FUF #7

Good morning, everyone. It's Friday, and here's some FU for thought:

First off, let's get to the Monday's Guess the Fakey answers. We succeeded in getting to double-digit comments, but it was actually a little bittersweet. Sacky Christi accused me of making up most of the names, including "Doctor Franken" for Teri Garr. Well, Christi, I'm ashamed of you for jumping to such a heinous conclusion. Ms. Garr was in fact in "Young Frankenstein" in 1974 as well as "Doctor Franken" in 1980. I didn't change any of the names, with one minor exception. Dom DeLuise's "The Silence of the Hams" was an alternate title for a film primarily called "Il Silenzio dei Prosciutti." Without further ado, here are the fakeys:

Teri Garr: The Heaviest Feather
Dom DeLuise: To Eat His Own
Robert Loggia: Gun! Shoot! Run! Die!

So "Charlie Horse Music Pizza," "The Ninth Configuration," and "Won Ton Ton, The Dog Who Saved Hollywood" are all real titles. No one guessed more than one correctly, so I consider that a victory for me. I'll get you back for your attempted libel, Sacky Christi, just you wait.

Car Watch!
Before I get to stickers, plates, and frames, I have a little story. I was driving to work yesterday, and some dude totally cut me off out of nowhere. I started to get angry at him, then saw the Lakers license plate frame and let it go. It all happened without any thought, so I must be a true fan to let egregious driving errors slide like that.

Saw a license plate frame the other day that made me laugh: Don't Hate Me...Because I'm LUSCIOUS! Yep, with the all-caps and everything. When I passed her, I was obligated to look at the driver, but that just confused me. I had thought "LUSCIOUS" and "even mildly attractive" would go together, but not in this case. I don't hate her, but I don't not hate her because of her lusciousness. (Go ahead and diagram that sentence, Mrs. Dunlop.)

I saw a nice twist on a bumper sticker that is worthy of mentioning. A pickup truck with "Will Fish for Food" on it. I believe he will. It's not often I smile from a play on a homeless person's sign, but this did it.

Rockabye wrote in after seeing a plate that said "1FRKY(heart symbol)R." More power to you man, but is that really the only thing you want other drivers to know about you? The answer has to be "Yes!" right?

Next, I saw this sign at the Coffee Bean near my work and had to take a picture of it:

I take back my earlier challenge and re-issue it: Diagram that sentence, Mrs. Dunlop!

I thought of something while I was writing about working at the pizza place, but couldn't find where to slip it in, so it goes in my FUF piece: I said for a few years that I wanted to some day open a pizza place just so I could call it, "Pete's-a-Pizza" with the slogan, "We Toss 'Em, They're Awesome." I never really intended on doing it, but it was sitting there, ready to be used should a road take me there. Then one day years ago, in the middle of nowhere on some road trip, I see a pizza place using that slogan in big letters on their neon sign. I really thought that one would be mine until I did something with it, but I should've listened to Darwin and used it or suffer the consequences. That's not quite as catchy, is it?

Two last things: One, my co-worker's parents' dog is at a kennel while they're on vacation, and it's called "Barkingham Palace." I love it. Totally warrants a mention in my book. Or my blog. Yeah, probably my blog. I don't have a book. Maybe I can turn these posts into a book though, and then I'll be a liar. A retroactive liar, but a liar nonetheless.

Sacky Christi sent my lonely inbox an email with some anagrams of her name. She listed some with her full name and some with just her nickname and no middle name. With the middle name, I think the best one was "Unethical heresy in hatred." Without her middle name, I think "Chesty Hitler Hair" was the best, although I'd probably change it to "Hitler-y Chest Hair."

Then she said something very interesting: "Never gonna give up the middle name." She hadn't written it in the email, but I take that as a challenge. Excuse me for a moment as I systematically cross off the letters from her first and last name...Well, I'm not sure if "Christi" is short for "Christine" or "Christina." I chose the former, leaving me with just a few lettes. To me, the answer is clear, but I won't post it here because no one wants to incur the wrath of Sacky Christi.

Still, let that be a lesson to all of you - if you call me a liar, I may try to find out your middle name. I know that's harsh, but hopefully it acts as a deterrent.

Have a fantabulous weekend, gentle readers. If you enjoyed the Guess the Fakey game, please either email ptklein@gmail.com or comment somewhere so I know if I should do more of those. Thanks as always for reading.

Caught in pantries

Ah, the wonderful world of teenage jobs. I had just come off my two and a half year stint at the pizza place, and with summer starting, it was time to get myself out there. I dropped off applications at a few places, but almost all of them were in the fruitless "we're not really looking for anyone right now but why don't you fill out an application just in case" category. That's a long category name, so you can imagine my frustration.

Then I saw a grand opening of a new salad place very close to home. I went in, and the owner/manager Mitch gave me the long-category response. Still, I turned it in because there was really no harm in that. He said he'd call me either way the next day, but when he didn't, I stopped by the following day to check in. Persistent, eh?

He didn't seem to remember me at all, which was a little troubling. However, he did seem much more interested in me this time. He led me into his back office and found my application amongst a sizeable snack. He took a pen out and started quickly looking over it. He perked up a little and asked, "So you worked at an Italian restaurant." "Yes sir," I said, "for over two years." "Did you make any salads there?" That was a trickier question than he probably imagined. Honestly, yes, I made salads, but they were salads a 3 year-old or even a seeing eye dog could make. Grab lettuce with the tongs, a few croutons, two tomato slices, and some of either the Italian or Creamy Italian dressing. See what I mean? "Well, yeah, I made some salads," I said. "Great!" he responded, drawing a big circle around my name on the application. "You're our new Head Pantry Chef!"

I didn't know what to make of that. On one hand, I figured, "Hey, that's cool. I got a job, and I'm a quick learner so it won't be long til I have a good grasp of my duties." On the other hand, I thought, "What the hell is a Head Pantry Chef?" He put me down for a 40-hour week starting the next day, gave me two shirts and a hat, and said he'd see me tomorrow. I walked back to my car, alternating between "Alright!" and "Oh shit!" What had I just gotten myself into?

I arrived the next morning, and a kid name Michael from my high school was working behind the counter. We greeted each other, but I wasn't happy to see him there. The guy was a total dick, and that's not exactly what I look for in co-workers. I saw Mitch, and he gave me an apron and walked me through the restaurant. Then he took me back up front to show me where I was going to be stationed. Michael and a few others were up at the counter, taking orders and helping people in a similar fashion to my previous job. "You'll be right here," Mitch said. But when I looked at where he was pointing, it wasn't with Michael and the others. It was with my back to all of them.

Basically, this is what my job entailed: Don't look at the customers. The other employees will put tickets up in front of you. Make the orders, announce they're ready, and keep moving. When you're out of the sandwich meat, cut some more on this heavy duty slicer. Be fast, good, and don't make a mess.

In other words, this position wanted me to use every skill I'd never managed to obtain. I have a lot of talents for working with the public. I can be personable, genuine, and in touch with their needs. In fact, I enjoy that quite a bit. Being a chef, on the other hand, is not something I knew how to do and never really claimed to either. And yet, I was thrust into it.

I found out rather quickly a little more about my hiring: the Head Pantry Chef from the first week of the restaurant's existence had just quit right before I walked in the door. Mitch probably knew he was stretching it with me, but he had no idea.

My first orders were for some big gourmet salads that weren't too difficult, but I just needed some extra direction. I didn't know how many bacon bits or how much bleu cheese was supposed to go into them, so I guessed if no one was around to help. The sandwiches were more difficult, because a lot of them had avocado on them. I'd never eaten avocado and had never even touched one before, so being told to put some of that thing on a sandwich was mind-boggling. Mitch came over, opened one expertly with a knife, cut some out, slapped it on the sandwich, and looked at me like I was an idiot.

I found myself falling behind right away, and I hated that feeling. I accidentally made food "for here" instead of "to go" for a customer, and that set me back another minute. People were coming over to lend me a hand though (not Michael), so I eventually got through the day. When we closed, I had to clean everything up and then go clean all of the dishes in the back before heading home. When I thought I was done, Mitch did a final walk through. He looked at the big blade of the meat slicer. "Michael, come over here," he said. "Does this look clean to you?" "No sir," Michael answered in full-on Eddie Haskell mode, "I would've done a much better job on that." I glared at him, unable to believe he so readily threw me under the bus. Honestly, it could've been cleaner and I admit that, but that would've required me to make bigger and more forceful motions on the giant blade.

In any case, things only got slightly better over the next few days. It just wasn't my thing, despite the effort I was putting forth. I wasn't a chef, and I certainly wasn't the right guy for this particular job. I didn't know how this was all going to play out though. I wasn't going to quit, because as inadequate as I was, they needed me in that role. Or so I thought.

Then the old pantry chef returned. Apparently his new job didn't work out, and Mitch very excitedly welcomed him back with open arms. When the schedule for the next week was put up, where I had 40 hours previously, I now had...3. I went over to Mitch's office. "Hi Mitch," I said, "I noticed that my hours were cut from 40 to 3. Isn't there any more you can give me?" He said that with the other guy back, they really didn't need me in that role anymore, so no, 3 was about it. I said that I was looking for more than that, so I didn't know if I could stay working there without a greater workload. "Okay, no problem, I understand. It's been nice having you with us," he said, way too cheerfully. I thanked him and walked out, still trying to understand what just happened.

