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.