Erroneous zones

Hola mis amiguitos, y bienvenidos a UOPTA (pronounced ooh-oh-peh-teh-ah). I hope that this week treated you all well and that you're as excited as I am that two years from today, it will be 10/10/10. I mean, can you just stand it? I know, it's pretty crazy, right? For today's post, I have a bunch of random thoughts that I won't even attempt to link together with those pesky transition phrases. You ready? Sweet.

I had to go to New York for work two days last week, and while the majority of my time was a wee bit on the boring side, I did manage to purloin a few nuggets of blogworthy substance from my expedition. (I guarantee you that I've never written that sentence before in my life, and I'm not sure it's ever been spoken by anyone in the history of the English language. I'm a frickin' pioneer, people.) First, a gentleman was giving a presentation on how awesome and advanced his company is. A few times during the talk, he proudly said that all of their systems are "fully redundant." I'm not used to hearing that as a benefit, but it clearly was in this case, which I found interesting.

As a side note, my dad's office had (or still has) a plaque from his insurance company celebrating the "outstanding loss ratio" he had the previous year. I saw that and said, "That doesn't really sound like a good thing." "No, I can see what you mean," he said. "Especially if 'outstanding' is being used in the 'not yet settled' sense," I added. And he's never looked at it the same way again. Sorry, Pops.

Back to the meetings. The next speaker managed to get me to jot two things down for very different reasons. The first was out of shock. I wrote this on my page, "He just actually made a 'special but not special like riding the shortbus' joke in a business presentation. Didn't see that coming." Yep, in a clearly scripted moment, the speaker went right for our funny bones by clearing up that his company is not - I repeat, not - mentally retarded. Whew, that was a close one. The second thing I wrote down was because I thought it was very funny. He was quoting someone else, so that's probably why he was able to successfully locate my funny bone this time. He was told by someone, "In India, if you're one in a million, there are 1,100 others just like you." I like that a lot and plan on finding appropriate times to use it. Wish me luck.

If you've visited here before, you might be aware of the fact that I dislike when people say a word that's already covered in an acronym (like PIN number, ATM machine, For your FYI, etc.) because it's redundant in a bad way. On a phone call yesterday, I had a co-worker say, "It's amazing technology; everything is 3D dimensional." I said, "Uh huh," because that was much better than the alternative (a mix of mocking, scoffing, righteous indignation, and moral superiority). It was close though.

Speaking of errors (damn, there's a transition), I picked up some Cuban food for dinner a week ago, and suddenly found myself tensing up. Why? Because in big letters on the huge sign outside of the restaurant, it says, "Cuban food at it's best!" "Oh," I wondered, "Cuban food at it is best or it has best? Those contractions can be so tricky." When inside, I looked at their business cards to see if they'd fixed it there, but nope, it was there too. Someone must've gotten to them though, because I just looked up their website and it correctly says, "Cuban food at its best." Good eye, someone.

Still speaking of errors (what the hell, Peter?), I think I found a rather large one in My Cousin Vinny. If you know the film well, then you know the final piece of evidence that tips the case in Vinny's favor is when Marisa Tomei uses her expert car knowledge on the stand to prove that the guys are innocent. Oh wait - SPOILER ALERT! Sorry about that. Here's the problem I have. They spent a lot of time explaining why she counts as a car expert and why her knowledge is far superior to the average person's when it comes to automobiles. However, Joe Pesci needed to possess that same level of knowledge in order to see the lack of positraction in the photo and know its significance. He was never set up as a car expert, but he needed to know all of those same intricacies to even ask her those questions in the first place. Shove that up your plot hole, Mr. Gambini.

Over the past week or two, some words have stood out to me for various reasons. I will break them into three categories.

Category 1: That Looks Funny

Today's Category 1 word is one that I expect will always make me pause for at least a millisecond while reading it: "debuted." I guess it's because the main word is of French origin but we put the English past-tense construction on the end, but it's comical to me that that word isn't three syllables. Hahaha. See?