So that was my entire time at the salad place. It was brief, overwhelming, and weird. I came in and got my paycheck a few days later, and then set out again to find summer employment. I don't think I ever put that job on my resume though. I kept my shirt from there and actually wore it quite a bit during my freshman year of college because it was "cool." So it wasn't a total loss.

I haven't eaten there since my brief tenure there, and it's been about 13 years. So I think it's time. With my wife out of town, I imagine I'll be stopping there on my way home sometime soon - maybe even tomorrow. I'll stick with a big salad; I don't want anything that's touched that nasty meat slicer. They really should clean that better. Much, much better.

Have a good, gentle readers, and we'll meet back here for a Follow Up Friday tomorrow. ptklein@gmail.com is just an email address, sitting in front of a reader, asking you to use it. Isn't that touching?

Working boy

Yesterday, I mentioned my job as a teen at the Italian restaurant in the mall. I thought I'd dive a little more into that experience today. The restaurant was owned by a family friend, so when I went in to "interview," I knew it was really just a formality. I met with the manager, a nice woman named Sandy, and we chatted for a bit. Then she needed an i.d. of some sort from me for the official paperwork. Since I was 14, the best I had was my junior high school id, so I gave it to her. We talked a little longer, and then she said with a confused look on her face, "So, your name is Gaspar?" It took me a minute to realize what happened, but apparently she looked at the top of the Gaspar de Portola Junior High card instead of where my name was printed. I nicely corrected her, and she said, "Oh, that makes much more sense." I realize that's not a classic story, but ask yourselves, how many times have you been mistakenly called Gaspar? That's what I thought.

Anyway, I worked there from age 14 until I was about 16 and a half, which was an interesting timeframe for me developmentally. I went from being a kid being dropped off by his mom to an adolescent driving himself and knowing everything. The job itself was pretty good to me. Since I was a kid, I didn't have the most typical work hours. During the summers and breaks, I worked 3 or 4 days a week. During the school year, they accommodated me by having me work Friday nights and all of Sundays. Not a bad gig, right?

Since it was cafeteria style, I didn't have to wait tables and put up with the crap that goes along with that. I made pizzas, cooked them in the big oven, and served people as they entered the line. Almost every interaction consisted of me serving them by cutting a slice of pizza, putting it on a tray, and handing it to them. I bussed tables, and when closing up, did the typical polishing and vacuuming you might expect. Not exactly rocket science, but it could get pretty crazy during the rushes.

Then one day, I was told that another pizza place bought the restaurant. When asked what that meant for my job, I learned that the new place was keeping all of us on. We had to meet with the new manager to talk about schedules and learn the new business, but it wasn't supposed to be an interview per se. So I went in and met Doug, the new manager. He asked about my schedule, I told him, and he didn't have a problem with it.

I had my first day of work there about two weeks later after they did some renovations. I was mainly behind the scenes, watching how some people they brought in were doing everything and taking mental notes. I was there for 8 hours, and I felt confident that I grasped enough to start working there regularly. When I was leaving, I asked Doug if the schedule was ready. "Not yet," he said tersely, "call me tomorrow and I'll have it done." Like the dutiful young man I was, I called the next day and left a message for him with another person. I called again the next day, but he wasn't there either. The next day, I tried again. "Hello, may I speak to Doug please?" "Sure, hold on," the woman on the other end of the line said. "Finally," I thought, because I really wanted to get back to work so I could get comfortable there before the approaching summer. The woman returned and asked, "Who's calling please?" "This is Peter Klein," I replied. "Hold on again," she said. I heard her cover the phone with her hand to tell him it was me, and then she returned a moment later, claiming "Doug just stepped out. Can he call you back?"

He didn't. I tried the next day to no avail. The next day, an old co-worker answered the phone. "I'm just trying to get the work schedule," I said. "It's been up here all week," he told me, "but I don't see you anywhere on it." I asked to speak to Doug, and he said that Doug asked if he could call me back. That day passed too, and so I called one more time. (You can't spell 'persistent' without Peter, after all.) This time, I recognized that voice that answered as Doug's. "Hi Doug, this is Peter Klein. I've been trying to get a hold of you all week to find out my work schedule." "Oh yeah, that's not completed yet," he lied. "Call back tomorrow," he said and hung up immediately.

Being mildly intelligent, I knew something was going on. Still, I follow orders well, so I called back the next day and caught Doug again. "Let me ask you something, Peter," he started. "What would you like your schedule to be during the school year?" "Well, as we discussed before, I'd like to work Friday nights and Sundays during the year as I have been." He jumped in with, "That's not too good for me, Peter. That's only two days out of the seven. How do you expect to keep a job like that?" I was completely taken aback, but managed to say, "Well, I can work five days a week during the summer, but that's how my schedule's been for the past two and a half years." "Yeah, that's not too good for me," he repeated. "I'm sorry, but I don't have a job for you." Click. The bastard hung up on me.

"Uh, Mom," I said, walking into the kitchen. "Guess what just happened." I told her the whole story, and she said, "Well you call him right back and make sure he's sending you a check for the day you worked there." She had a good point. As much as I hated confrontation, I built up my fake confidence, picked up the phone and redialed the restaurant's phone number. Doug answered again. "Hi Doug, Peter Klein again. I just wanted to make sure you were mailing out my check for the day I worked there." Very sternly, he responded, "I don't have any of those figures around. What do you want, like ten bucks?" "No," I said, with a very un-Teen-Peter-like resolve, "I worked there for 8 hours making $5.25 an hour." "Well, I don't have the books ready so you'll have to wait." Click. Bastard did it again.

I went back in and told my mom. She called my dad on his car-phone (yeah, this was a while ago), and he called Doug. When my dad called us back, he said that Doug would have the check ready the next day for us to pick up. My mom went the next day and got my check while I was at school, and I can imagine the glare Doug was on the receiving end of. My parents are both very nice people, but don't fuck with their kids. I'm not saying they'll cut you, but I'm not exactly saying they won't, if you know what I mean.

So it was a rather unceremonious end to my first job, and the way that era ended made me sad. My friend Jon loved it though, and would bust out, "That's not too good for me, Peter" at every opportunity. He can never remember Doug's name, but he has that line down pat. The job set me up for my next foray in the restaurant business though, and I'll write all about that tomorrow.

Have a good day, gentle readers, and I still have plenty of good spots available in this week's Follow Up Friday, so email ptklein@gmail.com ...if you dare. Bwa ha ha.

Can't budget an inch

As I've mentioned several times so far in this space, I'm a big fan of playing fantasy sports with my friends. (Non sports fans, please stick with me on this for a little bit. I'm just starting with sports here before moving on, so there's no need to turn the e-page.) I participate in baseball and basketball leagues every year, as well as a March Madness bracket game that's currently kicking my ass. For baseball this season, we decided to change things up. Instead of each team taking turns to select a player, we switched to an auction format instead.

As you might imagine, that means that players go to the highest bidder. Every team starts with the same amount of money, and at the end, everyone needs to have 23 players on the roster. I was very concerned about this because budgeting my money hasn't always been my strongest suit. In fact, as a kid, it may have been one of my worst skills.

I got a job at a restaurant in a mall the day I turned 14 and was legally able to get a work permit. In hindsight, I'm very thankful that my parents put me in that position because I think it instilled a work ethic early on. At the time though, I was thankful for a different reason: spending money. I was putting most of each check away in savings, and since I was making a whopping $4.25 an hour for the first six months, that didn't leave me with too much in my wallet. Therefore, I had to spend wisely, right? Well, that didn't exactly happen. Right across the way in the mall was a Sam Goody music store. I spent my 15 minute breaks there and sometimes a lot of my half hour lunches as well. Inevitably, I would walk out with a cassette single almost every single time. I remember talking myself into buying some of them: "Yeah, that's a pretty good song I guess. Maybe the B-side's really good. It's only a few bucks, and maybe they'll become my favorite band." This happened a lot, and so I ended up spending my money while I was making it.

I didn't get much better in high school. One would think that by bringing a lunch every day, I wouldn't have the need to spend money on anything more than possibly a snack. Yet for almost all of my sophomore and junior year, I ate my lunch at "Nutrition" and then bought something for Lunch 2: The Sequel. There was a pizza cart designed to increase body fat and acne percentages on campus. A mini pizza was $2, and Dusty and I got one practically every day. I know that's not a huge expense, but it certainly added up. I should've pointed out to my mom that I was a growing teenage boy and found that I needed more food each day, but instead I spent money because I had it. Things only got worse senior year when we could leave campus, because Lunch 2: The Sequel became much more costly at places like You're the Boss. Daily $5.00 sandwiches really added up, but the money kept burning a hole in my pocket.

I eventually got better at budgeting on my own and a hell of a lot better with my wife's influence. She stops me from getting every dog toy I see for Hallie, because the bucket o' toys is already more than full. Still though, my parents think of me as someone who spends money as soon as he has it, and it's all because of one story from my youth that I can't outrun.

I was probably in the 12-14 age range when I went to Disneyland with a group of friends. It's an all-day event, so my parents gave me some money to cover lunch and dinner. Things are really expensive there too (and I'm sure they've gotten much worse since my last trip), so they gave me around $20 for the day. We got there and began walking around through the candy shop before we got to any of the rides. I bought a little bag of candy that didn't break the bank and kept moving on. Then we got to the magic shop. We all looked around, arguing over which masks were the coolest, etc. And then I saw it: the fake plaster cast. Shaped like a C, if you put it on and kept your arm against your stomach, it looked pretty real. So I bought it with almost every last cent I had.

