Got to learn to keep moving on

[austin_dern]

An exceedingly odd license plate frame I saw on campus last week read, ``My other car is an Enterprise Rent-A-Car.'' I don't know how to respond to that claim except to be baffled. It appears to be whimsy, along the lines of the ``My other car is a Tardis'' or the like, but who jokes about the fact they have rented a car? It seems to make sense if the car is owned by an Enterprise Rent-A-Car franchise, but then it's senseless to claim ``my other car'' is one. The person driving the car does not, and if the franchise owner -- who seems the only person who could sensibly call one ``my'' car -- has more than two cars the term ``other car'' isn't reasonable.

The only sense I can make of it is if the car is owned by someone who owns an Enterprise Rent-A-Car franchise to place on his personal, non-rentable, vehicle. In this case we're forced to suppose there are enough Enterprise Rent-A-Car franchise owners who want licence plates like this to get them made, and I can't make myself believe there are that many franchise owners who'd want one.

Yet the frame exists, and I must find a way to fit it into a sensible understanding of the world. If I had a cell phone I might have left a note on the windshield asking for an explanation.

Trivia: Sui Dynasty emperor Yang Di ordered the construction of a canal some 1,500 miles long, which was completed in six years. Source: Journey Into China, Kenneth C. Danforth, editor.

Currently Reading: The Best of C.M. Kornbluth, C. M. Kornbluth. Edited by Frederick Pohl.

Comments

[moonfires.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's a reference to their television ad campaign about how Enterprise is like having a second car, but just what you need for the moment.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I didn't know they had such an advertising campaign. I've been out of the country. Thank you.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

There probably aren't that many franchise owners who actually *want* such a thing, but such considerations seldom stop a company from making and distributing stuff like that. When I worked for Western Technologies, I'd get a constant stream of weird stuff from vendors, ranging from the useful and appreciated (a nice lined windbreaker which I still have) to the bizarre (an enormously oversized rubber advertising stamp and inkpad). Now that I think on it, those both came from the same company too... I'm guessing you saw the car of one of the few franchise owners who thought it was clever, and put it on his car.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

There is that runaway product marketing. My father consulted for a while with a plastics company, and they had their names on so many products you'd think they were a dot-com, and they gave them away in buckets. I've got four or five nice cloth laptop-cases like that, for example.

[chahala.livejournal.com]

I think it probable is in line with their adds of late. About my other car is an enterprize rent a car. The fellow probable got it free or something.

As for people that would put that on... it would be the same people that would put on a t-shirt with the nike symble on the front... or a jacket with the chevy thing... or... ect.

There is no accounting for taste.

Chahala

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I didn't know of their advertising campaign. I suppose if the frames were being given away for whatever at least some people would feel like putting them on, since they might as well use that frame as one they'd paid for.

[oliver-otter.livejournal.com]

It's funny. I saw one of those on the way home, and wondered about it too.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'm relieved I'm not the only one, then. Sometimes it really does feel like life is picking out bizarre things to show me, particularly.