Fear in the headlights

Good morning, homepeople. How's everyone doing on this (insert adjective that correctly refers to the weather in your part of the world) Friday? Yes, it's rather (insert same adjective with the knowledge that it is either accurate or sarcastic) here in Los Angeles, too. We do what we can. As I type this, I have no idea what this post is going to be about, and that frightens me a little. But I shall face my fears, push on, and see what comes of this.

Actually, something just came of this. By writing, "face my fears," I recalled a brief story. Isn't it fantastic when that happens? (Answer: Yes!) I've written a little about our sweet and adorable dog Hallie in the past. I wrote about how she got her name, songs in which I frequently insert that name, and some silly things she does from time to time. I don't believe I've ever talked about how extremely timid she was when we first got her from the rescue organization.

During the first month or so of having our new family member, we learned more and more things that scared her on a daily basis. It made no sense, really. I'd be walking her, and the wind would move a leaf. I think that's fairly typical, but she'd cower and put her tail so far between her legs that it looked like she had a penis. A minute later, a car alarm could go off right next to us and she wouldn't bat an eye. "Really? You're ok with that though?" I'd ask her. She never answered.

The scariest thing in the world to her during that first little while was...ROLLING LUGGAGE! I was walking her, and a woman pulling a suitcase behind her turned the corner and was a few feet from us. Hallie leapt backwards in the air, curled into the smallest ball she could behind my legs, and started shaking. The luggage roller asked me why she was so afraid, and I said what ended up being a very common refrain for the first couple of years that we had her: "We got her from a shelter, so we don't really know."

I saw that she started to develop a bad habit. Namely, when walking through the parking lot sections of our large apartment complex, Hallie started to fear...PARKED CARS! Yes, I know, they're very scary. I would try taking us between two cars, and she'd stop dead in her tracks and pull backward or turn and try going a different direction. After I changed course a couple of times, I took a new tact. "Hallie, it's time to face your fears," I said to her. Trying my best to be the confident and assertive pack leader she needed, I pulled her through two cars parked close together. My thought was that if she saw that she could go through without whatever mortal peril she expected to happen, then it would be easier the next time. And you know what? I was actually right. The next time we got to parked cars, I said again, "Face your fears, Hallie dog." With minimal pulling, we walked through. The time after that was no problem at all. I made her face her fears and she came out the other end smiling. (She really does look like she's smiling at times. See?)

After being a part of our family for four years now, she hardly resembles the little scaredy-dog we brought back to that apartment in Sacramento. She's still more timid than the average dog, but she's come way out of her shell. Parked cars, rolling luggage, and even dreaded leaves don't have the same effect on her anymore. I'd like to think that transformation started right then when I had the heartfelt Father-Dogter pep talk. I'd also like to think that she'll magically start walking better on a leash without us really working on it, but I'll take what I can get.

That story got me thinking (uh oh) about whether I practice what I preached (proach?) to my pup. Do I push myself enough in uncomfortable moments? Do I have fears that I can actively try to minimize? I actually think the answer is yes, albeit on a couple of small scales that come to mind. If there's an ugly bug in the house, I would love to be able to cast a spell from two rooms away to make it disappear. Instead, since I'm the designated bug-killer of the house, I've forced myself to persevere in those situations. Oh sure, there may be some girlish screaming involved and, if it was unfortunately messy for any reason, slight waves of nausea, but I get the job done. And I suppose it has gotten easier of the years. Maybe this "face your fears" stuff really works.

The other example that readily came to mind involves talking to strangers. Oh sure, it's easy on a computer monitor, but I'm talking about a different forum: the phone. There are times at work that I have to call someone with whom I'm not yet acquainted. Often that call is to ask for something (set up a meeting, pitch him/her on a service that might not be needed, complain about how a matter was handled, etc.), so I don't think that they'll excitedly say, "Oh hi; great to hear from you!" after I introduce myself. Therefore, I find it a little difficult to pick up the phone and start that process. I don't know if it's actually fear that makes me hesitate and not want to do it, but it's definitely in the fear family. (Coming soon to Fox - Fear Family! What happens when a normal suburban family is haunted by ghosts as they attempt to eat pig rectums and walk a plank over genetically-modified barracudas? Find out Fridays at 10/9 Central!) So what do I do? I make myself start. It's very similar to how I would talk to girls in junior high school. I told myself that if I began the sentence, it would be too late to turn back and I'd be forced to run with it. That's what I do now on the occasional call of this type. Knowing full well that I don't want to, I pick up the phone and start dialing as quickly as possible. Once it rings, it's out of my hands and I just have to power through the call and make it happen. And everything ends up being just fine. That makes the next time and the one after that a little bit easier, and I'm pleased to know that I'm headed in the right direction. Peter Klein: Fear Facer.

