FUF #11

I believe the Beatles said it best: "Nothing you can read that can't be wrote. Nothing you can smite that can't be smote. All you need is FUF." It's on their rarities collection.

Good morning everyone, and I hope these words find you well. I've got a random assortment of things for you today on this Friday as well as the standard Car Watch items. Ready to roll? Let's do it.

I got a text message from a number I don't know. It read, "Me w/out u is like a camera w/ no flash, a car w/ no gas, a stripper w/ no ass & a pimp w/ no cash! Send to ten ppl u couldn't live w/out!!" Yes, gentle readers, that is my very first unsolicited chain text message. I have no idea how it reached me, but someone evidently can't live without me (or" w/out" me, as it turns out), so maybe I should just be flattered. Have any of you ever received something like that? I get a lot of calls for someone named Mark, so maybe someone can't live without him and my flattery is totally unfounded. Stupid Mark.

Earlier this week, I wrote about the process of learning Spanish and how much I enjoyed it. I wanted to give you a little more insight into my relationship with that language. Specifically, my favorite words. I have three of them, and they're all equally at the top for different reasons. First, I like the word for "spinach": espinaca. That's just fun to say. Espinaca. Really, no more for that one, I just like how it sounds. Second, I like desafortunadamente, which means "unfortunately." It's eight syllables, so it's hard just to throw into a sentence without sounding funny. "Si, si, quiero hacerlo pero desafortunadamente no puedo." No matter how fast you can roll that word off your tongue, it still drastically changes the pace of the sentence. Lastly, I like the word chantaje, which means "blackmail." I like that that word's in my vocabulary, but I like it more because I would stump people in Spanish Hangman with it. "Ch" is one letter in Spanish, but My Fellow Gringos (MFGs) would often forget that when faced with that one remaining blank. They'd guess every other letter before realizing I was being a jerk or giving up, whichever came first. Good times, good times.

Moving on now. I want to see someone use the "fist" part of the word "pacifist" in conjunction with punching someone in a movie. I think that would be cool. "I used to be a pacifist, but now I'm a paciFIST!" Pow, right in the kisser. Man, I should be writing movies. (See what I mean by "random assortment of things"?)

I'm very upset about something, but I find it's out of my control. Sports Illustrated's website has a section on it that I read almost every morning. It had one writer I really like in particular who makes puns and jokes each morning, some rumors about trades, and other interesting things. It was called "Scorecard Daily," and I even got my name and comments in there a few times. They changed the name of the section for some reason, and I really couldn't be more displeased with their choice: "Extra Mustard." Seriously, I would rather they name it "Peter Klein Sucks" than that. I f'n hate mustard, and now I don't even want to click on the link to get me to that page. Do they really want me associating their work with "yucky"? I'm not happy, and hopefully they take my email about it seriously.

When I wrote about accents, my homies the Sacky Family wrote in about them pretending to be British. My lovely wife reminded me that once we were in another country, and there were some very obnoxious Americans near us. Not wanting them to hear that we were "like them," we spent the whole meal with me speaking Spanish and her speaking Hebrew. We didn't understand each other, but we avoided having to talk to them. Nice move, eh?

Dusty and I once spent an entire Target shopping trip speaking in Gibberish to each other. I think we were going for "vaguely European," and the cashier seemed to buy the whole thing. When that becomes a marketable skill, I have a feeling we'll be leading seminars throughout the land. Keep an eye out.

Ok, it's Car Watch time!

Have you ever seen the bumper stickers that advertise a place called "The Mystery Spot?" I think it's in Santa Cruz if I remember correctly, but the sticker's always struck me as counterintuitive. Kinda hard to keep the "mystery" going that way, no?

I was behind a big truck yesterday, and the plate was "IV BY IV." I like it. I can say with 100% certainty that I too would resort to roman numerals to get a point across if it were important to me. In fact, maybe my FUF #s should switch to roman numerals so I can be like the...big football game that takes place once a year. Stupid copyrights.