There were two main problems with that decision. First, it was still 8:00am and I didn't have enough money for lunch and dinner. Second, I didn't think about the fact that I'd have to carry it around with me all day. It all worked out ok, as I was able to borrow money from my friends so I didn't die of starvation. Also, it got me and a friend to the front of a line because I was "injured." However, it's the quintessential example of my horrible budgeting sense as a kid, and my parents still bust it out from time to time. "That's great about your raise at work - are you gonna get another fake plaster cast?" (It's always "fake plaster cast" too, never just "fake cast" for some reason. And every time I think of it, I get "Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead in my song. I thought you'd like to know that.)

In any case, I was very nervous about spending all of my allotted fantasy dollars on one great player and then having to pick up horrible guys to fill out the roster. "Be patient," I kept telling myself, "let everyone else spend their money and there will still be good players available." Sure enough, I spent a good amount on one guy early on, but then I exercised the proper restraint. In the end, I actually had $1 left over even. I was as surprised as anyone. Today's lesson, gentle readers, is that people can change their tendencies over time. Especially if they keep telling themselves, "There's no reason to download that song. There's no reason to download that song. Close the application and back away."

Have a great day, and remember to email ptklein@gmail.com with things for future posts or Follow Up Fridays. The vehicle report is currently empty, and frankly, that shit ain't right.

It's game time!

Bold Prediction Time! Gentle readers, together we are going to make UOPTA history here today. This is hands-down the most interactive post yet, and we're going to break the comment barrier. In 81 previous posts, I've never received more than 7 comments on one. In fact, the two times that there were 7, only 5 were from people not named Peter Klein. Today though, that all changes. Buckle up, and then get ready to type.

By now, you've most likely come to realize that I do strange things with my group of friends. Often they are born from the unpleasant marriage of overactive imaginations and complete boredom. Sometimes that marriage doesn't produce the best offspring. For example, my fifth period class in 9th grade was a very boring algebra class in which the teacher repeated everything several times. Dusty had a different boring class at the same time, so we would write each other notes and then hand them to each other in the hall on the way to sixth period. I got in the habit of drawing a comic for him every day. Being a young teen boy, I made a superhero named Sphincter Man, the Contracting Muscle of Justice. He battled different venereal diseases and occasionally people we knew. With his body completely covered by sphincters, he could "swallow" bullets and then "spit" them back out at bad guys. What made it all worse (or better) was the fact that I'm horribly inept at drawing. So as you can see, boredom isn't always a good thing for my mind.

A few years back though, Dusty and I were again in that situation frequently, so we invented a game via email. This time, I think we actually did quite well. It's name: Guess the Fakey. It's very simple. One of us picks an actor or actress, then emails the other a list of movies that the person has been in. However, one of the titles is made up. It's the other person's job to guess which one without cheating. We had a great time with this, and I must say we got pretty good at coming up with the fake names after a while. It's been years since either of us has sent a challenge to the other (it's his turn, by the way), so I thought I'd introduce the game to my gentle readers.

For each of the three actors below, there are 10 real movie titles and one fake one. I limited it to ten, but there were plenty more that could've been included as well. Here is your mission: read through the list, then post a comment with your three guesses. As far as breaking records goes, that's not too bad at all, right? Here we go!

Teri Garr

A Taste of Jupiter
Life Without Dick
Save the Rabbits
Won Ton Ton, The Dog Who Saved Hollywood
The Whole Shebang
Honky Tonk Freeway
Doctor Franken
The Heaviest Feather
Kabluey
Half a Dozen Babies
Aliens for Breakfast


Dom DeLuise

Bongee Bear and the Kingdom of Rhythm
To Eat His Own
The Charlie Horse Music Pizza
The Brainiacs.com
An All Dogs Christmas Carol
Shari’s Passover Surprise
Wholly Moses!
The Silence of the Hams
Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?
Only with Married Men
Almost Pregnant


Robert Loggia

White Mile
Cop Hater
Elfego Baca: Six Gun Law
The Ninth Configuration
Flatfoot in Egypt
S.O.B.
The Ferret
Gaby: A True Story
Lifepod
Joe Torre: Curveballs Along the Way
Gun! Shoot! Run! Die!

Now comment away, gentle readers. Let's see if we can get this bad boy up to double digits. It gets tough to find people who have been in a lot of obscure movies, but it's a fun challenge to have. Who knows, if you like this feature, maybe it can become a regular thing. (I almost wrote "thang" there for some reason, and I couldn't tell you why.) I'll never know unless you post a comment though, and I hate being uninformed.

Have a good day, and as always, please send any thoughts, suggestions, questions, irritations, or observations to ptklein@gmail.com. Oh, and I must warn you ahead of time: My lovely wife left on Saturday to go out of town for work and a mini vacation. She's a wonderful filter for my ideas and has a good sense of what is and isn't appropriate for me to share. I don't know what I'm writing about for the next week plus, but if I cross the line at all, it's totally her fault. I'm glad you see it that way too.

**I will post a comment with the correct answers tomorrow morning, so be sure to check back**

EDIT: On second thought, I'm going to wait until the end of the week to post the answers. I want to allow enough time to get the guesses up before the grand reveal.

FUF #6

It's Friday, and it's time for McFUF to take a write out of Klein. Hmm, not doing it for you? If no one is reading, Mr. T pities the FU! Nevermind. I'm missing my pun gene today.

As always, let's check in with the vehicle report:

Sacky Christi was sitting at a stop light behind a CHP motorcycle. On the license plate frame, it read: "Relax...I could be behind you." Awesome. Thanks for sending that in, my NorCal homey.
Rockabye wrote in after seeing this bumper sticker: "Cashew Kid rides again!" Thank God, too, because I was getting very concerned about how long he'd been idle. It's cool to have a nickname, I guess, but I think I'd rather just go by my name than a diminutive nut. Rockabye also sent me a plate that said, "IDNTKNW," but I can't figure out what that's short for.

And then there's me. I was in Marina Del Rey, and a big harbor patrol vehicle was just ahead of me. In big letters on a plus-sized bumper sticker, it said, "Don't Abandon Your Baby." Please don't get me wrong, I'm 100% against people abandoning babies. However, I'm guessing that this person is preaching to the choir here. Are they hoping to catch that one person in his or her car who happens to be debating whether or not leaving a baby somewhere is the right choice? "You know, here I was driving my baby somewhere to leave her unannounced, but the harbor patrol really swayed me." I just don't see it. Again, I don't want abandoned babies either, but this strikes me as similar to a bumper sticker that announces, "Don't Put Arsenic in Your Boss's Coffee." You know, just in case you were planning on doing that this morning.

Also, I was behind an older man in a car with two things that may not have been noteworthy enough separately, but together they made me want to share. First, a license plate frame that read, "Saw It, Wanted It...Threw a Fit, Got It." That doesn't scream "older man" to me. Second, a bumper sticker that read, "Happiness is Being Married to a Dutchman!" See what I'm talking about? Somebody out there threw a fit to get a Dutchman, and now she's finally happy.

Moving on now, I wanted to write a little more about my experience as Charlie Brown in first grade. At one point in our rehearsals, my teacher instructed me to make a "disgusted face." Being in first grade though, my vocabulary wasn't quite at the same level it is now. Therefore, I thought she told me to make a "disgusting face." So there I was, throwing my hat down on the stage, making the most disgusting face I could to show my unhappiness with Snoopy. Maybe it wasn't what the teacher intended, but she never corrected me so I kept doing it. Naturally, my whole family makes the "disgusting face" from time to time. They think it's funny that I misinterpreted the teacher's direction, but I maintain that she should never have used a big word that sounded so similar to something I'd already mastered.

A couple of days ago, I wrote about how my name is in certain words (perfect, persistent, etc.). I forgot to mention that my brother Kevin can find all the letters of his first and last name in the word Kelvin. It's not often he gets to refer to absolute zero on the Kelvin scale of temperature, but there is a street named Kelvin pretty close to my house, so I think of that fairly regularly. Here are other lines I expect to hear those close to me use at some point:

My wife: Yes, I would like for you to pay me back for all of my meals at the conference. After all, you can't spell "reimbursable" without Amber.

My dad: Of course they enjoyed my speech in there; you can't spell "applause" without Paul.

My mom: Hold your horses, it'll happen at some point. You can't spell "eventually" without Elayne.

My friend: That's very flattering that you want me in your magazine. I've been told that you can't spell "studly" without Dusty.

And so it goes. "Lisa" and "sail" are anagrams of each other, I learned. This whole time, I thought the only cool thing about her name was that it looks like USA when written closely in all caps. Man was I wrong.

I told you all my favorite famous anagram, but there are more out there that always make me chuckle. Here are the best of the best (after Spiro "Grow a Penis" Agnew), in my opinion:

Ronald Wilson Reagan = Insane Anglo Warlord
Clint Eastwood = Old West Action
William Shakespeare = I'll Make a Wise Phrase
Monica Lewinsky = Nice Silky Woman
George Bush = He Bugs Gore

My dad posted a comment saying that he downloaded a trial version from www.anagramgenius.com, and I followed in his footsteps. It turns out that I'm not only an "Ink Dotted Leper," but I also apparently either "Kept Lent or Died." My buddy Scott's full name is also "Enjoy Smart Cats." My wife's full name turns into, "Milk me, alien belcher." Take out her middle name though, and she's just "Mr. Bikelane." I like it.

