A question for you
So I was commenting over on another site yesterday, and it had one of those spam-catchers like I have here, where you have to type in the random assortment of letters and numbers to prove that you're a real human, with a heart, brains and courage. Some of them give you real words. I think the one at Ethicurean is like that, very easy to use. Some are of the completely unintelligible variety - Wickedly Scarlett's is like that, only particularly bad, because hers is of the random-letter-on-a-smudgy background variety, and my cybertronic eyes can't always make out the difference between i's and r's and t's and l's and the smudges, and sometimes q's look weird, and I have to go through a couple of tries. I think I have the same one. Typepad!! (said while shaking fist.)
So I left a note for Tequila Stakes Croquet and the captchkin wanted me to enter SIDS, which I thought was kind of creepy. Why not SARS, while you're at it? Or POLIO? So I superstitiously had to make a new comment just to shake the mojo.
Which made me think of a question for you, the audience. What would you do, upon buying a new car and registering your vehicle, if the license plate that arrived in the mail was not a completely random letter assortment, but rather said something like
21BUTT
MOIST47
F3TU5
D0U CH3
R3T 4RD
DIA PER
HIV POS
Would you send it back? Do they even allow you to, without forking over for a vanity plate? What would you do?
Wow, I'm so glad you posted this, because I thought I turned that spam catcher off about a year ago!! Yes, for some reason, Typepad uses that horrible hard to read font on the smudgy background and on top of that, even when I KNOW I've typed it in correctly, it keeps bringing up a verification page.
Also, I'm dying laughing over those license plate words you've created! I wonder if they would even issue the plates if they read that way though? I've heard that the DMV is pretty strict about what they will and will not allow for vanity plates, so I don't know if that transfers over into the regular plates.
Okay, off to investigate this whole captcha thing--next time you comment, let me know if it's still on if you please :)
Posted by: Wickedly Scarlett | June 29, 2008 at 10:00 PM
I heard a rumor that Missouri (or fill in appropriately far away state here) recently recalled all license plates that began with "WTF XXX" after someone pointed it out. I do know that I have seen several California trucks with plates that begin "7POOXXX." I guess if you drive a big, tough truck, you don't mind a poo plate.
Posted by: boots | July 15, 2008 at 10:24 AM
We here at TSC just want to make sure that SIDS is still on everyone's radar. This HPV business has really distracted from SIDS and we don't like it one bit.
Posted by: melati | July 18, 2008 at 10:26 AM