Bees and wasps though? Nah, fuck that, I'm not facing that fear. I’m 31 years old, and I still freeze like a broken computer anytime a bee is buzzing around me.

Ok everyone, let's move our sharp and lethal stinger-asses on over to the Car Watch.
First off, my lovely wife and I went wine tasting over this past weekend. In the parking lot of one of the wineries, she saw this license plate frame: "Wine drinkers make grape lovers." Nicely done. Speaking of that trip, we went to one place called Wiens that we really liked. While sitting there, I pointed out that "Wiens" is an anagram of "sinew." "Or 'wines,'" my lovely wife added, which was way more appropriate. "What's wrong with me?" I asked. She didn't answer, so I took that to mean, "Nothing, honey, nothing is wrong with you."

Next up, my homey Rockabye sent me this Car Watch item that made me laugh: "Bring back professional football in Detroit." You see, they do have a pro team, but since their hometown Lions went 0-16 last year (a record in futility), the car's owner doesn't think that they should count as "professional." I like sarcasm, so I liked this. It's a simple equation really.

And lastly, my friend Dusty sent me a funny bumper sticker: "If size doesn't matter, how come I'm so popular?" I've wondered the same thing for years, my friend.

Ok, that's it for today. But have no fear (tee hee), I'll be back next Friday with more stuff and...stuff. In the meantime, here are some happies: Today is my favorite niece's 5/6 birthday, so wish her well as she nears becoming a whole number. Happy 91st birthday tomorrow to my lovely wife's grandfather, which is quite impressive. Happy half-birthday to longtime and loyal reader Sue on Wednesday, and happy full birthday to my co-worker Rob on Thursday. As always, you can reach me at ptklein@gmail.com. Take care, everyone, and shaloha.

Geeking havoc

Good morning, one and all. I hope everyone's feeling chipper out there. Not like a wood chipper, mind you; I'm pretty sure that's the opposite of my original intention. So welcome. Ya know, for all the time I spend at the end of these posts wishing people happy full and half-birthdays, you'd think that I wouldn't gloss over key dates like the Ides of March and St. Patrick's Day. You'd be wrong though. In any case, I hope you survived the former and enjoyed the latter.

Back in December, I purchased something from an amazing website called ThinkGeek. Some of the stuff on there is way too technical for me to even know what they're spoofing, but I found something on there that I thought my boss might like. It's a mini drum kit that you play with your fingers (http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/922f/), and I found it cool at least. However, I had no idea at the time that that gift would only yield about 1/1000th of the pleasure that I got from the "free gift with purchase." By spending a certain amount of money, I got a free device called The Annoy-a-tron. Here are the key parts of the item's description:

The Annoy-a-tron generates a short (but very annoying, hence the name) beep every few minutes. Your unsuspecting target will have a hard time 'timing' the location of the sound because the beeps will vary in intervals ranging from 2 to 8 minutes.

With its thin design and embedded magnet for easy hiding, the Annoy-a-tron can be placed in a variety of locations.

Assuming you have done your part in selecting a suitable hiding location for the Annoy-a-tron, it will do its part to drive your co-workers slowly mad with its short and seemingly random beeps. And when someone does locate the Annoy-a-tron, they're really not going to know what it is - which is almost as much fun as watching them search for it. Muahaha.

So once we got back to work during the first week of January, I thought about what would be the most suitable hiding place. I didn't want to subject my boss to this, mainly because I'm not a moron. My co-worker Jamie didn't deserve the torture, and Rob wouldn't have found it funny at all. In fact, I could see him getting very upset, yelling at the facilities managers, and unintentionally taking all of the joy out of the prank. But my co-worker named Scott...now that's a different story. Scott's a prankster in his own right (including the occasional hiring of a singing telegram in a full gorilla costume for someone's birthday), so I knew he'd eventually appreciate it. Also, there was a little sense of payback for the amount of stress he's caused me by consistently running five minutes late to conference calls and meetings. As a hyperpunctual person, that doesn't fly with me whatsoever. And he toys with me, often lying about when he'll be somewhere just to make me a bit more nervous.

