Teacher of the Year

Sometimes being a great teacher is about what you DON'T do . . . the other morning I was using my guitar to illustrate how form often overpowers content . . . I played my creative writing students "Delia's Gone" by Johnny Cash, which is upbeat and kind of fun, though it is about murder, adultery, and revenge, and I also played "Goodbye Earl" by the Dixie Chicks-- another song that is catchy and cute, despite the fact that it is about poisoning an abusive husband, wrapping him in a tarp, and tossing him into a lake-- and then I was about to launch into "Last Kiss," a sixties song about a fatal car crash with a catchy chorus that was famously covered by Pearl Jam . . . I have fond memories of all the high school girls on the Spotswood soccer team joyously singing this tragic song on a bus ride home, smiling and laughing as they hollered the description of the car accident that kills the narrator's girlfriend, but not before he is able to give her one "last kiss" as she fades into the hereafter . . . but then I remembered that one of my students recently lost her boyfriend in a car crash, and-- miraculously-- I remembered this before I played the song . . . and so I actually averted an awkward moment instead of producing one, and for this amazing decision, I think I should win Teacher of the Year.

Exercise Your Right To Plagiarize . . . or Plagiarize Your Right To Exercise?

I often see people doing interesting exercises at the gym-- sometimes with weights, sometimes on the mats, sometimes with unusual equipment, such as medicine balls or rope attachments, and sometimes with the machines and contraptions that I never use-- and whenever I see someone doing an exercise that I've never done before, I have the urge to immediately attempt it, before I forget all about it and go back to my normal routine, but I feel weird about stealing someone's "move" right in front of them, so I always wait until they are out of sight before I copy what they were doing . . . should I feel weird about this?-- about stealing an exercise?-- I probably shouldn't because it's not actually "stealing," as you can't copyright an exercise move . . . or can you?

A Question for Counsel

On Friday afternoon, my son Alex-- who is almost eight years old and fully literate, and who has been warned many times not to play with food-- brandished a sleeve of Go-Gurt brand yogurt snack over his head and yelled "LIGHT SABER!" and then he swung the aforementioned sleeve of Go-Gurt down in the manner of a Jedi Knight using a light saber, but the tip of the sleeve of Go-Gurt caught the counter-top, and blue Go-Gurt splattered all over both the kitchen floor and all over everything else in the kitchen (including Alex and myself) and I am wondering what legal recourse I can take in this matter . . . i.e. what is the maximum punishment I can exact and still be within the letter of the law . . . for example: could I liquidate Alex's college fund and use it to buy a vintage guitar? could I abrogate his snacking privileges for life? could I appropriate his birthday swim party as my own and invite fifteen of my friends to splash in the pool and eat pizza?-- those of you familiar with the law, I thank you in advance for your advice (and I should also point out that the kitchen floor was recently swept and mopped).

Yikes

Last Wednesday, I drove all the way from New Brunswick to Highland Park with my car door open . . . this is partly because my Jeep is so loud and porous that it doesn't sound any different if the door is open or closed, and partly because whenever I get any time alone, I recede deeply into my thoughts . . . and I must have noticed something odd, but when I looked over my left shoulder to see if the window was open on the driver side passenger door, because I didn't see a half-open window, I assumed that it was closed, but in reality, I was actually looking at air and thinking it was a closed window, and so I drove right across the Albany Street Bridge with my door jutting out at a 45 degree angle-- as Jeep doors lock into place at this angle-- and it's something of a miracle that the door didn't strike another car, as the bridge is narrow (although I guess people were giving me a wide berth as they thought I was insane, and now I know why that guy beeped at me . . . I thought he was an asshole).

Serpentine!

I am teaching my dog Sirius to heel-- which essentially means that he needs to stay on my left side with his front legs even with me and he needs to adjust his gait to my movements-- and Sirius, although very good-natured, is also fast and athletic, so it's easy for him to get ahead on the leash, but I have been reading a lot of dog training books and one of the methods to get your dog to pay attention is to frequently change direction, which is what I have been doing-- I execute a left turn, then a right turn, walk to a tree, walk to another one, walk in a square, walk in a circle, go forward, go backward, etc.-- and I am sure everyone in the park thinks I am a lunatic who likes to torture his dog, especially when I'm executing the "serpentine," but I just channel Peter Falk and Alan Arkin from The In-Laws for inspiration.

Dave Invents Keyboard Therapy!

