Steppin' out

Here we are, folks: the last UOPTA post of 2008. For those of you who celebrate Christmas, I hope yesterday's was especially jolly for you. Hopefully everyone has at least a couple of workdays off to enjoy sleeping in a little. My internal clock doesn't really let me do that, but I've heard it's fun. Ok, enough pleasantries. Let's jump right into some random crap and end this year off right.

Aside from his back going out every so often, my dad is usually quite healthy. Therefore it was very strange to have a stomach bug hit him so hard that he didn't join us for dinner on my favorite brother's birthday last week. Two days later, he was back to 95% and sent me this email (at ptklein@gmail.com) in an effort to give me some additional blog fodder: "So, on Saturday when 'I was feeling like shit' (nice mental image), 'was as sick as a dog,' 'felt like I had been run over by a Mack truck,' so chilled that I was 'colder than a witch's tit'.....I started to think about these 'sick' sayings. Anything there for you?" Well, Pops, not exactly, but it did get me (uh oh) thinking about something similar.

Before I dive into that though, please allow me to comment on the selections he made in his email. "Feeling like shit" is interesting to me, because I don't know if it was intended to mean "feeling as bad as shit smells" or "feeling like the consistency of shit." I know, that's quite repulsive, but where else can you get this in depth idiom analysis? "Sick as a dog" puzzles me, because I don't think of dogs as sick at all. I mean sure, they have diseases and illnesses, but I see many more humans far more often with colds, hurt muscles, scrapes and bruises, etc. It could just be that humans live so much longer than dogs that we have many more opportunities to get sick. Or, now that I've given this additional thought, are they using "sick" in the vomiting sense? I will agree that I see or hear of dogs throwing up more often than non-infant humans. Of course, they tend to eat grass a little more often than the average adult human, so that's not too strange. Therefore, if "sick as a dog" really means "vomiting, like a dog does from time to time," then that one could make more sense. That means that in order to use that phrase correctly then, people would need to be nauseous and making good on that nausea, if you know what I mean. "Felt like I had been run over by a Mack truck," I'll assume is simply hyperbole. First off, how many people really know what that feels like and have been around long enough to communicate that sentiment? Also, while Mack trucks are rather large, I would venture to say that getting run over by any truck feels relatively the same. I think "run over" is an interesting choice of simply "hit by." Do they mean "flattened?" Peter Klein: he asks the tough questions. And finally, "colder than a witch's tit" has always struck me as odd. Is there anything in any story or fable that tells us witches must live in cold climates? Certainly Oz seemed to be pleasant weather-wise, making The Wicked Witch of the West's tit(s) roughly the same temperature as non-witch Dorothy's, right? (And Dorothy was very clear in saying that she was not a witch at all.) If there's any reason why one part of a witch's anatomy would have a lower temperature than the rest, I'm all ears. If the phrase were, "colder than an Eskimo's tit" or that of a person in Greenland, I could maybe let that slide. Otherwise, I think it's just an excuse to say "tit." Tee hee.

As someone who cares an awful lot about language and word choice, I'm remarkably haphazard with some of my utterances. For example, I nitpick like a crazy nitpicking person at those phrases listed above, yet I've heard myself say, "It's cold as hell in here." That simply doesn't make any sense. "Hot as hell," surely, but cold? I'm just wrong with that one, unlike "duh" and "no duh" which both making sense. (Or being "up for" something and "down with" it at the same time.) I think this is all a function of trying to have interesting similes to express ourselves and occasionally coming up short in that endeavor.

Ooh, I just remembered a very interesting lesson from a linguistics class I took in the Fall of '98. (Crap, was it really that long ago? Getting old is baffling.) My professor told us a story about these types of phrases in another language: French. I shall paraphrase from memory and probably skip over some key points: While we might say that something didn't "budge/move an inch," this language used "a step" instead. Over time, "a step" was used to emphasize more and more negative statements. "Did you eat anything?" "No, not a step." Nowadays, "ne pas" is used for every negative, and the "ne" has almost disappeared completely in spoken French. There was a French student in the class, and the professor asked him to say a sentence to illustrate his point. Sure enough, there was only the slightest hint of an "n" sound in there, basically leaving "step" to carry the entire negative aspect of the sentence. I was very pleased with that lesson, and I was equally amazed to see many of my fellow students doodling or falling asleep during that same lecture that had fascinated the hell out of me. Hey, French-speakers out there: how would you say, "That is not a step" in reference to the top part of a ladder? I imagine it would fairly redundant sounding but necessary. Enlighten me please. Anyway, I think of that lesson every time I say "faux pas" or (less often) hear "pas de deux." Speaking of which, when does "So You Think You Can Dance" come back on?