So Scott won the honorable distinction of having me hide The Annoy-a-tron in his office. I found the perfect spot: the inside metal lip of a small table in the far corner of his office. I told almost everyone else in the office about the gag, turned it on, and waited to see what would happen. In all honesty, I expected Scott to complain about a beeping sound, find the device within a day or two, accuse us of planting it there, and then we'd all share a laugh as he called me names. Well my friends, my assumption was a little bit off.

A week went by, and I hadn't heard a peep out of Scott about any hearing any noises. I made sure to turn it off at the end of each day and then back on in the mornings in an effort to save the battery. Every time I turned it on, it beeped, so I knew it must have been working. The next week, I sat in Scott's office when I heard a beep from the corner. He didn't bat an eye and kept talking. Was he going deaf? If so, then this was a horrible idea. A few minutes later, it beeped again. I couldn't hold it in any longer. "Did you hear something?" I asked. "YES!" he yelled, with an exasperated look on his face. "I've been hearing that beeping for a week now. I think something's battery is dying but I can't figure out where it's coming from." Being fairly quick on my feet, I turned the exact opposite direction of where I planted The Annoy-a-tron and said, "It sounded like it came from over there."

A couple more weeks went by, with the same scene playing out over and over again. "I gotta find out what that is. It has to be either something losing its power or some kind of bug." "You think someone's bugging you?" I asked, trying my best to seem genuinely concerned. "It's possible, I guess." To maximize the fun factor, I'd occasionally leave The Annoy-a-tron off for a few days at a time before turning it back on. "Still hearing that beeping?" I asked. "Ya know, I didn't for a few days, but I just heard it a minute ago!" "Still coming from over here?" I asked, pointing in the wrong direction. "There are two beeps," he said. "One is coming from the that corner, and the other I think is coming from over there, but maybe up in the ceiling." That led to the three-week period in which he thought it was a smoke detector with a dying battery.

Two months into the journey, Scott seemed to be coming a little unhinged. Determined to find the source of the on-again/off-again beeping, he began unplugging various electronic devices around his office. The phone and plant that lived on the small table (under which the device was hiding) were temporarily moved into the lobby area. The television, cable box, and shredder were unplugged and scrutinized for any visible problems. Nothing seemed to work though, so he gave up and just tried to accept the fact that something was going to beep every few minutes on some days of the week.

That might make it seem like it lost its fun, but that's not the case. In fact, that's when the other office mates got involved to make Scott really start to question his sanity. "Did you hear that?" we'd ask, when there hadn't been any sound whatsoever. When it would beep, we'd keep a straight face and pretend not to have heard it. Then my boss and I "heard" the sound of a monkey going, "Hoo hoo" every so often. Scott just threw his hands up in the air and said, "I don't even know anymore. I don't think I'm going crazy, so something weird is definitely going on."

I was thinking of turning it off for a good week or two just to make him think the problem had resolved itself. I thought the payoff would be great when it reared its beeping head once more. I didn't get there though, because something happened. "Scott just found a bug in his office," a co-worker who wasn't in on the gag told me on Tuesday of this week. "What?" I asked, careful not to give myself away yet. "Yeah, something beeped, and his friend got on the ground and found a little electronic thing hidden under a table." I got up and went in there. Here's a synopsis of how the next half an hour played out:

Me: So it's a bug?

Scott's Friend: Yes. It definitely is. I've seen bugs before, and this is transmitting somewhere.

Me: (to Scott) Why would someone bug you?

Scott: I don't know, but this is fucked up.

Scott's Friend: Based on the size and battery, this thing can't be more than six months old. It has to be transmitting to somewhere close by. (He catches Jamie smiling.) Maybe these guys had something to do with it.

Me: Oh yeah, 'cause I want to hear everything Scott's saying.

Scott: No, and that looks like it's expensive.

Scott's Friend: I know a guy who I can bring this to. He can tell us if it's FBI, CIA, military, or something else.

Scott: Oh crap. Oh crap.

Me: If anyone's listening in there, my name is Peter Klein, and I've done nothing illegal.

