This is personal.

There are, at last count, millions of cars on the road. Billions? How the heck is someone supposed to stand out? Snazzy paint job? Check. Rear spoiler? Double check. Rims and tires that cost more than the rest of the car combined? Got it. I mean, I 've seen it all. Seconds after turning sixteen, I proudly showed my mom all of the spoilers and sun shades and louvers I was willing to spend my own money on to turn her boring red 1978 Toyota Celica into a lean, mean, driving machine. I think it went something like this:

Mom: What do you want to do to my car?
16 yr. old GM: You mean our car?
Mom: Did you pay for it?
16 yr. old GM: I was only 15 when you bought it. Now I have a job and want to make up for it.
Mom: Well I won't be seen driving around looking like that!
16 yr. old GM: Like what?
Mom: Like some 16 year old from the ghetto!
16 yr. old GM: Mom the cars in the ghetto don't look this good.

And on it went. Suffice it to say, the Celica remained boring, and mom didn't have to look like a jackass driving her own car. But there is one dubious bit of personalizing done out there that sometimes makes you laugh, sometimes makes you angry, and sometimes makes you say WTF? I am talking about vanity license plates.

I used to have one, actually. Back in my young and stupid and playing ultimate frisbee all the time days, I thought the name of our beloved team, the Flying Spuds, should be immortalized on my 1986 Chevy Camaro. But Flying Spuds exceeds the 7 letter limit in Illinois, so I settled on FL SPUD 1. I got it. My friends got it. But everyone else asked me if I was a potato farmer from Florida. That's when I realized that I looked dumb out there on the roads, as no one in their right mind would ever believe there were potato farms in Florida.

Today, in a social experiment, kind of, I wrote down every personalized plate I saw. So in no particular order, they were: GUAPO, MY BENZ 1, M OR W, ARISTOS, JSCNU, ECRA 1, M 16, PHILOS 4, KINOLA 6, ATS I, WTSOX, AVERY 9, SANDIAS, DNITA 67, IM MD 3, REAL LS 1, GRR ARGH (I shit you not), BKM 89, OSCAR 79, J STEW 2, SIGNSN 3, INTRNT, and MY UHOH 1. Now taken as a whole, most of these fall into the category of huh? Obviously they are personal to that person, but I haven't a clue. A few are clear cut, like M 16. He also had some sort of gun sticker, and he had veterans plates. So yea, don't mess with that guy. And the MY BENZ 1. On a Mercedes. Really? Your flippin' car that says "Mercedes" everywhere, and has the little unmistakable Mercedes logos all over it? Thanks for clearing that up. You spend an extra $100 a year to tell us what you already spent $75,000 on: that you're loaded. One guy is a Chicago White Sox fan (figure it out). And one woman is always pissed off. When I passed GRR ARGH, I looked at her and she did look pissed.

But a few plates beg a few questions. Like the lady hunched over the steering wheel like a 90 year granny in a spankin' new Camaro. Guess which one...her plate read, MY UHOH 1. UHOH as in "Watch out road, here I come in this rocket ship with wheels and I really suck at driving?" Or UHOH as in "I'll be paying this car off for a decade?" Or what about the INTRNT guy? Are you telling us that A. you invented the internet or B. you use the internet? If it's A, then you are more full of shit than Al Gore. If it's B, then congratu-freakin-lations. Welcome to the real world Neo.

I can't end without mentioning the 3 most memorable plates I have ever seen. The first was 1. That's it, just the number 1. It was an old Checker Limo, the second in a 2 car motorcade, and as I passed, I saw then Governor Jim Thompson. "Kewl," I thought. The other was one that pissed me off a little. It read, U ENVY ME. Umm, I do? And who the f$%k are you? I looked over as I passed, and she was a hot blond with a smug look on her little face, and I thought, "What an egotistical thing to do." Should I cut her off, run her into the ditch, so her car catches on fire, and as I run up to the window as she reaches out of the burning auto crying for help I can say, "Now who envies who bitch?" Well, I didn't. I should have, but didn't. Then a few weeks went by and I went to a friends barbecue and guess what car was sitting in the driveway? Well it wasn't my friends car, but his next door neighbors. I asked him about it and he responded that yea, she basically walked around like her shit didn't stink. Now her shit may or may not have stunk, but I'm sure glad I didn't run her off the road.

And the third? This is no joke. A neighbor, whose name was Jay, gave his wife a loaded Cadillac Escalade, or Chevy Urbantank, or something ridiculous like that, and had put on vanity plates. She was Jay's girl, and he wanted the world to know it. Nothing wrong with that. Except, in the confines of the 7 letter limit, JAYS GIRL missed by one. Personally, I would have gone with JAYS GRL. Everyone would get it. But he opted for this: JZ GIRL. Um, when I read it, I see something totally else entirely. Like a girl who is in love with, hmmm how to put this delicately? In love with a certain male fluid that spurts out of the, um, well you get it. Now driving down the road, everyone doesn't look at her plates and know to whom she belongs, they look at her and think she is a porn star. And I never had the guts to say a word to her.

Don't let me down.

Huh? What was this person thinking? Ok, so they weren't. It never ceases to amaze the Guitarman that the little things he takes for granted, like common sense, are lost on a good percentage of the general public. Like not smoking pot in my car in front of a cops house, or not writing a book on your sexual exploits while being a high school coach of a girls sports team. Or even re-electing a politician while half the federal government is investigating every aspect of his life. Today kiddies is a special addition of 5 on 5, dedicated to stupid.