I am having trouble expressing how angry I am with words fit to print on a family-friendly blog, and I don't want to resort to kicking my dog, beating my children, or taking an axe to my computer to dispel these feelings, so, in order to convey my outrage at McAfee's policy of automatically renewing one's anti-virus subscription (despite the fact that I don't own a PC nor have I used McAfee anti-virus for four years . . . and I realize this is my fault, but the automatic renewal e-mails all got sent to spam and so I never noticed I was being charged until now) and also to convey my general outrage of living in a digital society that makes me feel detached and alienated from all financial processes, in order to convey all this ire without the use of four letter words or random violence, I am going to pound on this keyboard for a few seconds and let the pounded jumble of letters and numbers signify my emotions towards McAfee, my own incompetence, and the society we live in: " hio;efg3 RQ \M=we ra NI]0- 4 4T U]9- fq I0-  Y89PWE TA BY89PSE  BY89PS RGA8N]0-6J=U90  - RTWE 4TAWE TAI]0 NI]0- RG ]90 Isrg I]0-E G NI]0-we r90W 4T B89-  MI]0- RN890we rq \,= WERQCBFNU90N94E YU90 RYUIO[NI0RA0NU=90" and now, hopefully, I will be able to go on with my day in an even-keeled manner; Serenity now!

Sometimes It's Best To Keep Quiet

So on Monday, my wife and I took separate cars to the LA Fitness because I had to leave before her, and while I was walking across the parking lot, I overheard a little girl talking to her mother about what went on in the Kid's Club that morning . . . and my children were still in the Kid's Club, waiting for my wife to finish her spinning class and retrieve them-- so neither the little girl nor the mom recognized me-- and the girl said to her mom: "Ian head butted me" and that is my son's name, and the mom asked the girl, "Who's Ian?" and she replied, "Alex's younger brother . . . Alex was choking him and they got in trouble-- I told the lady," and for a brief second I thought about apologizing to this little girl for the atrocious behavior of my children, but I only entertained this for a second, and then I got into my car and made a clean escape (although I did question my children about it later, and Ian said he ran into the girl with his head by mistake while they were running around).

Your Secret is NOT Safe With Me

This is a long one, but if you're a fan of awkward moments and bad decisions, then it might be worth your time: once we finish Act II of Hamlet, I have my students rate the artistic, practical, and ethical nature of the various schemes in the play, and we discuss how Polonius forces his daughter Ophelia to turn over Hamlet's love letters, so he can read them to the king, and I always provide a real example-- for educational purposes, of course-- and ask them if this sort of behavior is ethical, to take someone's private, romantic writing and make it public . . . unfortunately, my example involves my friend Kevin, who teaches next door (and we are only separated by a thin, temporary accordion wall with an foldable opening, so we often pop in and out of each others classrooms through this "secret" entrance) and he was kind enough to sit in my class while I told my students this "case study" last week: so here it is . . . once upon a time, many years ago, before I was married, a "small world" coincidence occurred-- I met my wife on the streets of New Brunswick outside The Corner Tavern Bar, and I was with my childhood friend Rob, and Catherine-- my future wife-- was with her good friend Tammy and-- wildly-- eight years later Rob and I ended up married to these two lucky girls . . . and if we had walked out of the bar moments earlier or or stayed for last call, then we would have never met our future spouses . . . so after several years of dating Catherine and Tammy, we learned-- another weird coincidence-- that my long-time friend and colleague Kevin (who teaches next door to me) dated Tammy-- Rob's future wife-- in high school, when Tammy was a freshman and Kevin was a senior, AND-- miraculously-- Tammy had kept all the notes and correspondence that anyone had ever sent her in high school in a shoe-box . . . in other words, she had love notes that my friend Kevin wrote in high school-- which was the greatest news ever-- BUT, she wouldn't actually cede the notes to me because she knew I would use them for nefarious purposes (perhaps photo-copy them and give them to Kevin's students) so Tammy just gave me a quick glimpse and then hid them, but I was able to ascertain one fantastic piece of information: he signed all his love notes to Tammy "TTFN" (Ta Ta For Now) and so when I finish telling the students the story, I reveal his "signature" valediction and they laugh and laugh and scream it through the thin wall at him and taunt him with the information whenever they get the chance, causing him much embarrassment (although he's used to it by now-- since I do it every year-- and I think he actually enjoys the whole charade, which is why he sat in my class last week while I told the story . . . so he could face the "Ta Ta For Now" taunts head on) and then I remind the students that this was an educational case and I ask them if it was ethical for Tammy to let me see the letters, and if it was ethical for me to tell them the story, and then we compare the case to Hamlet and everyone is happy except Kevin-- but he knows the deal, which is that I will pretty much use any example that connects in my class to prove a point, but, unfortunately, not everyone knows this and my big mouth can lead to some awkward situations, such as last Tuesday, when I was explaining to my Creative Writing class how I am often a terribly illogical arguer and that I often make points that are rhetorically powerful but lack substance, I told them the breast milk example from the other day, and the fact that I shared this rather personal story found its way back to Rachel, the woman who tasted her own green-tinted breast milk, and she was NOT happy with me using that example because her students mentioned it in class and it made her truly embarrassed and red-faced . . . so there's a lot for me to learn here and I think I've learned it, but in case I haven't learned it, please remember: your secret is NOT safe with me.

