My wife turned fifty today and she received a pair of lovely diamond earrings . . . and this bowerbird mating video explains why this happened-- if you need a full explanation, listen to this Radiolab podcast.
Dave Reads Fifty Before Cat Turns Fifty
My wife is turning fifty tomorrow-- quite a milestone-- but more significantly, I just finished my fiftieth book of the year The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-centered Planet by John Green. . . and judging by the number of passages I highlighted on my Kindle, it's a good one-- here are the highlights, with some fragmented commentary:
there's a lot of stuff on understanding the vastness of time . . .
Complex organisms tend to have shorter temporal ranges than simple ones . . .
When you measure time in Halleys rather than years, history starts to look different. As the comet visited us in 1986, my dad brought home a personal computer—the first in our neighborhood. One Halley earlier, the first movie adaptation of Frankenstein was released. The Halley before that, Charles Darwin was aboard the HMS Beagle. The Halley before that, the United States wasn’t a country.
Put another way: In 2021, we are five human lifetimes removed from the building of the Taj Mahal, and two lifetimes removed from the abolition of slavery in the United States. History, like human life, is at once incredibly fast and agonizingly slow.
John Green, who is very literary, actually missed an easy allusion here-- see if you know what I'm talking about:
Eventually, in what may have been the most entitled moment of my life, I called and requested a room change because the ceaseless tinkling of the Gatsby Suite’s massive crystal chandelier was disturbing my sleep. As I made that call, I could feel the eyes of Fitzgerald staring down at me.
he should have referred to the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg on the billboard over the valley of ashes-- as they were the eyes of God, staring at the corrupt and immoral wasteland of America . . .
on imagery
We’ve long known that images are unreliable—Kafka wrote that “nothing is as deceptive as a photograph"
on the stupid geese in the park . . .
Like us, the success of their species has affected their habitats: A single Canada goose can produce up to one hundred pounds of excrement per year, which has led to unsafe E. coli levels in lakes and ponds where they gather.
on the lawns which we mow, water, fertilize and manicure:
In the daily grind of a human life, there’s a lawn to mow, soccer practices to drive to, a mortgage to pay. And so I go on living the way I feel like people always have, the way that seems like the right way, or even the only way. I mow the lawn of Poa pratensis as if lawns are natural, when in fact we didn’t invent the suburban American lawn until one hundred and sixty years ago. And I drive to soccer practice, even though that was impossible one hundred and sixty years ago—not only because there were no cars, but also because soccer hadn’t been invented. And I pay the mortgage, even though mortgages as we understand them today weren’t widely available until the 1930s. So much of what feels inevitably, inescapably human to me is in fact very, very new, including the everywhereness of the Canada goose.
on the past and the future
And I suspect that our choices will seem unforgivable and even unfathomable to the people reading those history books. “It is fortunate,” Charles Dudley Warner wrote more than a century ago, “that each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.”
something that might be true (but would make me uncomfortable)
Taylor Lorenz tweeted that office air-conditioning systems are sexist, a blog in the Atlantic wrote, “To think the temperature in a building is sexist is absurd.” But it’s not absurd. What’s absurd is reducing workplace productivity by using precious fossil fuels to excessively cool an office building so that men wearing ornamental jackets will feel more comfortable.
a sports essay that made me cry
Dudek’s spaghetti legs, and this will end, and the light-soaked days are coming. I give Jerzy Dudek’sperformance on May 25, 2005 five stars.
and another sporting essay that made me cry-- this one on the yips-- I am a sucker for sports . . .
And then one day in 2007—six years removed from the wild pitch that took away his control forever—the St.Louis Cardinals called Rick Ankiel back to the major leagues as an outfielder. When Ankiel went to bat for the first time, the game had to be paused because the crowd’s standing ovation was so long and so loud. Rick Ankiel hit a home run in that game.
