We joked about it for months. Open season on riceboys. If we wanted to find a ricer, we knew where to look: no further than opening night of "2 Fast 2 Furious." It stood to reason that the kind of person who would see that movie on opening night would also be the kind of person who got their jollies showing off their car in the parking lot for everyone else who had nothing better to do than to obsess over the vehiculage of others. In other words, I could get all the laughs and snaps I wanted, without even having to buy a movie ticket.

Atlanta. Three-point-five hours of driving to get to the geek farm, where newborn goats were cuddled and cooed over, and dragon*con staff meeting was attended.

It rained. Of course.
I managed to get lost in Atlanta. Of course.

When we pulled up at the restaurant to meet the crew for Sean's dinner, everyone who was already there ran toward my car. "PLEASE tell us you brought your camera. We all forgot ours. You've GOT to see this Saturn."

"Uh-oh," I said. "Where's the car?" They pointed me off to the left. Before I even saw the car, I saw the glow.Glow is a bad sign. It's the ricer equivalent of a cancer symptom. The appearance of a glow indicates severe ricer issues - ones that, as we well know, can only be dealt with by liberal usage of a digital camera.

Flickr

There are two possibilities for this vehicle.

Possibility #1: Professional job.
Implication #1: Money was spent.
Implication #2: Someone actually gets paid to do this sort of thing.

Possibility #2: Homegrown.
Implication #1: Too cheap to pay for real paintjob (come to think of it, this falls under Possibility #1 as well)
Implication #2: Friends stood by and let this happen.

Sir:

Having wandered over to the Beast Buy parking lot from the restaurant across the street, we were alarmed to notice the existence of your car, which is plainly against the laws of Universe 57(b), Nebula 86XVI (records of which are available at various government agencies temporarily relocated to Omicron Persei 8 due to high consumer demand).

When Viet Huong opened in Huntsville, we celebrated: at last, Eastern food that wasn't a) Thai or b) buffet Chinese (which, we might add, has the approximate China Content of a porcelain teacup made in Mexico). Therefore, we visited, and we ate.

We weren't the only ones. The ricers showed up too, as they are wont to do, driving around and doing their business and unwittingly provoking howls of laughter among the rest of us who have far better things to spend our money on.