Wind makes temperature irrelevant.
No Handles (Except Love Handles)
First time I played morning hoops twice in one week in a few months-- and, strangely, though my legs were tired, my knee felt fine-- it still took me some time (and profanity) to warm-up, but in the end it was worth it all: the getting up extra early; the packing of clothing and towel the night before; the double knee braces; the rapid and rather perfunctory shower in the moldy coach's room; the race to class; the ridicule and derision from the students because of my open-toed sandals (which are much easier to don after a fast shower) and the general hangriness while teaching the first two periods-- because I made a game-winning three in the last two games-- and that's all you really remember, that last shot (although I also remember a couple of out-of-control dribbling escapades and those episodes were pretty traumatic . . . I really shouldn't be handling the ball unless I'm going to immediately shoot it).
Four Albums and a Lager
Things I have been enjoying lately:
1) pianist McCoy Tyner's exotic sounding jazz albums, especially Extensions and Sahara;
2) saxophonist Cannonball Adderley's swinging bluesy jazz album Somethin' Else;
3) trumpeter Freddie Hubbard's jazz fusion classic Red Clay;
4) the dark and (barely) smoky Smoke & Dagger lager brewed by Jack's Abby.
American Art Forms and More Dated Allusions
Today in Grade 10 Honors English class, I charged my students to make the best possible argument for the "most American art form"-- I was doing this because we just finished Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and, unfortunately, the slave narrative was very popular and powerful American literary genre-- so I told them to choose another art form that embodied America-- and after some prompting, the five groups chose these topics: jazz, country music, hip-hop, reality TV, and motor vehicle culture . . . and the reality TV group was working right next to my desk, so I could hear their sophomoric logic and often needed to guide them towards rationality and at one point I said, "You've got to mention our president if you want to win this debate!" and they were like: "Wha?" and I then realized that these sophomore girls had never heard of The Apprentice and did not know Donald Trump's trademark phrase "You're fired" so I polled the class of twenty-five and only one student knew this . . . but then, after more prompting-- the sophomores require a lot of prompting-- they recognized the connection between the fantasy of reality TV and actual political reality-- the fact that Donald Trump was now actually firing federal employees-- and other than this youthful oversight, the presentations were quite persuasive-- hip-hop and car/motorcyle design and culture were probably the best-- but then I synthesized those and said that the MOST American art form is playing hip-hop from a monster stereo system in your tricked out low-rider . . . and then I informed them that though they did a good job, they all neglected to remember that we were still in the 1800s in the chronological progression of the class (which is not actually how the curriculum progresses but I like to teach the kids some history along the way so I like to do things chronologically) and so next class I will make my case for the Western as the most American art form-- or at least for the 1800s . . . as the Western features guns and freedom and taking the law into your own hands and treating Native American poorly and manifesting destiny westward and horses and trains . . . and I'm going to introduce this genre and how it operates with a clip from Malcolm Gladwell on Joe Rogan's podcast-- and this is two hours and twenty-six minutes in and Gladwell is starting to get wacky, as anyone would-- just before this segment he says some sexist things about women who love Law and Order and then he explains his compass-point theory on Westerns . . . and all the other compass points-- here are his categories of thrillers:
A Western takes place in “a world in which there is no law and order, and a man shows up and imposes, personally, law and order on the territory, the community”
An Eastern is “a story where there is law and order, so there are institutions of justice, but they have been subverted by people from within”
In a Northern, “law and order exists, and law and order is morally righteous, the system works.” (A prime example is, of course, Law and Order.)
A Southern is “where the entire apparatus is corrupt, and where the reformer is not an insider but an outsider.”
My Allusions Grow (Even More) Dated
The Week Begins, as Literacy Ends
It is Monday, it's butt-ass cold, the double birthday weekend is over, Donald Trump is aligning himself with Vladimir Putin's vision of the new world order, and apparently-- according to the new episode of Derek Thompson's podcast Plain English-- reading an entire book is a dying art.
I Can't Drive 55 (or at Night)
Me and the Seuss, we share birthday fun--
If the doc were alive, he'd be one-twenty-one!
I'm not quite that old, but D. Boon would be proud--
there's no shame in saying it, so I'll say it loud,
fuck all those youngsters, growing old is no crime--
I'll revel in my age: double nickels on the dime.
Champagne is Gross
We had a lovely pre-birthday celebration for Alex (and myself) last night-- we all went to Shanghai Dumpling and stuffed ourselves on noodles and various kinds of dumplings-- mainly soup-- and scallion pancakes and mochi sesame balls and then, though we didn't save room, we went back to our house and ate some birthday cheesecake and then Cat and I entertained the girlfriends with various photo albums and pictures of the boys when they were young and adorable and very silly . . . and Alex and Ian were great sports about all this, they really are getting to be actual normal people-- and Alex and I agreed that champagne is absolutely horrible (although Layla and my wife like the bubbles) and we're going to save the real drinking for our big birthday outing, we're going to see the Knicks in a couple weeks-- and then Ian drove the whole young crew back to New Brunswick and they went to a frat party or something, while the old folks collapsed on the couch to watch Mythic Quest and digest.