Category 2: Sexist Bastards

Ah, Category 2. Today's offering from this newly-formed subsection of words is "manhandle." Can a woman manhandle something? Yes, I believe, which is part of the problem. It's almost the same type of thing as "throw like a girl," but a much more troubling version. It says that if you handle something like a man, it's obviously going to be rough or forceful because men are sloppy, violent, graceless creatures. I take offense to the violent part.

Category 3: Wow, I'd Never Looked At It Like That

I can't for the life of me remember why, but I wrote the word "disintegrate" recently. Then, for the first time, I looked at is as a root word with a prefix and blew my own mind. It adds a complexity to the word for me, and I (surprise, surprise) enjoy the hell out of that. Something that disintegrates isn't just disappearing for me anymore, but it's being taken out of something that it had seamlessly become a part of. It was dis-integrated from the whole. Does that make sense to anyone but me? Either way, it's a full-on Category 3.

And now, as it has been written in the annals of time and passed down through generations, we've arrived at the Car Watch.

I was behind a car a couple of weeks ago with the plate, "MY PLATE." Oh man, that's a Laurel and Hardy bit waiting to happen.

Hotel Worker: And lastly, we just need the plate of the vehicle you're parking in our lot.
Driver: It's MY PLATE
Hotel Worker: I realize that, but we need to know it because we tow unauthorized vehicles. So what is your license plate please, sir?
Driver: MY PLATE
Hotel Worker: Yes, your plate.
Driver: No, I don't think you understand, my license plate is MY PLATE.
Hotel Worker: I do understand, sir, and no one is trying to take it away from you.

Add 20 more lines to this, and - poof! - you have a scene. Not a great one by any means, but a scene nonetheless. Oh, there's just so much humor in the world of DMV-issued methods of vehicular identification!

Next off, my dad texted me with this plate, "LV2CELL." If I had to guess, I'd say that this person actually loves "selling" and not "celling," but the desired spelling of selling (which is compelling) was taken. However, there's an alternate reading of the plate (aside from "live to" instead of "love to"). Hear me out on this one. Remember not too long ago when the internet was really becoming a new thing? It went from a couple of people I knew chatting online via Prodigy to suddenly seeing billboards for Juicy Fruit gum that had www.juicyfruit.com on the bottom and blowing my mind. In any case, there was a while in which no one really knew what terminology was going to stick. "The net" was the leader for a while, and was rewarded appropriately with a Sandra Bullock movie named after it. After a little time though, "the web" caught up and surpassed it. Now, I'd say that "online" encompasses the entire medium. Here's where I'm going with this: What if, back in the cell phone boom, there was a small group of people who thought "to cell" was going to be the popular terminology for "to call someone via cellular telephone"? If this driver was one of those folks trying to stay ahead of the curve, then this plate was an attempt to sound both tech savvy and hip to the cellular revolution. Not a bad theory, right? (Answer: Wrong. Bad theory, Peter, very bad theory. You should be ashamed of yourself and for the dishonor you have now brought upon your entire family.)

Last but not least, my homey Rockabye sent me a plate that he saw: "FALIN (Star)." I think you already know where I'm going with this one, because it's the same point I've made in almost every single Car Watch. If you can't get something you want, it's exponentially better to just let it go instead of getting something that simply doesn't work. I don't know for sure if this person was going for "falling star" or "fallen star," but they ended up failing with "failing" instead. The only way that "failing star" makes sense to me is if Jiminy Cricket was lying and my dreams did not come true after wishing upon said star. I hate it when insects are incorrect about the wish-granting capabilities of celestial bodies, don't you?

That's it for me, gente de la casa. I will see you back here next Friday for more of this crazy little thing called stuff. In the meantime, Happy Birthday on Monday to my friend and old prom date Alissa (and Happy Canadian Thanksgiving too on that day). Happy Anniversary to our dear friends Dave and Twilight on Wednesday, and Happy National Boss Day on Thursday to all the bosses out there. The guy at the hotel I stayed at last week called me "boss" at least three times, so I guess I'll be celebrating on Thursday as well. Even without that, I ate at a frozen yogurt place called You're the Boss dozens of times, so I clearly have some executive leadership experience. As always, you can reach me at ptklein@gmail.com with anything about anything. Take care.