Ok, this is unrelated to the major theme of this post but I felt like I should include it here since it's another cool foreign language thing. In Spanish, there's an intriguing lack of a verb. "To drop" does not exist. Instead, "to let fall" is used (dejar caer, for those of you scoring at home). It totally takes the mistake part out of the action. For example, in English, "I dropped the soap, which resulted in a new level of friendship with my cellmate." In Spanish though, "I let the soap fall." That sounds like I wanted it, right? Believe me, I didn't. I suppose one could "accidentally let something fall" to convey the same point, but that then becomes three words to describe the one we have in English. I might try to use that in my everyday life more often. "Oh no, you dropped the vase!" "Nope, I just let it fall." That should work out well. After all, you can't spell "dropped" without Pedro.

Back to that specific type of simile we were discussing a paragraph or two ago: my friend Dave has a very interesting take on this. I don't know what started it, but he began ending sentences with "as/like China" all the frickin' time. "It's as crowded as China in here" might actually make sense, but "That gumball was as sour as China" or "My bike seat's as rusted as China" doesn't. I'd love to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe he was trying to be like the French and eventually have "China" signify a negation, but I know in my heart of hearts that he was just being a weirdo. After all, this is the same guy who decided to call part of the carpet in the room I shared with Greg and Dusty, "The Strait of Gibraltar." I don't think the room resembled the meeting of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, but maybe he did somehow.

If you had an alarm clock set to tell you when it was time for the Car Watch section of this post, it would be beeping its head off right now.

My homey Rockabye sent me a license plate along with his best guess for what it's attempting to say: "WLDDNUT ??? Wild donut?" I wish I had a better guess than that, but I truly believe that "Wild donut" or "doughnut" is fairly accurate. If there were only one D, I'd suggest, "Wild in Utah," but that's not too likely either I suppose. What would make a doughnut wild? Extra sprinkles? Not conforming to the normal round shape? Being made of neither dough nor nuts? I'm confused by this, but also a little hungry. Any other thoughts on what this person is trying to communicate?

My mom saw a plate that pleases me quite a bit: "LO IM VE." It took me a second, but it's quite clearly one of those word puzzles. In this case, it's "I'm in love." What I like so much about this is how few of these puzzles can fit in the constraining space of a license plate. Seven characters, all in the same row. That last point is crucial, since many of those puzzles rely on being "over" or "under" to get their message across. You know, like "Stand/I" is "I understand," etc. Therefore, this driver makes an excellent use of limited space. Bravo, sir or madam; a tip of the imaginary cap to you.

Lastly, I saw a plate that made me yell at the car's driver. "ILV2W84," it said. I checked the plate frame, but there were no other words to help me out. "What are you waiting for?" I asked loudly. If the driver had heard me, he may have thought that there was a green light or something, but I was solely interested in the license plate. I don't care if they "love" or "live" to wait for something - I just want to know what that something is. Being a hyperpunctual person, I wait a lot for a lot of different things. It's not fun. It sucks, to be frank. Maybe it's never been explicitly made a rule, but I'd like to add, "License plate messages must be complete thoughts" to the DMV books somewhere. If I ever met that driver in person, I'd have a good mind to.

And now we've reached the final paragraph. Let's get some happies out there for today through next Thursday. Today, my friends, is the always-festive Boxing Day and my good friend Silver's half-birthday. Tomorrow is your humble blogger's half-birthday. Sunday is my dad's birthday, and it hopefully won't be a step colder than Glinda's tit in China on that day. Dad, I hope you're as happy as a clam on that day (because that makes oh so much sense). Monday is little Sacky Katy's half-birthday. Wednesday is New Year's Eve, and Thursday brings us to 2009. I welcome '09 and all of its '09ness. In fact, March of next year will be 3/09, which is probably the month/year combination that sounds closest to my name. It's almost close enough that you could probably say, "Hey, three-oh-nine" and get me to look up. Ok, maybe not that close, but still. Happy holidays, my homepeople. Have a safe and fun New Year's Eve, and I hope '09 is healthy and prosperous for you all.

