I got my newly redesigned South Dakota license plates recently and like a lot of people, I see a few problems. I don't know if they were intentional or accidental, but here's my problems.

1) My new plates misspelled Mississippi. The printing missed the second of s's. So it said Missiippi.

2) My new plates said Mississippi instead of South Dakota. I don't want to point fingers, but I think they should have the name of the state that issues the plate. And maybe writing the state name and license number with a Sharpie isn't the way to go.

3) The Mount Rushmore graphic is wrong. As all school children know, Mount Rushmore is Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln. But, the plates I got have George RR Martin, Jeff Gordon, a drawing of teddy bear on a Post-it and a penny.

Worse yet, it looks like somebody just printed some picture and taped them on a blank piece of cardboard.

4) My plates are made out of cardboard. I'm a huge fan of recycling and saving tax dollars when we can, but I really don't think the any money will get saved this way. It's great that they're reusing those old shipping boxes that were laying around, but as soon as it rains the plates will be ruined. Then I'll have to go back to that guy on the corner that sold me my plates and get some more.

5) I had to buy my plates from a guy on a corner. It's great that the state seems to be decentralizing it's administrative functions. Why go all the way to Canton when I live in Sioux Falls, right? But having a dude selling license plates on the corner may not be the best way to go about this.

I don't want to say he was homeless. I've know plenty of hippies in my time that looked (and smelled) homeless but were usually rich trust-fund kids trying to turn profession Frolf player. So, I don't mean to judge, but I'm pretty sure he was sans permanent residence.

Additionally, it seemed odd that he didn't have any way to process my payment and had to write down my credit card info on an old cigarette box. And it must be different in South Dakota, but growing up in Nebraska I never had to give my social security number and a singed blank check to get new plates.

I don't know if anyone else in South Dakota has run into these same problems as me, but watch out. This new license plates thing may be turning into a bit of a debacle. From there it's just a quick step to kerfuffle. Then it could easily evolve into quite the hubbub.

If we can put a man on Mars, we should be able to distribute our misspelled cardboard license plates in a orderly fashion through a team of smelly hippies. Just sayin'.

Keep up with Ben’s goofiness by bookmarking Ben’s blog and connecting on Twitter.


See Also:

More From KXRB