More is Less Sometimes

I have three blogs now. Journals, whatever. I'm kind of old school. I guess they are blogs because I use the software instead of making HTML and uploading it myself. I like the dating, labels, tools. Although sometimes I wish I'd chosen WordPress because they seem to have a little calendar widget that is cool. But I digress. And sometimes digressions make things lose their punch. More is less.

Anyway. Besides this rather specialized journal (wherein we examine what happens when we are thinking about something else) I have my classic blah, blah, blah this is my life in too many sentences: The Visible Woman. And my spousal unit really wanted to join the Photo-a-Day family. So we started Austin, Texas Daily Photo. Now we have sleepy conversations of a morning, as we did today.

"Do you want me to put up a picture or do you want to do it?"

He returned an uncaffeinated, puzzled look.

"Austin Daily Photo."

"Oh. I wanted to put up a picture of the Avenue B," says he. (The link is to his original discussion of that place on our old WEB page.

"OK," says I. And I wonder if I will post anything on another space.

So that's where the car comes in. I posted some art cars on the daily photo: here and here. Well one was a truck. Still. I was flipping through photos on the computer and came up with the one shown here. I could 'save' it and exhibit in on the Photo-a-Day site. I specifically set ground rules there that the photos didn't need to be particularly current. (Although I'd try to identify the when and where. This one is from December 2005. Downtown on Second Street.) But I decided to show it here. Because it so clearly illustrates my 'more is less' theme of the day. Notice they had to (or accidentally) painted over a bumper sticker. Change of Heart? Too exuberant with the paint? Notice that the license plate got a bit of paint. That might be a problem, too. See here.

Gee I seem to have come up with a bunch of links for this puppy. So if you aren't convinced that this post just has too many words in service of its thought (more or less) then you are now reeling from following all those links. Do you do that? Do you have ADD? Me, too.

We're All Criminals Down in Texas

I've heard that Texas was originally populated to some extent by citizens of more civilized states who went on the lam. Well, a few years back the Texas Legislature passed a law that you couldn't obscure your license plate in any way. Subject to a $200 fine or if you "knowingly" did it...a $2000 fine and six months in jail. We scoffed at the time although we understood that the bad guys might obscure significant parts of their plates while, you know, being bad and that this would of course be a law for them. However, some law enforcement type stopped a guy for having a frame on his plate that obscured the space shuttle, part of Texas and the all-important slogan: "The Lone Star State." The officer discovered the driver was intoxicated. In his case they tried to suppress evidence saying this law didn't intend to cover a frame that didn't obscure the license number or make it impossible to pick out the state and that therefore the stop wasn't for due cause. Now I'm thinking that the guy was weaving or driving too slow or fast or whatever. But they cited him on his plate.

So a judge had to rule and said the legislature was within its rights. I guess they just have to go out and see what we are already doing, declare it illegal and make criminals of us all. The funny part is that they've built all these toll roads and they've been pimping TxTags for easy (and cheaper) use of them. Of course, if the tag attached to your windshield doesn't work, they give you one that (you saw this coming didn't you?) obscures part of the license plate.