Love, presidents, and other random things

Hello and good morning, friends. Well, crap. I have no idea what to write about. I have a bunch of smaller items on my list of single-paragraph thoughts, but I don't know if I should just bust those out (and empty the reservoir, if you will). I know, I'll start with two timely thoughts I had, see how much space those take up, and then proceed from there. Feel free to jump in at any time with any questions that might arise during this session.

Oh, I thought of another thing. Cool, even if it's quite brief. Yesterday, as many of you are likely aware, was Valentine's Day. (At least that's how my calendar writes it. I understand that it's the day of Saint Valentine, and so the apostrophe is technically correct there. Still, I can't help but think of "valentine" as the noun of someone's sweetheart, which I'm fairly certain is the most common usage of the word. Second, if I had to guess, would be the paper a kid gives to another on that day. Anyway, since I don't think of the saint first, I want to write the holiday as "Valentines' Day." That way, it is the day of more than one Valentine. I'm confusing myself though, because my calendar says "Veterans Day" without any apostrophe at all I would expect that to be an s-then-apostrophe one as well. Maybe I'm just way to liberal with my plural possessive usage. I really would like your opinions on this, even though it's not exactly the most important current issue in the world. I believe that would be, "Should Josiah have made the final 24 of American Idol this season?" The correct answer to that one is no, by the way.) Earlier in the week, I was asked two separate times about my plans for the night of the 14th. I told both my friend Greg and my homey Rockabye that I was going to be making my lovely wife dinner that night. Both of them had the same response: "Oh, quesadillas?" To me, the funny thing isn't that they both said that. It's the fact that if I were to tell my friends Dusty, Dave, and Jon, my favorite brother Kevin, or either of my parents that I was making dinner, I'm certain that it would've elicited the same response. I guess you can't spell "predictable" without Peter.

(Man, side notes sure to add words to a post, eh?) Sticking with yesterday's faux-but-nice-nonetheless holiday, I was waiting in line at a store to buy a Valentine's day card earlier in the week. A man in his 50s or so started walking toward me, shaking his head in a manner that clearly said, "I can't believe what I just saw." He was dressed pretty nicely, and as he started moving toward me, I noticed that he held a copy of the National Enquirer in his hand. Still smiling and shaking his head, he came right into my personal space and said, "Will you get a load of this?" He pointed to the cover. "What's, uh, what's her name again?" he asked me. "Oprah Winfrey," I said, not concealing a slight "Are you fucking serious?" tone to my voice. "Her husband or boyfriend, Stedman-" I quickly looked down, and sure enough, Stedman's name appeared on the cover. Thank God. Seriously, if this guy knew Stedman's name but not Oprah's, my head might have exploded. He continued, "Stedman told her that she needs to choose him or him." On the second "him," he was pointing to a picture of Barack Obama. Yes, the paper was alleging an illicit love triangle. And yes, this guy thought it was all true and it blew his mind. "Uh, yeah, that's something," I said before being thankfully called over to an open register. I don't know what part of that interaction I found most astonishing: not knowing Oprah, wholly swallowing that bullshit story, or the need he felt to share that story with the first person who came into his line of sight. Actually, I think I figured out what confused me the most about the whole scene. If he didn't even know Oprah's name (which is retardiculous in its own right), then how could that story be so earth-shattering to him? We'll never know, I guess. (A lone tear falls on the trusty blogger's keyboard.)

Yesterday, my Bratty Kid Sister told me that Yahoo Radio had a station of all 80s love songs. Naturally, I had it on for a few hours. It was hilarious as I went through Journey, REO Speedwagon, Bryan Adams, and the duet of all duets, "Endless Love." While I was laughing at the vast majority of the songs, one made me sit up, say "Ooh ooh!" and turn the volume a lot higher: "Someone" by Depeche Mode. It had been a long time since I'd heard that song, and it sounded great. Here's the thing about this song: it spoke to me when I was a teen boy yearning for a deep relationship with a girl (preferably a smoking hot one). It was one of those rare instances (not incidences) in which it seemed like someone understood me. I was deeply entrenched in the "nobody understands me" phase, so that's really saying something. To commemorate how moved I was by this song, I actually wrote the initials to some of the lyrics on one of my bookcovers next to an eye with a teardrop below it. It was obscured a little by my drawings of "Sphincterman, The Contracting Muscle of Justice," but it was on there nonetheless. I think part of me hoped that some hot chick felt the same way about the song, glimpsed the initials on my bookcover, saw the tear representing a feeling but vulnerable young man, and then starting making out with me. If memory serves, that never ended up happening.

(A side note that may or may not be interesting whatsoever: I also wrote the initials of "Under the Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers on another bookcover at some point. It probably had to do with the opening lines of "Sometimes I feel like I don't have a partner/Sometimes I feel like my only friend." Ah, gotta love the teen years. In any case, I distinctly remember briefly thinking that I had found a secret message or code in the initials of the lyrics. I wish I could remember what I believed that message was, because "SIFLIDHAP SIFLMOF ITCILI TCOA LAIA TWC" means absolutely nothing to 30 year-old Peter.