Birthday Weekend!
Buckle up: the birthday weekend begins-- Alex turns 21 tomorrow and I turn 55 on Sunday . . . so I put on a pot of coffee.
My Students Are Amazing (AI) Writers!
Earlier this week in my Creative Writing class we did an exercise where we voted on a topic and then everyone-- either alone or collaboratively-- wrote a piece on this topic, executing a particular literary technique . . . fun and simple and the topic the class chose was ripe for reflection: gossip . . . so once the kids finished, a student-- just a regular, run-of-the-mill standard sixteen-year-old-- read aloud his piece . . . and at the start there was some dialogue, which seemed a little too perfectly punctuated, and then he read aloud this symbolic sentence:
The weight of a secret, too heavy for two lips, was shared from hand to hand like a dog-eared book from the library—pages folded, words smudged, the original story lost.
and I played it cool (even though I knew no sixteen boy in 2025 would express such a sentiment in such a style) and I asked, with as much faux-sincerity as I could muster, just how he thought of such an interesting metaphor for a rumor-- a dog-eared library book--
and he said, "Oh, um . . . I didn't think of that part . . . my friend told me to write that"
and I said, "Is your friend named ChatGPT?"
and then when I was able to talk to him alone I asked him if he even knew what a dog-eared book was (he did not) and I told him to write his own stuff as it was insulting for me to have to read AI bullshit and he apologized and we left it at that and while I didn't want to embarrass him anymore than I already did, I loved the sentence so much that I used it as a cautionary example in my other classes-- so I read it to them and then I asked my students why this sentence set off so many AI alarm bells and the kids didn't fully understand so I had to explain to them that this metaphor was incredibly antiquated and specific and the best way I could explain it was that back when I was in elementary school-- Judd School-- our library had a copy of the Judy Blume book Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, and there's a part in the book where Margaret gets her period-- salacious!-- and someone would dog-ear this page (one of my students said she thought dog-earing a library book was a criminal act) and then pass the book along and the next person would be able to turn right to the salacious part and read it-- and explained to them that in 1982, a world without digital screens and cell-phones and readily-available smut on the internet, this is what passed for racy content . . . and the bizzaro ending to this story is that, despite all the readily available smut online, available at a moment's notice, one click away, Florida's Martin County banned a Judy Blume book (Forever) and so while this sounds problematic, it is Florida so what do you expect-- but when you ban something, it becomes more attractive (and more well known) and so maybe the ban will entice kids to read again and dog-ear some salacious pages and pass that book on, like a rumor, distorted, smudged, and heavy with secrets.
Wednesday with Thursday Vibes
This week is folding back on itself-- today I had Tuesday energy (the least amount) while my seniors had effusive Thursday chattiness and verbosity-- which is cute and would be fun on a Friday but is a lot to handle on a Wednesday that feels like a Tuesday, but the sun was shining like April, so we took a walk outside (and a few of us were moving . . . we were talking about sports and it must have inspired us to walk with some alacrity because we left half the class far behind until I remembered that I was responsible for the entire group and waited for them to catch up) and that helped but the fact that I'm already tired and burnt out from the four preps and the extra class and the rapid expansion of AI and the Trump administration means that I will be crawling to the finish line in June.
The One True Message
If there's one idea I could pass along to the young people, to the next generation of humanity-- one piece of wisdom, one profound final thought-- and I know this goes against human nature, against the "endowment effect" and our possessive minds, this conflicts with our desire for ownership and our love of indignance and personal space-- I know it's a hard message to get across and an even harder one for people to implement-- but I believe! . . . I believe we can learn to do this, as a culture and a collective and it will be a great leap forward . . . so the thing I will say on my deathbed, my dying words, my legacy, is this: the left lane is for passing!
Hookah's There?
Dave (Almost) Coins Another Word?
Apparently, the one unique word that I coined-- tupperawareness-- really has legs . . . my friend and colleague Matt said his friends have been so inspired by my lexical innovation that they are always trying to coin new words to rival my semantic masterpiece, and right now, as we speak, these guys are stuck in Lima-- five-hour delay-- and they are drinking and wandering around the airport and they are calling this activity "peroozing," which is pretty fucking great-- a triple pun!-- and it has inspired me to try to coin another word, for the people who back into parking spaces even though the parking lot is crowded and full of traffic and backing into the spot is going to hold everyone up . . . I considered "back-inner drivers"-- a sort of play on beginner drivers . . . but that's lame, and "barking" has obviously been taken by the canines, so I think I'm just going to refer to them as "assholes."