Ok, I'd better stop here or I'll keep going forever. This post has gotten all rambly-pambly anyway. Have a great weekend, everyone. If you want me to find out an anagram for your name because it's easier than downloading free software, email me at ptklein@gmail.com and I'll gladly do it for you. Maybe we'll find some really cool ones together for the next FUF. See you back here on Monday, gentle readers.

You can't handle the tooth

Good morning, readers of a gentle nature. It's Thursday, which means we're only one day away from the next Follow Up Friday. Can you feel the excitement? Try again. How 'bout now? No, that's just a mild headache. Oh well, it'll get there eventually.

Last weekend, my wife and I were going to hang out with our friends Lisa and Paul. We asked our friends Greg and Ceil if they could join us. Greg's response really caught me off guard: "I'm not sure if we'll be able to make it or not, because Ceil's chinchilla just had dental surgery." To be honest, I'd never even asked myself if chinchillas had teeth. I asked Greg for more information because I was a little confused. As it turns out, they do have teeth, and like beavers, the teeth keep growing unless they're given something to help grind them down. In this case, Ceil will be feeding her pet some hay to dissuade the teeth from further growth.

From one day to the next, I never know what I'm going to encounter in the way of conversations with my friends. However, "Ceil's chinchilla just had dental surgery" never crossed my mind as a possibility. They ended up joining us that night, so I'm sure it wasn't just an elaborate lie to get out of seeing us. Hearing that baffling non-excuse made me think of two other times in my past that I've heard unexpected things regarding teeth.

As a kid, it was clear early on that I'd need braces. I had pretty sizeable front teeth and a massive overbite that needed some professional attention. My brother Kevin had started seeing an orthodontist/oral surgeon named Dr. Taylor, so my parents sent me in there for a consultation. I went in there and quickly sized the doc up as a bit of a bull in a china shop. That's not a good thing when your teeth are the china, by the way. He had me open up and then proceeded to look around in my mouth. Without a word to me, he put down his instruments and walked away from my chair. I heard him open the door to the waiting area and say very loudly to the full room, "Mrs. Klein, your son's teeth are a wreck!" That's one.

Since my teeth were a wreck, I needed some work done to facilitate the renovation process. Namely, he was going to pull four of my baby teeth to create more room in that poorly-formed structure I called a mouth. The timing was horrible, because I was about to star as the titular role in my first grade play, "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown." I needed to be able to spit out such lines as, "Stop it, stop it, I can't stand it! All the beagle worshipping is just too much for me! I can't stand it, I can't stand it, I CAN'T STAND IT!" without tripping over my newly-exposed gums. As an actor, my voice was my instrument, and I was trusting my potentially lucrative future career to a man with the social graces of Sloth from The Goonies.

The day came, and I sat down in the chair. Dr. Taylor approached, and I tried reassuring myself that he probably wouldn't still be practicing dentistry if he had accidentally killed anyone. I laid back and followed their instructions as they started to administer the gas. Suddenly, I was in a large, dark room. I heard someone coming for the door, so I ran to the corner onto a big bed with dozens of stuffed animals on it. Hiding amongst them, I peered out and saw Dr. Taylor looking around the room. (In hindsight, my subconscious totally stole this scene from E.T., but it sure felt real and original at the time.) He called out for me, but I tried staying as motionless as possible so I could be mistaken for one of the animals. He barked out some commands like, "Look over here," and "turn this way," but I just kept as still as I could. He was getting closer and closer, and as I contemplated making a run for it, I was awakened by one of the dental assistants. "Everything went very well," she told me. I started to relax and think, "Hey that wasn't so bad," but then she continued her sentence: "Although Dr. Taylor decided to extract 7 teeth instead of 4 while he was in there." And that's two, my friends.

Like all masters of the craft, I pulled myself together to give the crowd a performance for the ages. I told Snoopy to "just get down off the doghouse and eat" with more Charlie Brown-ness than Charles Schultz ever dreamed of. Sure, I lisped throughout most of it, but maybe that was just a choice I made as an actor for my depiction of the famed prematurely-bald child. Despite my obstacles, my performance was still way more believable than blonde bombshell Shannon Kelly playing a beagle. An impartial panel of my parents, my Cabbage Patch Kid, and Hulk Hogan all gave me the highest marks possible on my performance, so I feel pretty good about it.

Anyway, Greg's bizarre comment about Ceil's chinchilla's never-ending teeth led me back my brief time in the care of Dr. Taylor. I switched to another orthodontist when the time came to get braces, and he had a significantly better bedside manner. More importantly, he was always able to accurately predict his procedures, so I never ended up with three braces on the same tooth or anything. I'm proud to say that my teeth are no longer a wreck, and I didn't even have to eat hay to achieve that.

Have a good day, folks. I'll be back tomorrow with a FUF. There's endless space still available, so please write in at ptklein@gmail.com with any thoughts, questions, or observations.

Letter perfect

Good morning everyone, and a special hello to my lovely wife, with whom I'm sharing an anniversary today. Through the years, she's heard all of my stories at least a dozen times already, but she still reads each post the minute it's up on the internets. That's devotion, folks. Happy Anniversary, my love.

At some point in a post last week, I typed the word "perturbed." I fought off the urge to go on a long tangent right then and instead saved it for its own post. I just searched for that word and my "Hard to Quantify" post came up. Then I searched for "shit" to see how many times I've used that word in posts, and there were 21 (22 now, I suppose), and I'm not sure if that's more or less than I expected. Nice feature, Blogger.

A couple of months ago at work, I finally got in touch with someone who I had been calling and emailing for weeks. He said he appreciated that I kept trying, and I responded, "Well, you can't spell 'persistent' without 'Peter.'" He thought that was the coolest thing he'd ever heard. "Actually you could," I said, "but you'd just be left with 'sisnt,' and that kinda misses the point." He wouldn't stop talking about how great a line he thought that was. A month later at a party, he even introduced me to people by telling the story of that conversation.

If you're at all surprised that I would notice something like that, then you must be a first-time reader. Welcome to UOPTA, newbie. Yes, I have a tendency to look closely at words and letters, so I've known that my name was in "persistent" for almost as long as I've known that my name was all on the top line of the keyboard. By the way, so are "power," "propriety," and "yo."

(Quick side note: I read somewhere that "stewardesses" is the longest word one types with only his left hand. Being multi-talented though, I can type "inconspicuously" with only my left hand. Sure, it's not standard typing procedure, but no one's ever changed the world by sticking to protocol.)

In any case, this was all brought to the forefront by typing another word with my name in it: Perturbed, which is an anagram of "Drub Peter" or the much preferred "Rub d' Peter." You also can't spell "perfect" without me, which is flattering. Here's something that only I might find interesting: In professional soccer, a team uses "FC" before "Barcelona" to stand for "Futbol Club." Therefore, if I ever own a pro soccer team, I can name it "FC Peter" and giggle to myself that it's also an anagram of "perfect." Of course, someone will figure that out and mock me when we lose our first game.

Anyone else find that interesting? Yeah, didn't think so. Oh vell.

What other fun things do I do with my name? I'm glad you asked. If I look particularly scruffy and I'm about to shower and shave, I might say, "Cleanup, Aisle Klein!" No one's found that funny yet, but I'm going to keep trying til someone does. Similarly, if my wife is making tea and asks if I want some too, I often will say in the coolest voice I can muster, "Baby, T is my middle initial." It is, but even accuracy isn't enough to get a laugh with that one. Someday, gentle readers, someday.

With the stellar help of websites like anagramgenius.com, I've learned that my full name of Peter Todd Klein uses the same letters as "Print, Ok, Deleted." Also, the same could be said about "Ink-Dotted Leper," but I am neither dotted with ink nor suffering from leprosy, so it's not quite as clever. I do actually print and delete, ok? Just my first and last name alone gives me "Triple Knee," which is cool but sadly anatomically incorrect. (Today's picture is of a "triple knee guard" by the way. I was shocked to type my anagram into Google's image search and have so many things come up.) I just played around with those letters for a few minutes and got "Tinkle Peer." I think I might start calling people at adjacent urinals by that term, as a mini shoutout to myself. I guess that could also be "Pee Tinkler" by moving the r, and that revelation truly brings me happiness. Is that wrong?

I just realized a day or two ago that Klein can be switched around to "e-link." I know that doesn't come up too often, but I can start referring to all online links as e-links for my own edification.

There are many fantastic anagrams of famous names out there, any maybe I'll share some on Friday, but my personal favorite has to be Spiro Agnew = Grow a Penis. Oh sure, that could be "Grow a Spine" also, but why waste an opportunity? I first learned about the versatility of the former Vice President's name while playing Taboo in high school. My friend Alon was giving clues, and he said, "Oh, grow a penis!" "Excuse me?" I asked, rightfully surprised by the command. "I guess you don't know that," he said before moving on to more traditional clues.

Ok, gentle readers, here's where you come in. Email ptklein@gmail.com with things having to do with your names. Anything at all, and we can have quite a FUF on this topic. Have a great day, and I'll be back tomorrow, probably still full from a celebratory dinner. Cleanup, Aisle Klein! (Anything? Damn.)

