Tensing up

Hello and welcome once more to another installment of UOPTA. I hope my electronic words find you well on this penultimate day of February. (I really like using "penultimate" every chance I get, because it's just cool to me that the word exists. Is there a word for the thing before the thing before the last? If so, I'd use that too. Let's make one up in case it doesn't yet exist. How about "tripenultimate?" Or would "prepenultimate" get the job done by itself? I may never know.) Ready for some additional random stuff? Excellent.

I had a strange dream during the week, and I recounted it in the office the next day. I went up to my boss and said, "In my dream last night, you handed me some dog treats. I think you should explain yourself." Without missing a beat, he asked, "Were they cookies?" "No, they were jerky treats. And I knew somehow that they were for me and not for my dog." "Is your subconscious telling you that I treat you like a dog?" he asked. "Maybe it's telling me that you respect my fierce loyalty to you and the company, best personified by a dog," I said. "Yeah, that's totally what I meant," he replied.

While that story and interaction didn't come up again for the rest of the week, typing it brought up a few questions I have. First, I understand that "dreamed" and "dreamt" are both acceptable past tenses of "to dream," but I don't know which one I use. I think I need to be caught next time I say it by someone who can then report back to me about me. I'm pretty sure it's "dreamed," but if I were writing a poem, I'd totally opt for "dreamt." Doesn't it sound more poetic? What about "leaped" and "leapt" then? I think I use "leapt" more often, which means I'm wildly inconsistent in my past-tense choosings.

A bigger problem (to me at least) is that I'm now questioning whether other words have two acceptable past tenses or not. Can I say that someone "creeped around the corner" or is "crept" the only right way? I can hear myself saying that I "kneeled down" somewhere instead of "knelt," (which looks like a completely made-up word to me right now), so I think that fits the pattern. You know what clearly doesn't though? The past tense of "to sleep." If someone said, "I sleeped for nine hours last night," s/he would get more than a few weird looks. I believe the same is true with "to mean." "I meaned to get there in time for the opening band" just doesn't get the job done. Interestingly enough, thinking about this past tense stuff is getting me tense, so I'll stop for now.

Time for a little more word stuff. My friend Dusty sent me a link to comedian Demetri Martin's 224-word palindrome poem. It's quite impressive: http://www.neatorama.com/2009/02/18/a-224-word-palindrome/. Two things struck me upon reading it. First, it's amazing how little syntax and flow matter in free-verse poetry. Second, I never knew that "deified" was a palindrome by itself. I like that a lot. I'm amazed by Mr. Martin's piece of work here because as much as I fancy words and thoroughly enjoy playing with them, palindromes seem incredibly difficult to create. I never know where to start and always end up with something that completely misses the point like, "Racecar and Hannah kayak. Kayak, Hannah DNA! Racecar." That said, I did come up with a brief (only three-word) palindrome two days ago after looking at a word backwards for the first time. The word was "golfer," which is "reflog" backwards. You know, as in "to flog again." Therefore, "Reflog a golfer" becomes the same frontwards and backwards. Now if I could just get my spellchecker to acknowledge "reflog" as a word, we'd be in business.

One more little word thing for now: on the radio earlier this week, the announcer said, "Our bonus word is 'fun dip.' 'Fun dip.' That's f-u-n, space, d-i-p. Once again, our bonus word is 'fun dip.'" I was already making my "You've got to be kidding me!" face after the first time he said that the bonus WORD was actually two words. I tried giving him the benefit of the doubt by wondering to myself if the Fun Dip candy was one or two words, but then he ruined it by spelling it with the frickin' space in the middle of the "word." Then he went back and reminded us again that those two words were the bonus word, and I pulled out my phone to text myself about that error.