Dave is Declared a Hero (of a particular sort)
I think for future generations-- so they understand what is happening around here-- I should describe just how much pickleball is being played . . . normally on a Friday afternoon, I would have already ingested several beers and be getting logy, but instead, I took a nap and I'm about to don my compression socks, visor, and knee-brace and head out with my buddy to the 7 -10 PM open play at Pickleball HQ . . . and then on Sunday, instead of playing in my normal indoor soccer game, I agreed to drive down to the Mercer Bucks Pickleball Club and was declared a "hero" for doing so-- it's a 35-minute drive-- because my brother desperately needs an eighth player in his game-- he plays with an elite bunch and most of them are playing in a tournament, so they needed an extra body . . . I was really trying to avoid getting involved in indoor pickleball, but they keep building places and my friends (and brother) keep getting involved in various games and it's honestly not the worst way to spend the winter because the weather is fucking awful.
Laying It On Thick
The way to teach "The Modern Moloch"-- a phenomenal episode of 99% Invisible about the mostly unknown story of how automobile lobbyists and auto club enthusiasts destroyed the modern American city with car-centric infrastructure, blaming pedestrians for reckless walking and removing them from the streets instead of shaping the road system around the idea of autonomous walking, vibrant street life, and public transportation (we link this source to another great essay on this topic, Rebecca Solnit's "Aerobic Sisyphus and the Suburbanized Psyche") is to make the cartoons from the 1920's about sacrificing children to the Ammonite god Moloch-- as there was a great deal of hatred towards cars during this time period, hatred that has been glossed over by the Trump-like revisionist history that portrays America as always having a love affair with the automobile, a narrative that is written by the winners and just not true-- but the reason we can't have nice things is the bad guys won . . . and seem to be still winning, as Trump is now promising to "terminate" congestion pricing in New York City-- and the orange dicktater will probably succeed because Eric Adams is in his thrall-- anyway, the way to get this stuff across to high school kids is to begin the lesson reciting a list of all the people I've known that have died in car crashes and then go on a very depressing field trip to visit the Emily Fredericks bench in the lobby, Fredericks was an excellent student of mine back in the day, and she was biking to work in Philadelphia and in the bike lane when she was struck by a distracted garbage truck driver (earbuds in, looking at paperwork) and killed-- a sacrifice to Moloch and so that we can have our wide and fast city roads and unprotected bike lanes . . . and of course, nothing happened to the guy who hit her, all charges dropped because like Eric Adams is in Trump's thrall, we are in the thrall of the automobile . . . and the lightbulbs were starting to go off over the heads of these subruban students, as they recognized the problems with Route 18 and the Ryder's Lane-- the hodge-podge of zoning, the fact that a giant new condiminium complex is being built but it is completely disconnected from all the surrounding shops and stores except by roads, so it won't even be possible to walk to Starbucks and the traffic will get even worse and it will be even harder to cross the street . . . what have we wrought?
Hip Hop Mic Drop
I can't think as fast as Busta Rhymes raps in the Chris Brown song "Look at Me," but apparently that's not the fastest rapping . . . this Eminem tune "Godzilla" is faster (9.5 syllables a second!) but it's also indecipherable, and at this point, I think we're getting into the whole "if a rapper raps in a forest but none of the animals understand it, and then a tree falls on the rapper, are these animals going to care if they don't hear the rest of the verse" philosophical conundrum.
The Best Genre, Hands Down, Knives Out
I've been doing some heavy reading lately--I read an extremely challenging historical literary mystery by Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club, which inspired me to re-read Dante's Inferno and I've also been slogging my way through the last book in Rick Perlstein's masterful political trilogy Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980 and The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China by Robert D. Kaplan-- but whenever I get too deep into the shit, over my head in literary shit, so to speak-- like the flatterers in the eighth circle of hell-- then I circle back to the best genre, really the only genre-- a modern procedural mystery story-- there is no question that this is the best genre of fiction ever invented (thanks Edgar Allan Poe!) and whenever I'm struggling to find something to really engrossing, I get a hold of a well-written crime mystery . . . this time it's Never Tell by Lisa Gardner, apprently this one is based on a real case (which I haven't delved into because I don't want to spoil the mystery) but it's gripping, detailed, well-paced, and each chapter is written from a different point-of-view, yet Gardner still maintains the mystery-- while I'm not sure which genre of music is the best-- I love hyperpop, alt-country, jazz fusion, hip-hop, post-rock, and many others-- I am certain that the mystery story is the king of all literary genres, bowing down to no other.
Presidents' Day . . . Take It Easy
My wife and I did NOT buy a mattress on our day off today, but we did go to the gym (though my wife and I were both very sore from working out too hard yesterday and walking around like very old people) and then we went out to lunch, but while I took the next reasonable step in this progression and took a nap, my wife-- who was starting on this bent at lunch, showing me Pinterest pictures and saying things like "I work hard"--appeared in our bedroom while I was mid-nap . . . with a tape measure!-- she's got some grand plans for our bedroom, which I like to keep in the style of Jay Gatsby-- "the simplest room in the house"-- and while I already talked her out of a plant wall over our heads at lunch-- although I love a plant wall-- because I don't want a plant falling on me while I'm sleeping . . . and now I think she's calmed down for the time being and found a book to read on her Kindle and is getting into the spirit of a random day off.
