by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Some laws and benevolent restrictions protect us from hurting each other. The rest of them exist just to be FCKN STPD.

Studies have shown that in North America, self-expression is considered one of the main keys to happiness. Everywhere but Quebec (and Newfoundland), governments have been encouraging the quest for self-expression by allowing motorists to arrange the combination of letters or numbers on their licence plate.

Vanity plates are harmless fun. They allow you to personalize your mass-produced vehicle and spice up the dull grind of life with a bit of perhaps slightly subversive cryptic quippery. The plates add levity to our streets and the chance to enjoy some light-hearted open-road parlour game of message-decoding before our too-short lives crash into the road barrier of eternity.

The plates break the presumed facelessness of strangers and force us to work our brains at red lights, trying to figure out such messages noted by platespotters as: 10SPRO, 12DRAG, 26E4U, 2BENVD, 2M8OS, 4ENJUNK, FQU2, 88KEYS (reputedly on Liberace's car), AN1 AN2 (on Lawrence Welk's).

It's also a win-win-win money-making makework bureaucratic project. Provinces make good moolah on it. Bureaucrats get a job from it, rubberstamping requests after checking to weed out offensive proposals. Consumers get a kick out of it. It's a party. Everybody is happy.

For the last few years I've been peppering provincial vehicle bureaucrats about why we alone (along with the Newfs) refuse to allow vanity plates. The closest they've come to an answer is that they don't believe that they could make money on it.

"URCRZY," I reply. According to 1998 stats, vanity plates are on about four per cent of U.S. vehicles. Virginia calculated that it cost them two bucks a year per plate. States in turn charged between $16 (Florida) to $67 (Nevada). So governments clearly made money off the gimmick and nobody got hurt, unless you believe that exposure to puns can lead to long-term psychological trauma.

So why do we ban this and so many other things in Quebec? Outlawed or well-nigh impossible activities here include the hosting of contests, the sport of falconry and parking parallel backwards on streets. Even though a bureaucrat told me recently that the province frequently compares our restrictions to other places, as they don't want to senselessly ban things considered acceptable elsewhere, our freedoms remain flaccid, in spite of a new premier.

Perhaps Quebec bans vanity plates for fear we'd inadequately salute our local culture. Two years ago China started allowing personalized plates but cancelled the program when they noticed people's widespread "unhealthy fixation" with pro-Western terms like "007" and "FBI."

Also, the plates force the paper pushers to think. In the States, motorists play a devious game trying to outclever bureaucrats to get mischievous plates. Washington state recently revoked a plate saying GOTMILF. Another in New Hampshire had his revoked when they figured out that H8DCYF criticized the Division for Children, Youth, and Families.

It's mental Viagra just imagining Quebec's bureaucrats going up against naughty dual-language proposals designed to outwit their censorship.

Apparently we're not the only place with humourless bureaucrats. Webmaster Joe from www.canplates.com writes me of his own rejection. "You remember Siegfried and Roy? And do you remember the incident where Roy got mauled by one of his white tigers onstage? The act has since been cancelled. At any rate, I wanted to commemorate the fact by getting a plate TIGR8ROY. West Virginia allows up to eight characters. Anyway, wouldn't you know it, the DMV wouldn't let me have that! Can you beat that! The bastards."

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Landlord adventures: Before buying rental property, consider one NDG owner celebrating five years as a small landlord. Three of his eight leases were eventually terminated due to non-payment. Tenant 4 paid just before eviction and left owing hundreds. Tenant 5 ran a massage operation from the unit. Tenant 6 was arrested after setting the building ablaze and seriously damaging it, thanks to a secret marijuana growing operation. The final two were apparently somewhat tolerable.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca