Just Trying To Live My Life (Dave Style)

So I'm just living my life, stealing some printer paper from the boss's office and printing some stuff that I need to print, and leaving a stack of paper on the common table in the office while I'm printing my stuff that I needed to print, when I realize that I need to bolt, that time is of the essence, but while I am in the process of bolting out of there, I hear this voice, a voice with a reminiscent tone, a voice layered with subtext, a voice that is dripping with an undercurrent, an undercurrent which I know exactly how to decipher and this voice says, "Are you done with this paper?" and I look and see Liz holding the stack of paper that I tossed on the common table and I recognize that her tone is the same tone as when Catherine, my beloved wife, holds up a used yogurt container that I have left on the counter and says, "Are you done with this yogurt container?" and I know what this really means is: "You are a fucking insensitive slob who thinks women have been placed on this earth to clean up your shit, but I have been placed on this earth to teach you a lesson, and the lesson is this: women are not here to clean up your shit, and you are going to learn to clean up your shit, and you may learn this sooner or you may learn it later, but you will eventually learn this, and this tone is essential to you learning this lesson because it is a tone that is antithetical to the way you want to live your insensitive, self-centered, egotistical, selfish life and eventually you will hear the tone before the words are even spoken because the tone will live in your head and then you will realize that the tone has won and the Way of Dave has lost" and while I can see where both Liz and Catherine are coming from, sometimes you just want to live your life the way you want and leave a bunch of shit all over the place and clean it up later, but maybe I was born in the wrong place and at the wrong time and maybe I'm never going to get to live my life this way.

Learning to Let a Sleeping Cat Lie . . .or Lay . . . Whatever She Prefers

Last week I corrected my wife for using the word "lay" instead of "lie," and when she questioned me about the proper usage I made the mistake of saying, "You call yourself a teacher?" and then I attempted to explain the difference between "lie" and "lay"-- that "lay" always takes a direct object, which is why you lie down in your bed, but a chicken lays an egg-- but she was hearing none of it; she was rightfully indignant over my contemptuous tone (I need to work on that) and I realized that this was a sleeping dog that I should let lie . . . so I didn't mention it again until yesterday, when I heard her repeatedly telling our dog to "lay down," and so-- being very careful of my tone-- I yelled from the kitchen, "Are you trying to annoy me, or what?" but apparently my attempt to use a warm and playful tone didn't work because she yelled back, "No . . . I guess I'm just really stupid!" and even I could recognize that she was being sarcastic . . . so though it offends the English teacher in me, I think I'm going to have to live with this one fault that my wonderful, beautiful, generally flawless wife possesses, and consider myself lucky that this is my only grievance in an otherwise blissful marriage.

Trump Causes More Shit

Last week, after visiting the dog park, I tried to walk home along the river. It was damn near impassable. The grass and the path were strewn with goose poop. Disgusting for me, and a health hazard for my dog. She loves to eat the stuff, and it's laden with bacteria and parasites. The last time she chowed down on it, she threw up all over my van. Yuck.

This was the last straw for me. The geese never shit on the river path. There are a few areas in Donaldson Park that are consistently covered in fecal matter (and they are easy enough to avoid) but this winter-- perhaps because we never got solid snow cover-- the entire park was littered with the stuff. Every sporting field, every paved path . . . from the grassy meadows to the muddy banks. Poop poop poop poop. The only spot in the park not covered with goose poop was the dog park. But I couldn't walk through the other sections of the park to get to the dog park. There was too much shit. So I had to take the street along the park and cut into the park on the trail just past the public works building and the diesel fuel tank. This route is not scenic at all. It's damn near tragic. I live next to Donaldson Park so I can walk around in Donaldson Park.

My New "Scenic Route" to the Dog Park

I generally managed to keep Lola from eating goose poop on my way back from the river, but it was not pleasant or relaxing. So I was pretty irate when I got home. I had been through a scatological minefield, and I was certainly suffering from PTSD: Post Traumatic Shit Disorder. I was fired up. But instead of my usual complaining into the void, I decided to do something: I would write an email to the powers that be. I cranked out a couple paragraphs of crackpot commentary to the county parks director. I was vivid. I was livid. I was graphic. I was gross. I mentioned bacteria and parasites. I recalled that there used to be a guy that would come in and scare the geese away. He would set off fireworks and place silhouettes of dogs in the fields. What happened to that guy? Donaldson Park needed that guy! My tone was polite but frustrated. What other tone is there when you're dealing with goose-shit?

Here's what I got back. I was very pleased with the prompt reply (and properly indignant about the causes of the excessive poop).

A Prompt Clarification on the Shit Storm

Mr. Pellicane,

Thank you for your message regarding Canada goose numbers at Donaldson Park.  The County currently contracts with the Wildlife Services Division of the USDA, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services for Canada goose management on all County properties.  This include harassment and egg treatments.  They cover over two dozen sites throughout the County.  With our proximity to water, open space and mild winters, controlling geese is always a challenge.

The biggest problem we are having this year is with the somewhat milder winter.  Many geese that pushed southward last year, simply did not this year.  Additionally, with the federal government shutdown for 35 days in December and January, all contracts were suspended.  Harassment during this time was minimal – only what our staff could get to.

We are certainly behind on behavior modification and it is apparent in many of our parks.  Our USDA tech is back on the job (for now, anyway) however, we are playing catch up across the County.  I have asked for increased visits to Donaldson Park over the next week and if there is not another shutdown, continued aggressive harassment for the next few.  This should hopefully help alleviate some of the pressure on Donaldson Park from the geese.

