FUF #4

It's Friday, and I'm here to FU. (I've been waiting a whole week to use that line, so I hope you appreciated it. It was either that or some horrible pun involving "FUF the magic blogger," so be careful what you wish for.) Let's get right to it:

Car Watch:
Upon reading my entry about looking for a place to live and the guys who asked me to do my best Vader impression, my lovely wife remembered seeing the license plate "DRTH VDR" a couple of days before. I asked if it was him driving, but she said it wasn't. I don't know exactly what message that guy is trying to get across. Clearly he's not the fictional character, so he's probably just proclaiming his love for him. I think "DTH STAR" or "DEATH *" would've been better, but maybe they were taken. It just seems like a misguided choice to me. Even if I'm the biggest Miami Heat fan in the world, I wouldn't get "SHAQ" on my plate, you know? I'm not being a Vader Hater here, I just think the guy could've done a better job. "DRK HLMT" from Spaceballs would've at least been funny.

Longtime friend and loyal UOPTA reader "Rockabye" Scott Ryan James sent in this Bumper Sticker Report: "Is It Wet?" I'm just as confused as you. To paraphrase a wise man, I guess it depends on what your definition of "is" is. And "it." And "wet." Maybe it's a pop culture reference that I'm missing (like "Is it safe?" from Marathon Man), but I'm pretty much at a loss here. Got any insight, gentle readers?

A big bumper sticker on a big truck: "God Bless America and Screw Those who Don't Believe it." Who don't believe what? That America exists? Or that you, Mr. Truck Driver, wish for God to bless this country? If you have enough anger to publicly announce it to the world, at least be specific enough for us to know who the target of it is.

Let's move to the nether regions. First off, in response to my post about boxer shorts, reader (and Sacky) Christi posted an entry on her blog about women's underwear and the untapped potential. In it, she wrote:

The undies for toddlers are cute and comfy - they come with teddy bears,
ballerinas, monkeys, bunnies, princesses, etc. Why can't this be done for adult
size girls? This is a whole untapped market. Deep down, we are all just kids
trying to survive being a grown up. And we are all kids every chance we get. So
why give guys all the fun with boxers? Why not do the same for women's Granny
panties? They could be marketed to married women who need to get a message
across - "Garbage taken out? Access granted." "All hail the spider killer" "How
comfy was that couch?"
Heck, why not Underoos for grown-ups?

She's got a hell of point there, and even though I have an obvious problem formatting block quotes, I hope her dream comes true. Keep hope alive, Christi. Readers, if you have other ideas of what could be written on the Purpose Panties (ooooh, I like that), post a comment and let us hear it. "These aren't the droids you're looking for" would be hilarious to me for a few reasons, but probably not to many others out there. Nevermind.

After reading my thoughts about "Juicy" on people's butts, my friend Stacy (aka Bratty Kid Sister) wrote the following:

Juicy is disgusting. You are correct. I have a strong "nothing written on the ass" policy that I would have broken once and only once: at my graduation from
UCSB. Jenn had the genius idea to custom-make pants or shorts to wear
under our robes with "my ass graduated" written on the ass. It never panned out,
but I thought it was pretty genius.

Too bad that didn't end up happening, BKS, for it would've been glorious.

I remembered something else about my time living at The Bungardens that I wanted to share. My wife and I were at a party about eight places away, and out of nowhere, a dog came into the apartment. He seemed friendly enough, so we were petting him and trying to find out where he belonged. I took a look at his collar. "Honey, it's Rabies Vaccinated!" I yelled. "Well that's good," a party guest replied. "No, no, that's his name. Well not really his name, but what I call him. Nevermind." It was the sniffing snout I'd come to know, but this time attached to an entire dog. We spent the next 45 minutes trying to get him to show us which house was his, because we couldn't tell which one the fence behind our place was connected to. Eventually, he seemed to know where he was going and went into a backyard, but it must've seemed very odd for onlookers as we were all saying, "Come on Rabies, let's go home. Over here, Rabies. Rabies Vaccinated, show me where home is." As I had guessed from the nose alone, he was a he, and he was a good boy.

A little while back, I wrote about going through an old nightstand and finding some things from the past. I found one other thing that warranted mentioning. It was a business card that a co-worker's dad used to hand to ladies in bars back when he was single in the early 70's. On it, it said: "I want to love you tonight! If you don't want to, return this card, as it is expensive." I think that's just about the most coolest thing in the world.

Lastly, the Mega Millions lottery reached a ridiculous point this week. My co-worker was buying 20 tickets, so I thought "What the hell?" and bought one also, fully knowing that there was no shot at me actually winning. It was the first lotto ticket I had bought in over a decade, and when we got back to his car, I chuckled to myself. Not only would I have never selected any of the random numbers it chose for me, but on the top of the ticket, it read: "National Problem Gambling Awareness Week." Ah, timing truly is the secret of comedy. (Oh yeah, I didn't win $360 million - I might've mentioned that earlier in the post.)