The great fire debate

It is morning and it is good, therefore I feel completely justified is wishing you all a good morning. We are now more than halfway through December, so the frenzy should peak and fizzle within the next week or so. And drizzle. Fo shizzle.

I've got a story to tell, so I'm just going to jump right into it, ok? About a week ago, a colleague was telling me about a Victorian home that he's renovating back east. During one part of his monologue, I (uh oh) thought of something. He said that there was a problem with the chimney, and that the company he's using employs a "little person" to get in there and fix some of the masonry. Instead of getting stuck on the more fascinating part of that story, I posed another question to myself: How many times a day must a chimney worker put up with Santa Claus references? I thought about it for a while and concluded that it must be very, very often. "Gotta make sure Santa can get down," "Maybe Santa got caught up there," etc. Especially during this time of year, I imagined the number to be quite high.

I posed this question to the folks in my office, and there was a pretty wide scope of opinions. First, a young lady named Jamie said that it probably only comes up once a week. I got visibly frustrated with her answer and told her that we "just fundamentally disagree on this issue." I asked another co-worker, and he said, "Well, let's say they go on eight house calls a day per day...I'd say five or six of those mention Santa Claus." I went to my boss and asked him how often he thought St. Nick came up to a chimney professional. He thought for a moment and said, "Fifty." "Fifty?" I asked. "Think about it," he continued. "Every time they talk to someone on the phone, every time they tell people at a dinner party what they do, Santa Claus comes up because that's what people associate with chimneys." "Or Mary Poppins," Jamie added. I argued that if someone specifically said that they were a "chimney sweep," then yes, Mary Poppins might come up. However, during December in particular, Santa was the main man. In fact, when Jamie found the California Chimney Sweep Guild website, two of the five men in the photograph actually look like Santa Claus. That's gotta help the odds, right?

I brought this up to a few friends over dinner, who promptly called me an adjective that rhymes with "metarded." I asked them what percent of business interactions involve a Santa Claus reference for chimney professionals. "Fifteen," one said. I said I thought it was closer to eighty, and they so violently responded to that suggestion that I probably put my hands up in self defense. We talked about making a wager on it, setting the over/under line at 50%. I said I would call three east coast chimney companies and average their numbers. I was the only one of the four of us to take the over, while the other three looked at me like I was crazy and took the under. What did we bet? Nothing. The food came, and we dropped the discussion and forgot to get back to it.

It's a good thing too, because when I'm wrong, I'm very wrong. A couple of days ago, I called three different chimney companies, and here is what transpired:

1. New England Chimney Sweeps, NY:

Peter: Hi, I have a rather odd question. I was wondering how often Santa Claus comes up in your daily interactions with clients or potential clients.

NECS: Not too much.

Peter: Oh. If you had to put a percentage on it, what do you think that would be?

NECS: Maybe about 5%.

2. Mr. Chimney, NY:

Peter: (same opening question)

MC: Never.

Peter: Never?

MC: (more emphatically) Never.

3. American Heritage Fireplace, Chicago

Peter: (same opening questions)

AHF: No, people don't like Santa this time of year.

Peter: (incredulous) They don't?

AHF: Nope, it reminds them of spending money. He doesn't come up at all.

Peter: Nothing about, "So Santa can make his way down the chimney?"

AHF: Nope.

I don't know how I could be so far off. If I were anywhere close to my projections, I'd wonder if I needed to tweak the way I was asking. But these numbers don't lie (at least with this small sample size). If my math is right, that's an average of 1.67% of the time that St. Nick comes up. I was shocked, disappointed, and even a little saddened by this. "People don't like Santa this time of year" is the biggest crock of shit I've heard all week. Are the chimney professionals all tired of the nonstop Santa references and have unilaterally agreed to pretend that they don't exist? That seems like a very involved scheme, so probably not. I'm puzzled though. My boss suggested that the sample size was not statistically relevant and that we should hire a team of fifty people to make outbound calls to 20,000 chimney workers. Jamie, of course, wants to call those same three companies back and ask them about Mary Poppins. Dear readers, what do you make of all of this? Am I that out of touch with reality or is there some master plan to keep Santa references hidden from non-chimney workers? It's gotta be one of the two, right?