Leverage Works the Same, Even If You Are Old (Mass is Mass, and I've Got Big Ass)
I really hustled today at indoor soccer-- and it paid off, I scored a goal and had a huge assist to keep our team on the floor-- but I am realizing that my only weapon against younger, quicker players is my substantial mass . . . in the open field, all I can do is contain you young motherfuckers, but if you get caught near the boards, I am winning that battle-- and it's too embarrassing to call foul on someone my age.
Beware!
In Naples, Florida in February, the weather is sunny, dry, and warm, and sitting around the pool is lovely . . . except when it isn't (and apparently this sign is no joke, my brother said he almost got hit while relaxing in the hot tub).
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles . . .
I am back in Jersey-- flew in last night and I went to work today-- it was nice to return to normalcy and high school kids-- but my knee and back and shoulder hurt from the traveling . . . plane seats have gotten absurdly small (and I thought I was going to get seated next to the beautiful Swedish woman in front of me in the boarding line-- she was tall, slim, blonde hair, sporting a headband, and wearing skin-tight white pants and crop top t-shirt-- but I was not so lucky, I was one row short of sitting next to her and instead I had to stuff myself into the seat next to a very stout woman with a wet cough, whose thigh and arm rested on me most of the flight . . . oh well) and after enduring the stress of dealing with my dad's passing, sleeping on a weird mattress in a room with my brother--who snores-- and an incessant light from the breezeway, and then the car ride to the airport, the cramped flight, and then the shuttle bus to the mini-train to the big train-- and I did get lucky there, the train to New Brunswick was two minutes late and I just got there to catch it-- my body was very stiff and sore today . . . but my students were sympathetic and cooperative and they knew I was a little off-- I can't wait to get a full night's sleep in my own bed, without having to worry about an alarm.
End of an Era
My dad passed away last night, down here in Naples, Florida-- a place he loved-- and he will be missed, by his friends, family, wife, and colleagues . . . he truly led an illustrious life-- a distinguished career in corrections and as a criminology professor . . . his progressive ideas, consultant work, jail design, prison educational implementation with football great and activist Jim Brown, and his work as an expert witness in prison logistics and best practices-- I often helped him with the writing of the expert culpability report and wow, you want to stay out of prison if you can help it, some wacky shit goes on in there-- but my dad did his best to allay those awful prison stereotypes and make prison a safe place for rehabilitation, not mayhem . . . my dad was also a great athlete-- a star-swimmer, a lifeguard, and a baseball, basketball, and football player and he taught me and my brothers to catch, throw, bat, shoot, and hit a golf ball . . . he loved family vacations at the beach, Cape Cod and Sea Isle City in particular and he was a patient and supportive father and the same as a grandfather, and always such a fan of my boys Alex and Ian, always at their tennis and soccer matches, and supporting them in all their endeavors-- he always expressed how proud he was of his family, he had a wonderful relationship with all my cousins, and he had a plethora of friends in both Naples and Monroe-- he made the best of the rare form of parkinsonism that plagued the last five years of his life, and even while suffering through all that bullshit, he was larger-than-life and his attitude and sense-of-humor were exceptional . . . we were lucky he passed the way he did, without becoming a tragic figure and truly burdening my mom beyond her cababilities, and instead he will remembered fondly as the legendary "Guy" from New Brunswick, who went a long way . . . I will truly miss you Dad and I couldn't have asked for a better father, and as my son Ian texted me: "he was the best Poppy I could have asked for."
The Waiting (Is the Hardest Part)
Not much news here-- my dad is now comfortably unresponsive in the hospice center across the street from the hospital and slowly giving up the ghost-- but it is a strange trip to Florida for me, as I haven't been anywhere tropical for a long time, so alternating between hospital settings and resort setting is very surreal . . . most of my time here has been spent hanging out with my mother and brother in various hospital settings, watching my dad fade away but then-- when we take a break from the hospital-- I've been walking through manicured gardens and splashing in warm swimming pools in my mom's development in Naples and the weather is the polar opposite of New Jersey, or perhaps the antipodal opposite of New Jersey-- which makes this all very weird (for me, but not for the health care workers down here, who are incredibly professional and compassionate and I think very used to these kinds of scenarios, considering the average age of the people in this town).