Scott: Oh crap. Oh crap.

I then texted my boss (who was out of town) to tell him what was going on. I grabbed The Annoy-a-tron's box from my office, and I was about to present it to Scott and come clean with the whole thing, but I waited until he finished leaving a slightly-panicked message on our boss's voicemail. He hung up and said, "I think I need to go bring this somewhere and find out what it is. It'll cost me $500 if I go to the one place I know, but that's worth it." That was enough for me. I printed out The Annoy-a-tron's page from the ThinkGeek site and put it on Scott's desk. "Hey Scott, it kinda looks like this, don't you think?" "That's it!" he said excitedly. "And it looks like it would come in a box like this, right?" I asked, as I put it next to the printout. He looked up at me, and confusion turned to disbelief, which morphed into a mix of smiling relief and dissipating anger. "You fucker!" he said. "I knew it was them," his friend chimed in. "Was that before or after you told us the approximate transmitting distance?" Rob asked.

For the next hour, Scott said many things about not believing that "mild-mannered Peter" played this trick on him. I pointed out that the device said "ANNOY" on it, but he said it was too small to read and looked like "ALLOY." He asked if we were snickering behind his back every time he unplugged something or moved the plant, and we said it was much more often than that. I told him that I knew he could take it, and I wouldn't have done that to anyone else in the office. That didn't make it any better though, and he vowed to get revenge on me for making him think that he was either crazy or under surveillance by the government. He had two final thoughts on the subject: "Payback is a bitch," and, "Payback is a motherfucker." I'll let you all know how that turns out. This free gift ended up causing an exponentially higher amount of entertainment than I ever could've guessed, so I regret nothing...yet.

And now, let's magnetically affix ourselves onto the Car Watch.

My homey Rockabye sent me this license plate: "KANSKID." I have to believe it's one of three things, each with a flaw. If it's "Kansas Kid," then the missing extra S makes it more confusing than it should be. If it's "Kan's Kid," what kind of name is Kan? Is it short for some funky spelling of Candice? Is it going the Courtney route (which has about 30 spellings now), leading to Khandyss and Kanndhis? I hope not. And if the plate is supposed to be, "Can Skid," then the driver needs better tires right away.

I saw a license plate frame, and between reading the top and bottom of it, I was able to slip in a thought and an entire memory. Pretty special, eh? So the top said, "All Eyez on Me." "Wait a minute, that sounds familiar," I thought. Then I remembered why. Years ago, I sent my friend Dusty a text message about a license plate frame I saw that confused me. "All Eyes on Me" was on top, and "Fijian Pride" on the bottom. Was the driver just vain and proud of her heritage? "Is it some kind of pun with the three dotted letters in a row?" Dusty wondered. We never came to a consensus, but I went back to that in my mind before looking at the bottom of the frame in front of me. What did it say? "2Hard's Mom." Well that's different. And it was a guy driving. I drove away more confused than ever.

Lastly, I was behind a car with this plate: "1TRU QT." I wanted to see how accurate the driver was in his or her self-assessment. So when the opportunity presented itself, I passed the car on the right and saw the woman driving. Um, gee, how can I put this politely? I think Borat said it best with, "You, eh, not so much." I don't normally go around judging people by their outer beauty, but when you tell everyone on the road that you're cute, you kinda have to be cute. Sorry, lady.

Ok, I've taken up way more of your time than I originally anticipated, so I'll make this part brief. Happy half-birthday today to our friend Paul, and happy 5th anniversary tomorrow to my lovely and increasingly wonderful wife. Have a great week everyone, and if you have a March Madness bracket, may your hunches prove to be accurate. As always, you can reach me at ptklein@gmail.com. Take care.

Spain management

Hello again, UOPTA readers, and thanks for coming back here for more of whatever it is I do here. I'm a little confused that it's Friday the 13th again after we just had one last month too. Aren't they usually more rare than that? And if the calendar on my phone is correct (and why wouldn't it be?), we have another one of them in November. That's weird, right? I don't keep track of such things, but three of them in one calendar year seems awfully high to me. Crap, now I have to look it up. Sure enough, 2008 only had one Friday the 13th (in June), so this year's total of three is a huge increase. And 2010 has but one as well (in August). I love it when my random hunches get proven to be accurate.