Fecal Paradox

Due to lack of snow, the Canadian geese never left the park by my house this winter, and so the fields and paths are a shit-stained mess, except-- ironically-- the dog park, which has the only clean grass in the vicinity.

Polar Plunge 2012: Time to "Mose Up"

I have reported before on my wife's tendency to mix metaphors-- and she's been in rare form lately, creating new idioms such as shit in the wall (a mixture of "hole in the wall" and "shithole") and screw yourself into a corner ("paint yourself into a corner" and "screw up") but my favorite is the one she used at this year's Polar Plunge . . . she said that next year everyone has to "Mose up," combining the phrase "man up" with my buddy Dave's nickname "Mose," as Mose was the clear victor of the Polar Plunge again: last year he plunged three times and this year we thought we lost him in the crowd, only to find him swimming around in the frigid ocean . . . he was probably in the water for close to ten minutes, and when he finally emerged from the water-- surprise!-- he was wearing a Speedo, which he hid under a long pair of bathing trunks until moments before the mayhem, so that none of our group saw his outfit until he came out of the water . . . and as he strode out of the sea, pale and red-skinned, we rushed over to get pictures with him and found it difficult as he was painfully cold to the touch, so the bar has been set once again and next year we are all going to have to "mose up," and if my prose wasn't enough for you, scroll down for a special event on Sentence of Dave that we like to call The Sequence of Mose.

Attention Lorne Michaels: Free Comedy Sketch!

My friend Igor wrote a scathing critique of The Grammys the other day, and it gave me an idea for a gut-bustingly funny comedy sketch . . . here's my pitch: you have a bunch of grandmothers-- a.k.a. the grammys-- discussing the biggest hits of the year, rapping hip-hop lyrics, trying to sing Adele a capella, and then ultimately deciding who winds the awards-- somehow these women, these antediluvian grammys, like the Greek Fates, have all the power in the industry . . . I'm chuckling already, thinking about old ladies breaking, locking, and popping to "Watch the Throne."

What Do Todd Margaret And Tommy Saxondale Have in Common?

The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret is another TV program that belongs in the "Dave Thinks It's Hysterical But His Wife Thinks It's Too Silly" category, along with Saxondale and The Alan Partridge Show.

Would This Happen If I Were Driving A Mini-Van?

Someday I'm going to man-up and buy a new car-- most likely a mini-van-- and although it will be convenient and wonderful to have sliding doors, a cup-holder, heat, A/C, doors that lock, and other modern features, I'll miss the things you can't buy in a car: case in point, the other day I was walking out of the public library with my new books, and I was thinking about a million things and not paying very close attention to my surroundings and when I pulled on the door handle of my Jeep, I was surprised to find it locked-- and I rarely lock it because I don't have power locks-- so I pulled a bit harder, and then I was even more surprised when a face appeared in the window; after a moment it dawned on me-- this wasn't my Jeep! it was an identical 1993 forest green Jeep Cherokee with the same rust marks and peeling plastic trim, and so I shrugged my shoulders and gave my best "I'm not a lunatic smile" and pointed to my Jeep, which was parked next to the doppelganger Jeep and the guy inside, an older African American gent, followed my muted logic and laughed as well . . . two days later, I parked next to him again, and he rolled down his window and introduced himself to me-- his name is Bill and his Jeep has 187,000 miles on it and his wife had one that got 380,000 miles before she got into an accident on Industrial Avenue and since the mistaken identity incident we've talked several times as he's always reading in his car in the library parking lot (which is a bit odd, but maybe he's so attached to his Jeep that he prefers to sit inside his car rather than sit inside the library) and I doubt that anything like this will happen once I purchase a Toyota Sienna.