Thank you,

Rick Lear

Director

Office of Parks and Recreation

Department of Infrastructure Management

Let's Assign Some Blame!

Trump! This was Trump poop. Caused by his government shutdown. And even better, Rick Lear alluded to Trump's arch-nemesis. He didn't call it by name (perhaps, like the EPA, he's forbidden). But when he refers to the "mild winter," we all know what he's talking about. Climate change! So I had stepped in Donald Trump's shit, caused by something he refuses to believe in, the Chinese hoax. I couldn't have been happier. English teachers love irony.

The biggest problem we are having this year is with the somewhat milder winter.  Many geese that pushed southward last year, simply did not this year.  Additionally, with the federal government shutdown for 35 days in December and January, all contracts were suspended. 

Rick Lear

I was also happy because getting upset about Trump shit is fun. This is because Trump is temporary. His ideas are outdated. He's a throwback, a dinosaur, soon to be extinct. A last gasp. In fact, despite the bipartisan quagmire and the incorrigible stupidity and corruption of the Trump administration, I'm feeling pretty good about the world, goose poop and all. This is mainly because I'm nearly done with Steven Pinker's book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. It's also because my wife is doing a lot of Zumba and looking great (but that's besides the point).

Pinker uses an avalanche of charts and statistics to remind us that we are living in the best of times. And this is because of th enlightenment values mentioned in the title: science, reason, secular humanism, liberal democratic ideas. The world has never been less violent, more healthy, more prosperous, safer, and more liberal. Despite what the naysayers prophesy, more people have rights than ever before, less people are at war than ever before, knowledge is more accessible, and democracy is on the rise. While there are challenges, we keep coming up with solutions. And the two existential threats-- the things that worry Pinker the most-- the environment (including global warming) and nuclear war . . . both of these things are improving. Slowly, but they are definitely improving. As countries grow richer, they do a better job preserving the environment; they reforest and recycle and use less fossil fuels and look for alternate energy sources. And we are slowly whittling down the number of nuclear weapons on earth. That number may never reach zero, but it doesn't have to. As long as we accept and understand the challenges, there are solutions on the horizon.

The Robots Are NOT Coming

Pinker also dispels some of the ridiculous notions that cause folks unnecessary anxiety: artificial intelligence experts don't fear the singularity. AI is not going to rebel and replace us. It's too hard to make a semi-conductor. It's too hard to make anything. It takes teams and teams of people and many highly technical factories and lots of resources. And we humans control all that. We are the kings of meat-space. And most of this perceived conflict is online. This is also the reason we probably don't have to fear technological nightmare scenarios caused by lone wolf lunatics. It takes too many smart people to create technology that advanced. Your computer may get a virus (but nothing as serious as Y2K) but you need a team of specialists to make a nuclear bomb or a super-virus, and it's hard to assemble that many people down with destroying the human race.

This is why rational people don't fear Donald Trump. He's not the face of the 21st century, he's a wart that will soon dry up. And fall off. He's an old wart.

Pinker does acknowledge that Trump will have an effect-- especially if we let him-- on some of these precious enlightenment ideals that have served us so well. He's an impediment to "life and health" because of his anti-vaxxer rhetoric and his role in dismantling our healthcare system. He's a threat to worldwide wealth because of his idiotic zero-sum notions about trade. Countries that are tied together economically cooperate. They don't go to war. He's certainly not helping economic inequality, nor is he a boon to safety, on the job or otherwise. He hates regulations, which often spur progress and make business seek solutions to problems (such as car crashes, plane crashes, poisoning, tanker leaks, lead levels, mileage restrictions, etc). He's not particularly keen on democracy and seems to have a penchant for dictatorial strongmen. He's no fan of equal rights, and his speeches and Tweets often have an undercurrent of xenophobia and racism. And he's a liar liar pants on fire. So he's not an ambassador or advocate to the wonders of available and accurate knowledge.

The Glass Is Half Full? So Lame . . .

Optimism is not cool. Pinker is an utter nerd. It's more fun to obsess over Trump and predict the end of civility, the end of civilization. Trump is certainly a shitshow, and Michael Lewis does a nice job illustrating some of the consequences of his incomptetence. And he's an environmental disaster. But we are progressing despite him. You need proof? Listen to Adam Ruins Everything Episode 1, where Adam talks at length with the Los Angeles DOT Seleta Reynolds. Streetcars, bike lanes, public transport, walkable neighborhoods and plazas . . . in the car capital of the country. In LA? Sounds like a hippie's dream and a conservative's nightmare. But this progressive vision is happening, despite Trump, and with federal funding. There are difficulties, of course, but when you hear this dedicated and intelligent government employee explaining that the market won't solve these problems of morals and values, it's really heartening. She's also really funny.

Pinker is an atheistic utilitarian who may not have enough feelings about anything to move the stalwarts on the left or the right. He glosses over some pretty bad shit. But that's because he's looking at the numbers, not at the emotions. Not at identity politics or anything particularly political. He's in the same corner as President Obama, who wrote a miniature version of the Pinker book for Wired Magazine. It's an essay called "Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive." It's not nearly as fun as visions of rusted out towns full of drug-addled opiate addicts (not the whole story) and porous unwalled borders which allow terrorists, criminals and rapists to pour into our nation. Statistically supported optimism can't match Chinese bandits stealing our intellectual property, black people who don't know their proper place (let's make America Great Again! And Institutionally Racist!) and liberal socialists who want to empower the government so that it controls every aspect of our lives. The end of times. That's what gets the clicks.

But I'm siding with Rick Lear. He's going to be around long after Trump is gone, directing county parks and rec infrastructure, fighting the good fight against the geese. He'll suffer mild winters and government shutdowns, deal with cranky emails, and continue to make this country greater than it's ever been. I have faith that he's going to make my local park greater. He's going to get rid of those geese (and their shit).

I believe.

Pinker's incremental pragmaticism does have it's problems. Robert Gordon, in his comprehensive work The Rise and Fall of American Growth claims that we've captured all the technological "low hanging fruit" and that advances will be tiny and slow for a long time. And Charles C. Mann provides a much more balanced picture in his new book, The Wizard and Prophet. Pinker is a fan of Norman Borlaug, the agricultural engineer who founded the Green Revolution‌, but there are those scientists who don't believe technology will bail us out of every dilemma. We might need old-fashioned conservation to preserve our way of life. Mann uses ecologist William Vogt to represent this perspective. It's one worth noting.

Pinker is also not very romantic. There's no room for honor and zealotry and fanaticism and mysticism and martyrdom and certain types of selfless ascetic heroism in his philosophy. He's no Hamlet, who says to his buddy Horatio: "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." But Hamlet has seen a spirit, his father's spirit. The time is out of joint. Something is rotten. That's not so in Pinker's secular, statistical view of progress. Society will be less varied, but I have to admit, I don't really care. I won't miss the zealous fanatical whirling mystical martyrs one bit.

I'd much rather have a river blindness vaccine. And people are working on it.

This Land is Your Land, This Land is Nomadland

Jessica Bruder's book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century is an eye-opener to another America, an America of a wandering people, who-- usually due to some setback-- are houseless (but not homeless) and move through our nation "like blood cells through the veins of our country" in tricked out camper-vans, small RVs, handmade trailers, and converted house-cars . . . these people-- who are mainly white . . . perhaps because it's hard to "boondock" as a person of color-- meet at desert rallies like the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous and move from one grueling temporary job to the next-- the sugar beet harvest, shelving and scanning items at the Amazon warehouse, cleaning the toilets at campgrounds, short order cook at Wall Drug . . . the work is hard and you are reliant on your tribe of van dwellers, your own resilience, Advil, and the ability of ride to endure wind and weather; the financial crash of 2008 sent many of these people on the road, but so did lack of pensions and unions and healthcare, lack of decent lower-middle class jobs and lack of a safety net to care for these folks-- and these are spirited people, many of whom are over sixty, and couldn't bear to live without freedom; Linda May has dreams greater than living in a van, she purchases some desert land in Arizona to build an Earthship homestead-- a self-sufficient, off-the-grid house; she's a grandmother of 64 and wants some place to call her own, but she struggles with how to go about it . . . these are her words:

Someone asked why do you want a homestead? To be independent, get out of the rat race, support local businesses, buy only American made. Stop buying stuff to impress people I don't like. Right now I am working in a big warehouse for an online supplier. The stuff is all crap made somewhere else in the world where they don't have child labor laws, where the workers labor fourteen to sixteen hour days without meals or bathroom breaks. There is one million square feet in this warehouse packed with stuff that won't last a month. It is all goin to a landfill. Our economy is built on the backs of slaves we keep in other countries, like China, India, Mexico, any third world country where we don't have to see them but where we can enjoy the fruits of their labor. The American Corp. is probably the biggest slave owner in the world . . . there is nothing in that warehouse of substance. It enslaved the buyers who use their credit to purchase that shit. Keeps them in jobs they hate to pay their debts. 

despite the tone of this section, there is also a pioneering spirit in the book-- there is a shared tone with the favorite pieces of literature of the Rubber Tramp crew; I was proud to say I've read ever book they mentioned as a favorite: Travels with Charley, Blue Highways, Desert Solitaire, Into the Wild, Walden, and Wild; if you don't want to read about all this, definitely watch the movie-- it's a masterful amalgam of the real stories in the book (and the real people) and some quality acting by Frances McDormand . . . and if you don't want to deal with any of this but still want to get the idea, listen to a recent episode of The Indicator wherein they explain that the Simpsons-- once representative of the lower middle class in America-- now live a lifestyle unattainable by that demographic.

My Sixth Grade Teacher Was Passive Agressive AF

I found my sixth grade "yearbook" and this is what my teacher-- who will remain nameless for her own protection-- wrote to me . . . and notice the tone shift, it's almost like she couldn't help herself:

Dear David,

Good luck next year . . . I'm very happy you were a member of my class . . . you have been a great sport thoughout the year, your sense of humor was a bright spot many times . . . now all you have to work on is your talkativeness . . . we helped your organization (and that was a chore) and I believe you can master your talking mouth . . .

and then she had the gall to write: I'll miss you very much, please come back and visit . . . and when I was younger, I would have probably thought this was a relatively sweet note, but now that I am a master of the female tone, I get the big picture . . . I must have been a royal pain in her ass, but I was too skinny and nerdy to scream at, so she had to express it passive aggressively in that note.

Serial Season Two vs. Dave's Brain!

Last year, I taught Serial Season 1 to my high school seniors-- I couched the podcast within a process analysis unit, and the kids really enjoyed it; Serial Season 2 is a bit harder to get a grip on, but I like it even better than Season 1, perhaps because it reminds me of all the things I learned when I lived in Syria, and-- despite the difficulties, I am teaching to my seniors and (with the threat of constant quizzing) they are doing a fantastic job with a dense and difficult story . . . this time I've embedded the podcast in a compare/contrast unit, because that seems to be the main structural trope that ties the story together . . . here are some of the topics that the podcast invites you to compare and contrast:

1) the liberal interpretation of Bergdahl's story vs. the conservative perspective . . . Katy Waldman (on  the Slate's Serial Spoiler) calls the tone of the podcast "radical empathy" while many of Bergdahl's fellow soldiers consider him a deserter and a traitor;

2) Bergdahl and Jason Bourne;

3) Bergdahl and a "golden chicken";

4) Bergdahl and a "ready made loaf";

5) Bergdahl and and a "free-floating astronaut" with no tether;

6) the American Army and a "lumbering machine" and an AT-AT;

7) the Taliban as a mouse running beneath the machine's legs;

8) Pakistan as "home base," the mousehole in the wall in Tom & Jerry;

9) the rumors about Bergdahl vs. the reality of his captivity;

10) The Haqqani Network and the Sopranos;

11) Bergdahl's imprisonment and treatment vs. the imprisonment and treatment of Muslim detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, and Abu Ghraib;

12) the feelings about infidels of moderate Muslims vs. radical Muslims;

13) the code of conduct required for POW videos vs. actual military expectations for POW videos;

14) the sovereign state of Pakistan and the tribal area of North Waziristan;

15) the captivity of Bergdahl and the captivity of David Rohde . . . Rohde was kidnapped and held for three months by the Haqqani network in the same area as Bergdahl at nearly the same time, he is a civilian journalist and not a soldier, and he wasn't blindfolded and isolated as much as Bergdahl, but his story is still very helpful in understanding what happened to Bergdahl;

16) the entire story and the children's book Zoom;

and these are the issues that I think will surface in the future-- I'm speculating, of course, but that's necessary when you're teaching a piece that's not finished yet . . . it's like teaching a book that hasn't been finished, it's exhilarating and exhausting, but also really fun; I can teach Hamlet and Henry IV in my sleep because I know what happens, while doing this is really keeping me on my toes, and this is where I imagine the story is going:

17) there will be comparisons drawn Bergdahl's endurance in captivity and the hero's journey . . . the fact that Mark Boal was interested in interviewing him for a movie and the fact that he is the longest held captive since the Vietnam War and the fact that they are viewing him with such empathy in the podcast leads me to believe it will head in this direction;

18) good leaders vs. toxic leaders . . . if Bergdahl is going to be portrayed as heroic, Serial is going to have to provide a reasonable story of why he deserted his post, and I think they are saving that portion of the narrative and I also think that it is going to open a whole crazy can of worms about the military and it's purpose;

19) the motivation behind Bergdahl's decision and the Pixar film Inside Out . . . which I have promised to show to my students if they survive the podcast;

20) the reaction you should have when you think about how long Bergdahl spent in captivity and the following clip from Grosse Pointe Blank (and while I realize that it doesn't connect exactly in a mathematical sense, the tone is perfect).

How Many Tabs is Too Many?

Today is my wife's birthday-- Happy Birthday Cat!-- and while I'll preserve her feminine mystique and not reveal her exact age, I will say this: the other day she had over thirty tabs open on our Chrome browser . . . the number of tabs she had open was nearly equivalent to the years she's been alive on this planet . . . the tabs were miniscule, there were so many of them, and I've spoken to her about this before, but she wasn't very receptive to my criticism . . . in fact, it annoyed her (I guess if opening too many tabs on our web browser is your only irresponsible behavior, then you don't want to hear about it from me) but you can't complain about the computer running slow when you've got thirty-something tabs open, and so my rule of thumb is this: an adult should never have open more than half their age in tabs at any one time . . . right now, I have seven tabs open, which is exactly the right amount, here is the list:

1) Sentence of Dave;

2) The Host (2006 film) Wikipedia page;

3) is crack a narcotic - Google search;

4) Maple Bacon Caramel Crack - Pinterest;

5) Amazon: Gold Tone Acoustic Microbass;

6) woot electronics Gold Tone Fretless Acoustic Microbass;

7) Gheorghe the Blog.

First World Problems

Now that our power is back, I am happy to say that the worst problem in our house is a universal one -- and though I didn't flush the toilet with malicious intent Monday evening, I was quite pleased to hear my seven-year old son Ian, who was in the shower, use the proper tone -- the tone his Dad taught him --when he screamed, "WHO'S USING THE WATER?"

Tone? Term? What? Who?

I realized today why I've been so fried and exhausted at the end of every school day this year-- and it's not the new schedule of 84 minute periods-- the problem is the sensory deprivation: I can't wear my glasses with a mask (they fog up) so I can't really see the students (and it's hard to discern who is who when they are all wearing masks) and I can't really tell who is talking-- every class wide discussion begins as a ventriloquism act because you can't see anyone's mouth moving . . . and even once you figure out where the sound is coming from, you might not be able to parse the words . . . teenagers are often mumblers . . . AND they might not have clearly heard what I said, so that adds to this muffled game of telephone . . . I told them to find a "term" and they were looking for the "tone" and so I had to remember to really enunciate the ending letters of words (and today was hat day, further obscuring any visual recognition-- when you wear a hat AND a mask, there's no much identifiable face showing) but my only solace is that perhaps I'm developing super-sensory powers because of this intense obfuscated sensory training.

This Is the Reaction I Expect!

I received a voice-message at work on Tuesday, which is usually something bad-- and the computerized voice said that the message was "80 seconds long," which is a pretty long message, so I was expecting the worst  . . . an irate parent or an administrator reminding me of something important I had forgotten, but from the first moment of the message I knew this was going to be different; it was a woman calling to express her rapturous adulation for my editorial opposing charter schools (which had just appeared in the local paper) and it was so impassioned that it made me blush, there were times when she seemed to be at a loss for words, nearly swooning with emotion toward my "cogency," and to confirm my suspicions about the tone, I let a few other people listen to the message (I've been known, on occasion, to misinterpret the female tone of voice) and they all agreed that I was correct in my inference . . . and I can't reproduce the commentary from the other teachers here because this is a family friendly blog, but you can imagine what went on (and I should point out that the woman-- who no longer has any students in the school-- left her phone number, though she said I didn't have to call her back) and, though it made me a bit uncomfortable, I think I'd like more of these messages, so if you read something wonderful that I've written, this is the reaction I will now expect of you.

Thinking It vs. Communicating It

I'd like to thank my dedicated readers for pointing out yesterday's gaffe; I thought the word "tone" to myself while writing yesterday's sentence, but I didn't actually type the word "tone" and instead wrote this objectless phrase: "the anthemic and triumphant of a Bruce Springsteen song," and while there's no excuse for not proofreading, I think I actually re-read this sentence and imagined that the word was there . . . I also have this trouble when I speak to my wife-- I think a bunch of thoughts and I think that I said some of the thoughts as a preface to my actual spoken statement, but really I uttered some cryptic, out-of-context gibberish.

The Funhole is No Fun

The Cipher by Kathe Koja is one of the weirdest, darkest, most disturbing things I've ever read. It was originally published in 1991 and it reeks of grunge. The original title was "The Funhole," which is what Nicholas and Nakota have discovered in the storage room down the hall. 

Blackhole fun.

After a series of bizarre experiments with the hole-- spearheaded by Nakota-- Nicholas ends up with a second funhole in his hand. And things keep getting weirder. The tone is dark, dank, and ambiguous. I'm not sure if I recommend this book, but it was impossible to put down.

Here are a few quotations to give you the idea of the tone:

These days she must really be gnawing them, and I wondered if the hand had bitten nails too. I’d read that nails kept growing, after death, a little while. “Who bites the nails of the dead?” I said, silly sonorous voice, and was rewarded with one of Nakota’s rarest smiles, a grin of genuine amusement. “I do,” she said, and went on fishing. 

You can get used to being wrong all the time; it takes all the responsibility out of things. 

I was so tired of hating myself. But I was so good at it, it was such a comfortable way to be, goddamn fucking flotsam on the high seas, the low tide, a little wad of nothing shrugging and saying Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t know it was loaded, I didn’t think things would turn out this way. It’s so easy to be nothing. 

And a moment oddly resonant of now . . .

All bodies are, in some sense; engines driven by the health or disease of their owners, jackets of flesh that are the physical sum of their wearers. But to become your disease? To become the consumption itself?

Sitcoms and Everything Else: Now and Then

The difference between watching a sitcom in the 1980's and watching a sitcom in 2015 is this: back then, you were never quite sure what you were going to get . . . you'd be settling in for WKRP in Cincinnati, hoping for some humorous hijinks with Dr. Johnny Fever and Venus Flytrap (and some dueling cleavage between Bailey and Jennifer) and suddenly you're thrust into a "very special episode" about people being trampled at a Who concert . . . but today, because of the fragmentation of media, everything is much more genre-based and tone specific . . . there's very little straying from a show's particular formula-- I'm not sure if this is a good thing . . . the fact that we can control the tone of everything we consume, whether it be music, TV, or political commentary-- while we get what we want, there are less surprises: imagine a "very special episode" of 30 Rock, where one of Tracy Jordan's children gets seduced and creepily molested by "the bicycle man."

Jury Duty: You Don't Need to Be a Clairvoyant Racist Lunatic

Last week, my wife had jury duty on Wednesday and I had jury duty on Thursday. This week, my wife had her administrative observation on Tuesday and I had my administrative observation on Wednesday.

Weird.

I hope my wife doesn't get bitten by a rabid animal (probably a coyote) next Monday . . . because it's going to happen to me on Tuesday. These things come in threes.

As far as jury duty went, my wife got called upstairs but didn't have to fill out any questionnaires or do any interviews. So she didn't need to utilize any of the stupid advice people give about how to get out of jury duty. 

Stupid Advice People Give You So You Can Get Out of Jury Duty

"Tell the judge you're racist!"

"Tell the judge you can tell people are guilty just by looking into their eyes!"

"Act crazy!"

The Real Deal with "Voir Dire"

If you've ever been interviewed for a spot on a jury-- the process known in legal parlance as "voir dire"-- then you know this advice is absurd. You're in front of the general public, in a formal situation, talking to someone wearing robes, in a court of law.

You don't want to present yourself as racist clairvoyant lunatic.

You might run into these people in the future.

My wife sat in a room for a while and then got released early.

I was not as lucky as my wife.

I arrived at 8 AM, and snagged a choice seat at the one large table by the TV (advice from my wife) so I could get some grading done. The presiding judge came down and spoke to us about the importance of jury duty and the system. He explained the difference between an inconvenience and a hardship. Then we watched a video, which gave us some instructions on how to behave if we were on a jury. We instructed to not only listen to the witnesses, but to observe their body language and tone of voice as well. I had a problem with this, which I tucked away in the recess of my brain. Then I got back to reading quizzes.

I was called upstairs at 9:30 AM, with a hundred other citizens. One of the elevators was broken so we had to stuff ourselves into the good one, in shifts. We were crammed into a courtroom. I was sitting in between a tall white guy from Texas and an older African American gentleman with one earring who was working on an adult coloring book with some markers. The judge told us they needed 12 jurors for a criminal case, and then he told us a bit about the case. I can't reveal this information, or I might get fined $1000. The prosecutor and the defendant and the defendant's lawyer were all there. The defendant was accused of a violent crime. He was African-American and looked like a tough hombre. You'll understand why I mention his race soon enough.

