FUF #38

Good morning, gentle readers. Some of you might not enjoy my Friday posts as much as the others and decide to give them up, but we'll still be cool. You know why? Forgiveness, forgiveness, even if, even if, you don't FUF me anymore.

It was tempting just to start off with "FUF you, I won't do what you tell me" sixteen times in a row, but like A-rod and his mega contract, I opted out at the last minute for something hopefully better. So welcome to another Follow Up Friday, mis amiguitos. I shall now proceed to ramble for a few hundred words. After that, it'll be time to shake our booties down at the Car Watch.

On Wednesday, I wrote a post largely about our dog Hallie. Somewhere in there, I made some reference to her being our child. That reminded me of an email I got recently from a client at work. In it, she said that her whole family went to a park over the weekend, including "one skin baby and two fur babies." That pleased me to no end, because I hadn't heard either of those terms before, let alone both right next to each other. While I can see myself referring to Hallie as "my fur baby" at some point for humor, I don't think I'll ever call my future human children "skin babies." I think "baby" by itself should be distinguishing enough, don't you?

Our bowling league ended last week, and we didn't finish as high in the standings as we would've liked. No matter, a new one starts up next week. Maybe I won't bowl the second best games of my life in the first week this time around. We'll probably end up keeping "Hip Hop Anonymous" as our team name, but we have a few days to kick around other ideas. So far, the only other viable option is for us to be Mulva, Bovary, Gipple, and Hest on a team called Vandelay Industries. Ya know, in case we needed to cite Seinfeld to accentuate our Jewishness even more. We'll see, we'll see.

I got a new cell phone this week, and it can do more things than the first three computers I owned combined. It's a Blackberry, and while it'll take me a little bit to get used to its larger width, I'm already enjoying many of the capabilities. The woman at the Verizon store said that once she and her co-workers tried a phone like that, none of them wanted to switch to the other brands. It took every ounce of my being to hold back from saying, "So once you go Blackberry, you never go back...berry?" I'm proud of myself for holding it in, but it was so difficult that I felt like I aged a year in the process.

My homey Rockabye asked me what the opposite of "nonetheless" was. I immediately answered, "Allthemore." He said, "But what's the opposite of The?" "Eht," I replied. He liked that. In all honesty, I can't think of a good (and existing) antonym for nonetheless. Any ideas, folks? I think the fact that the word had to be created from a three-word phrase probably indicates that it is only around because a special need arose, and therefore any opposite would most likely be a phrase rather than another compound word. Or something.

Do you recall my discourse on Auto-Followers from months back? I'm sure this isn't one, but I always think of one word in particular to follow "balky." When I looked it up online, they gave two examples, and neither of which was mine. I'm curious by nature, so I'm interested in hearing what people think about when they hear "balky."

Ok, enough of that thrilling language crap. That's what Wacky Wordy Wednesdays are for. We have more important business at hand. Yes, that. It's Car Watch time! (Cue the music. Damn, still no music? Note to self: get music.)

I saw a license plate frame that read, "Coffee girl seeking coffee boy." Did she mean "Barista seeking barista" or "Female constructed out of java seeking male counterpart?" Both are a little strange, don't ya think?

Next, I saw something that I would never make up because no one would believe me: a van from BM Plumbing. I'm sorry but even if those are the owner's initials, that shit ain't right. Pun intended.

I was behind a Prius on the 101 and saw this license plate: "I (Heart) BN GRN." Nice touch.

Later that day, I saw a plate that read, "ALOOOF." I liked that because the extra O makes me think that the person just held that key a little too long but couldn't give a shit to correct it. At least that's how it played out in my mind, and none of you can argue with that. Unless you're in my mind, of course. Whoa, I just blew my mind.

Rockabye saw this plate on a Mustang: "CU SCKA." Maybe it's the 15 year-old boy who lives inside me, but that just looks dirty to me. In truth, that's not a bad plate, but I bet the police aren't too fond of it.

My Dad saw a plate that confused him, and he turned to me to see if I could shed any light on it: "TH8GIRL." Uh, yeah Dad, that's pretty obvious. She's Theight Girl from the famed Theight Family. They live in Theight Manor and are really the cat's meow. Either that or she was on the prequel to the short-lived drama, "The Nine."

Lastly, I was driving with my co-worker Rob at lunch on Monday. I had just been explaining that one thing I was worried about in regards to getting a new phone was that I was currently so good at quickly texting myself plates and bumper stickers. "Like this, for example," I said. Ahead of us, a bumper sticker read, "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup." If I had seen that even one day later, I may not have been able to capture the - wait, what the fuck does that mean? There are so many things wrong with that statement. I'll take a stab at listing some prominent ones: First, dragons aren't real. Second, if they were real, which they're not, I don't think they'd have "affairs" per se. Third, if they were real, I think they would enjoy eating creatures without a processed tomato paste condiment. I'll accept that I'm crunchy and that I shouldn't meddle with fire-breathing (and imaginary) creatures, but that doesn't get me any closer to understanding that sticker.

Ok, that's it for me and my FUFfing. Have a great weekend filled with the spirit of shaloha, my friends. Feel free to write to ptklein@gmail.com with anything at all about anything at all (even if it's only about how cute my fur baby is in her picture from Wednesday). See you next week.