A day of reckoning

Yesterday I bought a van.  A minivan to be precise.  In fact, a beige minivan.

For some men, getting a minivan is looked upon as a moment of defeat -- as the moment when a man finally admits (for a decade or two at least) that he's no badass* whose lifestyle is befitted best by a Toyota MR2 or a t-topped Trans Am -- but for me it's quite the opposite. 

As a child, I didn't have posters of sports cars on my walls.  Instead I had ads for Nissan Quests, Dodge Caravans, and Chryslers Town and Country cut out of Popular Science.  After college, but before I started dating Baby, my career plan was to save up enough money to buy a solid diesel van (preferably a Sprinter) and outfit it to live in.  I was going to live outside a library at UC Berkeley.**  I have no clue what was supposed to happen after that, but during times of great stress I sometimes daydream*** about that life in the van.

So for me, this transition is not a defeat -- it's a victory.  After years of waiting and dreaming, I have finally attained van status.

Since we bought it used, I didn't really have a choice of colors, but I really wanted beige from the beginning and that's what we got.  Nothing says "I don't give a shit" like a beige minivan.  You could almost say that having a beige minivan is punk rock -- that is, if describing things as "punk rock" wasn't the least possible "punk rock" thing that could ever be done.  Baby and I thought about getting a diesel Suburban or Expedition and converting it to run on waste vegetable oil, but I decided that purchasing my fuel at a gas station was a compromise I am willing to make, when compared to hanging around behind Chinese restaurants with an industrial grease pump and particulate matter filter (read: crab wonton filter).

Now, in the complete opposite vein, I discovered that I have free access to an electronic vinyl decal cutter at work, so I'm kind of thinking about taking advantage of that little perk.  Any decal suggestions?  Somehow I feel that Boli may have something to offer here.  Flames are kind of played out, but a screaming falcon could be nice.

* "Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."  --Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash

** What do you mean "naive?"

*** And by this I mean I use Cylonic projection.