We filled out two questionnaires and then the judge, prosecutor and lawyer interviewed possible jurors. This went on for hours. We finally got to break for lunch at 12:30 and I went to Tavern of George (a.k.a. Tumulty's) and inhaled a burger. The beer looked was tempting, but I didn't want to be found in contempt of court.

I went back, finished my grading, and added some information to my questionnaire. Quite a bit of information. There was nothing else to do. And I decided if I got called up that I wasn't going to repeat what I did last time I went through "voir dire." No pathetic pleading. I would not throw myself prostate upon the mercy of the court. My kids were older now, and more responsible. If I got called to be on a trial, so be it.

So I would be myself. I would explain that it was a rough time of year for me to miss-- because of the College Writing curriculum-- but that this was more of an inconvenience than a hardship.

At 2 PM, I got called up for some "voir dire." I took a deep breath and walked over to the table with the judge, the prosecutor, and the defendant's attorney. I sat down. I told the judge my school situation, but very plainly, without drama or histrionics, and he said he would consider it. Then we got into my questionnaire.

First he wanted to know why I said I wouldn't be able to convict someone just on testimony alone. I told him about the new Malcolm Gladwell book Talking to Strangers and just how difficult it was to determine whether a stranger was telling the truth or lying. I told him I had a problem with the instructional video, because its very difficult to determine anything credible from tone and body language. Some people always seem like they are telling the truth and other people always seem nervous or anxious or sketchy. And it doesn't mean much. I talked about the fallibility of human memory and the ambiguity of eyewitness accounts.

Then we went through the people my interactions with the legal world. My brother worked in the building. My dad was director of corrections. I had a few run-ins with the law, but mainly college shenanigans.

Then he asked me why I wasn't sure if the legal system was fair. I told him I had read and listened to a lot about Ferguson and the shooting of Michael Brown, and I had listened to Serial Season 3 in its entirety, which delved into the corruption int he Cleveland court system. I told him I had learned that sometimes the court system is designed to shake down and oppress people of color.

Then we took a look at the free response questions. We were upstairs for a long time and I had answered the questions comprehensively. For example, there was a question about how you get your news. I had listed every podcast I to which I subscribed-- this is a long list.

The judge saw this scrawling mess and said, "I don't think we've ever had anyone run out of room on the sheet."

We talked my favorite books and movies (the judge enjoyed The Irishman) and the prosecutor pursued the list of magazines I often read: The New Yorker and Harper's and Mother Jones and The Atlantic and Wired and The Week.

The judge took a look at the people I'd like to meet. I had listed The Wu-Tang Clan, Dave Chappelle, and Howard Stern. I forgot Larry David.

The judge thought about all this for a long moment and then said, "I'm going to have you take a seat over there."

He pointed at the jury box.

"Over there?" I said, in slight disbelief. I was headed toward the jury box! I quickly accepted it. It was my civic duty, it was only a six day trial, and my family would figure it out. It wasn't the end of the world. My students would be fine.

I took three steps, and then I heard the judge again. I turned. The prosecutor had just finished speaking to the judge. Telling the judge to dismiss me. No way the prosecutor wanted some liberal bombastic blowhard all full of random and useless information on his jury.

So I was dismissed. And I didn't have to act like a racist or a lunatic or a mind-reader.

I just had to be myself.

This Underground Railroad is Actually Underground

I was pleasantly surprised (and pleasantly horrified) by Colson Whitehead's novel The Underground Railroad . . . I assumed that because of all the critical praise the book received (and because of the content) that reading it would be like eating fiber, good for you but no fun, but I was very wrong; Whitehead starts with the childhood conceit that the underground railroad is actually an underground railroad, and in the spirit of the magical realists, he makes you buy his fantasy . . . and in between the dream-like underground journeys on the train, the main character Cora-- a runaway slave-- who suffered abominably on the plantation and witnessed things even worse than she endured, finds herself in a fragmented variegated mainly hostile country; each stop on her journey is insidiously evil in it's own unique way; there are scenes reminiscent of the Tuskegee experiment, Anne Frank's captivity, Flannery O'Connor's Gothic South, and the stereotypical Southern plantation . . . and the common thread that unites this ugly patchwork of loosely connected territories of racism and abuse, is the slave-hunter Ridgeway and his odd companion/slave Homer, an educated and erudite miniature lackey on a bizarre epic journey far from his African-American roots, making his way in the only way that he can, betraying his people in order to thrive and survive; the book certainly evokes the state of our country today: fragmented, unsympathetic and divisive, and the theme is ominous-- perhaps only a civil war and the consequent reconstruction can mend the rips and tears in the fabric of our nation . . . but despite this heaviness, the novel is a damned good read . . . horrific, hallucinatory, compelling, and epic by turns, and just when you think you can't take it any longer, when you've entered the broken mind of the slave and see no escape from the shackles and chains, then the plot takes off and you're on the train, underground, excited to poke your head above ground in some new place, with some new tone and tenor, possibly better than what came before.

Would Gandhi Curb Stomp a Bully?

On Friday, during the morning announcements, the principal reminded us that it is National Bullying Prevention Month-- and this is certainly a good thing, as bullying is gradually going the way of the dinosaur (or at least meat-world bullying . . . cyber-bullying is another issue entirely) but then he told us National Bullying Prevention Month is sponsored by the leading national anti-bullying organization in the United States . . . STOMP Out Bullying . . . and my homeroom class and I found this name to be a bit oxymoronic, harkening back to the old days, when the only way to defeat a bully was to punch him in the face . . . so either we're not getting the irony (but I doubt a national anti-bullying organization would have an ironic name) or STOMP is an acronym for something a bit less violent . . . but I can't find anything about an acronym in their mission statement, so I'm guessing the tone is intentional and sincere and I'm wondering why they don't go all the way and add the word "CURB" to the front end.