Two days later, he hit two more home runs. His throws from the outfield were phenomenally accurate—among the best in baseball. He would go on to play as a center fielder in the major leagues for six more years. Today, the most recent player to have won over ten games as a pitcher and hit over fifty home runs as a hitter is Rick Ankiel. I give the yips one and a half stars.
more on lawns . . .
more land and more water are devoted to the cultivation of lawn grass in the United States than to corn and wheat combined. There are around 163,000 square kilometers of lawn in the U.S., greater than the size of Ohio,or the entire nation of Italy. Almost one-third of all residential water use in the U.S.—clean, drinkable water—is dedicated to lawns. To thrive, Kentucky bluegrass often requires fertilizer an pesticides and complex irrigation systems, all of which we offer up to the plant in abundance, even though it cannot be eaten by humans or used for anything except walking and playing on. The U.S.’s most abundant and labor-intensive crop is pure, unadulterated ornamentation.
Green writes about my favorite literary term, the pathetic fallacy!
There’s a phrase in literary analysis for our habit of ascribing human emotions to the nonhuman: the pathetic fallacy, which is often used to reflect the inner life of characters through the outer world, as when Keats in “Ode on Melancholy” writes of a “weeping cloud,” or Shakespeare in Julius Caesar refers to “threatening clouds.”
and he writes about my favorite poem . . .
There’s an Emily Dickinson poem that begins, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain.” It’s one of the only poems I’ve managed to commit to memory. It ends like this:
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge, And
Finished knowing - then -
and he writes about America's proclivity for large balls of stuff, like the largest ball of paint, which started as a baseball:
“My intention was to paint maybe a thousand coats on it and then maybe cut it in half and see what it looked like. But then it got to the size where it looked kinda neat, and all my family said keep painting it.” Carmichael also invited friends and family over to paint the ball, and eventually strangers started showing up, and Mike would have them paint it, too. Now, over forty years later, there are more than twenty-six thousand layers of paint on that baseball. It weighs two and a half tons.
and he describes a photo I'd like to know more about and a novel based on the photo . . .
Richard Powers’s novel Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance
I gave John Green's new book five stars!
Dave Might Survive
I am the worst at being sick-- but now that I'm feeling better it all seems kind of silly; the Thanksgiving break started off well-- we saw a great Beatles cover-band at Pino's on Wednesday night, then on Thursday Ian and I played two sets of tennis-- and I can usually only make it through one set (Ian beat me 6-4 and 6-3 and he claims I will never beat him in a set again and he put a pound of quality chocolate on the line) and then we had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner at my parents and then Friday I got a BRUTAL massage from an old Asian lady (after I went to the gym) and then I played tennis with Ian later in the day-- though it was cold-- and then we went to the Rutgers women's soccer game that night and it was freezing and the game went into overtime RU won!) and the next day I felt kind of crappy-- glassy eyes and fatigue-- and then Saturday night I hung out at my parents' place with my dad and my cousins while the ladies went to a fancy Italian restaurant in Robbinsville-- and by the time the ladies got back, I was feeling really lousy, and I spent the night freezing cold and then burning hot-- with some stomach issues-- and I felt awful all day today (and I even went for a Covid test) but now my joints are no longer sore and my stomach doesn't hurt and I just might live . . . of course, I might not live-- and I've been reading John Green's new book (The Anthropocene Reviewed) which can make you into an obsessive hypochondriac (but in a fun way) and his chapter on the plague is pretty grim . . . but this doesn't seem like the plague (but only time will tell . . . and while the plague had some terrible suppurating and devastating symptoms, nothing is worse than glassy eyes).
A Love Song
Greasetruck presents something romantic: a love song set in Nicaragua amidst the Contra/Sandinista conflict . . .
Something For Which We Can All be Thankful
I just finished the third book in Ben H. Winters' Last Policeman Trilogy (Word of Trouble) and while I will offer no spoilers, I will say that the books remain mystery novels until the end-- the milieu might be apocalyptic but the thrust and theme of the novels are solving crimes, seeking truth, and answering questions-- and this Thanksgiving, I am thankful that a giant-civilization-ending asteroid is not headed for the earth any time in the near future (as far as we know).
If You're Wondering Why There's a Teacher Shortage . . .