All in the technique

Yesterday, I commented that I only raise my voice to athletes on televised sports events and bad drivers who can't hear me. The latter happens much more often than the former, unfortunately. I still find that I'm somewhat pleasant in my yellings though. For example, I've heard myself say aloud to another car, "Learn how to drive more carefully please!" Sure, it gets a little meaner than that, but I'm sure my meanest pales in comparison to some people's nicest.

Where I make up for my lack of driving verbal prowess is in a couple of more subtle moves I do. I don't give people the finger for two reasons: First, it's overused. Second, I'm in L.A. and could get shot. I've found something that works better than anger in these situations. If someone's doing a poor job driving, when I pass them, I shake my head and make a face that says, "I'm really disappointed in you. I expect a little more, and you've let me down." That elicits a much better response than the finger. Instead of responding to anger with more anger, they see my obvious disappointment and think, "Wow, maybe I really screwed up back there." I've also tried waggling my finger in a shaming motion, but I've found that doesn't work quite as well.

Another tactic I use for bad drivers is sarcasm. If someone is tailgating me and finally decides to pass me with a glare, they'll be met by my smiling face waving hello to them. I've seen anger melt into confusion many times with that move. Recently, a woman cut me off horribly, and I gave her a big thumbs-up, as if to say "I really approve of that decision." Her response made me ecstatic: she opened her sunroof and gave me the finger out of it. She totally gets extra points for artistic expression and degree of difficulty.

I'm a very courteous driver in general though. I let people in probably more than the average man, I keep a safe distance, and I'm not too liberal with my horn usage. Last week though, I felt like I used it appropriately. I was on a narrow side street, and a woman turned in front of me when there wasn't much room, and then just stopped. I broke quickly, and when she didn't move, I tapped on my horn twice. (Is it just me, or is the double-tap a much friendlier honking than the single? I think of it as "yoo-hoo" vs. "hey!") Immediately, she put her hazard lights on, indicating that she planned on staying there. Not really upset at all, I started to pull around her to continue on my way home. I looked over as I passed, and she was staring at me and giving me the finger. I was floored. What the hell did I do to deserve that? If I hadn't been so shocked, I may have rolled down my window and pleaded my case for why I didn't deserve the finger in that situation. But then I would've been completely blocking the narrow street, which is totally finger-worthy.

I have driving on my mind because I saw a Driver's Training vehicle yesterday while on the road. I don't know about you, but I find that I treat those cars like the Ebola virus. If I see one in front of me, I almost always try to get over and around it as quickly as possible. It's not that I don't trust people to act appropriately while learning to drive, it's...oh yeah, that's exactly what it is. I want to give them their space, so maybe they'll feel a little more comfortable behind the wheel.

Seeing the new driver reminded me of my own Driver's Training experience. My instructor was a nice Persian man whose real name I can't remember, but I think he just went by "John" to keep it simple. I only remember three things about my entire experience. First, I pulled over to park once, and he said I did a good job except for one thing. I looked in my mirrors and saw that I was in the right place, I put the car in park and used the parking break, and I turned the wheels appropriately since we were on a little hill, so I didn't know what it was. "Do you here any sound?" he asked, sounding like a Jedi master showing me the way through life lessons. "No," I said, expecting him to explain why the silence was wrong. Instead though, he looked at me confused. "You don't hear your turn signal? It's still on; make sure you turn it off." "Oh."

The second thing I remember is getting onto the freeway for the first time. I was on the on-ramp, and he said, "Ok, little bit speed up." I pushed a little harder on the gas, but not much since I was conditioned not to do anything close to flooring it. It wasn't enough though, so he said more urgently, "Little bit speed up, little bit speed up, little bit speed up." He kept saying it, and I kept pushing harder and harder until he stopped. I looked down and I was going 60 mph, which was a lot faster than I had driven. It's funny, because I hear myself telling other cars sometimes to "little bit speed up" when they're not merging correctly. I'm sure John has no idea that he left a mark with that phrase.

Lastly, the third thing I recall is what we actually did on the training sessions. Namely, we ran John's errands. He had me take him to pick up a paycheck, to visit his friend who worked at a 7-11, to the post office, and to do other things on his list. I didn't really mind, as I felt it gave me more of a taste of what real driving was like, but I still found it odd. Six months later, my friend Jon used the same company, and it was his turn to chauffer John around on his daily errands. That's a pretty sweet gig, come to think of it. Ya know, minus the possible death that each day holds.

Anyway, that's what I thought of while avoiding the Driver's Training car like it was on fire and I was made of hairspray. The only time I feel bad about that is when I go out of my way to avoid said car, and then I look over and see that it's just the instructor going somewhere. That's probably the safest person to be around, and here I am acting like a repelling magnet to him. Then I look in the rearview mirror and make a face at myself that says, "I'm really disappointed in you. I expect a little more, and you've let me down." Man, that shit really works.

Have a good day, gentle readers, and I hope it little bit speeds up. Please email ptklein@gmail.com with anything that you think might find interesting. Otherwise, our friendship starting to look pretty one-sided.

Hanger Anger

My wife and I got our invitation to a black tie event next month that we attended last year as well. I had a string of formal events close together last year, and I knew I'd be having at least one a year for work, so I purchased a tuxedo at my boss's suggestion. I went into the closet to take a look at it and see if it needed drycleaning or not, and I stopped and looked at my suits for a minute. My wardrobe has grown quite a bit in the past couple of years, and it's still a little strange to me. There was a time that I owned one suit, and that suit was my only option for weddings, bar mitzvahs, funerals, important meetings, and interviews. I still have that suit, a nice charcoal grey one, and it plays a large role in today's story.

After college graduation, I began working at the Writing Program on campus for a few months. That led to an academic advising position in the main college office, where I was for a couple of years. Then my dream job on campus opened up: Assistant Director of Orientation Programs. I had worked for Orientation for two years as a student, and they were formative and eye-opening years in terms of who I would eventually be as an adult. I wanted that job badly, and thought of it as something I could do for the next decade.

So I sent in my application, waited for the position to close, then set up an interview for about a week from then. The next day, I took my suit pants and my dark blue dress shirt to a drycleaners pretty nearby. They told me it would be ready on Thursday morning, and my interview was the following Monday morning.

Time passed, and I prepared for my interview. Actually, it was a set of three interviews in one day, so that increased the nervous factor a bit. Then Thursday after work, I went to the cleaners and handed them my ticket. The young woman looked in the computer, made a confused face, then went to the back. She returned and told me, "There was a little stain on it that you didn't tell us about, so it'll be ready tomorrow instead." I didn't know there was a stain, or I would've told them so they could try to get it out, but I decided to swallow that point. Instead, I said, "Ok, well it's very important that I get it tomorrow because I need it for an interview. What time will it be ready?" She told me to call around 11am, and I said I would.

At 10:58 the next morning, I called. "If you call back at 1pm, it should be ready then," I was told. "Ok, but please remember that I absolutely need it this afternoon," I said. I did more work, I ate lunch, and then I called back at 12:56. "Hi, this is Peter Klein, I was told to call back now to see if my shirt and pants are ready." "Hold please." I heard talking in the background, and then a woman came on who identified herself as the manager. "Hello sir, what color is your shirt?" That was not at all what I wanted to hear. "It's dark blue," I said. "And what size?" "Um, I think it's something like a 15 1/2 and a 32-33, but I might be off a little - what's going on?" "You don't know what size your shirt is? How do you expect us to find it if you don't know the size?" One word really stuck out there: find. "You can't find my shirt? An hour ago, and you seemed to know where it was then." "Call us back in one hour," she said, and then she hung up.

As I've said several times in this space, I'm a pretty mellow guy in person. Oh sure, I have a lot of anger in me toward things like "PIN number" and the pronunciation of "H," but I've never been the type to yell at anyone besides players in televised sporting events and horrible drivers who can't hear me. However, this was very important to me, I had higher stress levels involved, and I was totally screwed if they couldn't do their job correctly. In other words, I was this close to completely going off on this woman.

I called an hour later and identified myself. "Hello sir," she started. "What color is your shirt?" That's where I started to lose it a little. "What color is my shirt!? I told you, it's dark blue. You lost it?" She repeated her previous argument, repeating that it was my fault for not knowing the size. I said, "No, no, it's not my fault. It's your job to not lose people's clothes. Cleaning them is secondary to not losing them." She said something about how since there was a stain, they took it out of the normal routine and now they can't tell which one is mine because a tag fell off. My pants were all done though, if that was any consolation. "How many dark blue shirts without tags do you have there?" I asked, hoping it was a rhetorical question. "I don't know," she said, "we do the actual cleaning off site, so unless I drive over there, I can't tell you if we have it or not." Then I channeled a bit my dad and told her, "Here's what's going to happen. I'm coming there after work at 5:30, and you're going to have my shirt ready. If it's not, you're buying me a new one and pressing it for me so it's ready to wear for my interview." She started to argue, but I cut her off and told her that I was hanging up, and I did.

That was possibly the meanest I'd ever spoken to someone. I realize it might not sound all that mean, but it was for me, and I was agitated enough that I had trouble concentrating on work for the rest of the afternoon. None of my other dress shirts matched the suit at all, so if they truly lost this one, I needed a new one right away, and I'd be damned if they weren't paying for it. I could feel myself getting worked up as I drove over there, preparing myself to stick to my guns.

