Fax and fiction

Good morning yet again, and welcome to UOPTA. No, it's not the Upper Oregon Parent-Teacher Association, but I can see why you'd make that mistake. Rather, this is the place in which your friendly neighborhood Peter rambles somewhat coherently about the topics arbitrarily chosen for this week. Are you ready for the disjointed shiznit that I'm about to throw down? No? Ok, um, are you ready to...read stuff? Ok, cool, I'm glad we cleared that up.

There are certain mediums (media?) of mass solicitation to which I've become fully accustomed. For example, when I check our mailbox and see an advertisement for a realtor, a tree-trimmer, or someone who can service our nonexistent swimming pool, I'm not surprised. Likewise, spam in the email form doesn't surprise me at all, and neither do cold calls from people peddling various wares. There is one distribution channel that still makes me shake my head a little though: cold faxes. Being an early bird, I'm the first one who arrives in my office every morning. Occasionally, I see that a fax came in during the evening hours, and I always check to see if it's anything important. It almost never is.

I'll give these people credit for the most part because they clearly try hard to fool people. There are fake memos from "Human Resources" asking us to circulate this amazing vacation deal that they found. Sometimes it's in an email format, saying something like, "Hey buddy, here's the information on that stock tip I was telling you about. It's gonna go through the roof!" I guess they expect someone to say, "That's right, I was talking to someone recently about a stock tip. I guess this is how that person chose to follow up with me. I'll take a gajillion shares please." Sometimes they got the name of the company or an individual from some other list. That's problematic, especially when someone who passed away months ago gets invited to various fundraising dinners.

One unsolicited fax caught my eye this week and reminded me that I hadn't yet talked about this topic. This one isn't trying to fool anyone with underhanded trickery or subterfuge, but rather just a good old fashioned "too good to be true" deal. What do I mean by that? Well, here is the offer and I swear I'm not making any of this up: "2 children free with 2 paid adults! 5 days and 4 nights in Orlando, 3 days and 2 nights in Daytona Beach and Ft. Lauderdale. Plus: 3 day 2 night Bahamas cruise. Bonus: 5 day Cancun or 7 day Puerto Vallarta. Mini Excursion: 3/2 Las Vegas. For the FIRST 100 callers! No Blackout Dates! All this for only $99." Ok, so I can get a 19-21 day vacation for under a hundred bucks, but only if I act right now? I can't see why not. Oh yeah, because they're lying liars with big fat lie-heads. I'd rather punch myself repeatedly in the face for four hours than give those people my credit card information. (And I don't have a high pain tolerance, so that really means something.)

I barbecued some turkey burgers at our house within the past week, and I had the most interesting conversation in my head. Well, it was interesting to me at least, and that's all that really matters here. I wanted to wash my hands after handling the raw meat, but I didn't want to get raw meat residue on the soap dispenser, so I used my forearm to push it down a few times. Then, for reasons unbeknownst to me (or anyone for that matter), I created a dialogue in my head between two made-up characters, who naturally happened to be British. The scene went something like this:

Two British men stand in a kitchen. We'll call them Nigel and Colin, because those names totally sound British. Colin walks up to the kitchen sink and with an open hand, pushed down on the soap dispenser several times. Nigel stands looking aghast.

Colin: What?
Nigel: You just touched the soap dispenser with raw meat on your hands!
Colin: Yeah, I did. So what?
Nigel: (getting a little agitated) So what? Now every time someone else touches that, they're touching all of the bacteria and germs that were on the uncooked meat.
Colin: Yeah. So?
Nigel: (getting much more agitated) SO? That's incredibly unsanitary, mind you.
Colin: Ah, yes, but you see, every time someone touches it, they're about to wash their hands, aren't they?
(Nigel stairs at Colin for a minute, and we see his emotions change from angry to contemplative to persnickety, and finally to resigned.)
Nigel: Bugger.