A couple of days ago, I was reminded of a story from my past. I started to send myself an email to write about it in this space, but I stopped partway through because I was certain that I'd already done that. The next day, I spent a good ten minutes searching on my blog for that story by typing in different words that would be essential to the story, but I came up blank. I still think it's in here somewhere, but what the hell, here goes:

During my senior year of high school, I went on a class trip to Spain with my fellow AP Spanish students and a few other people who my teacher just liked and allowed to join us. This was really the height of my extroverted behavior, fresh off a good role in a school play and 1.5 years of improv comedy under my belt. That said, I was clearly still learning that glorious secret to comedy: timing.

After a week of gallivanting around the country, seeing beautiful museums and landmarks, and learning the wonderful effect that alcohol had on my teenage body (it was legal there, Mom), the group headed to airport for our long trip back home. Since we were a larger group, we had an customs official assigned to us to get all of our paperwork perused and approved. The man assigned seemed nice enough, and he unknowingly started his questioning with the meekest and generally most uncomfortable student in our group. This was a shy underclassman named Brett, and I was standing right next to him. Here's how it went down:

Airport Agent: Passport please.
Brett: Oh, ok, um, here you go.
Airport Agent: Do you have any contacts here in Spain?
Brett: Excuse me?
Airport Agent: (a little more sternly) Do you have any contacts here in Spain?
Brett turns to Peter, the street-smart and wily veteran next to him. Brett's face shows a combination of confusion and sheer panic. Peter doesn't pick up on this and instead goes for the funny.
Peter: No, he wears glasses.
Peter looks around for approval and maybe a high-five, but his search is interrupted by the agent.
Airport Agent: Please let him answer the questions himself. (to Brett) Do you have contacts here?
Brett looks back at Peter, in full panic mode now.
Peter: (trying to save the day) No, you don't. (to the agent) No, he doesn't.
Airport Agent: Sir, please stop answering for him. (to Brett) Is there anyone in Spain who you were meeting?
Brett: Oh. No sir.
Airport Agent: Did you pack your bags yourself?
Brett: Yes.
Airport Agent: Do you have any firearms or explosives in your possession?
Peter: (half to himself) No, he left them at the hotel.
Airport Agent: (very sternly and seriously) Look, I know you're kidding, but if someone else were to hear you, you'd be in serious - SERIOUS - trouble, do you understand me?
Peter: (thankful for his ability to avoid shitting in his pants) Yes sir. Sorry.

I stepped away from their conversation, and when it was my turn, the agent and I went through the process quickly, mechanically, and uber professionally.

Here's the thing that gets me about that story: I was a fairly bright kid, so I should know what everyone on the frickin' planet knows about when not to make jokes. Airports/planes and banks are off limits, and rightfully so. Yet here I was, a snotty teen who had recently been praised for off the cuff comedic retorts, unable to stop myself from pointing out the ambiguity of the phrase, "in your possession." I'm glad the agent knew that a stern glare was enough to scare me straight, because an airport holding cell would've been excessive in my opinion.

I certainly learned my lesson. If anything, I get weird looks from airport personnel now for being super friendly and polite. It's a sad state of affairs when manners cause suspicion, but that's the way it works sometimes. "Why's this guy smiling at me and asking me how I'm doing this morning? What is he hiding?"

Ok, I have room for a couple unrelated stories. By unrelated, I mean both to the previous story and to each other, in case you were curious. First, I was watching with great adoration recently as my favorite niece was falling asleep. I found myself thinking, "Ah, there's nothing like a kid nap. Wait. Kid nap. Kidnap?" Naturally, I couldn't stop thinking about that word for while. Wouldn't kidnab make a hell of a lot more sense? Someone nabbed a kid, and there most likely wasn't much napping involved. Who do I petition to have that changed?

While I'm at it, I think "kidnapper" makes more sense than "babysitter" for that position. Maybe I should start handing out cards that say, "Peter Klein, Kidnapper. All ages. Reasonable rates. References available upon request." Seriously though, if you didn't speak English well at all, is there any way you would hire a "babysitter" over a "kidnapper"? One sounds much crueler than the other, and if you're willing to put everything you know aside, I have to believe that you'll agree with me. Just like Diarrhea being a pretty name for a girl (but spelled Diaria, of course).