At Least He Bet the Eagles
I talked to my dad on the phone last night during the Super Bowl and he was totally coherent, though he had recently fallen and hit his head and broken a rib-- and this coupled with the state of his lower body (weak and slow because of micro-strokes, afib, and a rare type of lower body Parkinson's) made it impossible for him to get out of the house to the nearby Super Bowl party -- which is why I gave him a call, I knew he was watching the game alone-- but when my mom came home at halftime, really just moments after I talked to him, she noticed he was behaving oddly and it was because he was having a massive stroke . . . so he's not at all in a good way right now and my brother and I are flying down to Florida . . . this getting old business really sucks (but that last chat I had with him was a good one, and he was happy that, like me, he bet the Eagles).
Triumph at Triumph
Yesterday was the first Saturday in a while that my wife and I were both healthy, so we took the train to Princeton (with Connell . . . it was the first time he ever rode the Dinky!) and first we stopped for an espresso martini and some snacks at the Dinky Bar and then went to the new Triumph Brewery location in Palmer Square-- inside the old Princeton Post office, an astounding renovation of a spacious 1930s building-- and I am pleased to report that both the beer and the food are excellent-- I liked both their IPAs and their dry stout, Connell doggedly stuck to a hand-pumped amber Celtic ale, and my wife had the pilsener and a delicious pear martini; as a bonus, they have live jazz every Friday and Saturday from 5-8 PM in the lounge . . . there are two bars, one in the basement-- it has a ratskeller vibe and there are plenty of TVs tuned into sports-- and then the upper bar amidst the restaurant seating, and that's where you can see and hear the jazz . . . anyway, this is a great spot-- nothing quite like it in the area, I don't think-- and taking the train to Princeton is much faster than driving (and driving home last night would have been treacherous-- we had to walk to the train station through a bizarre icy slush that stuck to your boots, while being constantly pelted with freezing rain-- and the walk up the hill back to Highland Park was like trudging through frozen wet sand . . . really weird).
My Dog is Probably a Heathen
While it's impossible to truly delve into the mind of a dog, we can always speculate-- and it's been a long cold winter, so I've spent plenty of time on the couch observing my dog and I think she has what might be called a pagan mentality-- she's always doing ritualistic behaviors in the hope that they will have some effect on her world and the generally benevolent gods that control it-- I think she knows that to some arbitrary extent, her world is controlled by inscrutable deities, and so she tries to sit a certain way, or stare a certain way, or turn in circles so many times, in the hopes that this will produce food-- of course, at times, she attempts to take matters into her own paws and goes on the offensive, but we usually foil those attempts-- although she did get a cookie out of my wife's school bag the other day--and I think she knows that she exists in a polytheistic universe, with many strange gods, some human, some technological-- like the dishwasher, which always contains lickable items-- and while she knows she can't control technology, she will try different strategies and rituals depending on which humanoid gods are present, in the hopes of diving providence in the form of a treat, but all of this is so random, so uncontrollable, and because she can't speak (though she does try) she has to communicate through other symbolic actions, in the hopes that they produce good fortune.
Hump Day Existentialism
Today we started a new text in College Writing, a chapter from Rebecca Solnit's book Wanderlust entitled "The Aerobic Sisyphus and the Suburbanized Psyche" and so I took the kids through the myth of Sisyphus and how in Greek times, the Sisyphean task of rolling the boulder was punitive, but then how Camus adopted Sisyphus as the mascot of existentialism and the idea that "the realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning" and then I challenged the kids to come up with ideas of how our lives are absurd searches for meaning and identity because-- unlike back in the old days, when if your dad made barrels, then you were probably fated to make barrels . . . which, on the one hand is rather restrictive, but on the other hand, relieves you of a lot of doubt and anxiety-- but we are modern humans and our fate, according to Satre, is wide open and there's no higher power to guide us, so our existence precedes our essence, which he explains thusly:
What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.
and then I challenged the students to come up with examples of how our lives are absurd searches for our essence-- but my examples were the best:
-- I'm going to Harvard to play football!
-- I just drove my car to the gym and I got so tired working out that I can't get any of this yard work done.
Dave's Shot is Breezin'
Two good things;
1) today at the gym, while I was shooting around, I made thirteen three-pointers in a row-- and all of them were solidly beyond the arc and I didn't have anyone feeding me the ball-- I was retrieving my own rebounds, tossing the ball out ahead of me, collecting, shooting, rinse, repeat-- and while this is a worthy accomplishment in any shoot-around, it's especially notable for those of you who know my blundering, unskilled basketball origin story (go Nicks!)
2) if you have the winter blues, George Benson's 1976 instrumental song Breezin' is the cure-- I certainly heard this song when I was a kid, and so when I relistened to it yesterday, I remembered the melody-- but I did not remember the miraculous groove (nor did I have the aesthetic sensibility to appreciate a miraculous groove when I was six-years-old).