This morning during first period I got the weird silvery aura in my right eye that happens sometimes when I look at a screen too much-- and I'm always looking at a screen these days, since they took away the printers and we migrated all our texts and work to Canvas: our digital learning platform-- and now our periods are 84 minutes long, instead of 42 minutes (because someone thought that was a good idea) so I was in for the long haul with this hazy eye (and oncoming headache) so I put on my blue-blocker screen glasses-- which I never use because I have to wear a mask and when I wear a mask and glasses, I fog up (probably because I wear a modified, very breathable, fake mask that barely touches my face) and after a second 84 minute period the silvery aura faded (I did some stuff where the kids wrote on the whiteboard, so I could avoid looking at a screen) and even writing this sentence is hurting my eyes a bit so I'm going to end it here.
Tragedy of the Viscid Variety
It's the end of an era, a cataclysmically tragic truncation of the most royal jelly . . . Birnn Chocolate-- our delicious town chocolate factory, a Highland Park institution-- no longer makes raspberry jellies-- the only raspberry jellies worth eating (because the jelly is homemade, firm and not that sweet) and they are discontinued due to lack of demand, and judging by the rather unconcerned reaction of old lady Birnn to my horror and lamentation at the loss of the jellies, I don't think they are coming back any time soon.
Don't Think About This . . .
If all the money spent on lobbying and campaign finance actually went toward infrastructure and scientific progress, we'd be living in an equally distributed sci-fi future.
Required Listening (Whether You Go Online or Not)
Whether or not you care for Joe Rogan-- and I love the guy, I think he's smart and curious and funny and knows how to let people talk-- but that doesn't matter, you need to listen to episode #1736 with Tristan Harris (of The Social Dilemma) and Daniel Schmacktenberger . . . and it doesn't matter if you go on social media like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, or whether-- like me-- the extent of your social media consumption is two blogs . . . here are some of the things they discuss:
the arms war between apps and beautification filters . . . if one app implements a filter then other apps have to follow;
the fact that China and Russia don't have to wage a ground war or an air war or a nuclear war, because they are stalling our progress from within, by creating polarization and political cynicism and obstructionism and they are doing it with troll farms-- the top fifteen Christian sites are troll farms, spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation and radicalizing folks-- and you don't even have to invite them on Facebook, if they invite you, then you will see their stuff in your feed;
this could even lead to stochastic terrorism . . . and awesome term that could be a punk band name-- it's really hard to get one particular person to commit an act of terrorism-- say Lee Harvey Oswald-- but it's easy to flood a country of 330 million with incendiary misinformation and eventually produce a Kyle Rittenhouse or whoever else, just through chucking shit at the dartboard and hoping some of it hits;
there tend to be two huge gutters that the bowling bowl of the internet is heading towards-- Orwellian autocratic dystopia and chaotic Huxleyian democratic catastrophe . . . Taiwan might be some middle ground;
China regulates its internet MUCH more than we do-- social media for those under 14 shuts down from 10 PM to 6 AM, if you game too long you will receive a reminder to get up, the scroll is not infinite, the TikTok algorithm promotes engineering, etcetera;
the fact that the CCP is providing the programming for American youth is scary . . .
according to Harris and Schmacktenberger, the problem is that we have "paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology" and they think the government needs to step in because the corporations have direct access to democracy, unlike an oil company that has to at least go through lobbyists;
Rogan believes the government isn't invested enough and it will have to come from individuals educating themselves and inoculating themselves against the evils of these platforms-- but he fully admits that unhappy people seek dopamine and purpose on the internet . . .
Harris wants to measure the success of a country not through GDP-- which goes up during times of addiction and war-- but through LACK of addiction;
Harris and Schmacktenberger are trying to imagine a new internet that nudges us in other directions than social media and the hyper stimulus for unreal dating, info, debate, gaming, connection;and I have an Android phone, which apparently is just a data farm, but perhaps I should get an Apple phone because they seem to be a more good faith company . . . I don't know but this episode raises more questions than it answers and may change the minds of some folks who dismiss Joe Rogan as a meathead and an idiot.