One of the Benefits of Growing Old

Twenty years from now, my only hope is that people will refer to me as a "character" instead of an "idiot."

This Is Why I Don't Drink Milk or Argue With Women

The other day in the English office, my friend and colleague Rachel claimed that her breast milk "turned green" when she ate a lot of salad, but I was skeptical and told her that she must have been hallucinating-- but I guess I don't know much about breastfeeding (and I have no problem admitting this) and so I did some research on-line and certain foods-- especially yellow and orange foods loaded with carotene-- can tint breast milk; Rachel has also tasted her own breast milk, which I find extremely gross, and when I tried to express this she countered with a very rational remark: "I taste everything my child eats," and that gave me time to process and NOT say what I was going to say next, which was, "Well, I don't drink my own urine," which doesn't make a lick of sense, but momentarily seemed like a powerful rhetorical flourish to my argument.

Christmas Serenity . . . for Now

Though I loved this particular piece of anti-Xmas art, I am proud to say that I had no annual Christmas melt-down this year-- I may have ranted a bit to my students about wrapping paper, but that was just to bait them into discussing consumerism and American culture-- but I delivered no full out angry anti-Christmas monologue to family members or colleagues, so either I am mellowing out or things are building to a head behind my calm exterior and we are going to have a "serenity now" scenario soon (on the other hand, I do readily admit that I despise Valentine's Day, especially the whole kids being forced to give every single classmate a Valentine thing-- the card industry is "training" them to be guilt-ridden materialists and we're all encouraging it).

Six of One, 3.85 Fixed Rate APR of the Other . . .

Though the result is essentially the same, I think I'd rather rob my bank rather than go through the hassle of refinancing my mortgage.

Does A.D. Mean Alcohol Dependent?

And without the discovery of fermentation, would we have already conquered the stars?

Does B.C. Mean Before Caffeine?

Without the benefits of coffee, would mankind still be in the dark ages?

Alan Moore: Predictable and Amusing (Just Like Me)

DC Comics is planning to release a seven comic book mini-series prequel to the unparalleled comic masterpiece Watchmen, and (according to The New York Times) creator Alan Moore is-- you guessed it!-- outraged and calls the new venture "completely shameless" and the article reports on Moore's typical pompous grouchiness, and explains that he has "completely disassociated himself from DC comics and the industry at large," and this sounds like a lot of fun-- to completely disassociate oneself from something, so here are a few things that I am now involved in that I plan to completely and indignantly disassociate myself from in the future:

1)  doing the dishes
2)  picking up dog poop
3)  tying my children's shoes
4)  wearing underwear
5)  flossing
6)  blogging
7)  canker sores
8)  Boardwalk Empire
9)  driving
10) Canada.

Sometimes You Need To Take Yourself For A Walk

I am browsing through Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems, which is written by Cesar Milan-- the "dog whisperer" himself (no relation to the slightly lesser known "dog hollerer") and Cesar believes that walking your dog is the "single most powerful tool" to connect with your dog's mind, as "fish need to swim, birds need to fly . . . and dogs need to walk," and I think this might be true for humans as well, but the difference is that humans don't need to walk in a pack-- obediently following the pack leader-- humans need to walk themselves . . . we occasionally need to be alone and moving with complete autonomy-- I think this taps into our hunter-gatherer roots . . . perhaps it's why women like to go shopping; I certainly walk to relieve stress and my friend Whitney recently reminded me of a perfect example of how well this works: several years ago Whitney and I drove from Virginia to Colorado for a wedding, and we were supposed to get a good night's sleep and start the drive bright and early, but instead we stayed up until three in the morning drinking beer and playing darts, and then we spent twenty-two hung-over hours in the car together, and when we arrived at our destination in Boulder and parked the car, we had a brief argument about the best way to walk downtown-- where we were meeting a friend-- but the argument was more about being in the car too long with each other, and so, without any formal good-bye, we simply parted ways, and I took the high road and Whitney took the low road, and twenty minutes later, we met at the bar (I think Whitney got there first, but we actually didn't speak of our separation or the argument until hours later) and after each of us had our "walk," we were able to tolerate each other again . . . and even cooperate with each other: we bought a wiffle-ball and bat and when we crossed the continental divide, we took turn pitching to each other in a very civilized fashion until Whitney hit one over the edge of the continent: the ball plummeted over a cliff and onto a snowbank and we were quite pleased with ourselves-- but then, to our surprise, some high school kids clambered down the cliff and formed a human chain and "rescued" the ball and returned it to us, so we had to hit it off the divide again.

