Succinct Summation of Week’s Events for 3.29.19 (plus humorous California vanity plates)

The weekly summation is once again provided below.  The positive about the Mueller Report failing to cause a rift in the space-time continuum, though a humorous observation, is quite premature since no one has yet seen it (or maybe that was the point.)  And the one thing that has been dominating the news all week but ended up in neither the positive nor negative columns was the yield curve inversion.  That may be because, after driving the price of stocks down the past ten days, the inversion ended on Friday but, like the Mueller Report, tomorrow may bring an entirely different set of news.  And while we are entertaining humorous sidebars about Mueller, the bonus this Sunday is a humorous article from Los Angeles Magazine about some of the more hilarious vanity license plates that have attempted to pass snuff with the California DMV.  I've included a jpeg of four of them but go ahead and click on the link provided to see a great many more and the (legit?) reasons the applicant gave for why they wanted it and the (mostly) perverse readings the DMV had on each as the basis for their denial.  Enjoy April Fools!

Succinct Summation of Week’s Events for 3.29.19

March 29, 2019 4:30pm by Barry Ritholtz

Succinct Summations for the week ending March 29th, 2019

Positives:

1. Mueller Report did not cause a rift in the space-time continuum;
2. New home sales rose 4.9% in February from 636k to 667k.
3. Exports rose 0.9% while imports fell 2.6% m/o/m bringing trade deficit to -51.1B.
4. Jobless claims fell 5k w/o/w from 216k to 211k beating expected 225k.
5. Same store sales rose 5.3% w/o/w, accelerating from previous 4.9% gain.
6. Home mortgage apps rose 6.0% w/o/w, above previous 0.3% rise.

Negatives:

1. Housing starts fell 8.7% m/o/m, from 1.273M to 1.162M
2. Pending home sales fell 1.0% down from previous 4.3% gain.
3. Chicago Fed National Activity Index fell 0.29% m/o/m, missing expected 0.10% rise.
4. Consumer confidence fell from 131.4 to 124.1 for the month of March.
5. Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index fell 6 points m/o/m from 16 to 10.
6. Chicago PMI fell from 64.7 to 58.7 in March.  

3-31-19 10 Sunday Reads - The Big Picture

3-31-19 The Funniest Vanity Plates Rejected by the California DMV

The DMV Reviewed Thousands of Hilarious Vanity Plate Applications Last Year. These Are Our Favorites

Inside the important job of keeping poop puns, dick jokes, and hate speech off California’s roadways

By

 Samuel Braslow -- Los Angeles Magazine

 -

March 28, 2019

When a DMV customer wanted to supposedly express his affection for his two children, Kyle and Sean, he applied for a vanity plate that read “KYLSEAN.” A sharp-eyed DMV staffer reviewing the proposed plate quickly raised an alarm. “Kill Sean!” he scrawled on the side of the application. Request denied.

KylSean was one of 20,000 requests for personalized plates that the California DMV received that month; nearly 250,000 were fielded by the department in 2018. Applicants are required to fill out a form listing the personalized plate they desire, along with a brief explanation as to why they want it. Whether or not the plate sees the light of day falls to a panel of four beleaguered bureaucrats, who weed through the slush pile and ferret out requests that are racist, tawdry, or otherwise offensive. It’s a tougher job than you might think. Ever since vanity plates were introduced in 1972, Californians have tried sneaking all manner of sly euphemisms and overt obscenities past the department’s guardians of civility.

Official DMV policy rejects “any personalized license plate configuration that [carries] connotations offensive to good taste and decency.” Broadly, this covers anything with sexual, racial, or profane meaning—even if it’s unintentional. When one customer requested a plate inscribed with his last name, Moorehed, reviewers denied it for its potential profanity. Although the customer’s last name really was Moorehead, they explained, “it looks like ‘more head,’ ” as in “a sexual reference.”

Helpful departmental guidelines also warn reviewers to watch out for words like “pink,” “monkey,” and “muffin”—all euphemisms for vagina—along with their phallic counterparts like “knackers,” “anaconda,” and “nards.” Any configuration with the word “hate” gets tossed as well. Porcine references like “pig,” “swine,” or even “oink” are also verboten because they’re deemed derogatory to police. More controversially, the guidelines instruct evaluators to pass on any plate with the word “Jew” in it—indicative of the word’s function as both an identifier and pejorative. (References to Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists are alright.)

There are exceptions, however. While “box” is generally rejected as a “vagina reference,” the DMV will allow it on a plate if the customer owns “a ‘Box’ type vehicle such as a Scion or a Porsche Boxster.” Similarly, only cars built in 1969 can use the number 69 on their plates.

As one of the most diverse states in the Union, California contains an expansive lexicon of offensive, lewd, and inappropriate words and cultural references. (Californians speak at least 220 languages—that’s 220 different ways to say “poop.”) But armed with Google Translate, Wikipedia, and Urban Dictionary, the DMV’s sentries gamely manage to weed out profanity in multiple languages, coded Nazi symbolism, and obscure internet acronyms.

Los Angeles obtained thousands of rejected applications after an official records act request. Here are a few of the more brazen, creative, and accidentally provocative plates, complete with the applicant’s explanation and the DMV’s deadpan response.

---