The day of sweet numbers

Today, my friends and friends of friends, is a very special day. Oh sure, it's the birthday of Einstein, Quincy Jones, Michael Caine, Billy Crystal, and Rick Dees, but that's not what I'm talking about. Check it out: Some people write a date with dashes in between the numbers. Others (like Ben and Juliet) use slashes between them. And then there are those who use dots or decimals to separate day from month. Let's all think like that last group for a second. With that format, today's date is 3.14. Yes, that same 3.14 that begins the glory of Pi. (I think I've mentioned this before, but my friend Dave and I once had a contest to see how many digits we could each remember. He got about 5 more than me. I still remember 3.141592653589 and I think 79 follows that and then maybe a 2, but I had about ten more digits memorized in my...prime. Ha!)

In honor of Pi Day, as I am calling it (and I'm 100% certain that others are as well even though I haven't heard of this celebration yet), I splurged and ordered a pie for the office along with a co-worker. The Sports Guy on espn.com once mentioned Porch Pies (http://www.porchpies.com/) for those in L.A. to check out. There was a little sticker shock at first, but with a couple of people going in, it wasn't so bad. Now, I'm not the biggest pie person in the world. That honor probably goes to Dom DeLuise. However, I like a good apple one from time to time, especially when it's got some crumble action going on, but I don't grab a dessert menu and immediately go to the pie section or anything. Still, believe me when I tell you that the $30 pie we ordered the time before in the office was a bargain. Seriously, it was that good, and I can't wait for today's. We got the buttermilk one, which I needed to be talked into since it sounded weird, and I can only describe it as tasting like "pureed goodness." Man, it's gonna be a good day. (By the way, if anyone from Porch Pies is reading this, I still have one sponsorship slot available for the right price. Although I guess you just got my glowing endorsement for free, so that wouldn't make the best business sense for you. Ah, I know, you should reward my word-spreading with a free pie. Yeah, that's the ticket.)

If you couldn't tell yet, today's post is going to be full of random crap. That's how I roll on Pi Day. After all, you can't spell "the number Pi" without Peter. (I love that I can add "the" to something to help with 40% of my name, by the way.) So here's another unrelated item: I spent literally 20 minutes trying to iron a new dress shirt this morning, not counting the set-up/heating-up time. One shirt! And I stopped at 20 minutes because I gave up and thought I could blame my seatbelt for the remaining creases. Here's the reason this is blogworthy in my opinion: In big letters on a tag attached to my new shirt, it said "Wrinkle Free!" I just don't understand how they can say that when the minute I take it out of the plastic and expertly remove all of the pins, a very wrinkled shirt is sitting in my hands. Are they saying that after I first take out all of the wrinkles, it will stay that way forever? That's not true either, because I've had other shirts that make the same claim. I'm very confused by this blatant and bold-faced fabric-ation. (Sorry.) It's the equivalent of selling someone a flat basketball with a "Never Loses Air!" sticker on it. Or a moldy loaf of bread with an expiration date two years from now on it. Or a $6 burger costing...oh don't get me started.

Ok, I'm gonna get a little strange on you right now, so be prepared. How many of you are familiar with the Greek Mythology story of Sisyphus? Basically, he's in Tartarus (the ancient Greek version of hell), condemned to constantly push a giant boulder up a hill all day every day. When he gets near the top, it rolls all the way back down and he has to start over. It's a story that I've always leapt to when in need of an example of futility, and it's made its way into a poem or two that I wrote in college. Here's my new thought with this old story: Where have we all seen a similar plight? Think about it for a second: we all know a character in a very similar situation. Give up? The Itsy Bitsy Spider. Seriously. He climbs up the water spout, gets tossed back down by the rain, waits a bit, then starts the same cycle over again. For eternity. (How many, "Holy shit, he might actually have a point here" thoughts did I just get from you?) Let it be known throughout the land: when you're in need of a link between Greek mythology and nursery rhymes, I'm your man. (I have a great Prometheus/Three Little Pigs theory brewing.)

Next item! My friend Dusty sent me something that many of you will undoubtedly not bother with, and I can't blame you. This is for the few of you who will like it. On this link (http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/13120) it explains how "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is an actual, grammatically-correct sentence. Intrigued? If not, don't even click it because it won't be worth it. I have one guarantee for anyone who reads it: the word "buffalo" will look and sound like nonsense to you for a little while. I think it's really cool, and Dusty knows that I'm weird like that, so I greatly appreciated the forward.