Earlier this week, my co-worker Rob was trying to get a female co-worker to sign up for online dating. "Peter will write your profile for you, and he and I will screen all of the guys so you only see the good ones," he offered. She eventually acquiesced, created a login with a couple of pictures on a free-trial account, and motioned for me to plop down and write. The prompt was something like, "Describe yourself and what you look for in your perfect match," and there was a minimum of 200 characters. (I'm guessing the minimum is there so people don't just write, "Cool. Sex.") "First off, what are you actually looking for?" I asked. "Just...keep it simple and don't make me sound desperate," she said. I thought for a minute, and then I wrote the following:

My co-worker thinks I should say that my perfect match is "three inches tall, highly combustible, with a phosphorous tip, and can light my way during my darkest hours." I think he's a moron. Fortunately, it's much simpler than that: I'm fun and down to earth, and I'm looking for the same in my match. See how easy that was?

She loved it (even though I made it all about me) and clicked to submit it. Within literally five minutes, she had three emails and one person trying to IM her. I took pride in this at first, thinking that they must have really liked what I wrote. Then I realized that they probably preferred her keywords of, "18-25," "blonde," and "Los Angeles" to anything I could've written. The onslaught of attention and apparent low quality of her potential suitors confirmed her earlier suspicions that this just wasn't for her (at least for now), and she deleted the profile later that night. Well, I had fun at least.

Those who know me well at all know that I love burritos. They're just wonderful. There's a Chipotle near my work, and two relatively close to my home, so when I can cajole someone else into going there for lunch or dinner with me, I'm a happy Klein. Last week, I went by myself to bring home a burrito for dinner, and the line was especially long. I had no problem waiting though, because I knew the payoff would be an exceptional one. It was only about thirty seconds of waiting before I pulled out my phone and began emailing myself about the interactions of the people in line ahead of me. Here are the highlights:

1. An employee was making a burrito for a woman who asked for sour cream. She didn't say, "Just a little" or any other qualifying phrase, just, "Sour cream." The next thing she said was, "No, no, no! Too much, too much, too much!" She then made the Chipotle worker scrape off what she deemed to be extra sour cream. I felt bad for the employee, but he took it in stride and didn't make any of the faces I would have in that same situation.

2. Another woman walked up to the counter and said very seriously, "This is not a joke. I want guacamole on the side and mild salsa on the side." It honestly sounded like a stick-up instead of a burrito order. More importantly, why would someone think that was a joke? Has she been laughed at and completely disregarded when making that same request before? I don't know, but I'd like something to explain her order's bizarre preface.

3. A woman two people in front of me in line asked her young son where his nose was, and he got it right. "Where are your cheeks?" she asked next, and the kid quickly reached out and grabbed the mom's breasts. Well played, kid.

4. I considered using my Blackberry to order online and then step into the empty "Pick Up" line, but eventually abandoned that idea. (Yes, that was a highlight. Leave me alone.)

5. The man in front of the breast-grabbing kid said to the mom, "Look at his red hair!" "It's strawberry blond," she replied defensively. Sore subject?

6. It eventually got to my turn, and the result was as glorious as I'd anticipated.

With that, let's wrap our tortillas on over to the Car Watch. That sounded way dirtier than I meaned.

My homey Rockabye sent me this plate that he spied: "HWYENDS." Yes, I'm sure every one does, eventually. I wonder if this has ever freaked somebody out. Some dude's from a small town and in L.A. on business. He's already a little on edge driving on our big and crowded streets, but the freeway is scaring the crap out of him. He misses his exit and starts to panic, wondering how in the world he's going to get where he needs to be. Then, in front of him, a car warns him of impending doom: Highway Ends, it says. "Ends? But how?" Convinced that he's about to drive into the ocean, he pulls over and breathes shallow breaths into a paper bag he kept in his suit's jacket pocket just in case something like this happened.

That same homey Rockabye saw this plate: "NINJA (Heart)R." It must be very difficult to be in a relationship with a ninja. One minute you're alone and getting ready for an evening out, and then - POOF! - he's right behind you. On the plus side, I bet they're masters of leaving quietly in the morning after a one-night stand. I've always wondered how they can remain so silent with all of those metal ninja stars bouncing around somewhere in their pockets or secret ninja pouches. (By the way, The Secret Ninja Pouches is immediately in the running for my next band's name.)

Lastly, I saw a license plate frame on my way home from work a little while back. It read, "Without a Doubt...World's Greatest Mom." I believe that's what statisticians call "an insignificant sample size," because I have to think that this unscientific poll questioned somewhere between one and three people. No offense to that lady, but I doubt that she holds that title, so I alone invalidate the poll's conclusion. I'm just sayin'.