Sometimes a Cookie Is More Than a Cookie
After I ate lunch last Saturday, while my wife was on the phone in the basement, I had a hankering for something sweet and I remembered that last week there was some kind of half-eaten chocolatey cookie thing in her lunch cooler-- I had sampled it and it was pretty good-- and I checked her bag and it was still there and I didn't want to interrupt her phone call (and I was hungry) so I ate it (pretty much inhaled it) and then I took a nap . . . and at some point during my nap, my wife woke me up and asked "Did you eat the cookie in my lunch bag?" and I confirmed this and she got pretty upset-- I wasn't sure why-- but I fell back to sleep . . . and when I woke up, she told me that this was a special cookie that her co-teacher had brought back from DisneyWorld for her-- that you had to wait a very long time at some gothic bakery named Gideon's Bakehouse and she had been eating a little bit of each day . . . and when she got off the phone, her plan was to relax and have some tea and eat the remainder of this special cookie-- everyone else in the house was napping and she was trying to not get angry when everyone else was relaxing when there was shit to get done, so she was going to try to relax herself but I had ruined it by selfishly eating her cookie-- I violated her personal space, went into her lunch cooler, didn't ask permission, and I had eaten all her potato chips the day before, etcetera . . . and so I apologized-- but qualified my apology by saying that if I had known how important this cookie was to her, I wouldn't have eaten (but also pointing out that no cookie should have this kind of value) and then Catherine, Alex and I were headed to go see Dune at the Rutgers Theater . . which isn't as fun to watch when your wife is mad at you-- and Alex and I were of the same mindset: it's just a cookie! and so we watched Dune-- which is a decent movie but doesn't really capture the heat and grit and dust of the desert . . . it's more Star Wars than Fury Road-- and then when we got home, Ian was up in his bed and he had been eating candy in his bed and throwing the wrappers and empty boxes under his bed-- as he is wont to do-- and this is a fineable offense for him, because it's gross and unhealthy and attracts mice-- and I got mad at him for doing this again-- and because he was hoarding a giant bag of Twix in his room-- and then Catherine got mad at me for getting mad at him because she said the reason he hoards candy in his room is that if it's downstairs, I'll eat it-- because eat everything, without regard for the owner (which is kind of true) and so I started making some rules about how no one is allowed to bring more than one serving of candy into the house-- because I can't control myself and everyone was pissed off at me and I was pissed off at everyone and I was sick of being treated like some kind of monster because I ate a cookie and then next morning I took the dog for a walk and then when I got back Catherine wanted to talk about what happened and I made a rash decision-- I took back my apology for eating the cookie! and this was very stupid but I wasn't really thinking clearly but I said that it had been in her cooler since last week and she hadn't told me the value, etc. etc. and there was more arguing but then I realized that I was wrong-- although I did get Catherine to admit ten percent guilt in the altercation-- she should have told me about the cookie and she shouldn't have overreacted so much and I made a special shelf in the cupboard for Catherine and Ian's food-- a shelf I'm really going to try not to violate-- and I got her a special cupcake at the special cupcake store that was just for (and I even waited in line . . . about a minute) and I also assured her that the cookie, from what I could remember, didn't even taste that good (and I guess this kind of shit is happening the world over because my boss Jess came in with a similar story-- she has two young kids-- and she brought home two cookies, one for each of them, but her husband ate one without asking and so she had to split the other cookie for her children) and it seems there are two kinds fo people-- people like me and Alex, who don't really treat there possessions all that possessively-- and people like Ian and my wife, who want their stuff and think people shouldn't steal and eat it (and those two are ore vengeful . . . Catherine made a batch of cookies and she put a post-it on it doling out the amounts-- Alex, Ian and Catherine got eight each but I only got three).
That's Good Stuff
I've been grading Rutgers essays all week and procrastinating on posting my good content, but Larry David hasn't been holding back his best stuff: episode 4 of the new season (11) may be one of the best ever . . . check out the"The Watermelon" as soon as possible.
Stacey = Sherlock
It's always an exciting school day when you've got to solve a plagiarism case-- and Stacey and I did it in a period . . . she was lucky enough to get a full confession, which exonerated my student (it seems her paper was stolen and then altered slightly, sentence-by-sentence . . . but the transformation was not enough to fool Turnitin).
77 Days and Counting
Countdown City-- the second book in Ben Winters' Last Policeman trilogy-- is a little less of a procedural mystery novel and a little more of an apocalypse novel . . . which is fitting because now the asteroid Maia is only 77 days out and more and more people are losing their shit; I was completely satisfied with the tipping of the scales . . . Hank Palace is still on the case-- though the case is weird and obtuse and he's not even on the police force any longer (because they've disbanded all the divisions except street police . . .) but things are getting grim and there are larger concerns, conspiratorial concerns and survival concerns and I'm very excited to read the finale in the trilogy, and I've got no clue where it will go.