I walked in, calmly introduced myself, and said I was there to pick up my shirt and pants. The pants were already sitting out there, and the young woman asked me to hold on as she picked up the phone. She called the off-site cleaning place and asked for the manager lady, but she was already en route back to where I was. So I waited a few minutes. Then a car pulled up, and a woman came out with around seven or eight shirts on hangers in her hands.

Without a greeting, she approached me and asked, "What color is your shirt?" I bit my tongue, took a deep breath, and said, "I've told you a couple of times already when I shouldn't have needed to, it's dark blue." She rifled through the ones in her hand. "Is this your shirt?" she asked, holding up a light blue shirt with a white collar that could've fit two of me in it. "No," I said, getting exponentially more agitated by the second. "Why isn't that your shirt?" she demanded. That's when it happened: Peter left the building. "Wh-Wh-Why isn't that my shirt? Why? Um, let's see, I didn't buy it, it doesn't belong to me - what do you mean, 'Why isn't that my shirt?' It's not my shirt!" She looked at me like I was insane. "You said it was blue, right?"

I took another deep breath, and then very flatly said, "I'm going to Macy's down the street and coming back with a shirt and a receipt for you to reimburse me." She didn't like that plan, and argued, "Why should we have to pay for a new shirt when we might be able to find your old one?" I didn't even know where to begin with that, so I just told them that I'd be back soon. I turned toward the door, and just then a van skidded to a stop in front of the store. A man jumped out carrying my shirt. (I knew it was mine because it was the color and size of my shirt, and also because I had bought it.) I took it from him and thanked him, glaring back at the woman as I started to head out. She called after me, "Next time, you need to tell us the size and-" I cut her off and said with a slight laugh, "Oh, there won't be a next time, believe me."

There it is folks, one of the angriest moments of my lifetime to date. It's been over five years since that incident, and I still clearly recall the flood of emotions. Was it worth all that tension and spike in blood pressure? Well, I got the job, and I got complimented on my charcoal grey suit and my dark blue shirt during the interview, so absolutely. Happy Monday, gentle readers, and I hope none of you reach that level of anger this entire week.

FUF #5

It's time for some PK FUFinstuff. No, let's try that again. I'm Peter, and I'm here to FUF (clap) you up! Hmmm, not quite. I hope you brought your laundry, because it's time for the FUF and fold. I give up.

Good morning, everyone. It is Follow Up Friday, and I'm ready to get right to it. First off, it's Vehicle Watch 2007:

My wife and I were driving home from dinner, and the truck in front of us had a bumper sticker that read "I (HEART) VAGINA." There was some small lettering underneath, and I really wanted to see what else that could say. The truck started to turn left, and even though it wasn't the way home, I quickly got over to follow it (turning on a very yellow light in the process). Just as I was almost caught up to it, it turned into a gas station and was gone forever. I can't for the life of me think of what else that might have said. Any ideas? Have any of you seen this sticker elsewhere? Some others from the past week:

• License plate report: DO UKARE. Not especially, no. Why would I?


• My friend Rockabye sent in a plate that read YY2BDUI. He told me to text him back when I figured it out, but it didn't take more than a second to realize it was plate-speak for "Too wise to be driving under the influence." Nicely done.


• Rockabye spends too much time driving, so he also sent me a Bumper Sticker Report: "Don't Panic, It's Organic." First of all, I wasn't panicking. Second, what's organic? Your car? I don't think so, unless it's sod cleverly disguised as metal.


• I saw a license plate frame that read, "The Worlds Best Mom." She must be if she put that on her car with the glaring apostrophe omission. Maybe her other car says, "I still love you, even though you suck at grammar."

Sacky Christi sent me a very, very intriguing question. When a sports team is winning a lot, we say they're "on fire." What about an ice hockey team though? As she put it, "Fire and ice are like, well, fire and ice." She wanted my suggestions for what it could be called without needing too much explanation. I suggested "They're really chilling right now" and "they've got their freeze on." Then I came up with the winner: "They're un-fuego." I know my readership is full of die-hard ice hockey fans, so feel free to start using that term. Contact me via email for where to send royalties.

I was talking to my brother yesterday, and he said that he had some fantastic Spam subject lines that he could send me. Now cover your eyes if you're easily offended, but these two made me laugh so I must share:
1. "tiiny sorortiy sults geet fucekd by loacl fraat booys." At least "by" is spelled correctly.
2. "Asian teen loves extreme uhh anal sex." This one just made me laugh out loud again. The "uhh" really gets me (or at least the 14 year-old boy living inside me). Thanks, Kev!

When writing about the male enhancement supplements, I was thinking about how I've heard things like that called "nutraceuticals" recently. Every time I hear that, I think of my friend Jon telling me about fake testicles marketed to fixed dogs. I guess it's so they look intact, but it could be just for canine self-confidence. I think it's completely ridiculous, but I think of them because he said they're called "Neuticles." I couldn't remember what they were called once, and said, "What were they again? Faux-nads?" My friends and I all agreed that that's way better than the actual name.

Lastly, I know this sounds crazy, but I have a story/observation that combines this week's unintentional themes of ingesting and penises. I was listening to the radio, and I heard a commercial for Wendy's and their square patty insanity. The song in the background was none other than "Blister in the Sun" by Violent Femmes. For those of you who don't know the song, it's a fun and catchy song...about masturbation. It's 100% about that, and anyone who knows the song knows that. Here are two parts of the lyrics: "Big hands I know you're the one," and "Body and beats, I stain my sheets, I don't even know why/my girlfriend she's at the end, she is starting to cry." So let's go eat hamburgers! What the hell were they thinking? Is some ad exec trying to sabotage them subliminally? I think that song choice is even worse than Wienerschnitzel's new campaign of "Pushing the boundaries of taste," and that's really saying something.

Have a hell of a weekend, gentle readers. I hope you survived the most potty-mouthed week yet of UOPTA. Enjoy St. Patrick's Day tomorrow, and I encourage you to take the high road and not pinch people who aren't wearing green. Nowadays you'll probably end up in Pinching Rehab for that. As always, please email me at ptklein@gmail.com with all your thoughts, observations, and questions.

Numb and number

Beware today! Yes, the Ides of March are upon us. The term "the ides" of something has really fallen out of favor. Does it just mean 15? If so, I'm using it from now on. "I get paid on the 1st and the ides of each month," etc. But beyond date stuff, I can use it for everything. "Yeah, he's in 10th grade, so he must be ides or 16 by now." I like it. Before I get too carried away though, let's check in with our good friends over at wikipedia.org:

"Ides may refer to: A day in the Roman calendar, that marked the approximate middle of the month, i.e., the fifteenth day in the months of March, May, July,
and October, and the thirteenth day in the other eight months. The word ides comes from Latin, meaning "half division" (of a month)."

Wait a second, not only does it not mean "fifteen," but it also makes zero sense. Let me see if I'm grasping this correctly: some of the months that have 31 days use 15 as their approximate middle. Ok, that makes sense. The other months, whether they have 31, 30, or 28 days use 13 as their approximate middle. Bullshit. 15 is the exact middle of 4 months, yet their ides is 13. I'm not happy about this un-unified ides crap, and if there were somewhere I could write
a complaint letter, it would already be on its way.

You see, this is typical. I say something trivial, get intrigued and look for more information,
then end up getting mad. Maybe I should just base things on limited, possibly incorrect information. That's always worked for people in the past, right?

This totally isn't where I thought today's post was going, but my tangent has led me to other places this morning. The world of terms for numbers. We all use terms like "dozen" with great frequency. In fact, it's popular enough that it has two spinoffs: "half-dozen" and "baker's dozen." Could bakers just not count well or were they being generous and tossing in a free cookie or
bagel? Maybe bakers introduced the concept of coupons to the world, with their whole "buy 12 get 1 free" shtick. I could look that up, but I'm finally getting less pissed off.

Other terms are known but not in most of our everyday vocabulary. The next most popular that comes to the top of my head owes its fame to Honest Abe. Yep, I'm talking about a "score" of something. It's just a cool way of saying "twenty," and I think we need to bring it back. I remember first realizing that Lincoln was unnecessarily making people do math in the Gettysburg Address, and imagining the crowd missing the next couple of lines of the famous
speech because they were busy thinking, "Ok, so a score is 20. He said four of those, so that gives us 80. And seven, right? So that makes 87 years ago. What did he say our fathers did then? I missed it; I was doing math. That's ok, the world will little note nor long remember what was said here anyway."

Next on my short list is "fathom." It means "six feet," and I'm absolutely shocked that I haven't been using this term frequently. Why? Because I'm a fathom tall when wearing shoes, and just a smidge under a fathom without. A "smidge" means "half an inch" from this point forward. Sure, they probably still use it a bunch in some field like ocean-mapping or something, but we need to bring that one back. "Hey, wanna join a Fathom and Under basketball league this fall?" Hell yes I do. "I just bought season one of 'Fathom Under' and it's really compelling!" Oh yeah, it's on.