Here's a random item before I move on to the penultimate Car Watch of '08. It's been long known in my circle of family and friends that I enjoy making faces in the mirror. In fact, I've often said in the past that if I could get paid to make faces in the mirror for eight hours a day, that would pretty much be my dream job. I have some good ones, I assure you. Anyway, one thing bothers me about a few of the faces I've made, and I'm here to share that with you. Whenever I have a face in either the angry or perplexed category, I furrow my brow. I get a crease between my eyes when I do that, which is fine, but it's not centered. It's closer to my right eye than my left, and that lack of symmetry really bugs me. Oh sure, one might argue that it makes the face better because it adds a little character, but I'm a big fan of symmetry and prefer it when it comes to my face. If I'm squinting one eye or curling one side of my upper lip, those moves are partially defined by the other side not being affected. I realize I'm trying to apply something resembling a scientific method to making faces in the mirror, but should I ever get the call from some billionaire who wants a big screen of someone constantly making faces in the background of his/her home office, I want to be as prepared as possible. Maybe that would even be considered art, and visitors to the office would then commission me for side projects or themed parties. I really think I'm onto something here. Ya know, once that billionaire calls.

Now it's time to gather 'round the fire and see what the Car Watch put in our proverbial stockings.

First off, I was next to a truck on the always-exciting 405 freeway, and I did at least a double take at the company's name: Wide Awake Roofing. I almost don't know where to start with this. I mean, is that really their unique selling proposition? I can hear the commercials now: "Are you tired of hiring people to put a new roof on your house, only to find that they spend most of their time with heavy eyelids? Here at Wide Awake Roofing, our workers are not just awake - they're wide awake! Every roofing professional on our staff has demonstrated the ability to be - and stay - awake for hours at a time! You'll never catch our guys sleeping on the job. You won't even find them sleeping at night. With the advent of energy drinks and caffeinated water, being wide awake is more than a job - it's a way of life. Wide Awake Roofing - not sleeping while putting on shingles since 2005. Call now!"

My homey Rockabye sent me a license plate that he saw: "NODUMY." At first, I was rather ho-hum about it. Then he told me it was on a Smart Car. Ah, I see. Now it makes sense, and good sense at that. I like it. It took a little thought and was executed well enough that no one is (hopefully) sitting there think, "What's a nod umee?" Therefore, it's a-ok in my book. Hell, it's even b-ok.

My friend Dusty got in on the action and sent me this license plate that he spied: "BUY JUNK." I wasn't sure which way to take this. My best guess is that this person purchases things that others no longer want and somehow turns a profit on them. If that's the case, then why would this person command the rest of us to do the same? Isn't that just unnecessarily creating competition? And maybe I'm in the minority here, but I prefer to purchase quality items so stop telling me what to do. Geez.

Last but certainly not least, here's a link for you to check out in your spare time. My Bratty Kid Sister sent it to me, and it's an article that explores possible "modesty plates" (instead of vanity ones - get it?). It's rather amusing, so take a look: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/13LucasKlauss.html

And with that, we're outa here. I'll be back here next Friday, but in that intervening week, we have a whole lotta stuff going on. Let's attack this chronologically, shall we? Tomorrow is my favorite brother's birthday and my good friend Jon's birthday. Sunday is not only my homey Rockabye's birthday, but also my grandparents' anniversary, the beginning of winter, and the beginning of Hanukkah at sundown. Wednesday is my friend Ozzie's half-birthday, and Thursday is both Christmas and the annual Klein Christmas Day Gathering (complete with grab bag). Get your rest folks, for that week's a doozy. Maybe even two doozies. As always, you can write me at ptklein@gmail.com with anything at all. Happy everything to everyone, and I wish you all very warm and healthy holidays. I'll be back here on the 26th if I can tear myself away from all my new toys. Shaloha.

