{"id":441,"date":"2008-03-04T02:52:43","date_gmt":"2008-03-04T06:52:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/?p=441"},"modified":"2013-08-02T17:21:15","modified_gmt":"2013-08-02T21:21:15","slug":"circle-stickers-on-cars-gettin-hip-with-iso","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/?p=441","title":{"rendered":"Circle stickers on cars &#8211; gettin&#8217; hip with ISO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometime after moving to the east coast, I started noticing a few cars driving around with these black and white oval-shaped stickers bearing a random 3-letter code. At first I figured they were some kind of east-coast thing, maybe parking stickers identifying membership in a particular school district, etc. I didn&#8217;t think much of it at first, but then they started to multiply. It wasn&#8217;t just a &#8220;thing&#8221;, it was a <i>phenomenon<\/i>, and I was living under a rock. Was it a new secret society? The Medford Mafia broadcasting their next hits? The <i>movement<\/i> appeared to be growing so fast, there were even parody stickers of these stickers popping up. This one says ((EARTH))&#8230;this one says ((BEER)). This one I ((CAN&#8217;T REPEAT IN POLITE COMPANY)). Today I turned to the <a href=\"http:\/\/google.com\">all-knowing one<\/a> for an answer. Sooo&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>In 1949, the Convention on Road Traffic (Geneva, 1949) came to be. Article 20 calls for &#8220;distinguishing signs of the place of registration&#8221; of vehicles. Yep, it&#8217;s a European thing. The letter code (not necessarily 3 letters) is an ISO country code (more info\/pointers\/rantables <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mtannoyances.com\/?p=190\">here<\/a>). In other words, these things Over There are about on par with an emissions sticker; in the US, they mainly represent American suburbanites trying to look Euro. A few municipalities (strangely, many in Connecticut) have adopted this trend wholesale, making up their own fake ISO &#8220;country codes&#8221; representing their town and handing them out. Naturally, a cottage industry has sprung up to generate <i>fake<\/i> fake country stickers; odes to sports teams and Jesus Fish and pictures of <strike>mooses<\/strike> <strike>meece<\/strike> <strike>moosii<\/strike> animals.<\/p>\n<p>This research jaunt is kind of a let-down. I want my secret societies, dammit! In the meantime, now I want an oval sticker of my own&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/images\/ovalfad.gif\"\/><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometime after moving to the east coast, I started noticing a few cars driving around with these black and white oval-shaped stickers bearing a random 3-letter code. At first I figured they were some kind of east-coast thing, maybe parking stickers identifying membership in a particular school district, etc. I didn&#8217;t think much of it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","iawp_total_views":8,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1042,"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions\/1042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}