My Wells Fargo Visa card expires this month, so it was no surprise to get a new one in the mail yesterday. What was surprising was that I'd been upgraded, and now warrant a Platinum Card.

Amusing to me is that my credit limit hasn't changed a cent, staying at a $3,000 max I haven't reached in the last two years. But now it's Platinum. It's pretty. This is now the card I'm proud to pull ot of my wallet when paying for dinner and trying to impress a date. After all, it's Platinum and it looks Platinum, and that says far more about my ability to be a family provider than if I opted for a translucent green card, which I can only guess is supposed to tacitly inform my dining partner that I'm looking to get married so that I can obtain citizenship.

Heck, my new credit card even has a Platinum Magnetic Stripe on the back, to impress others with my ability to induce ferromagnetism in otherwise nonferrous metals (not to mention making life difficult for people who can't tell where the stripe is, rendering near useless the semiotic drawing at ATMs showing which of the four orientations is the right one for swiping their card).

The funny part is that this is a credit card that was put on hold by Wells Fargo only last week because of suspicious activity. They sent me a nice letter letting me know that there was unusual activity on my card, and they did me the service of putting a hold on the card until I called them to go over the recent charges, item by item, to verify that they were all mine and authorized.

So I gave them a call and found out that the unusual activity was that, after six months of being overlooked in favor of my check card, I actually used it. I suppose to their fancy computers with their bayesian logic trees, that is unusual activity, and therefore suspicious enough to warrant shutting the card off, so that I don't do it again.

But now I have my fancy new Platinum card, lifting my spirits while padding my ass. I just hope all the honeys I try to impress with my ability to incur serious debt don't realize that every Wells Fargo customer is turning Platinum this year.

Shiny.