Twinkle twinkle

Good morning, and thanks for coming back for another dose of random thoughts and stories. It's hard to believe that we're already so close to the end of the year, but I guess I should just accept it and move on. That is, unless I have latent time-altering powers that may save the world sometime in the future, of course. Who knows? In any case, it's good to see you here again.

I'm going to try to have a theme two weeks in a row. I'm sorry, I should've started with, "Are you sitting down?" While I enjoy the free-flowing nature of most of these posts, a little cohesiveness never hurt anyone. The theme of this one: Eyetwinklers. Yep, I'm coining a new phrase. These are things that give me a sudden spark of creative excitement. You'll hopefully see what I mean.

About two weeks ago, I was chatting with some office folk about the December holidays. As is often the case, certain traditional Jewish dishes came up in our conversation. Out of nowhere, my boss turned to me and asked, "Hey, can you write a joke with God-felt-a-fish as the punchline?" It sounded very close to "gefilte fish," so I could see where he was going with it. I eagerly said, "Sure!" and started making notes on a piece of paper I had in my hand. He started laughing. "Did you see the twinkle he got in his eye?" he asked a coworker (hence my newly-coined phrase). It's true, I thoroughly enjoy things like that, and so the next morning I sent him an email with the following:

It was the third or fourth day of existence, and God was creating plants and animals to fill the new world. He’d think of one, wave His hand, and – poof! – there it was. He was getting tired after over twelve hours of this, so He did the last batch while standing knee-deep in the new ocean to soothe His feet a little. “Hmmm,” He thought, and then He waved His hand and new kind of bird appeared. “Hmmm,” He thought again, but right as He started to wave His hand, a slimy sea creature caressed His foot, surprising Him and turning His normally smooth motion into an erratic one. When He looked back at His creation, it was no more than a mushy, shapeless, foul smelling lump oozing with jelly. A nearby angel saw this and turned to his angel friend. “All of His other creations are so beautiful; what happened to that one?” The other angel leaned in and said, “Godfeltafish.”

It's not great, but I think it works. If you can come up with versions of your own, I'd love to hear them, so please comment away.

In recounting that tale, another Eyetwinkler from my past popped into my head. (You ever notice how "recounting a story" and "recanting" it sound similar but mean very different things? Of course you have.) This Eyetwinkler is special because it's a generational one. Ahem: In junior high (or middle school, as it's now known), my science teacher probably had no idea what she was getting into when she handed the class an assignment due at the end of the week. We were asked to come up with as many animal names as possible just by using the atomic symbols of the periodic table of elements as our letters. At first, this might sound simple since many letters are represented in the 100+ element names. However, if you dig deeper, you'll find that you can't spell "dog" with the element abbreviations since there's no D, Do, Og, or G. Sadly, you can't spell Peter either. How awful is that? We were to count up the atomic numbers of the elements we used as well, so for example, Amber can be spelled with Am (Americium, #95), B (Boron, #5) , and Er (Erbium, #68), giving her a grand total of 168. (Well done, honey.) We got bonus points for using the most elements, having the longest animal name, and having the highest grand total.

If you've read this blog before, you know that something like that would absolutely be an Eyetwinkler for me. I came home and told my mom about the assignment, and she got the same exact look in her eyes that I must have upon hearing it. Before I knew it, she was in my room flipping through encyclopedia pages to have the periodic table and the animal kingdom in front of her. This was our assignment now.

We were strategic as hell, let me tell you. We evaluated the best way to spell things, choosing the Co of Cobalt and its 27 "points" instead of combining the C of Carbon (6) and the O of Oxygen (8). Unless it was a long word already and had the potential for our longest name entry, of course. The next day in class, I slyly and privately asked if we were allowed to use plurals in our animal names. She said we were, and there was no way in hell I was sharing that information with my competitors. So while some students were using Li (Lithium), O (Oxygen), and N (Nitrogen) for "lion," we not only had "lioness," but "lionesses" too. Put that in your Bunsen burner and smoke it.

