its appearance on occasion, as does  Swahili, which is really odd, as I have never even heard Swahili.

Let’s say that someone utters the phrase “dead as a doornail.”  My brain turns into some weird form of Google, and pulls up everything I’ve ever known about that phrase. It starts by reciting “Marley was dead: to begin with…” and wanders off for paragraphs about how certain Scrooge and all the rest of us ought to be that Jacob Marley was pushing up daises and not pinning for the Fjords⁴.

See? I typed about pushing up daisies and there appear the Fjords.

It also means that I get whole phrases of the current writing project, whatever that might be, stuck in my head. Entire pieces will be inspired by one stray thought or phrase that caught my fancy. I’ll hold that phrase hostage for weeks until I’ve worried it to death with trying it in slightly different arrangements, or putting  other phrases and oddments onto it. By the time I actually sit down to turn it into something presentable, it all sounds like mush.

This one, of course, started simply with the opening sentence, and all of this has been hammered out, bit by bit for weeks until I finally surrendered and wrote it down, and now it can stick in someone else’s brain.

1. Rupert Giles,  Librarian, Watcher and Magic Shop owner from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He’s British, and they’re supposed to always want tea, so, when questioned about his choice of coffee, he replied with the aforementioned phrase. My brain does the whole scene.
2. “If only men were sharks,” It’s a satirical piece by Bertold Brecht.
3. You probably know this as “Rumpelstiltskin,” by the Brother Grimm.
4. That’s right. My brain starts with Dickens and ends in Monty Python.

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The first time I tried to adapt a story into a script, I was about 10 years old, and I had read this ghost story that took place during the summer at a beach resort. I remember the names of the living characters, but not the ghost, and not much about the plot. I can, however, remember that I could see the characters as people I knew in my neighborhood, and how I would translate the scenes into a live-action performance, and I knew it *had* to be done.

That’s right.  I was *that* kid.

The kid who got all the kids in the neighborhood together to do a play, and made props, and gave people parts, and got mad when they didn’t do it the way I’d imagined it should be done.  If I’d known that overly dramatic types referred to their productions as “their vision,” I’d have been all over yelling at those lousy kids who were ruining mine. I knew that there was lots of dialog for this show, so, I broke it all up with commercials I wrote myself, all of which I remember better than the play.

I have to say that the neighbor kids were awful. None of them could be bothered to memorize my scintillating dialog, and always tried to make me re-write things to give them fewer lines. Preferably so that all they had to say was “yes” or “I’m scared” or “I’m bored and you can do this stupid play without me. “

All this tells you exactly how committed they were to their art. Not one of them was remotely concerned with how crappy a ghost story would look if the ghost just decided to leave halfway through and not come back.

I probably should’ve suspected something when NONE of the neighbor kids brought their parents to opening night, which, due to the lack of a ghost, turned out to also be closing night. The reviews were not good, the best ones being highly guarded ones from my own parents who, with three kids in the production could not say more than “it was interesting,” and “we are very proud of you,” and “is it over yet?” Certainly, our parents knew better to use comments much worse than that. After all, we knew where they lived and one of us could easily express our “frustrated, artistic” souls on their sleeping forms.

I was never again able to mount any sort of production in that neighborhood.  The kids didn’t come over much after that, and my siblings fled anytime I started a sentence with the phrase “I read this cool…”

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There was a time when I thought personalized license plates were pretty awesome things. I liked puzzling out the message, and feeling like I was clever and being inducted into the elite crowd of people who had solved the passing riddle.  I imagined there was a secret handshake and meetings, and we’d all get together and pat ourselves on the back for our amazing skills, and share knowing glances at each other in the super market.

I was disappointed when they turned our secret club initiation into a game show, and then everyone fancied themselves good at figuring out the arcane messages flashed on car rear-ends.

Worse, that show ushered out the golden age of license plate puzzling. What had once been fun was now downright annoying.

Owners of personalize plates failed to make their personal statements clever or entertaining. They started to be nothing more than, well, “vanity” plates.

I feel certain that they owe us the courtesy of making their plates interesting and accessible. Frankly, if you’re going to pay the extra bucks to announce something to the car driving public, you should take some responsibility for that message, and make it worth our time. It should be a message that is first and foremost, comprehensible. Second, it should bring pleasure or inspiration to those that see it. Is this truly asking too much?

I would love to put an end to plates which have absolutely no meaning to anyone but the car owner.  What the heck does H1OK4ME mean? Are they fans of hydrogen? Sure, ok, I can come down on the side of hydrogen. Everyone loves hydrogen. I just want to know who spends good money to give hydrogen a half-hearted recommendation on the back of their car? If they truly loved hydrogen, why not IHEARTH1? Okay, so, maybe that just looks like IH EARTH1, or I HEARTH 1 which, let’s face it, is not any clearer.  The iHearth sounds like some new iProduct.

I suppose the owners of H1OK4ME could be virologists, and H1N1 is their favorite flu critter. Or, maybe they are from Oklahoma, and their town is called H-1. No, I don’t have any idea what town founder would name a town “H-1.”

I have a sneaking suspicion that all of these meanings are far superior to the real thing. Frankly, I don’t really want to know the true meaning because I’ll just be disappointed. I’ll also be grouchy that I thought about it as long as I did.

That smug plate owner is doing nothing more than mocking me with his or her private joke, causing me to burn a few brain cells sucking in car exhaust while trying to force their cryptic car code to make one iota of sense.

There was that one drive, when I was trying to stay awake late, when I could’ve sworn all the plates had hidden meanings.  948-VPO? Clearly, this a coded message to C3PO’s silver cousin, VPO, indicating they should meet at docking bay 94 at 8:00 AM.  Yeah. I’m onto them. I could join the Rebel Alliance, and find my very own scruffy-looking Nerf Herder.

Or maybe it’s just better for everyone if I stop looking at license plates.

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