Yesterday, in the YMCA locker room, an older guy next to me was whistling Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire"-- the chorus AND the verse-- and I'm proud to say that I did not punch him in the face.
Do Dogs Understand Phase Transition?
Yesterday, in an attempt to get some vitamin D and dispel the cold and dark winter blues, my wife and I tried to take a hike at the Rutgers Ecological Preserve-- but the trail was coated in a layer of ice covered by a dusting of snow: it was way too slippery to traverse hills and navigate cliffs-- and so we changed plans and drove over to the Raritan Canal Path, which runs between the river and tow road; we figured even if it was icy, at least the trail is flat-- but there is a small hill at the start of the trail, which leads down to where the first lock used to be-- now it's a stone dam-- and the hill was a sheet of ice, so I let Lola off her leash so she wouldn't pull me over and further destroy my bad knee and she hurtled down the hill and onto the thin ice covering the canal and promptly fell through the ice-- but luckily she managed to get her front paws on the stone of the dam and I quickly skated and slid my way down the hill and pulled her out of the freezing water before she fell all the way in . . . though it all happened very quickly, it was a hairy couple of moments where we thought she might plunge under the ice, never to be seen again-- but she was lucky and hopefully learned her lesson about thin ice (though I did keep her on the leash for the rest of the walk).
Capitalism Undone . . . by Mutants
To kick off 2026, I finished yet another Clifford D. Simak classic sci-fi novel, Ring Around the Sun, and this one is full of big ideas: pristine parallel earths; mutant humans--who may or may not know they are mutants; telepathy with alien races; corporeal temporal stasis; consciousness transfers-- it's too much for one book (from 1952!) but it is mainly a story of scarcity and abundance and how to break our capitalist, materialist consumer society with "forever" products engineered by mutant humans and imported from various parallel earths, to break the supply-and-demand system and allow humans to progress to something transcendent-- but at what cost, at what cost?
There's More to Life Than Table Tennis, Right?
My wife and I rang in the New Year with a trip to the Rutgers Cinema to see Marty Supreme, which was a highly entertaining way to start 2026-- the film is packed with fast-paced dialogue, chaotic action scenes, and plenty of scams and hustles, plus a concatenation of Safdie-style bad decisions . . . and as a bonus, the table tennis feels authentic (although not as authentic as this clip of the actual Marty Reisman defeating Victor Barna in 1949) and though most of the movie is a wild and messy ride, the story has a lovely resolution and moral: there's more to life than table tennis.
2025 Book List
1) The Birdwatcher by William Shaw
2) Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
3) IQ by Joe Ide
4) Save Our Souls: The True Story of A Castaway Family, Treachery, and Murder by Matthew Pearl
5) The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
6) Never Tell by Lisa Gardner
7) The Loom of Time: Between Anarchy and Empire, from the Mediterranean to China by Robert Kaplan
8) The Secret Hours by Mick Herron
9) The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis
10) Dry Bones (Longmire #11) by Craig Johnson
11) The Getaway by Jim Thompson
12) Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson
13) Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
14) A Hell of a Woman by Jim Thompson
15) Mastodonia by Clifford D. Simak
16) Boy's Life by Robert R. McCammon
17) Lexicon by Max Barry
18) Pure Innocent Fun by Ira Madison III
19) Dance Hall of the Dead by Tony Hillerman
20) The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties by Paul Collier
21) Hang On, St. Christopher by Adrian McKinty
22) Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence by Bryan Burrough
23) The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
24) The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
25) Gringos by Charles Portis
26) Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz
27) Red Chameleon by Stuart M. Kaminsky
28) A Taste for Death by PD James
29) The Trespasser by Tana French
30) Broken Harbor by Tana French
31) King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby
32) Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz
33) The Secret Place by Tana French
34) The Likeness by Tana French
35) Hot Money by Dick Francis
36) The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces by Seth Harp
37) A True History of the United States by Daniel A. Sjursen
38) Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson
39) Annie Bot by Sierra Greer
40) Harold by Stephen Wright
41) The Hunter by Tana French
42) Facing East From Indian Country
43) One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
44) Time and Again by Clifford Simak
45) The Time Traders by Andre Norton
46) Starter Villain by John Scalzi
47) The Doorman by Chris Pavone
And a few mammoth non-fiction books that I've been reading all year on my Kindle, which I hope to finish in 2026. . .