The last major one I can think of right now is a "gross" of something. This seems pretty arbitrary to me, and I don't want to spend the time finding out why it's not. Basically, it means 144. How often can that possibly come up? I'm sure for some reason some products are ordered in grosses, but I rarely come across that specific number in my everyday life. In fact, as far as I know, my wife might use "gross" 100% of the time she refers to 144, but I still wouldn't know because it just doesn't come up. It's too bad too, because I'd like to use that term. Maybe I'll start going out of my way to use it when I normally would've said 150. That doesn't come up often either, but I won't miss the extra 6 of whatever I'm talking about.

What other terms am I missing, gentle readers? I know "fortnight" is two weeks, and that's pretty cool. Being short for "fourteen nights" though, it's almost too sensible for me to use. It would be cool though to tell someone that "We're pretty busy for the next fortnight, but maybe that following Saturday would work." Hmmmm. I know I'm missing some, so help me out.


I also want to make up some new ones. I think that'll be fun, and we can start a grass roots campaign right here to get it into the public consciousness. Email me at ptklein@gmail.com with suggestions for new terms or numbers that need terms, and I'll try to have a post about them sometime soon (hopefully within the next fortnight or score of days).

Have a great day, everyone, and tomorrow's FUF is still wide open, so email away.

Mass un-appeal

Good morning, everyone. I hope this Hump Day has started off in a glorious fashion for you all. Mine started with extra traffic, so that's always a plus. Since I wrote about wheatgrass yesterday, I'm going to stay on the subject of ingestible substances.

But first, I have to ramble and then attempt to pull it all together. Guess who I'm nicer to than the average American? That's right, telemarketers. Don't get me wrong, I really don't like being bothered in an unsolicited manner by people who are selling something I don't want, but I'm a little nicer to them. Sometimes I use sentences like, "I understand the values of what you're selling, but as I stated earlier, I'm not going to be purchasing it." If they persist after two or three times of me nicely saying no, then I tell them, "I'm sorry, but I'm hanging up now." It's a far cry from Catherine Keener's character in "40 Year-Old Virgin" telling a telemarketer to commit suicide, and I'd guess that most people fall somewhere in the vast middle ground.

Here's the thing that gets me about telemarketing though: the ends must justify the means for them to be doing it. That is, if one out of every x number of people takes them up on this unsolicited deal, they make a profit. It's the same reason there are flyers on your car when you come back to it from shopping somewhere. How much did the copies cost? How much are you paying the person per hour to put them on windshields or doorknobs? If it's selling home theater systems, and just one person goes in and buys one, that likely covers every cost and then some. Is this system annoying and bothersome to a large percentage of the population? Oh sure. But until it stops being profitable (which every business owner needs), it'll stick around.

Why was I thinking about this kind of mass, unsolicited marketing? Spam, gentle readers, spam is the answer. First of all, I'm very thankful for designated spam folders in email. They're far from foolproof, but they do a good job at corralling the crap. My wife and I were looking at our spam folders, and we were amazed at how many of the emails were for penis enlargement products. I don't know if it's all for the same product or if each email is for a different one, but the subject lines vary in how they attempt to lure the customer in.

First of all, they waste 50% of their efforts immediately since the subjects are all speaking to men. Still, they must be making money somehow or they wouldn't still be doing this. I've broken down some of the email subjects into a few categories (these are all real emails in my spam folder or my wife's):

The Power of Comparison:
"Adult film stars use it"
"Ron Jeremy uses this"
"Tommy Lee uses this"

Colloquial Science:
"StrongCock" (one word)
"Powerful Dick"
"Make your Jimmy bigger"
"Three inches plus is yours to gain"

Playing on insecurities:
"Improve your manhood"
"Enlarge your manhood!"
"A powerful manhood is only a click away"

Pleasant:
"We offer the selection and prices customers want"

Unpleasant and illiterate:
"your life is really suxx if you fuck like looser or don't do it at all"

Here's one of my main questions: If someone were in the market for "enlarging his manhood," how would he choose one of those emails when they're all sitting in his spam folder next to each other? Maybe he's sitting there thinking, "Man, my life is really suxx because I fuck like looser or don't do it at all...Hey, look at that!" I don't know, and I doubt people are willing to volunteer how they choose one penis enlargement pill over another for a Follow-Up Friday.

I guess it must not cost too much to send out thousands and thousands of emails, so every sale probably makes a big impact for these companies. Enough to cover the costs of making the pills, employee salaries, and everything else associated with a business? I guess so. I don't see how exactly, but I guess it must.

Getting a little off track here: how do you think Hormel feels about "spam" being the universal term of junk e-mail? Not good, I imagine. I mean, it was already the butt of so many jokes before that term was coined. They say no publicity is bad publicity, but I just can't imagine someone associating unwanted email with a food product and then going out to buy some. Maybe that's just me though.

Gentle readers, got any fantastic spam subjects? What other items are you constantly being emailed about besides "making your Jimmy bigger"? Your comments and emails are very much appreciated on this one, because I feel like it's full of potential. So have a great day, and we'll meet back here on the other side of the hump.

All ingest

A couple of weeks ago, my co-worker Rob and I were heading out to lunch. He told me that we were making a stop at a juice place on our way back, and that was fine by me. As it turns out, it wasn't just a routine stop; his aim was to "pop my wheatgrass cherry."

First of all, I will acknowledge how nasty that last term was, and I apologize for it. I just report the news, folks. In any case, I'd heard some fables about the magical powers of wheatgrass, so I was interested in learning more. The only thing I remembered was that one serving of it was supposed to be a few servings of vegetables, so I figured I'd give it a shot by trying a shot.

We walked in there, and Rob picked up an informational brochure and handed it to me. The top thing it said on it was that "1 oz. is the nutritional equivalent of eating 2 1/2 pounds of leafy green vegetables." Holy crap, that's vegetastic! It went on to describe all of the other powers this magical juice has: minimizes fatigue, cleanses the body, bolsters the immune system, etc. Then it got to the claims that made me start questioning the accuracy of the pamphlet. Namely:

• "Increases mental clarity and calms nerves."


• "Stimulates hair growth."


• "Increases function of...reproductive organs."


• "Applied to the skin, it can eliminate itching, relieve sunburn and act as a disinfectant."


• "Helps to heal cuts, burns, rashes, poison ivy, athlete's foot and insect bites."


• "As a beauty aid it can tighten loose skin."

I'm skeptical by nature, so I couldn't help but wonder, "If everything they say is true, then why isn't everyone drinking (and otherwise using) this stuff?" Then there was one final item that really caught my eye: Five minutes after cutting/juicing, there is a "50% decrease in effectiveness." After five minutes! This stuff was getting weirder and weirder the more I read, so I was obviously looking forward to trying it out.

I'd heard a little about the nastiness of the taste, but I wasn't afraid of that at all. I mean, I know what grass smells like, and I actually enjoy it. How bad could grass juice taste? Also, I like bean sprouts, and my wife says they taste like dirt, so this couldn't be that far off, right?

Another reason I was starting to really look forward to trying the wheatgrass was to tell Dusty later. I lived with him back when I was in my late teens and then again in my early twenties. I had pretty bad eating habits back then when left to my own devices, and he incorrectly still thinks I never touch vegetables. If I'm ever eating green beans or something else in front of him, he'll say, "Look at you giving the veggies a try!" So I was looking forward to him making a typical comment about my diet, to which I would be able to reply, "How many pounds of vegetables did you have today?" Bam!

I ordered a 1 oz. shot with a 5 oz. chaser of orange juice. It was strange to see the woman cutting grass off a tray and knowing that I'd be drinking that soon. After the machine liquefied it, she handed me my little cup with the slightly viscous and very dark green liquid in it. I started to propose a fake toast, but then I realized that I'd already probably lost 10% of the nutrients. So down the hatch it went, and just like I suspected, it tasted like strong liquid grass. I slowly sipped the orange juice after, but I didn't really need it. I was hanging in there just fine.

As we headed back to the office, I felt the shot sitting in my stomach. It wasn't the most pleasant feeling, but it wasn't horrible. Then I read that "on a healing regime, drink 1 or 2 oz. up to 3 or 4 times a day." I assume they're not counting the amount that I'm slathering on my body to tighten my loose skin. For the rest of the day, I felt a little off. The best way I can describe it is that I had a little pit in my stomach (I guess 2 1/2 pounds will do that), and I was just slightly spacier than normal. For the amount of health it provided though, I decided that it would be worth that feeling every once in a while. The only problem with the whole thing was that I could never ask anyone to pick up a shot for me; I'd always have to go get it myself and drink it on the spot, or otherwise be doomed to only get maybe half a pound's worth of leafy greens.

Intrigued by the limitless benefits of wheatgrass as espoused on the pamphlet, I turned to our trusty friends at wikipedia.org for further information. The first thing that caught my eye was, "It should be noted that high dosages can cause nausea." Ok, I can see that. Then I saw the heading of "Health Claims." It lists all of the wonderful things the pamphlet did, then says that there is only anecdotal evidence to support the claims, rather than that pesky scientific kind. That didn't bother me, because the same could be said about something like acupuncture, and I know people who swear up and down that it works wonders.

Then I read this: "30 grams of cooked spinach and broccoli contains more of certain vitamins and minerals than the equivalent amount of wheatgrass...A garden salad of the size commonly sold in fast food outlets contains vastly more of a range of nutrients than a 30ml shot of wheatgrass."