Dave's Favorite Story About Dave

Other readers have shared their Favorite Stories about Dave, and most have these have been in the Awkward Moments of Dave genre, but I would like to tell my favorite story about Dave, and it's not awkward at all, in fact-- believe it or not-- I am the clever hero of the story, in the tradition of cunning tricksters like Odysseus, Loki, and Br'er Rabbit, but don't worry, this theme won't be a recurring feature because it never happened again, so enjoy the one time I came through in the clutch: several years ago, when my two boys were quite young-- just able to walk and talk-- and we took a trip to the Newark Museum, which has a mini-zoo, art galleries, a fire museum, and a natural history section . . . and we were walking from the mini-zoo to the elevators, and the only way was through the art galleries, and so I was making the best of it, pointing out things my kids could recognize in the paintings, boats and cars and colors; the museum was empty-- a ghost town-- and so the guards, who were probably bored out of their minds, started chasing Alex and Ian around a bit, which my kids loved . . . Ian went one way and  Alex ran the other, and I chased Ian because he was younger and then I heard BEEP BEEP BEEP from the room next door and when I got in there, I saw Alex touching a large painting, and this had triggered the alarm system-- so I told him you couldn't touch the paintings and apologized to the guards, but they weren't upset at him, of course, since they had instigated the running around, and when we finally got to the elevators, there was a post-modern sculpture next to the doors-- it was an intimidating pile of seven or eight televisions, and the top and bottom screens showed a silver Buddha head floating on the ocean, being buffeted by the waves, and all the screens in the middle showed the same rotating Buddha head, but each screen was tinted a different color-- red, green, blue, yellow, purple-- and right next to the tower of TV's was a video camera and a rotating Buddha head-- the same Buddha head that was on all the TV screens-- and so I wondered if the camera was actually filming the head and sending a live-feed to the televisions, or if they were just playing a loop of film, so-- naturally-- I stuck my hand in front of the camera (I also wanted to see if my hand would appear in a different color on each screen) and I was rewarded with both the image of my hand on every screen and the BEEP BEEP BEEP of the alarm-- like a child, I had set off the system, but when the guard jogged in to check out why the alarm was going off, I pointed to my son Alex and said, "Alex, I told you, you can't touch anything here-- it's a museum!" and then we got into the elevator and made a clean getaway; this is the only time in my life I was able to think on my feet and say the right thing at the right time, and-- even though I threw my eldest child under the bus-- it felt wonderful.

Dog Thought #2

They say you have to bond with a new dog, so that it feels like part of your family, and-- as everyone knows-- the best way to bond is to have something in common . . . luckily, Sirius and I do have a common thread: parasitic worms (and you'd think since I once had some of these critters living in my intestines, I would have been less grossed-out when I "discovered" them in his stool, but they were still wriggling, nearly causing me to faint in the park).

Even Hamlet Can't Compete With a Giant Wasp

Like most teachers, I get very wound up and excited when I start Hamlet -- it's the ultimate piece of literature, totally engaging and entertaining, and full of comedy, tragedy, controversy, ambiguity, and supernatural fun -- but no matter how exciting the opening scene is, from the initial "Who's there?" to the ghost's entrance, it can't compete with a giant wasp, but that's been the recurring situation for the past few days, I start a lesson and then a wasp appears . . . I think there might be a nest somewhere in my ceiling . . . and once a wasp is hovering around, there's only one thing for students to look at , and it's not their Shakespeare text, and so the wasp must be killed, and one period that got pretty ugly-- I was smashing a stool into the ceiling tiles at one point-- but later in the day, when another giant wasp appeared in a different class, instead of killing the wasp-- which was time-consuming and distracting-- I incorporated it into the scene: I was playing the role of the Hamlet's scholarly friend, Horatio, who is enlisted to speak to the ghost, and so I made the wasp play the ghost and I yelled my lines at it "Stay, illusion! If thou hast any sound, or use of voice, speak to me!" and this seemed to appease it, so maybe it's not a living wasp at all, but the ghost of a giant wasp that I killed in the past.