Ok, I'm not making any more sense, even to myself. That is a clear indication that it's time to stop typing. But first, let me address a plight that affects millions of Americans - most of them completely unaware. It's a silent attacker, much like hypertension. Or a ninja. My friend Ceil's birthday is August 30th. Therefore, her half-birthday should be February 30th, but we all know that she's never going to get the chance to celebrate that. Oh sure, once every four years she gets within one day of her half-birthday, but that's hardly a consolation prize. Every other year, the closest she gets is the tripenultimate day, which is already the saddest time I've ever used that word. I mentioned this last late April when I noticed that our dog (whose birthday is Halloween) shares in this same plight, but it never gets any easier. Today is my two-thirds birthday, and my joy is dampened by a hefty dollop of half-birthday guilt. Be brave for me, friends, and please join me in wishing Ceil the closest thing she can experience to a half-birthday. I'll be back next Friday, as we boldly march into...whatever that next month is. As always, please feel free to write me at ptklein@gmail.com, and have a happy and healthy weekend and week. Shaloha.

Zinging in the rain

Bienvenidos, mi gente de la casa. I hope each and every one of you is doing well. It rained here in Los Angeles during this past week, so naturally we all freaked out and refused to go about our daily business without first consulting the Live Mega Doppler 7000 HD. In the end, it turns out that rain is really just some water falling from the sky, so naturally we all survived.

I want to spend a little time today writing about teasing. Not a strip tease, mind you, but the poking fun variety. My group of friends has no problem whatsoever when it comes to needling one another. As time passed and we got to know each other better and better, that just led to more focused fun-poking. Those are the ones I appreciate the most - even at my expense - because they show a deep knowledge and understanding of our dislikes and shortcomings (as opposed to our likes and longcomings).

A perfect example of this happened recently when hanging out with some of my friends. We were starting a board game called "Time's Up," in which each card has the name of someone famous on it. You're allowed to discard two of the cards that were dealt to you. (The rest of the game details are inconsequential for right now.) Our dear friend Twilight tossed a card into the discard pile and said, "Who the hell is Tenzing Norgay?" When no one spoke up, I said, "He's the sherpa that helped Sir Edmund Hillary be the first to climb Mount Everest." It was silent for a second, before my sweet, adoring, and lovely wife asked, "Are you fucking kidding me?" Everyone laughed, and I surmised that what I said wasn't exactly common knowledge. My friend Dave then chimed in with the absolutely perfect zinger: "Yeah, but ask him where the windshield washer fluid goes in his car." He totally got me, and it was great because it demonstrated how well he knew me (and my competing areas of expertise and cluelessness).

Dave's not alone in this fun-poking activity. In fact, I can think of a few more recent examples right off the top of my head. First, my friend Greg was coming over to our house one day. It was about ten minutes before he was supposed to arrive when I got a text message: "Are you standing and looking out your window yet?" Sure enough, I was. Knowing me and how silly I am with time issues, he took a pretty safe gamble with that text, and it paid off beautifully.

Just a couple of weeks ago, our friend The Mills had a 30th birthday party. I saw a good friend's ex-girlfriend whom I hadn't seen in years. We exchanged pleasantries (what's one step up from 'pleasantries?' It was nicer than that.) and then half-smiling, she said, "I see you haven't branched out in your color schemes." I smiled the smile of one who has just been zinged. You see, years and years ago, her ex-boyfriend used to say that I only wore the colors blue and gray. While that was an exaggeration, those colors did make up a good deal of my wardrobe. So here, about eight years later, I'm standing before her wearing a light blue shirt, blue-gray jeans, and a gray hat. Her comment was perfect, and though it caused those around me to point and laugh, I still appreciated the zinger.