FunTimes
Two interesting (and rather frightening) things we were told at our faculty meeting today:
1) do not interfere with uniformed Federal Agents (particularly ICE agents) if they show up on school grounds (I did not need to be told this-- I make it a policy to never interfere with uniformed Federal Agents)
2) always behave as if a student might be surreptitiously recording you-- and remember they can piece together pieces of conversation to make it sound like you said something you didn't-- and a confirmed HIB (harassment, intimidation, and bullying) charge results in a loss of a pay-step . . . and HIB is not based on objective behavior but instead on the harassment, intimidation, or bullying being "perceived" by the victim.
The Hegelian Trumpalectic
tone, attitude, or methods, just remember, there will be an eventual synthesis of some of Trump's more obnoxious objectives and maybe, eventually, some sort of halting progress.
Unintentionally Dry January (But Not Sand Island Dry)
I was determined NOT to do "Dry January" for two very good reasons—
1)I’m already a moderate drinker
2) January is so dark, cold, and dreary that a little alcohol helps me get through without going full Jack Torrance
but this January wasn’t fated to be a wet one for me-- two weeks ago I came down with a stomach virus, then my wife caught the flu, and just as she recovered I got a mild case of COVID, so aside from a couple of parties and our outing to see Louie C.K., I barely touched beer, wine, or spirits-- but I'm not complaining because I just read Matthew Pearl’s new book, Save Our Souls: The True Story of a Castaway Family, Treachery, and Murder, and my January—despite its lack of alcohol and abundance of sickness—was a walk in the park compared to what the Walker family endured after their sharking boat shipwrecked on a spit of sand in the North Pacific (Midway Atoll), where they survived for eighteen months on seabirds, seabird eggs, the occasional fish, a bag of moldy rice that washed ashore, and an unlucky turtle—but no beer or tobacco; Pearl’s book is a gripping account of the shipwreck and the surrounding murder and mystery, including the presence of a nutjob named Hans, who was already living in a hut on Sand Island when the Walkers and their crew washed ashore-- and the book gets quite complicated with intrigue, it's not a tale like Swiss Family Robinson or Gilligan's Island, mainly because of the sinister first mate and his past crimes and new alliances, and honestly, after reading this, I'm astounded that anyone in the 19th century would willingly board an ocean-going vessel, given the abundant threats of shipwrecks, piracy, opium smuggling, scurvy, sharks, insurance fraud, blackbirding, and mutiny-- Pearl’s book is an astounding tale of survival, persistence, and malevolent maritime machinations and if you're looking to feel better about your landlocked piece of property, read it.
Thinking is Dead
I am having an existential crisis today, perhaps exacerbated by the fact that I feel kind of lousy-- I just tested positive for COVID-- and this diagnosis is amplifying the feeling that life is futile, we are all decaying flesh, and we have designed technology to replace what we once thought was unique about the human mind and spirit-- the inciting incident for this existential crisis happened this morning, when I went to school early to photocopy my Creative Writing mid-term prompt about the film "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" so that the kids would have to handwrite the answer because I didn't want them looking up stuff on Google and ChatGPT but then I fed my prompt into DeepSeek, the new, free high-powered Chinese AI-- and the prompt is pretty basic, just something to get the kids writing about a really complicated and interesting film:
How does the film use unreliable narration to explore relationships, memory, and time? What does the film ultimately say about our identity, our perspective, and the way we get along with people?
and, no surprise, DeepSeek gave an astute and organized and thorough answer to this prompt-- but an answer that sounded like AI-- parallel structure, abstract vocabulary, statements made with subtopics in groups of three-- but then I asked DeepSeek to summarize this answer in two sentences and use lots of profanity and it produced something that doesn't resemble AI at all:
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" uses its mind-fuckery of unreliable narration to show how relationships are a messy, chaotic clusterfuck of distorted memories and emotional bullshit. The film dives into the raw, fucked-up truth that love isn’t about perfect memories or clear-cut facts—it’s about the messy, irrational, and deeply human shit that keeps pulling people back together, no matter how hard they try to erase each other.
and this worries me, it means that there's no way to tell if the students are using AI-- now they can prompt it to sound much more human than previously-- and I think this means we have to rethink English/Language Arts class entirely-- it also depresses me that the skills I've spent my life developing can now be farmed out to a computer-- ideas that took my stupid brain hours of meditation and reflection can now be produced in a fraction of the time -- so I think we're going to have to have some difficult conversations about what learning and school is going to be like in the near future-- we could go the Luddite route-- the school is a gym for your brain route-- and do everything on paper and get rid of the computers . . . or we could turn kids into AI synthesizers, where they cull the best ideas from AI and develop them . . . or we could give up on teaching writing entirely and make English class more of a speaking and communicating class . . . but this stuff is evolving so quickly that it's breaking my brain-- it's also fun to ask DeepSeek "why is Jane's Addiction so fucking good?" and require it to use profanity in the answer-- I'm sure this Chinese AI broke a lot of copyright laws in its "training" but it really seems to know about everything (and how to swear realistically while telling you everything).