When the dust settled, we kicked major ass. Technically, I kicked major ass since my mom didn't receive a grade for the assignment. The encyclopedia set got more attention from that assignment than any other. We consulted the entries on reptiles, insects, birds, and anything else that might possibly be spellable with those letter constructions. Yes, spellable. Leave me alone. Our favorite one at the end of the day was a bird (or multiple birds): Brown Thrashers. I don't know what that is, but who the hell cares? Put Bromine, Oxygen, Tungsten, Nitrogen, Thorium, Radium, Sulfur, Hydrogen, Erbium, and another Sulfur together, and there you go. Brown f'n thrashers, man. I'm pretty sure my mom and I high-fived after that.

(By the way, if you're interested in seeing what you too can spell with the periodic table of elements, http://www.webelements.com/ can provide hours of fun. Or seconds. I always get those two confused.)

I'm often on the lookout for new Eyetwinklers, but I don't think it really works that way. From past experience, it seems like the idea must be presented to me for my creative excitement levels to reach the twinkling stage. That doesn't stop me from trying though. In fact, I came close to one just yesterday morning. Somehow, the phrase, "You learn something new every day" popped into my head. "Ooh," I thought, "I can write down something new that I learn each day of 2009." Then I thought about it more and realized that it would be a difficult task. I don't doubt that I truly acquire new information every day, but how would I choose that one item to write down? If faced with, "The Suns traded for Jason Richardson," "I don't mind seaweed in miso soup as much as I thought," and "Based on an SNL sketch, you can apparently say 'jizz' on network television," which one would make the cut? They might all be equally important. Still, despite that challenge, I just may give that exercise a try. Wish me luck.

Hear that sound, boys and girls? That means it's time for the Car Watch! Ok, calm down, it's not quite that exciting. I'll try to use my exclamations more sparingly in the future.

First off, I saw a license plate on the lovely 405 that read, "LAMB (Heart)R." I can't tell, are they farm animal activists or Greek? That is, do they love lambs as pets or as food? If we weren't in Los Angeles or another large metropolitan area, I'd assume the living animal option, but I'm really not sure. Do people love a certain kind of meat enough to proclaim it on their license plates?

This plate reminds me of a quick story. I recently mentioned that my lovely wife and I took a Canadian vacation a few years back, and one of our stops was in Quebec. In the old town of Quebec City, we saw a door sign with cute little bunny rabbits painted on it. We walked over to see what it was, and it turned out to be a restaurant largely featuring rabbit on the menu. It's safe to say that our warm fuzzy count during those two minutes rose and fell sharply.

Next off, my homey Rockabye send me a plate. It read, "GASHRTZ." Oh sure, it was on a Prius and they were trying to make a statement about the rising fuel costs and the high efficiency of their vehicle that allows them to escape the pain of shelling out more dollars than one is accustomed to, but I don't think it works. You see, gas can hurt. In fact, there are hundreds of companies whose sole purposes are to relieve people of said gas pains. Therefore, while this person probably settled on this plate after all of the "MORE MPG" type plates were taken, s/he instead comes across like s/he needs to fart. Big difference? Yeah, I'd say so.

And lastly, the same homey Rockabye sent me a bumper sticker. "BOOYAA MIXED MARTIAL ARTS," it says. I like it. Name your company after something someone might say directly after using/partaking in whatever you sell/provide. What else could follow this model? Yum Yum Donuts already exists, and I'd say that's similar. She'd Better Love It Engagement Ring Store? My Crotch Hurts Horseback Riding? That Was Crap, the new album by Britney Spears? Help me out here, folks. I always tell people that I have the smartest and wittiest readers in the western blogosphere. Show me what you got.

And now that I've officially given you homework, I'm calling it a day. Speaking of days, I have some happies to dish out. My loving mother-in-law's birthday is tomorrow, which is also our friend Wendy's half-birthday. Coincidence? Yeah, actually, I'm pretty sure it is. Monday is my parents' half-anniversary (39.5 - holy crap!), and Tuesday is our friend Candice's birthday. Happy all of that to all of them. I will return next Friday for my penultimate UOPTA post of 2008. Until then, please comment away and/or email me at ptklein@gmail.com. Take care, friends.