The last recent example that comes to mind happened this past December. I went to the holiday cocktail party of a company with which I often work. There were a bunch of people from other companies there, and I mixed and mingled to the best of my ability. Later in the evening, my co-worker Jamie came up to me laughing hysterically. "What's so funny?" I asked, but even as I asked it, I had a feeling that her tears of laughter were at my expense. Through her remaining chuckles, she told me the story. Apparently, she and our co-worker Rob ran into a very nice guy with whom I've joked around for a couple of years named John. They said hi to him, and he said hi back before adding, "Where's Peter? Oh wait, let me guess - he's probably off telling people what they can spell with his name." I'm not sure Jamie's stopped laughing yet, and it's been over two months now since well-placed tease.

There are countless smaller versions of these teases that happen almost daily. It might be someone mocking my lack of sense of direction, my hyperpunctuality, or my dislikes (i.e. mustard, Carl's Jr. commercials, etc.). All it boils down to one main thing though: familiarity. And I love it. They couldn't make those pointed comments without really knowing how I tick, and I relish in it. A relish without any mustard in it, naturally.

Like most humans, I enjoy feeling comfortable in my surroundings. What I like even more is the rare occasion in which I can pinpoint the inception of that comfort. Allow me to explain via example: During the winter quarter of my freshman year of college, I took a large lecture course on human anatomy. My lovely wife (nee girlfriend) was in the class with me, along with about a dozen people on my floor of the residence hall. For the final, all of us from the floor went into the lounge, spread out our books and notes, and went through what we expected to be on the test. A couple of hours into the study session, I was getting pretty fried mentally. I rose from my seat on the floor, leapt onto a little side table next to one of the couches, and half-sang/half-mumbled a few lines from a song while accompanying myself with the air guitar. (The song was "Possum Kingdom" by Toadies, by the way, and I'd had it in my head the entire day until that boiling over moment.) When I was done with my music, I stepped off the table and went back to my books on the floor. Here's the thing: no one even batted an eye. "Wow," I thought, "these people really know me!" It was one of my favorite memories from the entire freshman year, and believe me, that's saying a whole hell of a lot.

While I can't pinpoint the exact moment, I've felt more and more accepted and truly known at my work recently. This is evident by how freely I'm now sharing my strange and bad ideas with them. Last week, I stopped my boss in the hall on his way out of the office. "Wait, I came up with a kick-ass ad campaign for a gym." (Here's the part where I should point out that our company doesn't do stuff like that, so this was truly out of nowhere.) "Ok, let's hear it," he said. "Be Here or Be a Sphere!" I said. "What?" "You know, like 'be there or be square.'" "But why a sphere?" he asked. Jamie chimed in: "You mean, like, fat?" "Yep," I said. "Yeah, I don't think so," my boss said. I started to plead my case a little but then gave up, realizing that even I didn't like it that much. It was the extra syllable with "a sphere" instead of just "sphere" that bothered me. By the time I came to that conclusion, my boss was out the door and my other co-workers were back doing whatever they were doing. If I had pulled that same move two years ago, they would've been staring at me and shaking their heads, but since we've reached the necessary comfort level, it was just a momentary blip on the radar that hardly registered at all. While one might argue that it's more of a desensitization than an acceptance, I'm just happy to feel like I belong in the places I spend most of my days.

Now let's ride our imaginary elliptical machines on over to the Car Watch.

I saw a license plate frame and I didn't quite know what to make of it. On the top, it read, "This is where the." In the split second I had before reading the bottom, I contemplated the possibilities. "Party starts?" "Ladies flock?" "Trunk resides?" I didn't come up with a good answer, and so I read the bottom of the frame: "HEARTBEAT STOPS!" Well I clearly wasn't expecting that. So basically, the driver is saying that this car kills people, right? I don't think I'm reading too much into that at all. But how? Does it kill them by hitting them with the car, or do they die within the car (from fear or more likely, embarrassment)? Maybe s/he needed another license plate frame to clear up what this first frame meant.

My homey Rockabye saw this license plate on a Lexus SUV hybrid: "HRDTOGT." What is - the driver or the car itself? I've seen a number of those vehicles around, so I'm assuming it's the driver asserting his or her hard-to-get-ness. Doesn't that take some of the fun out of it? It's been a long time since I was in the dating scene, but isn't a major point of playing hard to get...not telling the seeker what you're doing? It seems like it would lose much of its efficacy if the gameplan was common knowledge.