My favorite brother called me to tell me about the bizarre license plate frame he saw. "Happiness is" on the top, and "Biting My Parrot Back" on the bottom. Now what the hell am I supposed to make of that? "Oh yeah, you want a piece of me, well take that, parrot! Oh man, that retribution felt so good!" There are a lot of weirdos out there, friends, and only a small percentage advertise like this one.

Here's a bumper sticker that made me laugh: "Obey Gravity, It's the Law!" Hee hee. I like that.

Saw this license plate: "NOT SURE." Well, at least we have that in common.

Sacky Christi wrote in with the following: "Okay, I was finally on the freeway for more than one mile and got to see three stickers/frames I felt were worth sharing. First - Big yellow caution sticker on a Saturn : Caution: Driver Singing ...we wondered if this were an ex-American idol contestant, or just that loud of a singer. Second: license plate frame: Happiness is being in Hawaii ...at first, I went, Well duh!, and then it made me think of being on vacation, and I had a small moment of bliss as well. Third: a little black sticker with white writing: My cat beat up your cat ...not sure what to make of that one...no kids to brag about and her cats are bullies?" I agree with you, SC. What do you gain by having your cat beat up another? Fines? Angry neighbors?

We watched the American Idol special this week, and they mentioned "Save the Children." I wondered if that was the same company I wrote about in January's post called "Angry on the Inside." I went to www.savethechildren.com and sure enough, the phone number that angered me so much is proudly displayed at the bottom of the page. Normally charities don't make me angry, but in this case, I'm ok with the exception.

Last but certainly not least, my bro asked what will happen when I go out of town for a week in May. I'm very pleased to report that my Bratty Kid Sister will be guest blogging for that week. She's great, so you'll all be in very capable hands. In fact, I've already read what she'll be posting on Monday and Tuesday, and they're perfect.

Have a great weekend everyone, and please remember to send ptklein@gmail.com anything you can for future posts or FUF pieces. Desafortunadamente, I can't do it all alone.

Text tickles

Good morning, and how is everyone on this (inquisitive pause) TGIT day?


Before I launch into more word and number fun, I have three important notes:

1. Yesterday was my half-birthday, and I only received one celebratory note all day. Thanks, Adam; without you, such milestones would be completely ignored.
2. Today is my Dad's full birthday, so happy birthday Pops.
3. This marks my 20th post, which is 19 more than I expected to have on this date.

Onto the fun. I can't think of anything that combines the realms of words and numbers more than text messaging. I know there are phones with full qwerty keyboards, but for years people relied on using the normal number pad for this form of communication. My friends and I used to be super-texting-crazy, and now it's simmered down to a regular-texting-crazy pace. I guess most people only use text messaging for conveying important things like "I'm on my way," "What's the attire for tonight?" and "Happy Half-Birthday." For us though, it was used for anytime something popped in our heads that needed an audience. This could be an Austin Powers quote that came up, a Poison song that we had in our heads, or even notification that we were going to the bathroom. It got pretty absurd, and by absurd, I mean awesome.

We used the "predictive text" feature of the cell phones. For those of you who don't know what that is, here's a very quick explanation: Normally to type "the," one would have to push 8-4-4-3-3. With predicative text, you only have to push 8-4-3 and it "knows" what word you were going for. This is a great feature that saves a lot of time and allows for easier no-look texting. It's not without its problems, though, and we've taken great joy in those problems.

The biggest issue is that some words have the same button combinations, and predictive text guesses which one you probably meant. It's easy to switch to the next word, but you have to pay a little attention. For example, "of" and "me" are both 6-3. So, if I don't take that extra step of changing the word (out of laziness or carelessness), I'll have text messages that start with "Tell of what time..." Naturally, we found these mistakes fun, and started purposely leaving them in our messages. This added a little detective-work to reading each others' notes. "Rate of!" would mean "Save me!" if stuck in a boring conversation or meeting. "That's book!" would mean "That's cool!" See how this works?

My favorite was a pretty standard reply of, "On shiv, goods, on shiv." That meant, "No shit, homes, no shit" and came up more often that you might think. "He" came up before "if," and "done" before "food," which led to such fun messages as, "He you want some done, let up know room, goods" Oh yeah, "up" is "us" and "room" is "soon." The only one I tried to remember to change before sending was "honey" to "homey," unless it was to my wife of course.