Reaganland by Rick Perlstein
The Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West, 1900-1914 by Philip Blom
The Great Divide: Nature and Human Nature in the Old World and the New by Peter Watson
Forgotten Continent: A History of New Latin America by Michael Reid
Back From Philly with the Goods
We are back from Philly, with to-go sandwiches from Reading Terminal (including roasted pork with sharp provolone, peppers, and greens from DiNic's-- my favorite sandwich in Philly) and while I couldn't walk as much as normal while we were there because my knee probably needs THIS again-- yuck-- we still made it out last night-- we went to Double Knot for happy hour drinks, sushi, bao buns, and dumplings-- there was a line to get in at 4 PM and then we stopped at McGillin's Olde (VERY OLD!) Ale House for a couple of O'Hara's, but now I have my knee raised up on pillows, hoping that will stop the swelling, and I will be taking it easy for the rest of winter break.
Crullers, Calder, and Cheesesteaks
Typical day in Philly: donuts from the Amish bakery at Reading Terminal Market, a visit to the new Calder Sculpture Garden and Museum, a cheesesteak at Shay's, and then we retreated to Stacey's apartment so I could rest my stupid swollen knee; last night, we enjoyed dumplings at Emei and beer at Love City Brewing, where we watched the Eagles eke out a victory over the Bills . . . there's nothing like a Philly bar during an Eagles game (even if you're secretly rooting for Buffalo to take it into overtime).
The Stupor Bowl?
I thought of an apt name for today's Giants vs. Raiders game-- both teams sport a 2-13 record-- and so I came up with "Stupor Bowl" but apparently that name is spoken for, and The Stupor Bowl is "an infamous, annual underground bicycle messenger race in Minneapolis, held the day before the NFL's Super Bowl, known for its drinking checkpoints and scavenger hunt format, combining speed with endurance and liver training" and it is real, very real.
The Weather is Winning . . .
The cold weather, my swollen knee, the crusty snow, and the lack of sunlight-- these have put me into hibernation mode-- and even coffee is losing its ability to knock me out of it.
Best For Last . . .
I am assuming Chris Pavone's The Doorman will be the last book I finish in 2025, and it was my favorite-- a thriller with plenty of social, racial, and class commentary; the novel's center is a working-class doorman (Chicky) with working-class problems, and his interactions with the very, very rich residents of the fancy Upper East Side apartment where he works-- and they have very, very rich problems-- and all the problems collide into a wonderfully stressful mess: this book feels like a tightly plotted modern version of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, with some Richard Price NYC tone thrown in for good measure-- definitely worth reading.
Crokinole Christmas!
My wife and I had a lovely Christmas Eve with the boys and Ian's girlfriend Kyla-- my wife made chicken cordon bleu and some fantastic mac and cheese-- and the evening was made even more lovely by my impulse Christmas purchase of a crokinole board-- I broke it out on Christmas Eve, and I don't know how we've lived our lives without this classic Canadian game of masterful flicking and dexterity-- while the board is a bit large, I'm even thinking of bringing it to my mom's house for Christmas Day-- while there were certainly many other fabulous gifts given and recieved today, crokinole might actually be one for the ages.
Like Old Times . . . But Older
Yesterday, Ian and I picked up Alex in New Brunswick, we ate some cheesesteaks, and then we all went to the YMCA and played some three-on-three hoops-- my two sons and I against some youngsters (one of whom was very tall and could dunk with ease)— and even though Ian was out of practice and cramping and I am old, Alex was able to pour in a bunch of three-pointers and mid-range jumpers and we beat the seventeen-year-old several games in a row (after I bested my children in a game of 21, due to some excellent free throw shooting) but today does not seem like old times for me . . . it just seems like I am old because my knee hurts (although the boys went back to the Y and played more basketball, but I had to lift weights and ride the bike . . . boo for old age).
