I skipped work Friday and spent the weekend celebrating my birthday, which is why you haven't been deluged with my normal bevy of weekend posts. I promise to have something at least slightly interesting to post in the next couple of days.

A word of warning to the general public: if you are ever tempted to use plastic license plate screws, don't. If they come with your "My Other Car Has A Flux Capacitor" license plate frame or your "Zap-Em-Back RADAR Deflecting Anti Speed Trap and Waffle Maker" plate covers, throw them away. I went out last night to put on my totally rokken new plates and what should have been a five minute job turned into an hour-wasting, hand-cramping, skin-bruising, curse-inducing fiasco. The front plate was no problem, but the rear one had been previously affixed with the aforementioned plastic screws. I remember using them several years ago and thinking how wonderful they were. I'm not sure what about them was wonderful, but I seem to remember thinking that they were. Maybe I had left the car running and was suffering from acute hypoxia as a result of the carbon monoxide. Or maybe I'm just incredibly lame. Either way, I could not have been more wrong.

Within mere moments it became apparent that plastic screws don't hold up well under the atmospheric conditions present in Ohio. The combination of water, Winter salt, and blistering Summer suns had clearly taken a toll on the Piece-O-Crap™ brand screws. Normally, you insert a screwdriver into the head of the screw which you wish to either a) screw, or b) unscrew, and then turn your wrist a) clockwise, or b) counterclockwise, as the situation requires. Such motion is usually accompanied by the recipient of the screwdriver willfully obeying your desires and yielding to the inevitability of being screwed or unscrewed. The tiny little threaded peon can sometimes be reluctant to bow to its master's desires at first, but with a little coaxing will eventually give up and comply without further resistance. This is often referred to in inner carpentry circles as the old "insert, grunt, and spin". Unfortunately for me, plastic screws do not subscribe to any such standards of behavior.

I was instead greeted with a rounded-out head after turning the screwdriver once, the plastic simply bending and tearing the little slot until it was a gaping wound.

Chucking the screwdriver, ostensibly the optimal tool for the job of unscrewing something, I pulled out a pair of slip joint pliers and went to work. The immediate result was the stripping off of the heads to both screws. This was to be expected but meant that my already small gripping surface had been further reduced to the mere half centimeter shaft. That, coupled with the tight confines of my work area, meant I could only turn about twenty degrees before releasing my grip, reacquiring, and starting over again. Oh, and did I mention I was trying to do this in the dark?

The little plastic buggers proved to be as stubborn as they were flimsy. The heads, of course, crumbled under the tremendous force of my stick-like nerd arms. The shafts, however, were embedded in the car like they had been fixed with superglue and secured at the other end by a level 5 hold spell. Seriously, the damn things almost seemed sentient, exercising their will to exist in direct contrast to my desire for them to be wrenched forcibly from their holes.

Incidentally, I am well aware of the numerous instances of potential innuendo in this post. Feel free to make up your own jokes at home, I'm going to abstain just this once.

About an hour after engaging in this Sisyphean endeavor, I had finally removed the rear plate and screws completely. Of course I had no way to affix the new rear plate so my immediate thought was to just steal the screws from the front (the rear plate, in Ohio at least, is the more important one as it bears the registration tag). I set about this task only to discover that the size of the holes for the front plate and rear plate are, inexplicably, different. There must be separate teams of engineers working on the front and back halves of vehicles in Japan, cause there is no other explanation for why someone would manufacture a car that uses different size screws/bolts to secure their plates.

Fast forward about ten hours to this morning and my commute to work. I decided not to tempt fate too long and pulled in to my local Target to see if I could pick up the needed equipment. Yes, I know, an auto-parts store makes more sense but there were none on the way. I was surprised to find a box labeled "license fasteners" hung merrily on the shelves of Target's (thin) automotive section and promptly snatched them up, whistling a happy tune as I made my way to the exit. In the parking lot I pulled out my screwdriver and custom plate and prepared to settle this business once and for all. And wouldn't you know it, the damn screws didn't fit!

Boned, yet again, by the dastardly Metric System.

Tags: Annoyances, Humor, Life, Ramblings