What is it about the Pizza My Heart in Palo Alto that makes it an ideal breeding ground for the new counterculture? My grandparents came to visit recently, so naturally I had to give them “the tour.” Look at this beautiful bead shop grandma, and grandpa this store has the very best wide screen televisions, and also REPENT FOR YOUR SINS OR YOU WILL BURN IN HELL FOREVER AT THE HANDS OF JESUS CHRIST, and this Mediterranean place serves a mean Baklava. You just can’t pass that courtyard without seeing the crazies.

Joe and I were walking by the other day and passed a cadre of elderly folk standing at attention in black garb. They were holding a sign that read: “WE STAND FOR PEACE.” Now, with all due respect… everything I do is for peace. Last night I flossed for peace. I separated my laundry into whites and colors for peace. But it’s like no matter what I do, the Iraqis keep fighting. Perhaps the Alzheimer’s got the better of these guys and they meant to say they stand for pizza, but even then, why not just go inside and get some?

Believe it or not, there are more productive ways to bring about peace than to stand in silence and wish for it. But these people aren’t about the real deal; they just benefit personally from taking a public, if meaningless, stance on a vital moral issue that everyone agrees on.

Our ancestors didn’t do things this way. They actually moved their legs, in what historians would later call a “march,” up the steps of, say, the United States Capitol Building, or the Statue of Liberty, or other capitalized landmarks with lots of steps. I don’t recall Martin Luther King slurping down a slice while changing the face of race relations in this country (”I have a dream, that one day–DAMMIT Alfredo, I asked for pepperoni!”).

The worst is when the Elderly Peace Brigade swaps shifts with the guy on the chair with the bullhorn. Bob, I think is his name. Bob tells us what Corinthians 1:19 states, as if we didn’t already know, in a volume loud enough for the Corinthians themselves to hear from all the way down there. Bob’s always droning on about all the things that will land you in the fiery depths of eternal hell, like being homosexual or eating pepperoni. He’s a real debbie downer.

Bob, if you don’t work Fridays, I would love to get you in for some user testing; our office is right down the street from your chair.

Anyway, I need to run. My pastrami sandwich for peace is ready.

Hi, my name is Blake Ross.

I’m sorry to start this note like an essay from Mrs. Lotterman’s third grade class, but I just had this conversation for the 27th time this month:

- Hello, Cheesecake Factory.
- Hi, I’d like to get takeout please.
- What is your name?
- Blake.
- Rick?
- BLAKE.
- Dyke?

Dyke? Really? Really? Are there more Dykes (capital D, hr) than Blakes out there? I don’t know any beyond Dick Van and John Up. Did you make an honest effort to arrive at a reasonably probable interpretation of my name or did you just go with your gut? Did I call you Chastecake Factory? Cheesecock Factory? No sir. You are a factory of cheesecakes.

The worst part about this is that I know it’s going to happen and I still can’t prevent it. There is no way to prolong a B sound for maximum clarity. M? Mmmmmm. N? Nnnnnn. But the human tongue wasn’t designed to “Bbbbbb”. The best you can do is “Buhhh…lake”, which invariably ends up sounding like “Uhhhh…Dyke”, which makes sense because if your name was Dyke, you’d probably hesitate a moment, too.

Forgive my abrasiveness but this kind of thing happens all the time. In fact, just before I called Cheesecake Factory, I picked up Blate’s dry cleaning:

I am not convinced there is a child out there who was born a ‘Blate’ and survived to the age where he is able to procure dry cleaning. Blate is not a name. It is something your cat does.

- Honey, Snowball blate on the rug again.
- What a cheesecock.

Occasionally, a clerk is faced with my actual name (Blake, if you’re just tuning in) on my credit card. There’s a moment of cognitive dissonance, often followed by “Welp, have a good day, Rick.” I never know if the guy is just being a jerk or if he’s secretly thinking “Poor Rick, going through life with the wrong name on his credit card. Bet everyone calls him Blake.”

If you’re going to reimagine my name, at least give me something bad ass. Why doesn’t this ever happen?

- Hi, this is Blake
- Blade?
- No, Bl–Yes. Blade. Son of Chainsaw and Tank. Don’t forget the fucking butter, pal.

Only problem here is that he’d probably blate all over my food in terror.