You Never Know What's Going to Offend Our AI Overlords
Holy shit . . . my wife and I are passing viruses between us-- the origin of which is most likely all the stupid children in our respective schools, coughing and blowing their noses and wiping snot on every surface-- and teaching is NOT a good job when you are sick, especially when it's a double mid-term day and you're going to spend five hours in a room with students and you have no voice . . . but at least I tapped into DeepSeek, the new deep-discount made in China AI that will list "five awful things about Donald Trump"-- unlike Google's Gemini, which avoids political discussion . . . but don't ask DeepSeek about what happened in 1989 at the Tiananmen Square demonstration, or you'll get stonewalled; although I did get DeepSeek to rattle off a bunch of general problems with China's one-party, undemocratic, censorship-prone, human rights violating government-- before it rescinded all the text and said, "Sorry that's beyond my current scope . . . let's talk about something else."
Heavyweight vs Lightweight (But They Are Both Kind of Orange)
The Rumble of the Federal Funding Freeze . . . in this corner, weighing in at 244 pounds, we have Donald Trump and in the opposing corner, weighing in at 1/4 pound, we have the U.S. Constitution-- and folks, this should be a chaotic, litigious, and slow-moving fight, with Trump delivering plenty of shots below the belt to our most venerated but embattled document.
It's Mainly Dark in Here, But I Can See the Light
This is the time of year when I feel like a mewling infant sliding down the birth canal, trying to emerge from the darkness of winter, slowly heading toward the light of spring-- and I will get there, but it's going to be painful (for all involved, including Mother Nature).
Louis C.K. Kills
Last night, Louis C.K. performed at the Stress Factory and he lived up to the title of his show, which was called "Trying Out New Material"-- he had a notebook on his stool, which he glanced at between bits and he raced through so many routines it would be hard to summarize the performance-- he literally abandoned transitions and did an hour of one thing after another-- and while the content was generally incredibly inappropriate, I'll give a synopsis in broad swaths of some of the topics:
how the sun and a vagina are similar (wonderful givers of life but don't look directly at them); what race of human he would choose to eat; a tour of the old folks "place" that houses his father; what the "worst" would be for him: being testicularly tortured and you truly don't know the information that the torturer wants; an analysis of the magazine Barely Legal and just how close reading that magazine is to pedophilia-- so close; how the worst thing a person could talk to you about is love, forgiveness, and your friend Jesus; taking AIDS test to get some good news; the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; in vitro fertilization and caviar; he revamped a Carlin bit about how newscasters will do an accent on the word Latino, but only that word, and a bunch of other stuff-- it was uproarious, the guy is a masterful in every aspect of stand-up-- the voices, timing, body language, and material-- and it was awesome to see him up close and personal.
HP Sees CK
Heading out (with a large contingent of my town and other various friends) to see Louis C.K. at The Stress Factory.
Fuck the TikTok Ban, Go Whole Hog and Revise Section 230
There has been much speculation about Mark Zuckerberg's recent "pivot" towards some Trumpy changes to Meta's content moderation policy and the removal of all fact-checking on his platforms-- and the constantly fluctuating state of TikTok has also got the social media world in an uproar, but I think it's time to do something more radical in this arena and rewrite Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act sop that platforms are responsible and can be sued over what they "publish"-- as they ARE publishers with proprietary algorithms that determine what goes viral-- and it's certainly not always accurate or innocuous stuff . . . it's not until we acknowledge that everything on social media is suspect, often a conspiratorial abyss, frequently misinformation and/or propaganda, and promoted in ways to merely keep users scrolling, not to provide the highest quality content and that perhaps our society would be more civilized and social without social media in its current form.
Dave Fails at Revenge, But Succeeds at Civilized Society
Yesterday morning, I tried to exact my gentlemanly revenge for this foul deed-- when I got out of my car, I spotted the shoulder-length blonde hair of the culprit as she was walking along the front of the building towards the side door; walked briskly to the door so that I got there well ahead of her; opened the door, and waited; and then, as the culprit rounded the corner I noted that this was another nameless woman with shoulder length blond hair-- people are really bundled up because of the cold and it's hard to differentiate between thirty-somethings with should length blonde hair-- but this was definitely NOT the woman who didn't hold the door for me-- but despite not exacting my revenge, things turned out just fine: she thanked me for holding the door for her and we had a normal, civilized conversation about the weather as we walked to the office to sign in.