The same homey Rockabye saw this bumper sticker: "My other transport is the Millennium Falcon." He didn't tell me what kind of car it was, but I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit on that. First of all, unless it was Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, or even Lando Calrissian driving, then the person is either a liar or they bought the Falcon second-hand from some intergalactic used spaceship lot. Let's assume for the moment that the latter is true. There's one huge problem with this still (I know, probably more than one): the Star Wars double-trilogy happened "a long time ago," not to mention "in a galaxy far, far away." For the sake of argument, let's say that the closest that something "far, far away" can be is...the next closest galaxy. According to Yahoo! Answers, that would be between 25,000 and 42,000 light years away. So even moving at light speed (with the Millennium Falcon certainly can do), it would've needed to leave that galaxy tens of thousands of years ago to reach that used spaceship lot. And that's without stopping for bathroom breaks, mind you. Let this be a lesson to all of you: nobody makes outlandish and obviously-false claims without facing the wrath of Peter the Debunker. You have been warned.

Ok, that's enough bullshit for now. You all have lovely weekends and weeks, and feel free to drop me a line at ptklein@gmail.com with anything at all. As for the small crop of happies during that time: Happy half-birthday to my father-in-law tomorrow, and happy half-anniversary to my favorite brother and sister-in-law next Tuesday. Take care, folks, and I'll see you next Friday. (By the way, you can't spell "strip tease" without Peter.)

Bored games

Shaloha, people and other highly-advanced animals that somehow learned to read English. I hope you're all doing well. I have nothing in particular to talk about this week, so I'm just going to jump into some random stuff and hope it forms itself into a post.

We had a strange day at work earlier this week. Being an early bird, I'm always the first person into the office. In fact, I usually have at least an hour to myself before anyone else gets here, which is a nice way for me to ease into the day and get some good stuff done before having to actually speak to people in person. My routine is a fairly simple one: I come in and as I make my way to my office, I turn on every light along the way. On Tuesday, I hit the first group of three switches and noticed that only about half of the lights turned on. "That's weird," I thought, but pressed on. The next switch in the routine is the one in the little kitchen. I hit that one, and the light came on...but it was about twice as bright as it normally is. "Well that's really weird," I said (probably aloud). As I went through the office, the individual lights either turned on, stayed off, or turned a blinding hyper-on. There was no rhyme or reason either; all three outcomes could happen within the same office.

I called the building management, and an engineer came out. I told him the problem, and when I mentioned the ones that were brighter than normal, he very condescendingly said, "There's a dimmer on these switches, so maybe they're just all the way up this morning." I pointed to another one with the same problem. "Well unless someone switched out the bulbs between last night and this morning, this has nothing to do with it," he said. He then said he'd check something out and come back. When he returned a minute later, I said in my big-boy voice, "I know it sounds weird, but I turn these lights on every morning and a few of them are definitely brighter than normal." He nodded dismissively and went to check on more things.

When he came back ten or fifteen minutes later, he said in a serious tone, "This is going to be a while. Make sure all computers are off or unplugged, because something big happened." I started to ask what "a while" meant when he added this mumble: "And you were right about the brightness thing. That's really strange though." Hmmm, maybe the engineer should've listened to the guy who knows absolutely nothing about electricity or how anything works after all.

It was about 8:45am when my co-worker Jamie came in, and we had no idea what to do. The plan was to wait for our co-worker Rob to come in around 9:15 and devise a plan of action based on the estimated time we'd be without power. In the meantime, we were completely useless to the world. The phone system was completely down, we had no computers, and neither of us even gets good cell phone reception in the office. I was doing some work emails from my Blackberry, but my battery was getting low. I have a charger, but that requires electricity. I thought about going back down to my car and charging it in there, but that seemed a little pathetic.

"Let's play a game!" I said to Jamie, only half-serious. "Ok!" she said, surprising the hell out of me. She then told me about a game that she called, "Landmass." The instructions were simple: we take turns listing non-man-made types of objects until someone's stumped. Here's how it started:

Jamie: Mountain
Me: Peninsula
Jamie: Ocean
Me: Oh, so it doesn't have to be land?

