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Read MorePhone Call With The DMV About A License Plate Which By Chance Spelled Out BRUCLEE
“Hi, yes, I’m calling about an issue with a recent license plate that I paid for.”
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“No, it arrived fine. That’s not the issue.”
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“The issue is that the license plate says Bruce Lee.”
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“Yes, that’s right. The Chinese kung-fu movie star from the 1970s.”
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“B...R...U...C...L...E...E.”
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“No, my problem’s not with -”
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“Yes, I know that there’s a seven character limit.”
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“Yes, I agree that even with the ‘E’ left off of ‘BRUCE’ you can still tell what it says. That’s not what -”
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“Listen to me! The problem is that I didn’t order a novelty plate. I ordered a regular plate and through some sort of statistical anomaly instead of a seemingly random assortment of letters, the plate I just received looks like I did in fact intentionally choose this particular collection and order of characters with the purpose of conveying my enthusiasm for the oeuvre of film star Bruce Lee.”
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“I’m serious.”
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“Yes, I’m sure I didn’t accidentally buy a novelty license plate.”
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“Well, I know because I paid the standard $25 rate for regular plates, not the $60 initial fee plus $31.25 annual upkeep fee thereafter for personalized plates.”
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“Well, as it so happens, I am familiar with vanity plate logistics.”
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“Why? I don’t want to tell you because I think it will make you believe me less and I just want you to send me a different plate.”
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“Can’t you just look it up in your system? Look, fine, I know because I have bought a personalized plate in the past. Okay?”
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“I don’t want to tell you what it said.”
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“Because it will make you believe me less.”
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“Fine. It said Lee Jun-fan.”
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“Well, it’s relevant because it is Bruce Lee’s given name.”
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“No, his real name wasn’t Bruce.”
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“He was Chinese.”
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“Bruce isn’t a Chinese name.”
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“Excuse me?”
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“How is me saying that ‘Bruce’ isn’t a Chinese name racist?”
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Well, Lee Jun-fan is a Chinese name. It’s Cantonese for ‘return again.’”
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“‘Bruce’ doesn’t mean anything in Cantonese because it isn’t Cantonese.”
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“Well, I don’t like your tone and I am not lying.”
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“Why did I get it? I don’t want to tell you.”
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“Because it will make you believe me less.”
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“Fine. I got it because I’m a huge Bruce Lee fan.”
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“Stop laughing.”
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“Please stop laughing.”
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“Yes, he’s something of a personal hero of mine.”
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“Sir, please stop laughing.”
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“Yes, I know. I know it makes it even that much more of a coincidence that I would receive this random assortment of letters.”
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“No, I wouldn’t describe it as ironic.”
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“Well, I wouldn’t describe it as ironic because that’s not what irony means.”
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“No, irony doesn’t mean -”
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“Right, well, according to an OED commissioned study approximately 78% of printed uses of ‘irony’ are incorrect.”
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“Most of the time when people say ‘ironic’ they mean ‘coincidental’ or ‘improbable.’ So, for example, it would be correct to say that it is ‘improbable’ that a huge Bruce Lee fan would randomly receive a random license plate that spelled out Bruce Lee. But that would not be ironic.”
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“It actually means a state of affairs that seems deliberately contrary to expectations and is thus amusing as a result.”
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“Um, I don’t know, remember those ‘PARENTAL WARNING’ explicit music labels that used to be on CDs? Well, those were designed to warn parents and thus prevent children from listening to those CDs, but the actual outcome was that they became more cool and thus attractive to children and so CDs with ‘PARENTAL WARNING’ labels were even more likely to be listened to by kids instead of less likely as the label was intended. That’s ironic.”
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“Or if I said, ‘This phone call is going well’ it could be said that I was saying it ironically because I wish to convey the opposite meaning, so synonymous to ‘sarcastic’ in that usage, which is also correct.”
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“Yes, that means that in that song she was using it wrong. She was a dumb Canadian.”
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“How is that racist? She misused a word, which makes her dumb, and she was from Canada, which makes her Canadian. And Canadian isn’t a race.”
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“Yes, everyone misuses words, but not so much that it causes a generation of others to also use it wrong.”
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“Yes, I agree English is an evolving language.”
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“I don’t think that’s a fair comparison.”
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“Because Shakespeare invented words, he didn’t misuse existing words.”
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“Um, I don’t know, like, ‘gloomy’ and ‘majestic’ and ‘lonely’ and a whole bunch of others.”
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“No, ‘You Oughta Know’ was the one about the guy from ‘Full House.’ Look, can you please just send me a new plate?”
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“Well, you’re wrong. I am not stoked.”
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“No, I do love him and he is still my hero, but I was fired from my job recently and my girlfriend wouldn’t be happy to see me spending money frivolously.”
