Idle thoughts

Good morning, homepeople of the internets. I probably mentioned this a year ago, but the band NOFX has a song called "August 8th" in which they frequently say, "August 8th is a beautiful day." So it has to be, right? I mean, punk bands don't lie. Oh crap! I just thought of something that may not seem like a big deal to you but bothers me to a rather large extent. In a song by David Garza, he sings, "Honest words/are like August 3rds/they just both come maybe once a year." It's an interesting rhyme, although the "maybe" doesn't apply to the date which certainly only comes once a year. Still, my point is that I just let August 3rd go by without listening to that song. It's on my iTunes at work so I had no excuse and now have to wait an entire year before I'm able to listen to that song on the most appropriate day of the year. Damn I hate when I do that. That said, good morning everyone. Here's to August 8th!

I did something for the first time in my life last weekend: I went to a movie by myself. I realize that many people do this every single day, but being the first time for me, it was a new and fairly interesting experience. When I stepped to the counter and asked for one ticket, I almost expected the young (and completely disinterested) man to say, "Just one? Why? That's kinda depressing, don't ya think?" And I had my response all set: "Oh no, I'm just meeting my friends in there; they're saving a seat for me since I was running late." Notice I said "friends" in the plural, because I totally have more than one. If he was smart, he'd point out that I couldn't be simultaneously "running late" and standing in front of him a full forty minutes before the movie's start time. Good thing I made him extra dumb in this scenario.

Well, he didn't say anything, and after walking around the mall for a while, I entered the theater by myself. I debated putting something on a seat next to me, but I thought that might be silly (and I didn't have anything to put there anyway except for my cell phone or keys). "What if someone asks if I'm saving a seat?" I thought to myself. "I could say that I just got a message saying my friend couldn't make it, so no, I guess I'm not saving it anymore." Was it really better to look like I got stood up? Then I got a better idea. If someone asked anything that had to do with me being alone, I'd proudly own up to every bit of it. Why? Because maybe they'd think I was some sort of film critic or something, purposely alone so as to avoid being distracted (by my lovely wife's beauty, for example).

This probably says a lot about me - and isn't terribly flattering either - but this falls right into a pattern of behavior that I've noticed about myself. When alone, I always jump to people looking at me and figuring that I must be brilliant. This happens at conferences often when I'm up and ready to go an hour before my first meeting of the day. I sit at a cafe with a large black coffee and...want to look important. That's not easy, especially when Pre-Coffee Peter's involved. Therefore, I usually take out a pen and pad of paper and put a "deep in thought" look on my face, pausing every so often to jot something down. This leads to many pieces of paper with such intellectual musings as, "Peter Klein," "My name is Peter Klein," and "How does this pen write?" Do I really expect acquaintances to walk by and think, "Wow, that guy's deep in thought and is probably coming up with ways to revolutionize business as we know it"? No, but something close to that would be nice. I figure it's better to avoid looking like I'm just sitting there, praying for the caffeine to work in double-time.

Come to think of it, I did a very similar thing during boring lectures in college. The pen poised ever-so-gently against my bottom lip, I'd employ a slight squint and give a barely-perceptible nodding motion to say, "Yes, that's very interesting, but I think I could do even more with that. I might just blow your mind if your give me a minute to fully think through this concept I'm working on." The important part of that look was the subtext: "Don't call on me, don't call on me, don't call on me."

What can I take away from all of this self-realization? If you said, "You're a lot smarter and deeper when you don't open your mouth," that's a good guess but not quite what I was looking for. I guess the real lesson is that I don't fully know how to behave when alone in public. I don't want to be the annoying stranger who is eerily chatty with people, but I also don't want to be the creepy guy sitting alone in the corner. From when I entered the movie theater until I was in my car driving away, I didn't speak even one word, and that felt very not-me. Even when my lovely wife is out of town for a couple of days, I'm talking to our pup or on the phone or seeing family or friends. So this was (as previously billed) a fairly interesting experience for me. I can see myself doing it again at some point too, because there were many others just like me in the theater. Did they find the same comfort as I did when leaving in one mass of crowd so onlookers couldn't tell who was with whom? I don't know, but I bet they didn't look as insightful as I did either.