And my other unrelated story involves my favorite nephew. Well, he's related to me and to my favorite niece, so I guess there's something related going on here. Anyway, I was reading one of the Shawny Man's books to him, and something caught my eye. On one of the pages, Cookie Monster was eating a piece of watermelon. "He's eating something other than cookies?" I asked my dad, who was on the couch with us. "That's bullshit," he said (or something similar). I thought about it and realized that no one ever said that the Cookie Monster only ate cookies, it's just that he loves them with every ounce of his being. If he's hungry and there are no cookies around, then sure, he can eat something else. One page later though, and Cookie Monster was eating cupcakes...and there were cookies right in front of him! What the hell, man? Did he go to cookie rehab or something when I wasn't paying attention? I don't ask for too much from my puppets, but consistency is key. Seeing Cookie Monster eating other foods is like seeing Oscar the Grouch living part-time in a condo in Manhattan. It just ain't right.

With that, let's take the subway (specifically the C line) on over to the Car Watch.

First off, my homey Rockabye knows how I feel about Prius license plates. It seems like I've come across every combination of plate that touts their MPG capacities. So when he sent me a different type of Prius plate, I appreciated the variety. It read, "GSGZLRR." Yes folks, we've branched out into the sarcastic Prius owner realm. I welcome it with open arms.

My Bratty Kid Sister sent me a license plate, and even if I didn't like it, I'd still put it here because I believe in rewarding those who reach out to me by writing to ptklein@gmail.com (hint hint). As luck would have it, this plate would've made the cut even if it had come from my homey Rockabye and his infinite supply of Car Watch items. This one read, "QDITCH*." If you can't tell, that's "Quidditch star." If that still means nothing to you, I'll shed some light on the subject by explaining that Quidditch is the make-believe sport that the make-believe characters play in the make-believe world of Harry Potter and his friends. Not only does the driver of this car want us to believe that s/he plays this sport (which involves flying on broomsticks), but that s/he is very good at it too. I hope - and I mean really, really hope - that "Quidditch star" made it on the driver's resume at some point. That would just make my day.

And lastly, I saw this plate on a car while driving home earlier this week: "DROOLY." I looked, and the driver was neither a Bassett Hound nor a Newfoundland, so my guesses were way off. (By the way, here's a good little joke to use at anyone's expense you see fit. I'll choose our former President as a target to illustrate my point: "Did you hear what George W. Bush got on his SATs? Drool." It's best when you bring it up contextually, like when someone mentions W's Yale education, for example. Maybe I've officially learned my lesson on comedic timing. In any case, please let me know if you get a chance to use this joke and how it's received. It's served me well in the past, especially when I ask it in a very serious tone like I'm about to impart some cool trivia. I'm gonna close this parenthetical side note at some point, right?)

That's it, homepeeps. I hope your Friday the 13th is neither freaky nor filled with homicidal maniacs wearing hockey masks. Aren't I sweet? I'll be back here next Friday with more stuff, so hopefully you can wait that long. Before that, Thursday is our good friend Danielle's half-birthday, so send her some half-happy thoughts, ok? Take care, everyone, and be happy and healthy. That's an order.

More than I can chew

Hello and shaloha, my homepeople. It's a pleasure to have you on this website today, especially since there are at least 20 or 30 others to choose from. I hope you're all doing well. Personally, I could be doing a little better. You see, I have a problem, and I want to get it all off my chest here and now...in story form, of course.

In college, I took four creative writing courses and absolutely loved them. The first of those classes allowed us to write whatever we liked, and after dabbling in short stories for a week, I switched over to writing poetry and never really looked back. More specifically, I almost exclusively wrote in specific forms and meters instead of free verse (which I referenced in last week's post). There was something about trying to be creative within a defined (and often rigid) structure that gave me a much, much greater sense of satisfaction and accomplishment than the free verse variety. In fact, I had trouble writing not in meter. I tried once, and my professor happily pointed out that I slipped into a rhythm a few times in my lines. Why did I like it writing in meter so much? I believe it all boils down to the degree of difficulty.

Allow me to back up a little before I move forward. It's not that I don't enjoy well-written free verse. I do, and I even just read an entire book written in free verse that was fascinating. It's called Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow, it's about modern day werewolf creatures, and it's like nothing you've ever read. That format worked surprisingly well with the subject matter, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I personally don't like writing in free verse though, and here's where I'll sound a little snobby: I feel like anyone can write crappy free verse, but it still takes skill and planning to write crappy meter. In fact, really crappy meter turns into crappy free verse, if that makes sense. Which brings us back to the degree of difficulty thing: it wasn't enough for me to think of a topic and want to write a poem; I needed the extra level of fitting it into specific metric feet to get my full sense of accomplishment.