We went on for about five minutes, which really is a long time if you think about it. I was very pleased with using "marsh," "tributary," "isthmus," "delta," and few more choice selections. We eventually got interrupted by Mr. Condescending Engineer and never made it back to the game. For something that sounds really boring, it ended up passing the time quite nicely for those five minutes. In the end, we were told that a transformer blew and that we'd be out of power all day. Our boss realized our complete uselessness without electricity and sent us home for the day.

The inappropriately-named "Landmass" game got me thinking (uh oh) about other diversions sprung out of boredom. One in particular came to mind that I played way back in...gosh, '92 I think. Wow. Am I really that old now? Anyway, when my friend Jon and I were both 15 years old, our social options were slightly limited by our lack of driving ability. (My nerdiness and awkward stage of adolescent development had nothing to do with it too, I swear.) So we often walked to the Sherman Oaks Galleria, which Google Maps tells me is 1.2 miles away from my parents' house.

As 15 year-olds, we were fairly adept at entertaining ourselves on those walks. We would talk about all sorts of deep topics, ranging from music and cute girls to music and not cute girls. Despite that never-ending supply of conversation topics, we occasionally fell into extended silences. During one walk back home, we encountered such a silence. Jon spoke up and suggested that we play a game that he and his friend Arash used to play. It was simple and it was great. While walking west, we'd watch the westbound cars that passed us. The third car that passed would be "his," and the third after that would be "mine." Then back to him, back to me, etc. I know that can't sound super exciting to you from that description, but it had four elements that maximized the fun factor:

1. Since the cars were coming up from behind us, it was always surprising to see what appeared.
2. The cars that were either number one or two in the sequence (and therefore neither of "ours") added a great element. If it went BMW...Porsche...we'd start getting excited right until a beat-up '78 Cutlass Supreme showed up.
3. Sometimes there would be a virtual tie as to which car was second and which was third. The argument couldn't last long though because we had to get back to counting the next three cars.
4. Sound. After car number two, we'd hear something coming and only have a second or two to determine whether it sounded like a fancy car or a clunker. We could never really tell (unless it was a city bus or cement truck), but it added a different level of anticipation. Maybe that old, smoke-emitting VW bus would be overtaken by a new Lamborghini at the last moment to secure the third spot. We never knew.

The reason the car game so easily came to mind is that I thought of it just a couple of weeks ago (for the first time in years). I went to pick someone up from LAX by myself, and I had a bunch of time on my hands. First of all, I'm hyperpunctual by nature, so I left a little too much time to get there. Second, there wasn't any traffic whatsoever, which simply doesn't make sense. And third, her flight was delayed a little. Needless to say, I sought some mental diversions. I plopped down in the perfect location: I could see both the board that showed the changing flight arrival times and the escalator that all arriving passengers were using to get to baggage claim. The people came in waves as flights landed, and I created a ridiculously immature version of Jon's car game to pass the time: To save the fate of mankind, Jon would have to "do it" with the third person who came down the escalator, and I would have the same duty with the third after that. Let me repeat - this act was not for pleasure but rather to save the entire human race. And it was hilarious. I played for twenty minutes, and I think I had only one woman (who was at least in her 60s) fall my way. The first three or four of mine were older Asian businessmen, and if any of them were looking my way as they came down the escalator, they may have wondered why I was giggling to myself. Not to sound too shallow, but there were only two mildly attractive women the entire time. One was in her 40s and in a business suit, and she narrowly missed saving the world with Jon. The other was in military fatigues, and she was sharing her escalator step with a male soldier, so it was hard to tell which one Jon ended up with. It was childish and occasionally a little mean-spirited, but it passed the time and made me laugh, so I feel comfortably sharing it all with you. In fact, I encourage you all to try that game at some point and see how undeniably funny it can be.

And with that, let's ride the electronic staircase on down to the Car Watch.

My loving mother-in-law sent me a license plate that took me a few minutes to get: "WERYNOS." I went through "weary nose," "weary Nos" (like I get when I ask my lovely wife if she's still awake), "we rhinos," and "wearin' Os" (like the Baltimore Orioles or Oregon Ducks). Then I realized that it was most likely saying, "We are winos." I hope that's not really the driver's family's most distinguishing characteristic. I understand that "WINE (Heart)RS" was probably taken, but "wino" yields a much different mental picture than "afficionado," ya know?