I was listening to a song recently called "Have You Forgotten" by Red House Painters. It's ok, I hadn't heard of them either until my friend Jon put it on one of his infamous mixes. In any case, there's a line in there that says, "When we were kids, we hated things our parents did." Even by listening to all of the other lyrics, I can't decide which of the two possible meanings the lead singer is going for. Is it, "We hated the actions of our parents" or "We hated the same things that our parents hated"? Growing up, I experienced both of those potential meanings. I hated when my mom brushed my fro-y hair since it hurt a lot (and I'm told I "screamed bloody murder"). At the same time, my parents and I were unified in our hatred for the Boston Celtics. Tough call, eh?

That reminds me of something else that had two potential meanings, although this time I was just clearly wrong. A little while ago, I stayed in a rented house with some friends for a weekend away. In our instructions for how to check-out, I read that we were supposed to make sure that the broom was clean. "That's weird, but sounds pretty easy to me," I thought. When other people read it, they pointed out that I was, in fact, a moron. It stated, "Please leave the house broom clean." Maybe if they had put a hyphen or quotes around the "broom clean" part (or if I'd been familiar with that term), I would've correctly assessed the situation. Instead, I was left thinking, "Ok, the house broom, like the house refrigerator. Makes sense to me!" I tend to enjoy ambiguous phrasings a little more when they don't result in me looking or sounding stupid, but what the hell. Ok friends, it's time once again for everybody's favorite (and only) running UOPTA segment: Car Watch!

My homey Rockabye saw this license plate frame: "Have you hugged your race car today?" Well, the first problem with that is fairly obvious: an extremely small percentage of people who view that frame (or "piece of car flair" as I feel like calling it right now) actually have race cars. I'm gonna go with about 0.5%, and I think that figure's a little high. The second problem involves the delicate timing of hugging said race car. Certainly one would want to make sure it wasn't currently, ya know, racing. The third problem is simply logistical: how does one hug a race car (or any car for that matter)? I'm picturing my chest against the driver-side window and my arms outstretched in an attempt to touch the front and back windshields. I don't know how large my imaginary race car is, so it's hard to really see this in my mind's eye. I can tell you one thing though: it's not sponsored by those marketing bastards at Carl's Jr. I'd sooner drive the Viagra car than that one.

Next, I saw a plate that read, "LUVMYDUK." While that's very interesting, I'm more intrigued by the fact that someone in L.A. owns a duck. For that person, it doesn't seem like a big leap that s/he would love the pet duck enough to put that on a personalized plate. I'd say the same thing would probably go for anyone with a bumper sticker saying, "I love my life-size J. Edgar Hoover circa 1970 wax figurine."

Lastly, I saw a license plate frame that I'm sure meant well, but it didn't quite hit the mark for me. It read, "Stop bitching. Start a revolution." Here's the thing with that: there's an incredibly different amount of activation energy required to perform those two tasks. I'll explain further (in case I'm being too obtuse). In chemistry, for a chemical reaction to take place, a certain amount of energy is required. It's called "activation energy" since it's needed to activate the reaction. This always seemed to be diagrammed with a hill of sorts, if I recall, and that's an apt analogy. (A catalyst, for those of you in a sciencey mood, lowers the required activation energy or "makes that hill smaller" so that the reaction takes place more easily.) So here's my point: there is an extremely low amount of activation energy required for someone who wants to stop bitching. He or she just stops talking or gets distracted or laid or something. Starting a revolution is on the extreme opposite end of that spectrum. That hill of activation energy is more like Mount Everest. Oh sure, you think I'm being hyperbolic by using the tallest mountain on Earth. But think about what it takes to literally start a revolution. It's a crazy amount of grass roots organizing, igniting the will of the people, strategic planning, weapon purchasing (often), and much much more. So, all things being equal, I'm a hell of a lot more likely to just stop bitching and say, "Have a nice day."

So have a nice day, everybody. Happy Birthday today (August 8th, the beautiful day) to our friend Laura. And this upcoming Wednesday is International Lefthanders' Day, so raise a glass (with the appropriate hand, of course) to your humble blogger and all of his southpaw brethren. Lefty power! As always, drop me a line at ptklein@gmail.com with anything that crosses your mind. Then it will cross mine too, and we'll be mind-crossing pals or something. Sweet.