Ten Years of Scary Stories!
Another excellent Scary Story Contest last night, the tenth one . . . so the prompt was "Ten Years Later" . . . Stacy and I had to cut A LOT of words on Friday-- the deadline day-- in order to get it under the limit (2000) and though we didn't win, I'm very proud of how we pared down our piece, which was a 2030 Ten Year Reunion of the Class of Covid . . . and no one wanted to go, aside for murderous insane reasons and thinks got very very ugly (I was especially proud of my VR idea . . . someone had downloaded everyone's high school photos so everyone wore VR goggles and you appeared as you did in high school, which was cool-- aside from the fat girl with acne who lost a bunch of weight and kicked the drugs and sugar that were giving her skin trouble-- she was really angry that everyone was seeing the high school version of herself instead of the big reveal) and while our story got a lot of laughs, it was not the winner-- Cunningham won again, this time with a photorealistically described tale of a pair of hoarders, one of whom was dead and the other was arguing with the skeleton over the same stupid shit for ten years; I read Liz Soder's tale of a chimp named Garbo who led an absoutely inhuamne life in a lab-- and she came in second; and there was also a sell your soul to a healer/preacher/devil tale by Mooney; a tightly plotted Goonies style international mystery by Eric and a disturbing tale of molestation and revenge by Liz . . . I'm always impressed by how excellent the stories are and we've all gotten really good at plotting and developing under the 2000 word limit . . . and it's really a treat to get your story read aloud by a new reader . . . so thanks to the Soders for hosting, and for all who wrote and all who attended . . . it really is one of the best social events of the year.
I Like to READ Stories
Tomorrow is the 10th Annual Scary Story Contest and Stacey and I are still way over the word limit on our story and we are giving up and going to bed . . . we will finish this thing on the clock during school tomorrow-- and thus be professionally paid writers-- and I can't wait to get upstairs into bed and read my professionally written novel Countdown City . . . because I truly enjoy reading fiction far more than I enjoy writing it, and this stupid contest makes me appreciate the time, energy, logic, revision, editing, and passion that goes into writing a great book.
Rage, rage! Against the dying of the light!
My wife has banned me from ranting about Daylight Saving Time to her, so I'll do it here instead: New Jersey is experiencing the finest fall weather possible-- mid-60s and sunny and dry-- and this lovely sunlight has been stolen . . .. stolen! . . . by these bureaucratic time manipulators who need to justify their job by changing the clocks . . . I could be enjoying several hours of this beautiful weather after school lets out but because we decided to "fall back," now it gets dark at 4:30 PM . . . why? why? why not just leave the clocks on Daylight Saving Time, use lights in the morning, and enjoy tennis, hiking, dog-walking, etc. in the evening . . . this seems like a no-brainer-- plus we avoid the shitty feeling of feeling "off" because the clocks have been moved . . . I just don't get it.
The Midnight Library
I'm not sure if I accept the Borgesian premise of Matt Haig's novel The Midnight Library . . . but I'm also not sure if Nora the narrator-- or Matt Haig himself-- accepts the premise either . . . but the adventure of parallel universes and the many, many, many possible lives of Nora-- the rock star lives and the depressive lives and the addicted lives and the successful lives, the jobless lives and the Arctic lives, heaps and heaps of lives . . . and perhaps this is how the forking paths of time branch, but I think things might tend a bit more towards the mean-- I could be wrong of course, especially seeing the way my best friend and I met our wives (in the middle of the road in New Brunswick, after the bars emptied out) and understanding my life might be completely different if that moment didn't occur . . . but it's worth getting to the end and seeing how things resolve-- because maybe all these possible lives aren't that important anyway.