Have a great weekend, everyone. I'm always interested in your thoughts and ideas, so email me at ptklein@gmail.com with anything about anything.

FUF #3

What do we do on Fridays, boys and girls? Follow-up! That's right!

Sorry, I got all kid-game-show-host on you for a minute. It's gone now; it can't hurt us anymore. Welcome to another installment of Follow-Up Fridays. We have some FUing to do on this F, so let's get right to it.

First off, we have a License Plate Frame Report. We've all seen many of those "My other car..." frames and bumper stickers, and I've never quite gotten them. They fall into three categories mainly. One, the "My other car is a Porsche" variety. So...what? Am I supposed to look at that and think, "Wow, he may not be driving a Porsche right now, but I know he has one so that guy's cool"? I really don't get it. Two, "the other mode of transportation" variety, in which the other car is a bicycle, plane, or the ever-popular broom. Ha, that's some high comedy right there. (Oops, my sarcasm meter is beeping rather loudly; it must be picking something up.) Lastly, there are the bizarre ones. I went online and saw: "My other ride is your mom," "My other car is also a piece of shit," "My other auto is a .38 Special," "My other car ran over a terrorist!" and "My other car was assimilated by The Borg." Ah, what glorious choices the internets make available to the public. (As an aside, why did the other car run over the terrorist? Was he afraid that we'd check for little bits of terrorist in the grill of his truck and then, upon not finding any, call him a liar? Does he have "This car ran over a terrorist!" on that car?)

Anyway, the one I saw this past week falls under the third category, but doesn't have the same creepy quality as some of those. On the top part of the frame, it read, "My Other Car," and on the bottom, "Was Stolen." How sad is that? Being on a frame is so much better than a sticker for that one, because I had to pause just a little in the middle to see how it was going to end. I really liked it, but I wish I had noted what kind of car it was. Silly Peter.

Moving on! Reader Melissa pointed out in the comments section that she's seen women's underwear with words on them, including "sexxy" (sic). You see that, I used (sic)! I'm so proud of myself. Sorry. Anyway, what bothers me about the trend is that on several occasions, I've seen young ladies in shorts or jumpsuit-type pants with "JUICY" written across the ass section. I don't like that. I can appreciate a nice heiny like the rest of the world, but "juicy" isn't a word I like to associate with butts. To me, "juicy" implies that one can squeeze it and get juice. Yes, I know that sounds disgusting, and that's precisely why I don't like seeing that. I feel like I should walk up to someone wearing those pants and say, "Excuse me, but you might want to get that ass drained before it leaks all over the place." Maybe they'd then see how disgusting that comes across to me. Am I way off on this, gentle readers? Let me know, and if any of you actually own said shorts or pants, what's the rationale that I'm missing? Is the “Juicy” brand that cool that it supersedes the nasty factor?

Next up, I wrote about my favorite sounds, number, and color. I have a least-favorite I'd like to share with you: the letter H. More specifically, it is the letter whose pronunciation bothers me the most. I have nothing against it in words (even though I don't have any in my entire name), but I don't like how we say that letter.

With consonants in our language, almost every single one is said as the sound that letter makes plus a vowel sound. It's either a soft vowel before it, like F, L, M, N, R, S, or X or a long vowel after it, like B, C, D, G, J, K, P, Q, T, V, or Z. That only leaves three consonants who don't comply: W, Y, and H. W is in a class by itself as an oddball since it was first used as a double V in the 7th century and then grew into the letter we know and love. Y is different too; it's a consonant sound plus the sound it makes when it's acting as a vowel. Since it has so many roles in our language, I give it a pass here too. But H..."aitch"...what the hell is that about? By the other rules, shouldn't it have to be either "hay" or "he"? It's like someone said, "Well, it's 'eta' in Greek and 'hache' in Spanish, so let's just combine them and hopefully no one will notice." Well I noticed, Mr. Alphabet Maker, and I'm not picking up what you're putting down. I'm calling it "he" from now on. Who's coming with me?

Lastly, you may recall in my "Checking it Twice" post that there are famous people who I don't like. Somehow, I know not how, I forgot a name on there: Joan "Oh My God I'm Annoying" Rivers. Look out Kirstie Alley and French Stewart, there's a new sheriff in town...and she's had more facelifts than La Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona. Oh, snap! I'm busting out the Gaudi architecture reference on your ass! Wait, your ass doesn't happen to be juicy, does it? Whew, that was close.

Have one hell of a weekend, gentle readers. Please don't forget to write to ptklein@gmail.com with any thoughts, questions, dislikes, or bumper sticker reports for future FUFs.