There were two other things I really liked about predictive text. First, it doesn't know some words. So I can either manually get the word to appear correctly or leave it as the Gibberish it spits out as its guess. I think you know which I choose to do. "Hey wanna grab a cursivo" came up often since it didn't know "burrito." My reply to that might be, "Nonmomoonm!" which meant "Mmmmmmmmmm!" Dave would call me a "citag," and I knew he meant "bitch." I'd try to reply by calling him and Dusty "bitches," which always came out at "citager." (Please note, I use the French pronunciation of that made-up word, so it sounds like sit-ah-ZHER. I thought you'd want to know such things.) He'd reply calling me a "mother duckes," and I'd easily know what he meant. Those phrases are all in our vocabulary now, and I've often heard myself say, "Listen duckes" at the beginning of a sentence. Usually to Dave.

Lastly, I enjoy seeing what words have the same number combinations with each other. Some are quite interesting, actually. "Lips" and "kiss" are the same, for instance. See, it is interesting. "Water" and "waves" are the same too. And (cover your eyes if you're easily offended) "cock" and "anal" are the same letter-number combination, which has led to some very anatomically-confusing messages. Those three are the best, but "prove"/"proud," "love"/"loud," and "awake"/"cycle" are kinda cool too.

I keep thinking of more and more, but I'm going to stop here. Please comment and let me know if there are any egregious omissions.

Happy Birthday, Dad. Let of know he you want some done later. Maybe a cursivo?

Beating the odds

Another entry into the blogosphere. In the biggest upset since UCLA spoiling the Trojans shot at another national championship, I'm here with more musings. (By the way, that football game is tomorrow, so feel free to reflect upon my sports pre-cog ability as something "truly special.")

Here's what's on my mind right now: My friend Twilight is having a birthday party in a week. They're apparently making karaoke a component of the party and have asked people for requests of what they'd like to see on the song menu. I've done karaoke four times in my life. Three of them were pretty standard:

• I sang "Paperback Writer" by the Beatles with a friend at a bar mitzvah when I was 13


• "When Doves Cry" by Prince with my buddy Scott at a Sweet Sixteen when I was 16


• A loungy version of "Like a Virgin" with my brother when I was probably 20 for an audience of maybe 5 people

The fourth was not so standard, and since I had the most fun with it and got better reviews, it's skewed the way I've viewed karaoke ever since. My friend Jon and I (notice I never do this alone) sang "Burning Down the House" in gibberish. All made up words except for "burning down the house" and "fight fire with fire." It was great - the confused looks from people who couldn't understand what we were doing ("The words are right there on the screen!") were priceless. Sure, I sounded a bit like the Swedish Chef, but whose gibberish doesn't?

(Sidenote: Should I be capitalizing 'gibberish'? I know it's a made up language, but it's still a language. Does one write 'Pig Latin'? Probably, because 'latin' looks weird. I'm starting a movement on this. Plenty of good seats still available on the bandwagon.)

So here are my options: I can either skip the karaoke part all together - the leader in the clubhouse right now - and just watch others ham it up, find a good and funny song that I can "sing" normally without having to have any kind of singing voice, or find a song that I can do something special with like the BDtH example.

Option 2 is slightly difficult. I can maybe get my one of my friends to sing "If I Had $1,000,000" by Barenaked Ladies with me. I could sing "Punkrock Girl" by the Dead Milkmen quite easily. Or...nope, that's all I've got right now.

Option 3 is super difficult. I don't want to do BDtH again, even though I have some ideas on how to make it better (i.e. audience participation). I could do a stalker version of Richard Marx's "Right Here Waiting" to leave everyone with that creepy feeling. Nothing evokes that better that saying "I will be right here waiting for you" with a clenched jaw and wide eyes. That would get old a third of the way through it though.

That's where I am right now. Mentally. Physically, I'm at work and have to start doing actual work. Messed up priorities, I know. So, I'd ask for advice, but that would require people reading this...that's a tricky one. Well, they don't call me Balls-Out Natalie for nothing. Any advice?