Ok, enough with that holiday. Let's move on to next Monday: Presidents' Day. Ah, the calendar got the apostrophe right there. Good thing too, because I probably would've been pretty angry at such a clear-cut call for the plural possessive there. I mean, seriously, that holiday was specifically created so that we didn't get days off for both Washington and Lincoln. Good job, calendar. So, with the topic of presidents, I always like to think of the most obscure ones. To me, Millard Fillmore is mentioned often enough as the default obscure president that he no longer fits the description. (That, my friends, is irony.) So I just looked up the list of presidents, and there are a few that I would like to nominate for the most obscure POTUS. At first glance, I was going to say John Tyler, but then Zachary Taylor caught my eye. His name may be more familiar, but the fact that he died of natural causes in office just a year or so after being sworn in caught my eye. How did I not know that? I know about William Henry Harrison dying of pneumonia a few months after taking office, but Taylor somehow slipped though the cracks. Those two presidential deaths of natural causes were within a decade of each other. I wonder if that had an effect on the number of people who ran for that office, seeing as how it greatly reduced one's lifespan. Rutherford B. Hayes is another fairly obscure one, as is James K. Polk. If Martin Van Buren didn't have kick-ass sideburns, I'm sure that he'd be in this discussion as well. So tell me, folks, who do you nominate? Did you just learn of any president from this paragraph? How many people out there do you think named their kids Taylor or Tyler without knowing that there was a president with that name? Sadly, I estimate that number to be in the hundreds of thousands. Yikes.

Hey, I just did a quick search for something irrelevant about presidents, and I spotted a very funny comment. Apparently, Zachary Taylor has another noteworthy distinction: he's the only president who shares his name with two-thirds of the band Hanson. You learn something new every day, my friends.

Ok, now I'm going to go through a few of the smaller items I have on my List o' Things to Write About When You're Fresh Out of Ideas. Yes, the fabled LTWAWYFOI really does exist. Some dreams really do come true. First off, I saw what has to be one of the nerdiest items of all time. While bowling in my league with my fellow Sweep the Leg teammates, I noticed a very peculiar looking ball that a fellow bowler had. Granted, bowling itself is fairly nerdy. I'll agree to that fact, even though I enjoy it immensely. However, the nerdiness factor increases exponentially when a clear bowling ball has a big twelve-sided die in the middle of it. For those of you unfamiliar with that object, it's what's used in Dungeons & Dragons. Yes, we found something unequivocally nerdier than bowling. When combined, it's an almost unspeakable level of geekdom. (That totally sounds like a book title. Keep your eyes out for "An Unspeakable Level of Geekdom" by Peter Klein, hitting bookstores this summer!)

Here's another quick hit of things I've thought. A co-worker of mine was talking about dressing up for Halloween when she was a little girl. She said that it was one costume and one costume only for years: a princess. She went on to describe the wand, the dress, and, in her words, "the dunce cap and everything." She's totally right. I'd never noticed how extremely similar a princess's headwear and a dunce cap are. Why is that ok? I mean, I know fairy tail princesses aren't always making the wisest decisions, but they're a model of purity and goodness, not unintelligence so extreme that one is forced into a corner with a special "I'm dumb" hat. Do you think they're from the same origin somehow? Too bad I gave up internet research for Lent.

And like that - poof! - I'm already to the Car Watch portion of this post. It's almost like magic when that happens.

My friend Dusty sent me a text message yesterday with a bumper sticker he saw: "I dyslexia (heart)." Brilliant! All this time, I thought I was such a genius for singing Paul Westerberg's "Dyslexic Heart" as "Cixelsyd Traeh" with my friend Adam. It just got us confused looks though. With that bumper sticker, however, the owner clearly and concisely makes fun of the learning disability. And I applaud him for it.

My dad saw a plate that read, "MRXITMT." Maybe it's just me, but I think "Mr. Excitement" is a title one should have bestowed upon him and not self-proclaimed. Oh yeah, and either fit it on a plate in a way that makes sense or abandon the idea. It took me longer than it should've to realize that it's not Mr. Exit Mountain. (I also toyed with a mis-spelled 'excrement' somewhere in there. Um, please don't let me ever write that sentence again.)

My homey Rockabye saw "NOOMAAS" on a plate. That's great...if you're being tortured in Spain. It's not easy to incorporate a complex emotion like anguish in just seven characters, but I really feel it in that one. Well done?

He also saw a plate that made me laugh quite a bit. "IHVNOIQ," it told us. While I certainly hope that's not the case (especially since that person's driving and all), it's more self-deprecating than I'm used to seeing in that medium. And we all know the Klein formula of humor: Self-deprecation + unexpected situation = big laughs. Rinse and repeat.

Last, but oh-so-not-least, is a license plate frame I saw on my way home from work on Wednesday. "Voice over artists...Do it with a boom." Now what kind of lame sexual innuendo is that? How about "Voice over artists...Do it while you're picturing someone else" instead? Nope, they went with "Do it with a boom." Does that mean very quickly and forcefully? Do they really want that to be what they're known for? Can I have another question in this paragraph? Why not?

And like that, I'm out of here. My Bratty Kid Sister's birthday is next Tuesday, so I'm wishing her an early happy one here and now. I suggest you all do the same...in your minds. Have a great weekend, Presidents' Day, and work week until I see you back here next Friday. I'm interested in all of your thoughts about obscure presidents, so comment away. And as always, please feel free to email ptklein@gmail.com with anything at all. I need ideas and thoughts, folks, so please keep sending me anything about anything. Thanks, and see you soon.