Earlier this week, I looked up and saw the word "joy" in an email I was writing. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how that word got there, because while I knew it was a typo, I hadn't planned on writing anything even remotely similar in that part of that sentence. I went back and figured out that contextually, I meant to write the word "hit" there. That confused me even more at first, but then I looked at the keyboard. Go ahead, I'll give you a second. There, ya see what happened? I was off by one key to the right when I set my fingers up to type, and those three erroneous letters ended up forming their own word. It's kinda like a more modern version of IBM and HAL, if you know what I'm talking about. I'm glad I figured it out, because "in order to joy the target demographic" just wasn't going to make me sound competent enough.

Here's a hypothetical situation that's probably been an actual one for the majority of you. Say you're walking from your car to your front door, and you see some dog shit on your lawn. It's not from your dog, and you're unhappy that someone didn't clean up after his or her pet. What do you do? For me, the options are limited but all require little or no effort. I might leave it there and be pissed off, or I might clean it up next time I'm cleaning up my own pet's poop. In the category of "a little more effort," I can understand if some of you would then put up a sign that said "Please clean up after your pets" or a picture of a dog dumping with a red circle and line through it. To me, those are all perfectly acceptable responses. What my lovely wife found, on the other hand, was someone who went to a slightly more involved response to the shit. She took and sent me this picture:

Now, it's a little dark and a lot sideways, but it's a laminated color sign, three posts, and a shitload of effort to point at the poo. Yes, it's still there. Follow the big blue arrown. Can you believe the hassle that person went through? How incredibly pissed off was he (I'm assuming) to do all of that. What if it was gone by the time he got there with his whole project? Better yet, what if it was a stray dog that crapped on his lawn? How unbelievably misguided would his ire be then? Stylistically, I'm a little confused by some of the choices this person made. With the clear ability to print in color, he chose just "asshole" and "shit" to stand out, and in different colors of course. Clearly though, he wanted "clean" to stand out too, but he went with the underline instead of the color there. Why? I also want to know how he decided that the person being an asshole merited only one exclamation while the shit-cleaning earned two. Lastly, I want to know if he had all of these supplies already because this is a habit of his. "Hey Fuckwad! Leave the NEWSPAPER on my PORCH next time!!" He must be fun at parties.

And now, as if that isn't enough deep ruminating for one day, let's mosey our little booties over to the Car Watch. (I meant butts and not woven socks, by the way.)

My dad wrote me saying that he saw this bumper sticker: "Make brown rice not war." I never knew they were mutually exclusive. I'm glad to learn that though, because we made brown rice at home within the past week. At the time, I thought the lack of war was a coincidence, but now I know the true correlation. Brown Rice 08! (I don't mean Jerry Brown and Condi though, just to be clear. Bobby Brown and JerryRice? Jerry Brown and Jerry Rice? That's an interesting pair. Got more Browns and Rices? Comment away.)

My homey Rockabye sent me a bumper sticker as well: "Gnomes Unite," it said. I'm not going to go the obvious route and wax faux-poetically about what united gnomes might accomplish. Instead, I'm going to be practical with my question about this car adornment. Is that truly the best place to put a message intended to rally fictitious garden creatures? How many gnomes does that driver expect to be in the car behind him or her? Everyone is entitled to their own pet causes, but at least advertise them correctly. Gee whiz.

Did I just say "Gee whiz?" What happened there? Good gravy.

And finally, I saw a license plate that said, "PETITMD." I'm slightly confused by this. In my opinion as an expert Car Watcher, I see three possible meanings. Ahem:
1. "I'm short in stature, but I aced my way through med school. I'm a Petite MD, but oh yeah, I can't spell very well."
2. "In the veterinary clinic, I specialize on miniature computers to put in cats and dogs that tell us what ails our furry friends since they can't speak. It's a new field, but I'd say I'm a Pet Information Technology Medical Doctor."
3. "I like going into doctors' offices, exposing myself, and commanding them to touch me."

I'm pretty sure it's one of those three. Ok, enough fun for today. I had fun at least. Have a grand weekend and week, gentle readers. May all of your Ides of Marches be pleasant tomorrow. And please, when you come across anything I might find interesting, funny, disturbing, or confusing as hell, send it along to ptklein@gmail.com. Buffaloha.