College, Expensive and Absurd (and great fodder for a novel)

Take a second rate college with an inane administration, add a number of irate and eccentric teachers of the arts, add curricular and campus dysfunction and you've got the kind of novel English teachers love: the academic satire . . . it's a fairly narrow genre but-- typical of my profession-- I have read too many books of this ilk and I have a number of favorites (Moo by Jane Smiley, Straight Man by Richard Russo, Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon, I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe,  White Noise by Don DeLillo, Giles Goat Boy by John Barth are a few) and I'm going to add Julie Schumacher's epistolary novel Dear Committee Members and the traditionally written sequel The Shakespeare Requirement to the list; The Shakespeare Requirement, like it's predecessor, is mainly very funny, though it tackles some serious issues as well-- especially if you're a parent or student, shelling out 50,000 dollars a year for your education-- Jay Fitger, the unhappily divorced and always irate Creative Writing Professor, is now department chair and he needs to garner consensus on a statement of vision, so the college doesn't prune his worthless non-STEM department down to nothing; he's teaching a "Literature of the Apocalypse" class in an antediluvian science classroom that is literally (and inadvertently) apocalyptic: " a faintly illuminated bunkerlike enclosure . . . this windowless chamber had an emergency showerhead in one corner and presumably, at the time of the first atomic explosions, been a science lab" and he informs his students that they "should leave all gleaming gewgaws at home and take notes by hand," and he's not just talking about cell phones," Fitger-- though his face is swollen from several wasp stings-- more apocalypse-- says he is talking about everything: "iPhones, iPads, laptops, desktops, earbuds, tape recorders, DVD players, Game Boys, minifridges, pocket pets, laser pointers, calculators, e-readers, slides rules, astrolabes and-- unless they could supply a note form a medical professional-- iron lung or dialysis machines," which is pitch perfect tone for a sardonic professor in a slowly dying department in a system that has become too expensive for the students, too bureaucratic for intellectual pursuit, and too pragmatic for the arts and there is the battle between liberals and conservatives-- and though the liberals outnumber the conservatives, their departments are being starved, while Econ has the fund-raising ability, the new digs, and the blessings of the dean-- the school is going to weed out less successful departments, departments that can't pull in "customers," and this is based on some real facts-- college students are shifting their majors to studies that seem more practical--so less students are majoring in English, History, Philosophy, etc and more students are majoring in STEM (science, technology engineering and math) thought he research doesn't really show that majoring in these means you''re more likely to find a career but it does feel that way . . . if you're spending so much money on college, than perhaps you should study money, not something silly like literature or philosophy or art . . . or Shakespeare; Schumacher also satirizes the whole "coddling of the American mind" situation, the micro-triggers and the overly liberal feel-good campus zeitgeist of the bulk of the students, in sharp contrast to the tactical advances made by the various teachers and administrators . . . this may be the last book in this genre I read until my kids graduate from college, for obvious reasons.

Happy Birthday?

On the morning of my birthday, my mother texted me this:

Hi Dave, Happy 46th birthday . . . have a good day . . . I can't believe in four years, you will be 50, I will be 75, hopefully, and Alex will be driving on his permit . . .

and I feel like the tone of this text is a breach of birthday etiquette, as not only is there a reference to my mother's mortality-- and she's perfectly healthy-- but the text also thrusts me four years closer to my own hypothetical demise, for no apparent reason-- and four years is a long time: longer than my wife and I spent in Syria, the same amount of time it takes most people to get a degree, and so I wanted to text back (but didn't) a message in this vein: "That's true, and in fifty-four years, the bulk of the East Coast will be underwater and we'll both certainly be dead."

Give Us This Nada Our Daily Nada

I recognize the absurdity of a blog about nothing commenting on a TV show about nothing, but Seinfeld is actually about everything (and so is this sentence) and it took a book about nothing to make me realize how complicated and deep my feelings are about a show about nothing; Seinfeldia, by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, sports the subtitle "How A Show About Nothing Changed Everything" and this is accurate . . . the book is not some deconstructive analysis of Seinfeld's philosophy, neuroticism and anxious characterization . . . it's more of a history of change, both during the course of the show and during the course of the zeitgeist during the show's run, more of an an explanation of just how difficult it is to write, cast, and maintain a dynamic television show and maintain quality and consistency, week to week, year to year, and even day to day; Armstrong refers to the great moments in the show's history but doesn't overly describe these moments, so the writing is fast and fresh and informative (but probably only totally comprehensible to a true Seinfeld fan) and while the book is a comprehensive history of the show and the alternate universe it created (and the interaction of the Seinfeld universe with the actual universe) it also encourages plenty of nostalgia for people who watched the show when it aired . . . this is a tribute to the last time that network TV was cool, to the last time that there was a true cultural touchstone that everyone shared in a timely fashion (the show aired on Thursday night, and everyone at work dissected the episode Friday morning) and this deeply fond nostalgia about the show has motivated me, in true Seinfeldian fashion, to NOT watch any reruns . . . this is the one great sitcom I've completely withheld from my kids-- we've done The Office and Parks and Rec and some 30 Rock and lots of Community-- but I don't want them to see Seinfeld until they are ready to appreciate it . . . and this book makes me want this to happen soon; anyway, one of the interesting things Seinfeldia explores in detail is that almost all of the plotlines in the show were inspired by real-life anecdotes-- at first they used things that happened to Larry David, and then, when they ran out of Larry David anecdotes, they used things that happened to the ever-revolving crew of writers . . . Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld basically mined the writers for these real incidents and then sent them packing) and so, in this spirit, I'd like to share two Seinfeldian moments that happened to me that were provoked by the show, both of them spongeworthy:

