Goin' with the flow

Hi everybody. In the sprit of shaloha, I welcome you to another weekly installment of UOPTA. In the past couple of weeks, I've had stories or themes that have taken up the majority of my posts (before skillfully transitioning to the stupendous Car Watch section), but today will be a little different. I've got a bunch of random things on my mind, and I feel like just getting 'em out there. I hope that's fine with you.

As you know, I typically save the license plates that I've spied for that last section of my musings, but one that I saw leads directly to a little story, so I'm breaking form a bit. The plate read, "GIGL H2O." I saw that and thought (or possibly said out loud to myself - hey, it happens), "Giggle water? Water that makes you laugh? What could be so funny about water?" And then, I answered my own question.

You see, we have a friend named Jane. (There's a remarkably small number of Janes out there, even though it's used as a placeholder for a generic name. I believe that would be irony.) Jane is a grad student who actually works with water. More specifically, she does something with testing the chemicals in tap water and/or rating the healthfulness and drinkability. I find that very interesting. Not necessarily the research itself, per se, but the fact that I know someone who does that research. Does that make any sense? It does to me, so hopefully I'm not alone.

Anyway, I can't help but make stupid comments sometimes. For a while, whenever I saw Jane, I'd ask, "Water you up to?" I found this to be hilarious, and Jane usually just smiled politely and nodded in a way that let me know she was picking up what I was putting down. After about a dozen of these interactions, she said, "I wish I had a good answer to that." I started thinking about it, and the best I came up with was, "Goin' with the flow." Not bad, but not stellar either. The next time I saw her, I inevitably asked again. She started to do the whole smile-and-nod thing, but then she paused and said, "Distillin'." I loved it! That was hands down the best possible response I could think of, and I defy you to come up with a better one. She said it perfectly too, with an "oh, not much" vibe. "Water you up to?" "Distillin'." Game over; check mate.

I just thought of something else involving water that makes me laugh (besides Evian being 'naive' backwards). Thanks for the inspiration, GIGL H2O! Back in high school, I took various science courses with varying degrees of success. Physiology was fun and interesting, while chemistry (especially Chapter 8, stoichiometry) sucked ass. Yes, I remember the chapter number because it was that awful. (Random side note: I enjoyed the biological sciences quite a bit. So much so, in fact, that I looked at the requirements for being a Biological Sciences major when I first got my General Catalog at UCSB. "Ok, let's see, Chemistry, Calculus, and Physics? Fuck that shit." So I became an English major.) In one such high school science class, each student had to do an experiment and make a poster board showing the whole scientific process. My mom, I mean, I did an experiment involving bread, mold, and how different substances either encouraged or discouraged the spread of the mold. It was pretty cool, even if my hypotheses were based on absolutely nothing other than wild guesses. The point is, I spent some time on that bad boy. Weeks, in fact. I used enough dot matrix printer ink and rubber cement to make Ralph Nader wince, but the final product was a pretty cool display.

Dusty, on the other hand, remembered this assignment the night before it was due. He showed up the next day with a poster that read, "Aqua Oddities" on the top. His whole "experiment" was based on things we already knew about water from either that class or another one. It expands when it's frozen, and its frozen state is actually less dense than the liquid one (i.e. ice floats in water). It wasn't earth-shattering by any means, but he made it look nice enough. Naturally, he got a better grade on it than I did. I attribute that almost entirely to the name "Aqua Oddities." If he had just put, "The Strange Properties of Water," I think his grade would've suffered. In hindsight, I should've titled mine, "The Mold and the Beautiful" or "Let's Grow Mold Together." Words are powerful, friends.

Some of you might recall that months back, I had some negative things to say about a nearby restaurant called Fast Taco. At the time, my order took a lot longer than I thought it should've, ya know, considering the inherent promise of their name. The food was quite good, mind you, but I was put off by that. After a couple more trips there, I printed a retraction saying that they had noticeably sped up, thereby making their name not nearly as worrisome. However, I am now troubled once more. I shall explain. Please meet me in the next paragraph.

Hello. When I went to Fast Taco a couple of weeks ago with my co-worker Rob, he called me over to the salsa bar. "Um, does 'gringo' mean anything other than what I think it does?" he asked. "What?" "Look," he said, and he pointed to the salsa in front of him. "Salsa gringa," the top line of a little display said. Below it, they translated for us: "Mild." Sure enough, it was just pieces of tomato. As a gringo who enjoys spicy food (especially my Aunt Lynn's spicy chicken casserole thing), I was offended by that translation. I should not be relegated to the mild stuff just because of the color of my skin, and that bothers me. Naturally, I defy them and get two to-go containers of the salsa verde. Despite that transgression, I did not soil their name another time in my personal blogosphere.

Tuesday of this week though, something else happened. I went in there, placed my order, and then paid. I stood off to the side to wait for my tacos (which weren't especially fast, but they were busy). There, in front of me, was an ATM that told people to swipe their cards and then enter their "PIN number." That redundancy always chaps my hide, but I still decided to give them a pass since it's not like they own that machine. But then, folks, then I looked over at the counter. On a laminated sheet of paper, this was typed: "Try our 'new' lentil soup." "New?" Why the quotes? What the hell? Is it really old but they're trying to pass it off as new? Is it a recipe so ancient that they felt like liars when they referred to it as the un-quoted new? I don't know the answer, but I do know that it pushed me over the edge and I had to speak out. They're lucky their food tastes so good, because this gringo counts cuatro strikes against them.