Stumbling to conclusions

Good morning, homepeople of the internets. It's a pleasure to see you here again today, even though technically neither of us is really seeing each other. I'm willing to let that slide. So, what's new with you? I feel like our relationship is pretty one-sided, so I'll just sit and listen for once.

Wow, that was fascinating. I never knew. Ok, time to talk about me. I was speaking with someone from Montreal recently, and it reminded me of a story. (That, in turn, reminded me of another story. You smell that, folks? There may be a theme brewing.) When my lovely wife and I took a Canadian vacation a few years ago, we had a great time seeing the sights, meeting the friendly people, and trying the occasional new thing. One of our stops was in Montreal, and upon learning that there was a nearby casino, I suggested that we check it out. Being of the agreeable sort, my lovely wife agreed. It was a pretty quick trip, and before long we were walking the casino floor and watching the table games.

The first sign that things were different was the felt at the blackjack table. The circle for where to place your bet was in a different location, and there were some extra circles and boxes that didn't quite make sense to me. "It's blackjack though, how different could it be?" I thought. We watched a hand, and I learned a big difference immediately: it was in French. I don't speak French, but as I watched I realized that I didn't need to. I understood blackjack just fine, and as long as the hand signals were universal for hitting and staying, I should be able to manage. The only other big difference was that there seemed to be an entire second row of bettors, constantly leaning in to place their chips on top of other people's bets. On any given hand, there could be ten to twelve people with some action. I've seen one person do that on a friend's bet from time to time in Vegas, but not an entire row of strangers doing it. But I could handle that, should the time come.

A seat opened up and I nabbed it. I cashed in for some chips and nodded when the dealer said something to me in French. I assumed it was wishing me luck, but for all I know, he could've been saying, "I took 5% as an exchanging fee, I hope you don't mind." During the first hand, I noticed a third difference: the cards were in French. "What the hell does that mean?" you may be wondering. Well, I got a picture card emblazoned with an R. I cocked my head sideways for a second like my dog does when a sentence starts with "Wanna." "Oh, that must be a king," I told myself, proving that I knew at least one French word. My hand signals held up, and I hit and stayed with the best of them. I was a little daunted when a stranger put money on top of my bet, but I rolled with it. I played by the book and lost the hand, so I turned to the stranger and shrugged, but he didn't acknowledge me at all. Sorry for trying to make you money, dude.

The funniest thing about the whole experience to me was my interaction with the dealer. He would point to my cards and say something. While I knew that he was probably just telling me what my cards added up to, it got in the way of my own internal math. This was compounded by the fact that it sounded like he said, "douche," "cans," and "deez nuts" while pointing at me. I have since learned that those were twelve, fifteen, and nineteen, respectively. (You can go to http://french.about.com/library/begin/bl-numbers05.htm to hear what I'm talking about, if you so choose.) I stayed for about 15 minutes and left close to even. Not bad, but it required a lot more thought than I'd anticipated because I'd wrongfully assumed that blackjack would be blackjack anywhere in the world.

Where else have I made a false assumption? 1989. Not specific enough for you? Fine, I'll tell the whole story. As I've happily written about in this space before, I'm currently in a bowling league with some friends. My parents are bowlers, and when I was eager to join a league as a little kid, it was clear that I'd inherited the gene. A few years into the league (and after winning the whole thing one year), my teammates and I became friendly with a team of four young ladies. We were all about 12 years old, so naturally it was an awkward combination of being fascinated by girls and utterly frightened by them. For reasons not quite clear to me, my friends and I gave each girl a nickname...that corresponded with a Central or South American capital. We must have just learned them in school, but that's still no excuse for quite possibly the nerdiest flirting mechanism in the history of the planet. In any case, it seemed like Tegucigalpa maybe liked me a little, so I gravitated toward her more than Belmopan, Paramaribo, and Montevideo. Her name was Jennifer, and after weeks or months of our weekly chats, she took the first step and gave me her phone number. I must've looked a little shocked because she followed it with something along the lines of, "Now you're supposed to give me yours." I did, and she said she'd probably call me sometime before our next bowling session to say hi.