And...scene. Believe me, folks, I'm almost as weirded out as you are that I have spontaneous British scenes appearing in my head. Still, that Colin has a point. I mean, it really doesn't matter how filthy the top of a soap dispenser is when touching leads to washing one's hands 100% of the time. God save the Queen!

Speaking of the British persuasion, is there any doubt in anyone's mind that "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" was written by someone from the U.K.? Seriously, who else calls anything "jolly good," and who else refers to people as "fellows" (unless some kind of grant is involved)? Why not make it, "I Fancy He's a Bloody Brilliant Bloke and my Best Mate. Cheers!" and remove all doubt?

You know what word I recently realized that I really liked? Laughingstock. What a great noun. We need more just like it. Seriously, do we have any other words with that construction? If someone has mono, are they going to be a sleepingstock for the next two weeks? Does anyone ever say, "Man, I'm so f'n hungry. I'm gonna be the eatingstock of the party"? We should! Why waste that cool word style just on one word?

I just re-read that paragraph, and instead of deleting most of it and starting over, I want to share my thought process with you all (as scary as that may be). You see, I realized that my examples of sleepingstock, etc. aren't really the same exact thing. The "laughing" in "laughingstock" is directed at the person instead of being an action that the person is initiating. Simply put, a laughingstock isn't someone who does a lot of laughing, and that's the way my examples turned out. Instead, I want to come up with some truer examples. Let's see...here: "Rocky, you don't stand a chance against Drago. You're going to be a punchingstock!" I think that works. "Oh sure, go ahead and boo Derek Jeter in Yankee Stadium while wearing a Red Sox jersey, but you'll be the hatingstock of the game." I guess "punchingstock" works there as well. Since I'm the one trying to get this word construction out there, I'm going to say that we should be able to use it for both direct and indirect actions, thereby making all of my examples valid. If you have strong feelings that it should be only one way or the other, the comment section is all yours, gentle readers.

And now, if you can muster the energy in your post-Bastille Day stupor, come meet me over in the Car Watch section.

You made it! Sweet. First off, my favorite brother saw a Prius with this plate: "L8R 4 GAS." I suppose that since "I NEED GAS LESS FREQUENTLY" wouldn't fit, that'll do just fine. I applaud the effort, because the point still got across, even if I would mock the driver endlessly if I saw them at a gas station. "So I guess by 'later' you really mean 'right now' then," I'd ask. Maybe I'd make some joke about the space-time continuum getting messed up because he or she is doing something both now and later at the same time. That's the kind of humor I bring to those situations, for better or (more likely) for worse.

I was behind a car on my way home a couple of days ago, and I saw that the plate read, "WRLS MVN." "World's moving?" I thought to myself. I started going through more options in my head but stopped when I saw the bottom of the license plate frame. "Wireless Maven," it said. Well why get the plate then? If you know that you need a supplementary way to convey the message because the abbreviated one would still leave it confusing or ambiguous at best, then why not just get the frame, tell everyone plainly what your message is, and move on without the personalized plate? Geez, some people's priorities are way messed up.

Lastly, my homey Rockabye saw this license plate frame: "Why be pretty when you can be gorgeous?" It's a good question. Wait, scratch that: it's a fucking retardiculous question. Let's come up with some equivalent frames along the same lines of irrational logic. "Why eat a steak when you can eat five steaks?" "Why win $20 from the lottery when you can win $3.8 million?" "Why be moderately stupid when you can be a total and complete imbecile?"

Deep breath in...hold it...and release. Ah, that's better. And that's also it for now, homeys. Thanks for visiting Urban Outfitters Part-Time Assistance or whatever this blog is called. Happy 2.5 b-day to my little homey T-roy tomorrow, happy 1.5 to the Ty-baby on Sunday, and happy whole first birthdays to both little Keira (on Wed) and Rio (on Thurs). Wow, the children really are our future. Have a lovely weekend and week, and I'll see you all here next Friday. As always, please comment and/or email ptklein@gmail.com with anything at all.