Dog Thought #1

One of the ways I blow off steam is by walking around-- but I always feel a bit like a lunatic if I'm walking around completely aimlessly, without any ostensible purpose, so I usually "create" a perfunctory errand: I go buy cold cuts or a cup of coffee or some beer . . . but, of course, it's more about listening to my iPod and getting out of the house, alone and unfettered; one of the benefits of owning a dog is that now I don't have to invent a task for myself, I can just walk around aimlessly with the dog, and people look at me and think: he's not an itinerant wandering lunatic, he's just out walking his dog . . . but the only down side to this arrangement is that you have to talk to the Dog People you meet and I'm horrible at Dog Talk . . .

Dave: That's a beautiful dog . . . what is he, a Basset Hound? A Pekinese?
Dog Person: She's a Great Dane . . .
Dave: Oh, right . . . how about that one? A Shar-pei?
Dog Person: That's a cat.

Who Cares? Not Tom Ripley. Not Banksy. You.

The talented Tom Ripley is at it again in Ripley Under Ground, the second book in Patricia Highsmith's "Ripliad" series-- this time his victim is an unlucky art patron named Thomas Murchison, who rightly suspects that the painting he has bought is a forgery-- unfortunately he has stumbled into one of Tom Ripley's sophisticated con games-- and because he can't adopt Ripley's amorality, he ends up a corpse, but Highsmith has bigger fish to fry than just murder: Ripley asks Murchison, "Why disturb a forger who's doing such good work?" and this raises one of my favorite artistic/philosophical debates, which is portrayed in both the documentary My Kid Could Paint That and Banksy's perplexing film Exit Through The Gift Shop . . if there is any way to objectively judge art, then it shouldn't matter who painted the picture-- if it's good, then it's good-- but, of course, our brains don't work like that; art buyers want to be sure that it is prodigy Marla Olmstead that painted the canvases they spent so much money on, not her dad, and when Oprah revealed that James Frey's "memoir" A Million Little Pieces is actually part fictional, people were outraged-- including me!-- and so I suppose I should come clean here and reveal that Sentence of Dave is actually written by a trained donkey, not a computer program . . . but I'm sure you all suspected that from the start.

How Did This Happen?

I am an introverted person who enjoys being alone for long stretches of time-- I like to read and play the guitar and write sentences and listen to music-- and I have trouble thinking about more than one thing at a time, but somehow I've gotten myself into the absurd position where I have to: 1) be the boss of over a hundred kids during the school day . . . I constantly compel them do things that they would never do on their own: read Shakespeare, write essays, perform skits, and draw horses (I especially love compelling kids to draw horses, because if you can't draw-- and the bulk of the population in America can't draw-- then drawing a horse is especially comical) and then 2) after school I have to lord over my own children, and compel them to do homework and clean-up their shit and eat their dinner and brush their teeth and stop fighting, and now 3) we've added a dog to the equation, and I've never had a dog, but everything I've read explains that you have to establish yourself as the alpha and show the dog who's boss and my friend John gave me this advice: "Dog training is easy, you just need to establish that you are the master," and that makes sense, of course, but I often wonder: How did this happen? because I would be perfectly content being The Boss of No One and The Master of Nothing.

Specific Demographic

My friend Ann believes there is a very specific advertising demographic profile which consists of: 1) men in their late thirties and early forties 2) who use the digital music service Spotify 3) and run while wearing Vibram Five Fingers (those goofy looking "shoes" that have individual slots for each toe, and simulate the experience of running barefoot . . . sans glass shards, tetanus, and trichinosis) and she may be right . . . and I may be a member of this demographic, but all I can say in my defense-- which is exactly what the advertising folks want me to say-- is, "I love Spotify!" and "I love my Vibram Five Fingers!" and "I can't wait to see what they sell me next!"

Neal Stephenson Cares About Canada . . . and by the transitive property, so do I

The first seven hundred pages of Neal Stephenson's new novel Reamde take place in exotic locales such as Xiamen, Taiwan, the Philippines, and the MMORPG T'Rain, but the last three hundred pages follow international terrorist Abdullah Jones as he makes his way through the mountains of British Columbia towards the U.S. border-- and though the Canadian portion of the novel is a bit slower paced than the rest, it is well worth the wait until the entire international cast of characters descend on the inaccessible and mountainous border of Idaho and Canada-- Stephenson has a miniature war play out there, and his detailed, steady description of multiple plot threads is so arresting (not to mention that after 1000 pages you're rather attached to the characters) that your heart will race, your palms will sweat, the outside world will vanish, and when you finish the final page, you won't believe that the experience was NOT virtual, not generated by any sort of technology, and simply the result of well-placed squiggles on the white pages of a very thick book.