Even though I wasn't sure if I "like liked" her, I was still in a constant state of anticipation for the phone to ring. When it did the next night, I cleared my throat and almost-confidently said, "Hello?" "Hi, is Peter there?" a young woman asked. "Hi!" I answered, "This is Peter!" "Do you know who this is?" she asked. "Yeah, Jennifer, right?" "Just making sure," she replied. We had a very interesting conversation. It started with us talking about movies and music we liked, and it was extremely comfortable. She said she forgot where I went to school, so I told her. "Oh, I know someone there," she said surprised. "Do you know Mandy?" I told her I did and that Mandy was one of my best friends at school. She had met her once at a birthday party, and it turned out that she knew a couple of Mandy's friends too. I said nice things about them all, and she agreed that they seemed nice to her too. We hung up after about 20 minutes, and I felt good about how that giant leap went.

The next day at school, I noticed Mandy and a couple of friends laughing a little when they saw me. "Crap," I thought, "Jennifer called them and now they're going to tease me about having a girlfriend." But no, it was worse than that. "Did you have a good conversation with Jennifer last night?" Mandy asked. Trying to appear confident, I said, "Yes, I did. It was very nice." They laughed even more. Shit. "Um, that...wasn't Jennifer. That was me." The two minions behind her started laughing their heads off. I tried very hard to have it sink in and make sense, but it didn't. How could that have happened? She explained: the three of them were having a sleepover the night before and played some girly board game. One of them pulled a card that said, "Call a boy from school." 99% of the time, this results in a five second long conversation replete with giggles. But no, my friends, this time Peter Klein was involved. "Do you know who this is?" she had asked me on the phone. Instead of saying that I didn't (since I clearly didn't), I leapt to the conclusion that it must be the person who said she might call me sometime during the entire week. You can't spell "complete moron" without Peter, after all.

(At least I only said nice things about the three girls giggling on the other end of the line. It could've been worse. And when Jennifer actually did call, it wasn't nearly as good of a conversation as our fake one. )

Ok, enough shenanigans. Let's go see what the Car Watch has in store for us today.

I was behind a car a couple of weeks ago with this plate: "ASKADOG." Now I have some experience with this, and I can tell you firsthand that one rarely gets the answer he or she seeks in this situation. Almost daily, my lovely wife will say to our pup, "Hallie, what should I wear today?" Not a single time has Hallie stated a preference. Similarly, I've asked Hallie somewhere in the ballpark of 4,000 times, "Who's my girl?" Guess how many times she's answered, "I am" or "Me." Zero. Ask a dog? Not if you want an answer, my friends.

A few months ago, I was parked near the airport and waiting for my lovely wife to call and say that she'd landed. A car pulled up in front of me and was waiting for a break in the action to turn right onto a busy street. The plate read, "MYSPACE." It was an old California plate, and I thought, "That's funny. They probably had no idea when they got that that it would end up being something hugely popular on something called the internet." I decided that while it was interesting, it didn't make the cut in my mind as blogworthy. Another car pulled up behind it, also waiting to turn right. The second car's passenger door opened, and a teenage girl got out holding something in her hand. Just as the MYSPACE car started to turn, the girl ran up close to it and held out what I could now see was a camera. "I got it!" she yelled to her car and got back inside, clearly happy with herself. As they pulled away I thought, "Ok, now that probably counts as blogworthy."

Lastly, my homey Rockabye sent me a plate that will probably elicit the same response from many of you. On a Porsche Turbo, it read, "SLUMING." My response: "Fuck you, man." I would also accept, "Fuck you, dude." I'm feeling accommodating today. Seriously though, the guy has to know that he's going to inspire some ire with that car/plate combo, right? Why not add a frame that says, "Happiness is...Being Rich - Duh!" and go for the trifecta?

Ok, that's it for now. I hope this regular-sized work week went just fine for you all. As always, I'll be back next Friday with more of whatever comes to mind. That'll be 12/12, or Douche/Douche in the way I hear French. Shall we toast to some happies in the meantime? Happy Half-Birthday today to my lovely wife (who is still 22 days older than I am). Happy Birthday to our dear friend Twilight on Monday. If you wish to share a license plate, bumper sticker, or your thoughts on anything, ptklein@gmail.com is there for you. Have a safe and healthy weekend and week, friends.