Kansas released their 1800-combination list of banned personalized license plates, and it makes for a surprisingly fascinating read. It sort of like what you might get if you locked your prudish grandmother in a room with Tosh.0 playing for 12 hours. Lots of indignant rage, but not a whole lot of understanding. How else can you explain a list that bans RAMJOB (both with and without a trailing space) but not RIMJOB, America's favorite slang for analingus?
The list bans all the usual suspects (SHIT, FUCK, 69, in all the possible spellings and permutations) but gets profoundly weird and specific as well. Some are genuinely gross things to be reminded of during the day, but, really, what are the chances someone actually wants a SMEGMA personalized plate? Who's looking at their pristine '94 Saturn and thinking "what's that cheeselike substance that forms inside foreskins? That's so me."
Anything that seems to even remind a driver that sex exists, no matter how obliquely seems to be banned. Even non-word inarticulate noises like OOOOHH and AAAAHH, and descriptions of inarticulate noises like GRUNT and SIGH. SIGH is banned? I'd love to meet the person who thinks a sigh is a revoltingly biological display unfit for civilized company. They'd die if they ever learned farts exist.
There's so many genuinely baffling ones. Like R. Yep, just R. Because, you know, that letter, looking like a B with its slutty legs open, is just wrong. And the fact that BADAZV6 is banned, but not BADAZV8. Maybe because, deep down, we all know you need at least eight cylinders to be truly BADAZ.
Also, the fact that KEESTER is banned seems just mean to the one 79-year old man with a lovingly restored Model A rumble-seat coupe who has got to be the only person in the world, let alone Kansas, who wants such a plate. KEESTER may be the most inoffensive word for not just the buttocks, but any body part. Duodenum sounds dirtier than that. So does armpit, eyeball, epiglottis.
Here's some other banned plates: SQUISH, SPOONER, WOMB, WOODPKR, GUNDAM, DESIRE, DO, APES, 51, TETANUS, WEIRDO, YEARNIN, and FOMOCO. Those are banned, yet somehow any plate referencing SCROTUMs are fine.
In fact, for all the insane vigilance of an 1800 word list to keep any offensive words out, I can still think of a bunch they missed right off the top of my disgusting head: SCROTUM, RIMJOB, TAINT, HOTCARL, FEL8R, FEL8EO, RUGMNCHR, and I'm going to stop there before I completely prove myself to be a revolting perv.
If you want to prove how revolting you are, pervwise, here's the full list.
Based on this list, you'd think Kansas drivers had thinner skin than the top of a pudding cup and were constantly on the lookout, reporting any remotely offensive combination of letters and numbers that dared to intrude in the driver's virginal eyeline. But that doesn't even seem to be the case. According to Donna Shelite, the Department of Revenue's director of vehicles, she's only received two complaints since she took the job in 2011.
So if it's not the general population, the mystery of who Kansas' Grand Dowager of Personalized Plate Propriety is remains unsolved. I just hope they're giving her her Alzheimer's meds, wherever they keep her.