Up in flames: Juggling can be fun to watch. Especially when the said items being juggled are flaming. Ooooh!! Aaahhh! But here is word of advise to all would be flaming jugglers out there: move the can of fuel away from you before you practice your craft. Seems that was lost on one Aaron Rossetti as he promptly lost his flaming bowling pin to the picnic table where his open can of camping fuel was sitting, which of course was right next his props, which of course also burst into flame and melted into the pavement. Try using chain saws next time buddy, and we won't feel sorry for you because you were momentarily afflicted with stupid disease. You'll be dead.

Fido vs. Goliath: Take a quick look a this picture and look away.

Ok, what was the picture of? If you said a Starbucks sign like me, then you were fooled as I was. Look again. Yes Andrea McCarthy-Grzybek decided it was a clever idea to name her doggie daycare business as a take-off of the worlds largest barista shop. Not only does "Starbarks" invoke the name of the coffee megalith, but her sign looks just like a Starbucks sign, complete with the little stars, and of course the green logo. And of course Starbucks is suing, and of course McCarthy-Grzybek can't figure out why. I know why. Stupid covertly crept it's ugly little head into her brain and demanded to be heard. You don't steal one of the most recognizable logos from a giant corporation and walk off, leash in hand, into the sunset.

I'm really a good guy: That's what Bryan Craig wants you to believe. That's what 99% of his friends would say about him, he says. Well I want talk with the other 1%. He is the guy who was a high school girls varsity basketball coach, and student counselor, who thought it was a smart idea to write and publish his own book on female sexuality called "It's Her Fault." Where he talks about targeting women for sex with low self esteem. And the differences in the vaginas of women from different races. He is suing for being fired from his job where he was around young women all day, for writing a book on how to get into their pants. Says his right to free speech is being violated. Hey dumb ass, nobody is stomping on your right to talk about what a callous womanizing loser you are. They are stomping on your right to use a high school full of young woman as your personal grazing field.

Up in smoke: Now we all know being 18 goes hand in hand with being stupid. Sometimes. We often write off our own less than Freudian moments of clarity when we were teens as being young and stupid. But here's simple little hint for all the would be pot smokers out there: don't sit in your car in front of a cops house getting high. Just ask Maximilian G. Salling. Hint number one, pot is still illegal almost everywhere. Hint number two, cops generally will bust you for breaking the law. It's what they do.

Triple J: Now my regular reader of this blog can attest to the fact that yes, I do like to pick on certain people, and in this case, the less than honorable Jesse Jackson Jr. But putting him in the "stupid" column today is not what I am doing here. Yes, using campaign money to fly your concubine to Chicago is less than smart. Yes, thinking that no one would notice that you were trying to buy your way into the US senate ranks up there in the halls of stupidity. But not today. Today I am calling out people of Illinois's 2nd Congressional District. All of you. It seems that polls indicate a clear path to re-election for Triple J despite the above stated poor decisions. Not to mention being locked in your house and the Mayo Clinic with bi-polar depression for the last six months. He hasn't campaigned. He hasn't addressed the media once. He denies the sworn testimony of his fund-raiser that he offered Blago over a million bucks for the US senate seat. He cheated on his wife. And he used campaign funds on less than campaign matters. So, all of you in the Illinois's 2nd Congressional District, I have just one question for you. Are you stupid or what?

I have said it before, I will say it again, and I will put it on my tombstone. If you give people a chance to do something stupid, they will never let you down.

What's in a number anyway?

Numbers are fun. Age, after all, is just a number. Will it mean anything on The Guitarman's next birthday that the prefix of that number will jump from a 4 to a 5? Maybe only in my head. The big number that is being celebrated today in the paper is 7.8. That is the percentage of Americans still out of work. Not including of course those that have given up looking, tradesmen working 20 hour weeks instead of 40, stay at home moms who only do so because the food stamps they get allow them to eat for free on the governments dime, and those once proud salaried workers now making $10 an hour at Starbucks or Menards. But when you look at the number and not the facts, it's easier to swallow. But the number that has me all gaga today is 10,000.

That is supposedly the number of readers that decided they could waste 5 minutes of their day reading the rambling, narcissistic grandstanding that is passed off as prose on this page. Can I get a woot-woot? Clearly tooting my own horn. But what, if anything, does it really mean? Are they actually reading? Or just stumbling along in search engines for something else altogether?

Ever go looking for something on the internet? Of course you have. But usually you get 10 items that have nothing to do with what you are looking for for every one that is. Example? A piece I wrote a year and a half ago still gets regular hits. 'Wow, I must really have struck a chord that day,' I used to think. Until I looked closer and saw that all of the traffic came from google images. It was about life as a kid growing up in our neighborhood, and watching Saturday morning cartoons. And so I included a little picture of one of my favorite old cartoons, the Road Runner. So when it seemed that someone in Australia had an interest in the childhood of an average American suburbanite, it was actually some kid looking for an image of Wile E. Coyote.

The one article that has gotten the most hits of any though, was one about a study that suggested that the government should tackle the country's obesity problem by regulating sugar. Flashing back to my childhood was a bugs bunny cartoon where Bugs Bunny would always ask Pete Puma, "One lump or two?" in reference to the amount of sugar in his tea. And Pete would respond in that twangy southern drawl, "Oh three of four..." So of course I included a photo of Pete, and of course there are more people looking for images of old cartoons than there are curious readers who want the demented opinion of an obscure blogger from Illinois.

So like I said, a number is is just a number. You can skew it every which way but loose, look at it from different angles, and come up with any number of conclusions. So when the number of people completely looking for something else readers in my little corner of heaven topped the big 10,000 mark, I was momentarily proud of actually accomplishing something. Until the moment had passed, and I looked behind the number, and realized it was probably closer to old Pete's proclamation. So if someone ever asks me how many readers I have had, I will respond with the same twangy southern drawl, "Oh, three or four."