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“Right, but she won’t believe that. She’ll think I am not being frugal, which is another word that Shakespeare invented.”
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“No, it’s not ironic that I just thought of that.”
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“Right, but just like you didn’t believe me at first, she isn’t going to believe me that I didn’t spend money on a novelty plate. I have most of his movies memorized. I’ve read every interview with him that ever was done. I have posters of him in my bedroom. Posters plural as in more than one. She is not going to believe that this just happened by chance.”
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“36 to the power of 7, actually, just accounting for 26 letter possibilities and 10 number possibilities for each of the seven slots.”
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“Yeah, big. It comes out to one in 78 trillion.”
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“No, it’s bigger actually. There are 300 billion stars in the Milky Way.”
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“It varies but most scientists say 37.2 trillion cells in an average human body.”
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“Yeah.”
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“Well, I guess he is my hero because I think he sort of represents the pinnacle of the combination of mental and physical discipline. His life was a fully present one. A lot of his philosophy was about being rather than doing. Like, he said, ‘There is nothing to try to do but try to be purposeless and formless, like water.’”
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“You could start with his first film, ‘The Big Boss’ from 1971, but that was written and directed by Lo Wei. So, if you were just going to watch one, I’d say go with the only film he wrote and directed, ‘Way Of The Dragon’ from 1972, which was the year before he died.”
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“Yeah, that’s true.”
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“Of something called a ‘cerebral edema’ which basically just means excess fluid in the brain.”
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“Really sad, yeah.”
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“No, that’s the thing. Nothing caused it. Just one of those freak accidents that can happen.”
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“Hah, yeah, maybe like 1 in 78 trillion.”
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“True.”
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“Wow, yeah. Well put, but look, could you please just… My girlfriend is going to break up with me if she thinks I am spending money on stupid stuff like novelty plates and she already thinks my Bruce Lee fandom is unhealthy.”
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“How? I don’t want to tell you how I lost my job.
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“I don’t want to say because -”
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“Fine. My boss thought my novelty Lee Jun-fan license plate was racist.
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“Well, Lee Jun-fan was too many letters, so it actually said JUNFAN1.
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“She, actually, and yes, she was Chinese.
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“So, there’s no way that you’ll send me a new random one?
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“No, it’s okay. I understand.
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“Okay, I guess I’ll just pay for a new novelty plate but choose random letters.
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“Yes, I do want a random one, but if I actually order another random one and I get another 1 in 78 trillion anomaly of, say FRYFIST or something my girlfriend is not going to believe that it was random and I’m back in the same spot.
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“Thank you. Yes. Okay, choosing randomly, how about…C...H…, and let’s throw a number in so I definitely won’t accidentally spell something...1...N...3….S...how many is that?
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“Okay, and how about end with a 3.”
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“Great. Do you need anything else from me?”
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“Oh yeah. Duh. My name is Dave Coulier.
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“No, I’m not him, we just have the same name.
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“No. No it is not. It’s just chance.”
Our “Our Philosophy Poster” Poster
Relax. Breathe in. See those three Vitamix blenders? They are state-of-the-art in healthfulness tech.
Read MoreThe Transformation
O
ne morning Conifer Middle School student Jeremy Coil woke from a rather bestial dream about a nice classmate of his named Ariana to find that his penis had turned into a lobster. Sensing something was wrong, Jeremy jumped up and gazed down in horror: a red tail grew out of his mons pubis, tiny crawling legs extended and retracted where his scrotum had been, and at the end a pointy head and two large pincers.
As the adults in his life had warned, there had been growing and changing occurring to Jeremy and his peer group. But the changes he could observe in others seemed desirable. Duncan Dofter had gained four inches of height and a baritone, crackless voice. Ariana Pulski had gained breasts and the attention of the more popular boys in the grade. Jeremy’s own personal growing and changing seemed disgusting and shameful by comparison. First he had found a single stringly strangly string of hair growing out of his left arm pit. And now this: his penis had turned into a lobster.
“Maybe if I go back to sleep” thought Jeremy, crawling back under the covers. As he closed his eyes, the Ariana dream returned. As always, she was in shop class, a subject at which she excelled. In the dream, Ariana stood using a vice and a power drill to connect two planks of wood. As she drilled, Jeremy felt his lobster-penis fill with vibrancy and then violently pince the inside of his right thigh. “Ouch!” Jeremy shrieked.
“Jeremy! Are you okay?” his mother called, knocking at the door.
“Fine mother! Don’t open the door!” Jeremy shouted back, startled.
“Okay. Well, it’s quarter to seven! Time to get ready for school, sweetheart.”