I saw a plate that read, "2PRIUS." Oh yeah, it was on a Toyota Highlander and not, as any reasonable person would assume, a Prius. What the hell, man? I'm trying to make sense of it all but coming up woefully short (like Danny Devito). Is the driver "too Prius for a Prius?" Is that "Prius 2: Bigger and Badder...at gas mileage?" I have no idea, but I do know that I don't like it.

Lastly, my homey Rockabye sent me an incomplete Car Watch item. It was a bumper sticker that said, "Register Librarian." "There was some other text but I couldn't read it," he said. Well that puts us in a bit of a pickle, now doesn't it? I like the pun of using "librarian" instead of "libertarian" quite a bit (if that's indeed what they're going for), so I want us to work together to find the best "other text" possible. How about, "Register Librarian: Vote for Dewey?" "Register Librarian: Let your whisper be heard." "Register Librarian: State your reference." Let's here it, people.

Ok, I'm out of here. I actually turned a blank mind into a post with a coherent theme, so I count that as a success. Have a Happy Valentines' Day tomorrow if you choose to celebrate that slightly commercialized holiday. Happy birthday next Thursday to my Bratty Kid Sister; she's the best fake sibling I've ever had. As for the rest of yous, have safe and healthy weekends and weeks. I'll see you next Friday unless you choose to grace my ptklein@gmail.com inbox with your presence before then. Peace out, homepeople.

All up in my face(book)

Hello and good morning in this second month of 09. Yes, February, with its non-conformist number of days and status as "Most Mispronounced Month." Seriously, how many of you ignore the first R out of sheer laziness? I know I do from time to time, and that's just not right. No other letter in any other month's name is so blatantly skipped over. I think it's all due to our minds wanting it to sound like January to form a pattern. Yeah, that's the theory I'm going with. It narrowly edged out the "It's just too difficult to pronounce" theory. To summarize my thoughts on the matter, here's a haiku:

O February:

Rebel month with fewer days

and skipped-over R.

Yeah, I don't know why I went there either. Let's get to a topic, shall we? I would like to address a current cultural phenomenon and my private battle with conforming to the wishes of the masses. Yes, I'm just like February. What is this phenomenon? Facebook, the social networking website.

Some time ago, I received an invitation to be someone's "friend" on Facebook. I said that I wasn't really into that stuff, so I wasn't going to sign up. Then I got two more requests about a week later, and I kind of caved in a little. I created a profile with nothing but my name, location, and a picture of our dog Hallie. Every once in a while, I'd get another request from someone I knew. I'd log in, say yes to the request, and then log out. That was the extent of my Facebook usage.

Then something happened. Apparently there's a feature in which the server tells people who they might know. After accepting the friend request from a former student worker of mine, I received around 20 more requests from other student workers within two days. I still just accepted them and moved on with one exception: I put a note on my page saying that while I would love to get in contact with each and every one of them, I don't use that site and would prefer an email. I then listed my address, and two or three of them actually took my suggestion.

The strange thing about this whole thing is that my best friends weren't my "friends." Only recently did my friends Dusty, Lisa, and favorite brother officially join the ranks. Jon, one of my best friends since 9th grade, is on Facebook but we just haven't become friends yet. I suddenly had over 50 "friends" on this thing, and so I put up a new note saying the same thing as the other one. Within twenty minutes, I had a comment from Dusty saying, "How about you just give in and use the site." Then he called me a name which I didn't appreciate. Less than an hour later, my favorite brother commented: "What is it? Are you too good for the site that we all choose to use to keep in contact? It's good enough for us, but not for you. I'd say majority rules." And the he too called me a name. Do you see what's going on here? It's nothing short of bullying, and I'm being publicly chastised for trying to be an individual. I didn't realize I signed up for Communist Facebook.