The Truth Doesn't Always Sound Good
I made a musical trivia quiz today for my Music and the Arts class and part of the quiz was about which artists were popular in each decade, and I learned that the artists that sold the most albums in the 1990s were not the artists I thought were popular at the time (aside from Nirvana) because I thought everyone was listening to Pearl Jam and The Pixies and Soundgarden and 2Pac and Biggie and the Wu Tang Clan and Rage Against the Machine and Weezer and Radiohead and Beck and Jane's Addiction and Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul and the Beastie Boys and the Chili Peppers and Smashing Pumpkins but I was in my twenties and demographically skewed . . . here's the actual top ten selling artists of the 1990s:
Céline DionMariah Carey
Garth Brooks
Whitney Houston
Nirvana
Michael Jackson
Metallica
Backstreet Boys
Shania Twain
Madonna.
Trump = Don Quixote?
Donald Trump-- in one of his most deranged moves to date-- continues his quixotic battle against windmills, halting five developing wind farms off the East Coast and essentially, according to the New York Times, "gutting the industry" and vaporizing ten thousand jobs and jeopardizing billions of dollars in investments . . . Trump cites fabricated "national security concerns" as the reason for ending these green energy projects, which were supposed to power 2.5 million homes and will instead reduce the efficiency of the electrical grid and make us more reliant on traditional (and expensive) energy sources . . . what is wrong with this man, and why isn't anyone in our government standing up to him?
(Slightly) Brighter Days Ahead
Today is the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and thus the darkest fucking day of the year . . . but tomorrow we will have a couple more seconds of sunlight and by January-- and this has something to do with the tilt of the earth and angles and lag time and ellipses . . . way above my pay grade-- we'll be gaining two minutes of sunlight each day . . . which will be fantastic because when it's dark like this, I want to go to bed at 7 PM.
Follow the Link For the Recs . . .
I did my usual "Seven Books for Reading" post over at Gheorghe: The Blog today . . . if you're looking for a good book, check it out.
Not Following Directions (Because They Are Insane)
Does anyone actually:
1) rinse and drain quinoa thoroughly in cold water before cooking?
2) determine doneness by the visible germ ring on the outside edge of the grain?
because these are the specific instructions on the back of TRADER JOE'S Organic Tricolor Quinoa, and while I like to follow food hygiene instructions and recommendations--
1) quinoa grains are much too tiny to rinse in a colander-- they would go through the holes!
2) quinoa grains are way too small to examine in such a precise manner;
so WTF?
Enough With the Time Wars . . .
I'm not sure how-- serendipity, I guess-- but I just finished another sci-fi book written in the 1950s that details a war being waged throughout time . . . this one, The Time Traders, by Andre Norton, is much faster-paced than Simak's Time and Again-- although it features an American rehabilitation prison/time traveller program, a hostile advanced alien race and the Russians, and everyone is at odds with one another, this is really more of a Bell Beaker-era (2000 B.C.) survival tale, with some interesting anthropological details (and a bunch of sci-fi action) and the usual cautionary lesson, that when you fuck with the past, things are going to get ugly-- but with the additional idea that there may have been great technological wonders in the past, whether alien-made or human-made, that were lost in the haze of the millenia-- modern humans have only been around for 300,000 years . . . in the millions and millions of years of life on earth, advanced technologies could have risen and decayed and left no trace (although this is highly unlikely-- they probably woudl have left some chemical fingerprint or isotopic anomaly).
Dave "Works" From Home
I decided to give working from home a try today-- I've got a cold, and I'm losing my voice, so I didn't feel up to inspiring the youth to write without "help" from AI . . . despite my illness, I did sweep, vacuum, and mop the floors and I cleaned three bathrooms, but no matter how much you clean the floor, there's still dog hair-- it's very resilient stuff.
Even With Some Help, I Don't Think Our Brains Will Ever Work This Well
Time and Again is more profound and serious than most of the Clifford Simak books I've read (Mastodonia, They Walked Like Men, The Goblin Reservation, City) and while the book has some fun sci-fi tropes-- a war throughout time, androids that can chemically reproduce vying for human rights-- it also has that 1950s transcendent evolutionary vibe that seems naive today . . . the idea that humans will eventually, possibly with the help of alien intelligence, become something mentally more, something psionic and telepathic and revolutionary . . . and maybe I'm being pessimistic and thispsychological transcendence is possible, but I'm more of the feeling that the huan race is going to be perpetually stupid until we exterminate ourselves.
Are People Actually Working at Home?
Despite the cold and the ice and the preponderance of delayed openings in the surrounding counties, Middlesex County schools did NOT have a delay this morning-- so I'd like to send a big FU out to anyone who "works from home."
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