He had to stop thinking about Ariana. But as he got ready for school, she continued to return to his thoughts, resulting in the lobster-penis shredding any underwear Jeremy pulled near. How was he going to explain that to his mom? At last, he managed to lash the pincers closed with some camping rope and was able to dress. “Oh, dreadful school. As if it wasn’t already bad enough without having a lobster for a penis,” Jeremy thought as he pulled on his jeans. “And, drat it all, today I have gym!” Jeremy went downstairs, ate the now cold oatmeal his mother left for him, and resignedly marched to the bus stop.
J
eremy pressed his head against the bus window, his backpack placed purposely over his groin, picturing everyone at school noticing and teasing him immediately. Middle school was a cruel place. Kevin Huganvick had tried to transfer school’s after Duncan pantsed him the hallway, granting Kevin the nickname “Mouse” ever since, a mouse being a small creature and not something you’d want your penis shape or size compared to. What sort of nickname would having a lobster for a penis earn? “Probably something like ‘Lobster-Penis,’” Jeremy thought. His worries were interrupted when he noticed that the lobster-penis seemed to be enjoying the gentle gyration of the bus seat. Trying to calm the sea bug, Jeremy pushed his backpack down harder but the lobster-penis seemed to enjoy that too! In fact, the lobster-penis seemed to become stimulated by just about every stimuli Jeremy encountered. How could his classmates not notice his condition with such a non-docile lobster? But when Jeremy arrived at school and proceeded to his first class, nobody said a word. “I guess everyone is too worried about their own own anxieties and agendas to care about my lobster-penis issue,” Jeremy thought, as he sat through his morning classes as if his penis wasn’t a lobster at all.
There was one close call, however, just before lunch. It happened when Jeremy passed by a pretty eighth grade girl named Katelyn Gibbons. She was bending over to fiddle with her bottom locker in the hallway and, without meaning to, Jeremy caught a glance of the very top of her eighth grade butt slit, sneaking out from the top of her jeans. The sight of her butt slit sent the little creature thrashing so violently Jeremy had to take his backpack off and carry it in front of his waist all the way to the bathroom. Once safely inside a stall, Jeremy checked to make sure the bindings were still in place. Looking down at the squirming fellow, red and angry, trying to break free, Jeremy felt sorry for it. “Geeze Louise, I know that was a good looking butt slit, but what do you want me to do about it?” Jeremy said aloud to his lobster-penis. A cough that sounded a lot like one of Jeremy’s teachers came from the stall next door, letting Jeremy know he wasn’t alone. Jeremy tried to think thoughts that made him feel the opposite as the Katelyn’s butt slit thoughts made him feel. He settled on thinking about the way he had felt looking at his mom crying during his grandmother’s funeral, and how it had felt weird to think about how his grandmother was his mom’s mom, and how one day his mom would look as old and wrinkly and dead as his grandmother had looked in her casket and maybe one day in the past she had been as young and confused a kid as Jeremy felt now. Those thoughts seemed to do the trick. Soon his lobster-penis clammed up, pulling its appendages inward, and before long seemed to be sleeping. Carefully, Jeremy returned his lobster-penis to his underwear, pulled up his jeans, and walked to end of the lunch line.
Jeremy sat by himself in the cafetorium, the large room used as both the cafeteria and the auditorium at Conifer Middle School. Jeremy stuffed his cafeteria purchased greasy pizza and chocolate milk into his mouth as fast as he could, hoping to leave lunch without incident. Still chewing the last bite, he stood with his tray and walked to the trashcan by the door. With just two paces to go, he felt a tap on his shoulder: he spun to see Ariana smiling at him.
“Hey Jeremy!” Against all laws of nature, goddess Ariana was talking to lowly bottom-feeder Jeremy.
“Oh, hey Ariana.” Jeremy said, his lobster penis waking slowly, like a sleeping puppy stirring at the sound of hard kibble being poured into a porcelain dish.
“Um, I wanted to tell you that I liked that book report you read in class last quarter,” she said. His lobster-penis was now fully awake.
“Oh. Um. The one on Kafka?”
“No,” said Ariana, “the other one. Dickens I thinks? The one with Lucy Manette. Anyway, you’re really smart,” she said, pushing his shoulder playfully. The lobster penis was now thrashing as violently as it ever had, “and I was thinking maybe we could, like, read or do homework together this weekend? ” she said.
“Oh. Um. Yeah! I’d really like that.” Jeremy felt that this conversation with Ariana was an even less likely occurrence than his genital metamorphosis.
“And to return the favor I can help you out in shop class. I know Mr. McDaniels has been giving you a hard time because you’re afraid to use the circular saw,” Ariana said.