Something funny happened this week that I's just gots to share with you. I got an email in my ptklein@gmail.com inbox (which is newsworthy in itself, hint hint) from a guy named Mike who lives in Texas. He wrote

I entered "Tommy Fuckerfaster' into google being curious about how this joke had morphed over the decades (centuries?) Your blog came up and, since you are a student of such things, you might be interesting in something I saw in a book called "Texas Crude," basically a lexicon of texas language. "Older than Tommy Fuckerfaster's Grandmother." Really Really Old.

One of my postings apparently came up because I once wrote about jokes involving "Johnny Fuckerfaster," and how hilarious it was that we were just supposed to accept that as his name. I wrote back to Mike, telling him that he made my day. Seriously, how many times in your life has someone found you by searching for "Fuckerfaster" online? On second thought, don't answer that.

A few months ago, I signed up with a site called Statcounter. It's amazing, especially since it's free. It will tell me how many people viewed my site on a given day, break it down by city, state, and country, and even tell me how they found me. For example, I went there after receiving Mike's email and it showed me that someone in Waco, Texas searched for "Tommy Fuckerfaster" and then clicked on a link for my site. That's crazy, isn't it? The geography's not perfect, but it's usually pretty close.

The strangest thing is seeing what Google (or other search engine) entries lead people to me. For some reason, someone out there searches for my old high school classmate Jason Barbanell on a weekly basis. The only reason I know this is because he or she clicks on the link to my blog that often and gets there by searching for his name. That strikes me as quite odd, because I have to figure that they know what they're going to get when they click on the same link that they have for months.

Someone keeps searching for "grown up dress up games" also, for reasons that would probably make me feel uncomfortable. They find my post about Halloween costumes and click on it a few times a week. I have no idea why, and I can't find the person to ask (nor would I want to). The other most popular searches that lead people to me are "Bastian say my name" from The Neverending Story and "maltese bark sounds." Weird stuff, friends. And I fully acknowledge that by writing all of these phrases again in this space, it only increases the likelihood that my site will continue to pop up for these searches.

(The most disturbing one so far that I saw was someone who searched for "jungfrau porn" and came to my site. Specifically, it's a post that my Bratty Kid Sister wrote called "Like a Jungfrau" about being in Germany, in which she explains that "jungfrau" means "virgin." I'm pretty sure she didn't have the word "porn" anywhere in there, but it still led this person right to UOPTA. Ah, isn't technology grand?)

And now, ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together (but then separate them, put them together again, and repeat) for the one, the only...Car Watch!

I saw a bumper sticker that told me, "Cowgirls are more than an 8 second ride." I guess that's an alternate version of the "Blank do it blank" stickers, and I'll give her credit for that. The only reason I understand the reference to eight seconds (which is the time a bull rider needs to stay on for his score to count) is because Luke Perry was in a movie called "8 Seconds" about bull riding. Without that knowledge, I may have gone on some ignorant tirade asking what the hell that meant, who thought that cowgirls jumped ship after seven seconds, yadda yadda yadda. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Thank God for Luke Perry. (What's that? I've never said that before? Well I should've.)

On my way to work during the week, I saw a license plate frame that made me laugh out loud. Then, questioning if what I saw was accurate, I sped up to look again for confirmation. Sure enough, the top said, "Keep your paws off," and the bottom said, "TRUCK!" Yes, please keep your paws off truck. I put foot on gas pedal, then went to office and called parents. Seriously dude, you need to proofread something like that before letting it represent you to the world. The only possible explanation that would make me take back my mocking sentences is if the guy's nickname is Truck and dogs (who can read English) keep inappropriately touching him. If that's the case, then he has every right to tell those dogs to keep their paws off Truck, and I will humbly apologize. Anything short of that, and I'm afraid he's just a moron.

(Sorry for the random sidenote in the middle of Car Watch, but I reminded myself of something. My favorite brother and I used to have our own line in our parents' house growing up, and every once in a while, someone would call on it asking for my dad. I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he would never give anyone our number as a way to reach him, so the person was a solicitor. I would politely say, "I'm sorry, but this isn't his number. This is his kids' line." They would inevitably ask for his number, to which I'd always reply, "I'm afraid I'm not going to give that out." Dusty found that hilarious. "You're afraid? Why would you be afraid?" Sometimes I'd add a "Yeah..." to the beginning, which he thought was even funnier. So am I really afraid that "paws off Truck" guy is a moron? Truthfully, a little, because I share the road with him, and we don't need any additional morons out there.)

Sticking with me (since I am the first person - or I is the first person, to be more accurate), I saw a plate that read, "EZ NRVUS." Those two adjectives don't seem to go together to me. It's like having "HAPY MAD" on a plate. In fact, I have trouble seeing how they make sense next to each other at all. "Oh yeah, I'm nervous alright, but I've done this a thousand times, so it's kind of an easy nervous." That's all I got. Any thoughts, folks?

Lastly, my homey Rockabye saw a plate that read, "KISSING." I don't get it. It seems more like a clue on the Pyramid game show than a license plate to me. "Um, things that can be French? Uh, uh, things cousins do? Um, what people apparently do while sitting in a tree?" Maybe it's just his or her hobby, but I find that proclamation more disturbing than my game show idea. I tend to side with myself fairly often.

Ok, gentle readers, I'm off. I've got some cute kids' birthdays coming up this weekend as my homeboy T-roy turns two tomorrow and my favorite kid in Maryland, the Ty-baby, turns one on Sunday. Have a great week, everyone, and please write to ptklein@gmail.com with anything about anything. Seriously, that's a pretty accommodating request, don't you think? Take care, everyone.