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.

Transition housing

Good morning, one and all. Hey look, it's already Thursday. Thor, you wacky Norse god of thunder, I'm glad the day bearing your namesake has arrived. We're cool, right? Sweet.

Keeping on the housing vibe for a little longer, I want to fast forward a few years after my experiences in "that house." I had lived with some good friends for a couple of years, and my now-wife and I wanted to find a place together. The search wasn't nearly as exciting or eventful as my previous one (i.e. no Vader impressions), but that was fine with us. Eventually, we found a very cute and very small two-bedroom apartment in a nice residential area of town. The group of apartments was different from other places I'd seen, and I can't even call it a complex. There was a long driveway with four apartments along the right side, made up of two side-by-side duplexes. We shared a wall with Apartment A, which was inhabited by a single mother, her permanent scowl, and her young daughter.

As it turned out, Apartment C was also for rent, and Dusty and The Mills ended up moving in even before we officially did. It was hilarious to us that we went from living in the same apartment to living in adjacent ones. Dusty and I would often look over our common fence and say, "Hey neighbor" before laughing at how grown-up we were. I wanted nothing more than to need a cup of sugar, just so I could go over and ask him for it. Apartment D was a couple named Kareem and Laura that we're still friends with, and the six of us had a ton of fun together (much to the consternation of Frowny McScowlerson in A). We'd often keep our front doors open, so there was a lot of chatting that went on. We got so used to just popping by to say hi that it was very weird to actually call Dusty on the phone (especially since we could hear the phone ring). It was almost like Melrose Place, and by that I mean not at all like Melrose Place.

Behind our apartments, where our washing machine and dryer lived, there was a fence separating us from other neighbors. Dusty and I were back there one day, and we heard the distinct sound of a dog trying to get more information by sniffing. We looked through a small missing section of the fence, and we saw the snout working overtime to greet us. We pet the dog, and said hi to "him" (50/50 chance, right?). Next time we were back there, so was he. The space was so limited that we couldn't tell what kind of dog he was, just that he had a black nose and seemed cute. "What's your name, big guy?" I asked. He didn't answer, which I guess was a good thing. We managed to make the most of the tiny opening and got a peek at his collar. "His name is...Rabies Vaccinated," Dusty said. We looked at the other side of the tag but still couldn't find a name. Therefore, he was Rabies Vaccinated (or Rabies or just RV) from that point on. I'd bring a load of clothes to the back and say, "Hey Rabies," and he'd sniff back at me.

Now that the dog had a name, we wanted our apartments to have one too. Our previous apartment had been on Figueroa Ave., so we affectionately called it "The Fig Pad." It was catchy, and it felt cool to say, "I'll meet you back at The Fig Pad later." It might've sounded like a speakeasy to eavesdroppers, and that was almost as cool as it could get. So with this place, we had high hopes. We lived on Arden, and originally started calling the collection of apartments "The Arden Gardens." Then we heard our neighbor across the driveway (the one with the Maltese named Bon Bon) call her place that once, so it ended almost before it began. We were brainstorming one night, and I said, "Well, my mom said that these apartments are like cute little bungalows, so maybe we can use that somehow." Someone then threw out "The Bungardens," which was so awful sounding that we all agreed it should stick. Sure, we may have been intoxicated then, but that's beside the point.

Life in The Bungardens was good. It was the perfect transition place between "just out of college" and "all growns up." I went from being "in a serious relationship" to engaged to married in that place, so it'll always be special. We made some very good friends there, and when the six of us got together for drinks and games, no one needed to be the designated driver for the twenty feet back to our apartments. We had a lot of fun, settled into more of an adult lifestyle, and had several pleasant encounters with Rabies. What more can a guy ask for in a living situation?

Onto real work now. Have a great day, gentle readers, and remember to write to ptklein@gmail.com with anything about anything. I'll be back tomorrow with a Follow Up Friday, and there's plenty of room to include your thoughts, gripes, opinions, questions, or observations.