Some real goat-getters

Greetings and salutations on this Thursday, my friends and friends-of-friends. I spewed forth a great deal of anger in my posts over the last few days, and even though I don't enjoy being angry, I guess that'll be my unofficial theme for this week. Much like the passing of bad gas, anger seems to linger a little longer when it's unwanted. Man, I'm so deep. You can quote me on that one.

Ok, so I've got three things to write about that piss me off. None of them are related to each other, so fasten your seatbelts as we traverse the rocky trail of Peter's transitionless prose. I'll get the one that might bore some of you out of the way first.

As I've mentioned before in this space, I joined a bowling league that started last week. The goal in any bowling league is to continually do better and better, thereby raising your average every week. The more pins over your average in a given game, the more likely your team is to win that matchup. Make sense? Good. Well, there's always the temptation for some to purposely do poorly in the first week of a league to ensure that they don't establish averages that are too high to maintain. I don't subscribe to that method, and I think it's pretty cheap to do so. What pisses me off about this? Two things, actually. First, there were people bowling against us who spent the entire third game doing trick shots. Granted, their trick shots were amazing, but they were pretty blatantly tanking. Their averages ended up being significantly lower for the week because of these methods, and I don't approve of that.

Second, I bowled the best three-game series of my life. That really, really angers me. It felt good to be setting personal bests, but I knew that every strike or spare was increasing the likelihood that my team would lose many of our next games. I couldn't bring myself to purposely miss spares, and my team will end up paying for it starting tonight. Going into the league, I expected to average anywhere between 155 and 170. Instead, I ended the first week with a 198.67 average. I'm not a 190+ average type of bowler, and I'm mad at myself for setting the bar so high. That means that if I average a very good (for me) 170 tonight, I'm still almost 30 pins below my average per game. We're going to lose every game unless I get back up near 200 or my teammates pick up my major slack. I'd ask you to wish me luck tonight, but I can't decide if that would mean hoping for high or low scores. Grrrr, this is supposed to be fun.

Ready for item number two of what really gets my goat? Last week, I was walking around at lunchtime to find something to bring back to the office. I passed a couple of places and then knew that my feet were probably leading me to the Subway nearby. My feet knew what they were doing too, because a six-inch Roasted Chicken Breast sandwich was totally going to hit the spot. As I got closer though, I saw that the line for Subway was literally out the door. I quickly surveyed my options: wait in a long line or see what else is nearby. Directly next door was a place called "Fast Taco." I can eat Mexican food daily, so I went for it. No one else was in line before me, but I could tell that a few people were waiting for their numbers to be called. I asked what came on the tacos, and the lady told me that it was just meat and lettuce. I ordered two steak ones, paid for them, and then filled up a container of salsa at the little bar. I ask you, gentle readers, for a place called "Fast Taco" in which there's nothing much to said tacos, how long should I have waited before they were ready? How much time needs to elapse before I can rightfully call them liars? Well, it took 8 minutes. 8 minutes! I know that's not a lifetime by any means, but it's "Fast Taco" we're talking about. 8 minutes to put meat and lettuce on tortillas seems way too long for me. The tacos ended up being quite tasty and I'll probably go back again in the near future, but the false advertising really grinded my gears. They should change their name to "Not Especially Fast But Tasty Nonetheless Taco."

The third Angry Peter story of the day takes us back a few years. At UCSB, there was the department of Chicano Studies. Similar to Asian American Studies, Black Studies, and Women's Studies, the department offered many interesting classes about the experience of that particular group through the media of literature, film, and occasionally music. At some point, their flyers started referring to the department as "Chicano/Chicana Studies." I understood what they were trying to do, but understanding how the Spanish language works, I found it unnecessary. It's not very gender-equal, but if there are ten girls and one boy in a group, they are called "muchachos." All girls, and they're "muchachas," but just the one male and the masculine form takes over. Therefore, I thought "Chicano Studies" covered both "Chicanos" and "Chicanas" just fine. It didn't piss me off though. That came later, when I saw the department listed as "Chican@ Studies." "What the hell is that?" I asked my co-worker Alicia. She said that it's the "a" inside an "o" and therefore combined the two letters. At that point, my ire was sufficiently induced. "How do you even pronounce that?" I asked, clearly agitated. "Do you still say 'Chicano and Chicana Studies?' Is it 'Chicanoa?' Do you say 'Chican-at' instead? Are they just trying to be as confusing as possible?" She didn't have any answers for me, but we spent the rest of the year saying "Chican-at" and shaking our heads at least once a day.

Ok, I'm calming down now. I'll return to Jovial Peter for tomorrow's FUF piece. Please remember to write to ptklein@gmail.com with anything about anything. Thoughts, Car Watch items, jokes, things that piss you off - whatever strikes your fancy. Personally, I'm fancy-free, but I won't judge you. I'll stop now.