Odds and ends

As those of you who know me know, I love reading license plates. Thank heavens for vanity plates; they can add a bit of spice to the blandest of days. To whit:

EVOLUTN
OVERDUE
ILVUMOM
at the other end of the scale: ORPHAN
BUMMER (now there’s an optimist)
CREMATE (another cheerful soul)
MYRDSOX (major fans here in Maine)
ADOLL4U
and then there was SING4U
BBLGUM (that one took me a while)
HEBOPS
DR JAB (!)
DAYOUT (do you suppose the person drives that car only on...?)
And then there was FAVORIT (favorite car? Or the driver is somebody’s favorite?)
AWESOM (that one made me grown out loud – I am so tired of that overused word)

Favorite book title recently encountered: “Social Structure and Testosterone” (according to the American Journal of Sociology, it is “irreplaceably worthwhile.”)

Favorite store name recently encountered: First Amendment Adult Video Store

Favorite community event (I read about this a few years back, and am just getting around to mentioning it): The town of New Bedford, Massachusettes held a public reading of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” (24 hours and 17 minutes), to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the voyage that Melville took – leaving from New Bedford – that inspired the book.

A couple of (personally experienced) Maine accent stories:

A woman started to go up the steps of the post office in Hallowell, and found the side she was on blocked off. A man coming down the side that was still open looked over at her and said, quite literally (and cheerfully), “Ya can’t get they-uh from he-uh.”

A female tourist was looking out at the Kennebec River, which flows past Hallowell, and asked the bemused question, “Did they lower the river? It looks a lot lower than it did yesterday.” A man standing nearby drawled, “A-yah-uh. They call it the tide.”

Does anybody else wonder:

Where they get the figures for statements like: “Flood damages are estimated to be 3 million dollars”?

Why radio stations stay on all night?

Why they have Stop for Pedestrian signs? What, you’re going to run over them?

And is anybody else bothered by the fact that virtually all female police detectives, FBI agents and forensic scientists on T.V. shows wear their hair long and loose, and wear low-cut, form-fitting tops on the job? Has anyone ever seen women in these kinds of positions dressed in these totally inappropriate ways? The forensic scientists are the worst – just think how much long, loose hair could contaminate a crime scene.