I don't know who to believe and what to make of this whole thing. All I know is that it didn't taste awful, it was at least a little good for me, and it made me a wee bit nauseous. Two out of three ain't bad, right? I'll probably try it again next time I'm with Rob and he's getting a shot, but I don't see myself going out of my way for it. Unless, of course, I find some site online that tells me that each shot is the equivalent of uneating a double-cheeseburger. Then it might become more of a routine.

Happy Tuesday, gentle readers. Please email ptklein@gmail.com with anything about anything and make my inbox less lonely.

Hard to quantify

Reader "Sacky Kevin" sent me a thoroughly entertaining email after a few beers on Friday night. Amongst other things, he said that when I worked with him for almost a year, we discussed the "How much is a shitload?" topic about five times. That doesn't surprise me in the slightest, and it reminded me of a similar conversation Dusty and I had years ago.

We talk about stupid things often. Let me clarify: stupid, trivial things to most people that we happen to find interesting. So one day, it came to my attention that I regularly did something that seemed contradictory to my very being. I would use "a couple" when talking about more than two things. By definition, "a couple" should just be two, yet I'd find myself saying that "I might have a couple of friends come over for the game" when it would probably be three.

By now, you probably know that I care about accuracy in somewhat trivial things. Dusty cares too, so he was the perfect person for me to discuss this issue with. (I'm sorry, I couldn't bring myself to type "with whom to discuss the issue." I know it's right, but it just sounds so haughty. I have selective grammar, so hopefully that's ok with you.) Here's a brief side story that should illustrate how Dusty thinks:

About a decade ago, we were walking around a little village of shops. One of them was a magic shop, and we started looking around. Dusty pointed to a rubber hand for use in tricks or pranks that was for sale. On the bag, it said, "So lifelike, it's incredible!" He turned to me and said, "I think they mean, 'So lifelike, it's credible!'" He was so right. Anyway, we sometimes look at things in the same way.

I told him about my incorrect use of "a couple," and he understood why I was perturbed. This led to a discussion of how much "a few" is. Could two be a few, or did "a few" have to exceed "a couple" to make sense? What about "several?" Here was my initial stance:

A = one

A couple = two

A few = three to five

Quite a few = four to seven

Several = five or more, until it becomes "many" or "lots"

I purposely had them overlap a little, before any of you fellow smart-asses point that out. This scale didn't sit well with everyone, and I wasn't sold on it myself. One friend (I believe it was Greg) stated that "several" could be as little as three to him. Even though I thought that was crazy talk, I was beginning to see that it was going to be very difficult to nail down those definitions. In the end, we decided that it was largely situational. My initial scale would still be accurate in many cases. For example, if a room has three beanbag chairs in it, I'd say there are a few. Once there are five or more in there, I'd refer to the several chairs.

Here are two examples of where my definitions don't fit: First, if there are five ants crawling across the kitchen floor, I would never say "several" in that case. There would be "a few ants" or even the incorrect "a couple." Same goes with chocolate sprinkles on a sundae. If I asked for sprinkles and there were only five of them on there, I doubt I'd use "several." "Hardly any, you cheap bastards" is probably the term I would use.

Second, if I met someone with three arms, I might say that he had "several arms," even though it flies in the face of my previous definitions. "Quite a few" would probably still work there. Could "several" ever be two? What about noses? Maybe, maybe. Tough call.

I consulted the dictionary to see if it would give me any definitive answers, and I was far from successful. What does Merriam-Webster say “a couple” is? After definitions about two people being together, it says “an indefinite small number : FEW.” I thought that would be the easy one that we could all agree on, but apparently M-W would rather leave “a couple” as an undefined number…even though they already defined it as two in previous definitions. Bastards.

The definition for “few” wasn’t helpful either: “not many persons or things.” I understand it’s hard to put a number on that, but the definition for “couple” listed “few” as a synonym, and I wouldn’t say that “not many persons or things” works for “couple” too. Then I got to what they did with “several,” and it pisses me off. I’m serious, it makes me angry. Here are definitions 2a and 2b from Merriam-Webster: “more than one” and “more than two but fewer than many.” Are you fucking kidding me? I just started to type everything that bugs me about those two definitions, but I had to stop because it was all in caps and I didn’t want you to feel like I was screaming at you. Simply, those definitions are full of shit. Whether “several” is fewer than “many” can be debated since they’re vague terms, but you simply can’t assign specific numbers if you’re going to contradict yourself three words later. Breathe in, hold it, and out. Ah.

Happy Monday, folks. I hope you have a shitload of good times this week.

FUF #4

It's Friday, and I'm here to FU. (I've been waiting a whole week to use that line, so I hope you appreciated it. It was either that or some horrible pun involving "FUF the magic blogger," so be careful what you wish for.) Let's get right to it:

Car Watch:
Upon reading my entry about looking for a place to live and the guys who asked me to do my best Vader impression, my lovely wife remembered seeing the license plate "DRTH VDR" a couple of days before. I asked if it was him driving, but she said it wasn't. I don't know exactly what message that guy is trying to get across. Clearly he's not the fictional character, so he's probably just proclaiming his love for him. I think "DTH STAR" or "DEATH *" would've been better, but maybe they were taken. It just seems like a misguided choice to me. Even if I'm the biggest Miami Heat fan in the world, I wouldn't get "SHAQ" on my plate, you know? I'm not being a Vader Hater here, I just think the guy could've done a better job. "DRK HLMT" from Spaceballs would've at least been funny.

Longtime friend and loyal UOPTA reader "Rockabye" Scott Ryan James sent in this Bumper Sticker Report: "Is It Wet?" I'm just as confused as you. To paraphrase a wise man, I guess it depends on what your definition of "is" is. And "it." And "wet." Maybe it's a pop culture reference that I'm missing (like "Is it safe?" from Marathon Man), but I'm pretty much at a loss here. Got any insight, gentle readers?

A big bumper sticker on a big truck: "God Bless America and Screw Those who Don't Believe it." Who don't believe what? That America exists? Or that you, Mr. Truck Driver, wish for God to bless this country? If you have enough anger to publicly announce it to the world, at least be specific enough for us to know who the target of it is.

Let's move to the nether regions. First off, in response to my post about boxer shorts, reader (and Sacky) Christi posted an entry on her blog about women's underwear and the untapped potential. In it, she wrote:

The undies for toddlers are cute and comfy - they come with teddy bears,
ballerinas, monkeys, bunnies, princesses, etc. Why can't this be done for adult
size girls? This is a whole untapped market. Deep down, we are all just kids
trying to survive being a grown up. And we are all kids every chance we get. So
why give guys all the fun with boxers? Why not do the same for women's Granny
panties? They could be marketed to married women who need to get a message
across - "Garbage taken out? Access granted." "All hail the spider killer" "How
comfy was that couch?"
Heck, why not Underoos for grown-ups?

She's got a hell of point there, and even though I have an obvious problem formatting block quotes, I hope her dream comes true. Keep hope alive, Christi. Readers, if you have other ideas of what could be written on the Purpose Panties (ooooh, I like that), post a comment and let us hear it. "These aren't the droids you're looking for" would be hilarious to me for a few reasons, but probably not to many others out there. Nevermind.

After reading my thoughts about "Juicy" on people's butts, my friend Stacy (aka Bratty Kid Sister) wrote the following:

Juicy is disgusting. You are correct. I have a strong "nothing written on the ass" policy that I would have broken once and only once: at my graduation from
UCSB. Jenn had the genius idea to custom-make pants or shorts to wear
under our robes with "my ass graduated" written on the ass. It never panned out,
but I thought it was pretty genius.

Too bad that didn't end up happening, BKS, for it would've been glorious.

I remembered something else about my time living at The Bungardens that I wanted to share. My wife and I were at a party about eight places away, and out of nowhere, a dog came into the apartment. He seemed friendly enough, so we were petting him and trying to find out where he belonged. I took a look at his collar. "Honey, it's Rabies Vaccinated!" I yelled. "Well that's good," a party guest replied. "No, no, that's his name. Well not really his name, but what I call him. Nevermind." It was the sniffing snout I'd come to know, but this time attached to an entire dog. We spent the next 45 minutes trying to get him to show us which house was his, because we couldn't tell which one the fence behind our place was connected to. Eventually, he seemed to know where he was going and went into a backyard, but it must've seemed very odd for onlookers as we were all saying, "Come on Rabies, let's go home. Over here, Rabies. Rabies Vaccinated, show me where home is." As I had guessed from the nose alone, he was a he, and he was a good boy.

A little while back, I wrote about going through an old nightstand and finding some things from the past. I found one other thing that warranted mentioning. It was a business card that a co-worker's dad used to hand to ladies in bars back when he was single in the early 70's. On it, it said: "I want to love you tonight! If you don't want to, return this card, as it is expensive." I think that's just about the most coolest thing in the world.

Lastly, the Mega Millions lottery reached a ridiculous point this week. My co-worker was buying 20 tickets, so I thought "What the hell?" and bought one also, fully knowing that there was no shot at me actually winning. It was the first lotto ticket I had bought in over a decade, and when we got back to his car, I chuckled to myself. Not only would I have never selected any of the random numbers it chose for me, but on the top of the ticket, it read: "National Problem Gambling Awareness Week." Ah, timing truly is the secret of comedy. (Oh yeah, I didn't win $360 million - I might've mentioned that earlier in the post.)

Have a great weekend, everyone. I'm always interested in your thoughts and ideas, so email me at ptklein@gmail.com with anything about anything.