And that's a problem I see in my life at times when it comes to creative projects. The higher I set the degree of difficulty, the lower my chance of success will be. Some of you longtime readers might recall the humble beginnings of this blog. I wrote one day, then another, and then another. From that point, I decided that I had to do it every single workday (including holidays) or it didn't count for some reason. It took me a year to finally switch to once a week, and that came with some hefty internal struggling - even though I was almost completely out of topics.

One might reasonably think that I'd learn my lesson, but I keep coming back to this problem. The most recent example is what led me to this post. Back in a late '08 post called "Twinkle Twinkle," I casually mentioned that maybe I should write down something new that I learned every day of 2009. That, in and of itself, is a fine idea I think. After I told myself that I was going to go for it, I just couldn't leave well enough alone. "Maybe I could write the thing I learned in a rhyming couplet," I thought. "That way, at the end of the year, I'd essentially have a 730-line poem!" I thought about it more and ditched that idea, realizing that I would often have more content than would fit in what would amount to twenty syllables. So I went the other way: I chose to make a book out of this. Each day, I would learn something, but I wouldn't just write it down like a list of new facts. Instead, I would start by telling a story, which would cause me to question something, which I would then look up and find out the answer. If each day ended up being about a page in length, I'd end up with a (hopefully) interesting book of over 300 pages that I could then shop to publishers. How cool would that be?

So I began. To show you the full range of my lunacy, here is what I wrote for January 3rd, 2009:

I'm reading a book by Nick Hornby right now in which he talks about the various books he's purchased and read on a monthly basis. It's taken from a series of articles he wrote for The Believer, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. In May of 2008, he started and stopped a few books, but "nothing took." "At least I have some fun facts at my disposal," he wrote. "Did you know that if you wrote out the human genome one letter per millimeter, the text would be as long as the river Danube?" He doesn't specifically say which book that was from, but of course I was not aware of that. Still, I didn't feel comfortable saying that the thing he learned that day would be the thing I learned on this day.

What struck me most about that fact was that it posed two more questions for me.
First, the human genome is written in letters? I'd never pictured it or tried to, but I doubt I would've pictured letters. And second, I guess the Danube is long, but I have zero idea whether it's five or five hundred miles (or kilometers, I suppose).

So I looked stuff up. According to Wikipedia, the human genome "occupies a total of just over 3 billion DNA base pairs." That sounds like a lot. A sample base pair looks like this:

ATCGAT
TAGCTA

I'm now remembering Adenine, Guanine, and other -ines from science classes back in high school, thereby making sense of this whole thing. "One letter at a time" for each base pair with over 3 billion base pairs...I'm guessing that's a damn long river. Let's check.

Sticking with Wikipedia for ease, it tells me that the Danube is "the longest river in the European Union and Europe's second longest river after the Volga." How long is that? 1,771 miles or 2,850 kilometers. Wow, that's a long river. How does that compare with the Nile? Well that one is 4,132 miles or 6,650 kilometers, aka "long ass long." So what did I learn today?

You would need to write out the human genome letter by letter about 2.33 times to make it the length of the Nile.

And to doubly prove my point (and ensure that this is the longest UOPTA post of all time), here is January 5th:

I was standing in my boss's office with another co-worker today when my boss turned on his computer. His desktop is a pretty picture of bright stars and what I'm assuming are galaxies. Out of nowhere, my co-worker said, "Ah, the Peacock Galaxy." "What?" my boss asked, and the co-worker pointed out a bright part on the screen that looked a little like a peacock if you squint and/or are extremely high. "Is there really a Peacock Galaxy?" I asked. "Eh, I'm just making stuff up. But I think that's it," he replied. "Hold on," I said, "either you made it up or it really exists." "It exists in my mind," he said, rendering himself completely useless.

