Exhibit 19.3

This really was so predictable as to almost not warrant another post. But then I thought about all of the children relying on me for their Nebraska license plate news and figured I'd catch everyone up:

1) State holds online vote using four designs everyone hates
2) The chosen design--done by the aluminum vendor of all things--wins because of a prank done by a humor website
3) The state goes to the second place winner:

4) Everyone hates the new winner even more
5) Governor Heineman loses his reelection bid over this

Okay, so that fifth step is just a guess, but I don't think anyone would be shocked. We are talking about a state that would break into a war if anyone ever tried to renumber the counties based on a contemporary census. Custer County would rather see their entire population killed than live with a license plate number higher than 4.

It's either 4 or 93 for those people, there is no compromise.

At the moment, there's a 0.4% chance this bird and weed plate ends up being used. Needless to say, I'm continuing to enjoy this.

Exhibit 18.25

Now, I don't care in the sense that I don't have Nebraska license plates and will likely never have Nebraska license plates. I also don't care in the sense that I can't say I ever really notice license plates.

I just think the state's reaction to the license plate voting has been fairly hilarious. For weeks people have been complaining about it and writing letters to the editor, all of whom seem to hold the same opinion: the choices, such as they were, were horrible and whatever misguided process excluded using actual design professionals should be scrapped.

Almost every aspect of the process has been attacked, from the use of the governor (who, despite a fairly well documented history of being a tool and no documented history of being a graphic designer, picked the finalists) to the required inclusion of Nebraska.gov (at the expense of, say, "The Good Life," Nebraska's awesome state motto).

And now, naturally, the worst design won and I'm as outraged as everyone else for some reason (probably boredom). The winner:


Black? Really? This for a state with two distinguishing features (wide, blue skies and flat, amber prairie)? There's not even any indication of what the intent was here. It's too designed to be distinctly plain (like Delaware's plates) and is so contrary to the state itself as to actually be fairly transgressive, as if the football team played five seasons as The Nebraska.gov Corpsemongers.

More importantly, the gradients. Good lord, the gradients. It's like someone took a two-week Creative Suite class and couldn't help themselves. We're just lucky we didn't get any clip art or artificial lens flares.

And by we I mean you. I'm out of here, suckers.

[runs away laughing maniacally, returns for Christmas, feels bad]

Exhibit 14.18

It's not often that someone does something in real life that is so outrageous, so preposterous, that if it were to happen in a book I would immediately stop reading. In no book with a pretense to reality would I believe a plot in which the radically corrupt governor of a state--who knows he is under federal investigation--auctions off a seat in the U.S. Senate with the cunning of a fifth-grader shaking classmates down for milk money.

So to that I say, Congratulations, Governor Blagojevich, you've made John Grisham blush.