The thrashing in his pants was now causing his entire body to vibrate. Certainly this couldn’t go unnoticed? Yet Ariana gave no indication if she did. Jeremy wanted desperately to extend the ecstasy of this moment, but then he heard the distinctive sound of lobster claw scratching on metal and Jeremy thought it unwise to wait around and see if his lobster-penis was smart enough to open a zipper from the inside. “Cool. I’ll Facebook you! Bye Ariana!”
Jeremy turned and ran, throwing his food, tray and all, into the trash and dashing out the door, too euphoric to notice the stink eyed grimace Duncan had given him from the cool kids table near the exit. Still running down the hall, Jeremy’s happiness didn’t stall until he realized the class that his feet had been automatically propelled him towards: gym. His pace slowed to a somber stagger. “Gym? Oh, God, no!” he thought.
T
he bell rang as Jeremy completed his funeral procession to the locker room. Inside, the foul smelling dungeon was already abuzz with activity. Animalistic shrieks and maniacal laughter echoed across the fading green metal lockers and gray cinder block walls.
He managed to get his gym shorts on without causing a stir and kickball passed as it usually did: a super fun time that was way better than any other class. It wasn’t the gym activity itself that Jeremy hated. It was the locker room.
Returning to the locker room, Jeremy knew he could escape his fate no longer. Coach Hitches was strict about the rule that everyone had to shower before returning to class. Jeremy wrapped a towel around his shorts, attempting to drop his shorts under the protective screen of the towel. He felt his lobster-penis come alive, interested in its new less encumbered surroundings. He turned and was startled to see a cross armed and bare chested Duncan standing in his way.
“Why’d you change under the towel, Coil? Afraid everybody would see your vagina?” Duncan said, managing to be conversational yet at the same time call everyone’s attention to the interaction. “Answer me, Coil. Do you have a vagina under there or what?” Duncan said. A spattering of laughs that betrayed a sense of relief that they weren’t in Jeremy’s position more than genuine mirth.
“Um, no,” said Jeremy.
“No, what?” said Duncan.
“No I don’t have a vagina.”
“Oh really? Because I saw you talking to Ariana in the lunch room, and unless...” Duncan stopped speaking and looked down. Jeremy’s lobster-penis wasn’t good at distinguishing context and even the mention of Ariana’s name in this hostile way caused all sorts of activity beneath the towel.
“What the… ?” Duncan’s hand darted to where Jeremy was keeping the towel closed around his waist, but before he could pull it away, a cry came from the shower.
“AHH! Greg is a bug! Everybody, Greg is a frickin’ bug!” Everyone turned to a flash of black exoskeleton and the sound of a dozen of hard legs hitting the locker room floor and crashing out the emergency exit. The alarm rang, lights flashed. In the commotion that ensued, Jeremy slipped away and threw on his regular clothes.
Coach Hitches entered, “All right, protocol, everybody to the soccer field!”
The class chattered as they filed out.
“What was that?”
“Greg was a bug!”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m telling you he was like a giant bug monster!”
“Yeah right.”
“No, I saw it too!”
O
ut on the field, they were lined up according to their homerooms. “Hi Jeremy,” said Ariana, standing behind him in his homeroom line. Despite his recent close call, Jeremy was delighted to see her.
“Oh. Hi Ariana.” Jeremy looked over to the line Duncan waited in. To his surprise, Duncan stood sheepishly in nothing but his towel. In the kerfuffle his clothes went missing. A very satisfied looking Kevin Huganvick smiled as Duncan was on the receiving end of middle schooler scorn for the first time. Despite his circumstances, Duncan shot over a stare warning physical bullying for any missteps in Jeremy’s direction. Jeremy considered turning away from Ariana, but something deep inside him, something deep inside him that was connected to his lobster-penis, compelled him to stay. He breathed in.
“Um, Ariana?” said Jeremy.
“Yeah?”
“You have blossomed into a well built and beautiful young lady.”
“That’s a weird thing to say, Jeremy,” Ariana said sweetly, “but thank you.”
They became quiet as the adults finished taking attendance and began leading them back to the school.
“Anybody seen Greg?” a teacher called out. “No? Okay, everybody back inside!”
While their classmates flowed past them, Jeremy and Ariana stood in place and shared a glance. In that glance, without speaking they agreed on something that they both knew but didn’t yet have the vocabulary to articulate, something in confirmation of their new growings and recent changings, psychically acknowledging a mutual pledge to accept and affirm aberrations both physical and mental of the other as they entered this new as of yet unknown life phase, and as their classmates reached the threshold of the school and a teacher called something out to them that neither heard, they each stretched out an arm and held hands before slowly turning to walk to their final class of the day.
Also, Ariana’s vagina had turned into capybara, a large water rodent indigenous to the rainforests of the Amazon Basin.