I went to Wikipedia and found zero entries for "Peacock Galaxy." When I just tried "Peacock," it took me to a page for a star called Alpha Pavonis in the constellation Pavo. "Alpha Pavonis was named Peacock, for obvious reasons," it told me. Uh, not obvious to me. So I dug around some more online and found another site the spelled out that "pavo" means "peacock" in Latin. "Wait a gosh darn second," I said to myself, "Pavo just means 'turkey' in Spanish."

I consulted an online English to Spanish (and vice versa) dictionary to get more information. As I knew but confirmed, "duck" is the similar "pato" and "turkey" comes out as "pavo." What does "peacock" tell me in Spanish? "Pavo real." Yeah, enough of those fake turkeys already. I'm talking to you, vegans.

I went to find out more about peacocks to see how close they were as a species to turkeys. I guess they look alike, come to think of it, once you get past the showy colors. As it turns out, a turkey is in a different genus than the peacock, but that's not my learned item of the day. Nope; it's this:

While a male is called a peacock, a female is technically a peahen. Together, their group is amusingly called peafowl.

I think you may see my dilemma. I was having fun and truly learning interesting things, but I set my sights way too high. I'd get to the end of the day and think, "Oh crap, did I learn anything today?" Then I'd try reliving conversations I had, and on the off chance that something stood out, I'd have to go back and find a story to tell to lead to that fact. On several occasions, I had to start scouring the internet to find something to learn before the day was up. The task was becoming far too arduous, especially since I decided at some point that none of that information should overlap with what I was writing in my weekly blog. Brilliant, Peter, simply brilliant.

At the end of January, I began questioning if I should abandon this task. I hated to even think of doing that, but I looked at the calendar and thought that was probably the way to go. Before throwing in the towel though, I was going to press on. I got through February 10th successfully, and then my lovely wife and I went away for the weekend. I sent myself text messages during that time of things that I should write about upon my return. The messages said, "Find origin of 'shoe-in,'" "something about steroids - start with A-Rod," and "Who was Ft. Lauderdale named after?" Well folks, those text messages remained just that, and I never got back on the horse. My desire to up the proverbial ante outweighed my actual ability to complete the task. Part of me was mad and disappointed in myself for being my own creative project's downfall. The other part of me felt great about abandoning the idea, because it was taking a lot of time and stressing me out when I had to search for new information.

So what's next for me and my high bar-setting? I don't know. I'm going to try to regulate myself for a while, and if I get an idea that makes my eyes twinkle, I'll try to keep it on the simpler side. I can always go back and rework it to be a Spanish palindrome in iambic pentameter, or whatever ridiculous thing I decide to attempt.

With that, my friends, let's take a palindromic race car over to the Car Watch.

For once, I have clear-cut examples to illustrate the point I've been trying to make about license plates all along: if it doesn't quite work, just abandon the idea instead of forcing it. Longtime and devoted reader Sue sent me this plate: "IAMUNEC." I can only assume that the driver meant to say that s/he is "unique," but there is a major flaw with that attempt. Just like a plate from a while back that read "D UNIK1," botched attempts at spelling "unique" make it instead look like "eunuch." Therefore, "IAMUNEC" is proudly telling the world, "I have no balls." On the extreme flipside of this example is a license plate that my loving mother-in-law sent me. It read, "8YPICAL." I like it; I like it a lot. Way to use all of the weapons at your disposal, Mr. or Ms. Car Owner.

My homey Rockabye sent me a plate that was immediately received by the 14 year-old who resides in me. It read, "LUV DKC." Oh sure, go ahead and argue that someone's initials are probably DKC, but you're not changing my stance on this one.

Lastly (and possibly conversely), my friend Dusty sent me this license plate: "IH8PORK." Wow, this person must feel very strongly to put that on the license plate. Hate? Geez, I bet Orthodox Jews don't even hate pork. Did pork kill the driver's family or something? Is the driver an ostrich farmer who was about to trademark, "The other white meat" as a slogan but got usurped? Look, I hate mustard and tell people that fairly often, but even I think that this great dislike of a foodstuff is over the top.

Ok, I'm done. I've written enough for this week (even if two large sections were simply cut and pasted). I'll be back with more stuff next Friday, and I still have about 38 "what I learned" entries to supplement any shorter post. In the meantime, Sunday is our little buddy Noah's 0.5 birthday, and Tuesday is my cousin Carrie's birthday. Think happy things for them. Take care, everyone, and feel free to write me at ptklein@gmail.com with anything that crosses your mind.