New Jersey . . . It's Dense
Soccer season is over . . . tragically . . . so Catherine and I went on an adventure today in our newly detailed (and dry) Mazda . . . lots of contrast in a small area:
1) we went to the Jersey Shore Outlets and I bought some golf shirts at the Under Armour outlet because they gave an additional 40% off to frontline workers-- including teachers!-- and a pair of running shoes at Saucony . . . most places are giving big discounts to veterans, teachers, hospital workers, etc . . . wild
2) then we hiked around the Manasquan Reservoir-- quickly-- because we didn't have the kids or the dog;
Sports (Can Be) Extra
Yesterday we played Middlesex in the second round of the state tournament-- they are the two seed and possibly the best team in the section-- they have two huge center backs and the best goalie in the county-- athletically, skill-wise, and in fashion-- and a number of skilled and physical players-- but we only lost 2-1 to them last time (and my son pulled his quad in that game and was out for two weeks) but yesterday we were playing them on their hilly grass field so it was going to be an ugly game-- they like to pack it back and play over the top, but they can also knock the ball around-- the first half we avoided a couple of scary opportunities and we had a couple of nice shots, which their goalie snagged, and so it was 0-0 into the second half . . . my son Alex went in at left-back and a few minutes later someone collided with him and kneed him in his bad quad and he had to be taken out of the game and our only other experienced defensive sub had a midl concussion, so we were down to no subs that could really deal with this level of physicality but we hung on and scored a nice goal fifteen minutes into the second half, to go up 1-0 . . . our big center back has been playing striker (Luke) and he knocked it over to Tekoa, who finished low and away on the super-keeper . . . everyone mobbed Tekoa-- I was so excited, I slipped and fell on the wet grass-- it was mayhem . . . and then, a few minutes later, the head ref decided the game with an absolutely abominable call . . . the ball was rolling into the side of the box and out big striker Luke was trotting after it and the goalie called it and came at it from an angle and he did something very clever: he scooped up the ball and then leapt forward into Luke-- so he initiated the contact (which was very mild) and the ref saw it differently and gave Luke a yellow card . . . it was his second yellow-- so he got sent off and we had to play with ten men-- and we were still generating chances-- our most skilled players, Robin and Matt, were connecting and getting shots off but to no avail and then the inevtiable happened . . . Middlesex scored on a bouncy shot to the corner from outside the eighteen and we were headed to overtime . . . Golden Goal . . . and we were playing with ten men and without our best defender/striker and a few minutes in, on a long free-kick, one of our defenders got thrown to the ground and three big guys got goal side and one of them scored on a header . . . a tough tough loss-- the kids were stunned, they sat in silence on the bench for fifteen minutes and it was an emotional bus-ride home . . ., especially for the seniors and the varsity coach; andf this would be the last away game bus ride I would take with these guys and my older son (aside from tennis season!) and they were truly a great crew to coach and while it was a hard way to go out, at least it was epic and against the best team in the section, but it was an emotional rollercoaster, yikes . . . and while we got knocked out this year, we all fondly remember our undefeated middle school season back in the day . . . sports, sports, sports . . . they're something else.
Valentine Street Massacre
This morning, my son and I absolutely annihilated a couple hundred frost-bitten lanternflies that adhered to the two small maple trees in the front of our house; I would post a picture but the carnage was too gross (and there were some giant wasps feeding on the carcasses . . . so we beat a hasty retreat once we were done with the squishing).
I Should Have Been a Bear
The cool weather is finally here (and wow did I eat a lot today . . . I guess my body is getting ready to hibernate).
Ritickulous
I thought it was cold enough to go for a walk with the dog at Rutgers Gardens this morning-- it was in the 40s-- but apparently the ticks were also enjoying the fall weather . . . one managed to get lost in my stomach hair and the other was on the outside of my sweatpants, making a parasitic bloodsucking beeline for some exposed flesh-- how far north do I have to go to avoid these critters?
The Last Policeman
The Last Policeman, a sci-fi/detective novel by Ben H. Winters, is the literary equivalent of David Bowie's impending-- but not too imminent-- apocalypse song "Five Years" . . . in The Last Policeman, a large asteroid will hit earth in six months time, most likely resulting in the end of civilization, but until then there are murders to solve and existential feelings to confront; the story-- like the Bowie song-- is a masterpiece of the mundane confronting the eschatological . . . but there's no big rush, yet (although plenty of folks are committing suicide or going Bucket List or taking early retirement or settling into a life of drugs and alcohol or embracing conspiracy theories, etc. but this is more background to the matters at hand: a murder and a cop who still believes he has a purpose).
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