Here's the other thing that bugs me about the site: people are frickin' fanatics about it. You can update your "status," which is much more fleeting than it sounds. I wasn't exactly expecting something along the lines of, "Peter Klein is now landed gentry instead of indentured servant," but nor was I expecting how it's actually used. Here are some recent status updates from my "friends":

"...is getting ready for work"

"...is doing absolutely nothing of importance"

"...is getting ready to head to the gym"

"...is shopping at whole foods"

You're kidding me, right? To fit in, I'm supposed to post on a website when I'm doing something, doing nothing, or getting ready to do something or nothing? I don't think of myself as an extremely private person (even though you can't spell "private person" without Peter), but I don't want to share that level of life detail with everyone. At the same time, I don't mean to be rude, but I don't care to know those details about anyone else's life. Yes, we went to junior high together and it was fun, but I don't care if you're "having a hard time focusing at work." It just comes across as very self-important to think that other people need to know what you're doing right now. "Oh my God, she's at Whole Foods? I wonder what she's getting! I won't try chatting with her now because she's not at her computer - she's at Whole Foods! I like Whole Foods too! I wonder which one she's at and if we like the same things from there. When her status changes, maybe I'll chat with her and see what she bought and we can talk about how alike we are." (Wow, I sound like a 70 year-old curmudgeon sounding off against new-fangled technology, don't I? I'm sure that's an attractive quality.)

I have one last rant on this topic, and I think this might sway any of you still on the fence. People send polls and quizzes that are eerily close to annoying email forwards or chain letters. "At the end, choose 25 people..." it says. It doesn't say that bad luck will befall me if I don't do that, but since everyone knows everyone else's every move, it's obvious who did and didn't comply with the directions. One of the greatest coups of my life was in college when I received a chain letter email. It said that if I sent it to ten people, I would be exempt from ever having to respond to another chain letter for the rest of my life. Nothing bad would happen to me as a result of ignoring future chain letters because this one would protect me. How sweet is that action? And now, I have friends and "friends" trying to mess with that shit. Can't they see I'm protected? I don't want to list 25 random things about me or find out which 1980's sitcom character would be my best friend. (It's gotta be Balki, right?)

All I want from this site is to email occasionally with some folks with whom I've lost contact to see what they've been up to. That's it. I don't need to know when they're getting ready for work or what movie they're in line to see. Does that make me a bad person? I hope not.

And with that, let's update our statuses on over to the Car Watch.

I saw a license plate that was a bald-faced liar (as opposed to all of those hairy-faced liars out there). It read, "ITS 04." No, it's not. It hasn't been for a while, in fact. "ISNT 04" would've fit just fine and been correct 99 years out of 100. Even if the car is a 2004 model and was purchased in January of 2004, the car's owner was still very shortsighted in his/her plate selection due to the ephemeral nature of it actually making sense.

My homey Rockabye saw a Mini Cooper with an interesting plate. Over the past couple of years, he's seen a bunch of personalized Minis. As you might expect, they play upon the small nature of the car. This particular plate appears to be doing the same thing: "MININTZ." But then you have to ask yourself what the rest of it means. Is this short for "Mini nuts?" If so, I'm sorry to hear that. Is it "Mini Nazi?" If so, I'm really, really sorry to hear that. Are those the owner's initials? If so, why not take out the middle one and put a 4 in there to make it "MINI4NZ?" Are they going for "Mini nights?" If so, what the hell does that even mean? Nights out in the Mini? I guess. Basically, I don't really get or like that plate.

But I like this one even less: "PRFR RED." Oh yeah, it was on a blue fucking car! There's a space, so it's clearly not short for "preferred." Instead, it's either someone stating a preference for red things that just doesn't happen to extend to the automotive world or someone who would've preferred that his/her blue car was red instead. In that second scenario, if it's such a strong car color preference that the license plate is devoted to the lack of redness, why not just wait until you can get a red car? People really confuse me sometimes.

Ok, I'm outa here. This has seemed like an angrier post than normal, and that pisses me off, which makes it an extremely vicious cycle. I hope you all have very pleasant weekends and weeks, my friends. Happy half-birthday to our friend Laura on Sunday, and I'll be back here next Friday with more of what's on my mind. In the meantime, please feel free to email me at ptklein@gmail.com with anything at all. Take care, everyone.