1) I won't mention any names in this story because I'm rather embarrassed by my behavior (a common Seinfeldian theme) but the setting was a high school cafeteria-- I had "cafeteria duty," which means you need to loosely monitor the students while they eat lunch-- and there was a "close talker" in my section-- she was a Spanish teacher and when we conversed, I often had to literally back away from her to preserve my personal space (I do enjoy my personal space . . . in fact, I'm a bit claustrophobic) and this was so pronounced that she would often drive me around and around the lunch table that we stood next to . . . I would slowly back up as she got closer and closer to my face, and the other teachers in our section were English teachers-- friends of mine-- and they enjoyed watching this to no end, as the woman only did this to me, and the two English teachers were Seinfeld fans, of course (as was the close talker!) and so one day, after several months of close talking, I told my friends to find an obscure vantage point where they could observe me talking with the close talker because I was going to make history and stand my ground and we could all see what happened, and so I did it-- despite my claustrophobia-- I stood my ground . . . though I wanted to laugh-- and the two of them witnessed this from the corner of the cafeteria . . . I didn't back up, I stood solidly and she got closer and closer until she was less than an inch from my face, talking away, so close that I could see the specks of saliva on her lips . . . I didn't know what she was saying and I wanted to laugh, and I stole a glance at my friends and they were laughing and then I suddenly felt very guilty and regretful for doing the experiment, because the close talker was a super-nice lady and we were in real life, not a sitcom . . . but still, it was profoundly awesome to see just how close she got to my face, and I'm glad I had two witnesses that bore testament to this insanity;

2) the second Seinfeldian moment will only make sense to fans of a certain age-- Catherine and I often taped the show on VHS, because I went to Doll's Place on Thursday nights, and so on a hungover Saturday morning, we tried to watch "The Betrayal," which is also known as "the backwards episode" and I didn't rewind far enough and we started watching and it seemed like we were at the end, but it was the beginning, and I kept rewinding and fast-forwarding in spurts, not realizing that the chronology of the episode was backwards, taking note of the size of Kramer's lollipop, watching a scene, then attempting to get us in the right place . . . and, in a perfectly Seinfeldian technological twist, we ended up watching the episode in some semblance of the correct linear order, with many stops and starts, before we realized that the entire story was told in reverse . . . so then we re-watched it "properly," noting the irony and absurdity, of course, but not knowing that the Seinfeldian brand pre-9/11 irony and absurdity was on its way out, to be replaced by something darker, and the hypersensitive, super-silly tone of the '90's was about to end, and people my age (46) would yearn for this feeling for the rest of their lives (Beavis and Butthead).

Do Not Resuscitate (the voice of Kurt Vonnegut)

If you're in the mood for something a little apocalyptic-- and something that sounds a bit like a modernized Kurt Vonnegut-- then check out Nicholas Ponticello's sci-fi novel Do Not Resuscitate . . . it's funny and dark and romantic and weird, and it's a fitting story for these times: the world in the novel is slowly falling apart, and science is necessary to stitch it back together.

The nice thing about the story is that near the end, the plot finally leaps into the future and you learn how things are resolved, scientifically and otherwise . . . which is NOT the point we are at yet with this COVID 19 situation (and COVID 19 sounds like something out of a Vonnegut novel . . . a complement to ice-nine in Cat's Cradle.) 

Besides the disease itself, this lack of knowing is what causes the anxiety. We don't know how the plot ends. I can't even wrap my head around what school is going to look like in September.

Here are a few moments from the book that I highlighted on my Kindle. They are enough that you will get the tone. 

The first piece of advice is really important right now, and-- at times-- I am struggling with it (although watching Silicon Valley helps . . . reading the New York Times every morning does not).

I myself am surprised at how quickly a sense of humor can atrophy with age. I can’t think of anything more important to keep in tip-top shape than a sense of humor, especially after your knees and hair and sight and taste and smell and even little parts of your mind are gone. Even after most of the people you knew or ever could have known have died.

And then there's this thought, which I assume-- aside from the most optimistic among us-- we've all had in some way, shape, or form. Ponticello's narrator just articulates it well.

Whoever said one person can make all the difference didn’t live in a world with seven billion people.

The next passage describes the kind of economic system that inevitably falls apart in an apocalypse. We are seeing it to some extent right now. Our economy is based on stability, extra-cash, good health, consumption, and extreme specialization. When everything works properly in a modern economy, you only need to know how to do one thing . . . or, if you're rich, less than one thing!

Today I write from a folding chair on my patio, watching some person I don’t even know wash my windows. It amazes me that we have come to this: a person who specializes in mopping floors, and another who specializes in washing windows, and another who mows lawns, and yet another who balances finances, and another who calculates risk, and so on. We are each a cog in some giant cuckoo clock, one man among many in a Fordist assembly line.

Sometimes my reading reflects this next thought. If I were perfectly logical, it probably should. But I'm glad when I switch back to fiction. Fiction is more satisfying, especially in times of great unrest. 

I myself, prefer nonfiction. I have enough trouble wrapping my head around all the things that have actually happened on this planet. I don’t have time to worry about all the things that happen in other people’s imaginations.

The moral of Ponticello's story . . . and the moral for right now.

I didn’t know then that life never stops dealing you surprises and that the biggest surprises always happen when it looks like everything is finally settling down.

This is the first book I've read by Ponticello. I will definitely try another.