What's Scarier Than a Savage Pitbull? An Enormous Savage Pitbull
If you're looking for a dumb (but highly entertaining) read about a smart guy, check out Joe Ide's mystery novel IQ . . . it's about a young ghetto detective (a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Encyclopedia Brown) with a tragic past who gets involved in a case featuring rappers, entourage members, bodyguards, gangs, guns, drugs, sordid women, LA shysters, and a very large pit bull . . . the plot is a purposeful nod to Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Some Fine Day, Vengeance Will Be Mine
So yesterday I was hustling across the parking lot and into the school building-- and I was not wearing my jacket or gloves or anything because I leave that stuff in the car-- and it was cold, single digits, and I was maybe fifteen feet from the door and this teacher (I don't know her name but I'm going to find it out) was at that distance where any civilized person would hold the door, especially because we made eye contact and she could see I was moving with some determination and alacrity-- but she glanced at me and then she slithered in, she opened the door the minimum amount and squeezed through, leaving me literally in the cold-- now even if she didn't feel like holding the door, she could have given it a good shove, so it opened completely and I was close enough that I most likely would have been able to grab it before it shut-- but she didn't even do me that courtesy . . . unconscionable stuff . . . and so I have plotted my revenge (which is a dish best served cold, and it is butt-ass cold in New Jersey right now) and it will happen thusly: I will keep my eye out for this woman, and one day when I am ahead of her in the parking lot, I will walk briskly to the door-- so there is a great distance between us-- and then instead of NOT holding the door open, instead of slithering in-- which would be childish and predictable-- I will hold the door open-- I will hold the door open for an uncomfortably long time-- and while I stand there, chivalrously, waiting for her to walk all the way across the parking lot, I will make eye contact with her, and I will smile, and I will say "after you" and then let her pass through the door while I stand valiantly in the cold and then she will know that vengeance is mine and her fate is to be filled with shame and mortification.
A Very Special Episode of We Defy Augury
Despite having a stomach virus, yesterday I cranked out a very special episode of We Defy Augury . . . "A Transcendental Perspective on the L.A. Fires". . . my thoughts are (loosely) inspired by various articles on the L.A. Fires, Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Nature" and Joan Didion's essay "The Santa Anas"
Special Guests: The Bicycle Man, Conrad Bain, Nellie Bowles, David Gelles and Austyn Gaffney, Leighton Woodhouse, The Rivieras, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Delta smelt, the gang from Full House, and the gang from WKRP in Cincinnati.
Trump
Dave Keeps Overdoing It (Physically and Literarily)
I woke up feeling much better this morning-- I definitely had some kind of stomach/body-ache/low fever viral bug yesterday-- in fact, I felt so good that I went and played indoor soccer-- and my knee felt better than it has in a while, I was actually playing serviceable balls with both feet-- but then after soccer, I started feeling shitty again, and I think I'm running a low fever-- and the sci-fi novel I'm reading is not helping: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis . . . the narrative switches between a time-traveling historian who was mistakenly sent back to the year The Black Death ravaged England, instead of an earlier, plague free year-- there was some "slippage"-- and 21st-century epidemic in Oxford, caused by a dormant, ancient virus unearthed from a medieval archaeological dig-- it's a compelling book but there are a great many descriptions of buboes and fevers and bodily fluids and sickness in general, not ideal.
Dave Probably Overdid It
I completed my old man three-sport-in-one-week triathlon last night-- my friend Ann and I defended the challenge court for 90 minutes at the Picklejar, before we got tired (and the dudes we were playing hit her with several wild drives, including one to the chin) and I generally felt pretty good on my knee, but then I had trouble sleeping-- I rarely do sports at night and it was hard to get comfortable-- and though I loosened my leg up at the gym and grocery shopping at Trader Joe's (which was insanely crowded because everyone is worried about the incoming snow but I put my earphones in and listened to some Chris Joss, this French multi-instrumentalist funk musician who has an incredible catalog of instrumental funk-tronica albums . . . I can't believe I just discovered this guy because he will now be the soundtrack of the majority of my life!) but now I feel lousy and I'm running a low fever and I'm wondering if I either overdid the sports this week or if I'm getting sick.
Friday Potpourri
Today felt marginally better than yesterday-- the sun was out and it warmed up to 40 degrees-- but we were still fairly chilly when we had an unexpected and rather lengthy fire evacuation because something started burning in a cooking class-- I was about to call it a fire "drill" but it wasn't a drill, it was an actual fire-- albeit a very small one-- which interrupted an important discussion in Creative Writing where I was informing my students that The Beatles were not fro the midwest, they were from England . . . seriously . . and I today also introduced my sophomores to the idea of a "very special episode"-- a concept from the 1980s and 90s where a normally humorous TV program tackles a delicate or controversial event with the appropriate gravity . . . the one I'll never forget is the WKRP in Cincinnati episode about the Who concert where 11 people got crushed to death . . . a total bummer . . . we had a very special episode of class today about the LA fires-- and it is to be continued next class!-- perfect . . . I'm going to try to make the lesson into a very special podcast because it would take too long to describe here and I've got no time to sit and write because I'm about to finish my week-long triathlon of old man sports on a bad knee-- I played indoor soccer on Sunday, morning basketball on Tuesday, and now I'm about to go play some indoor pickleball-- if my knee holds up, I'll be very pleased.
Cold and Gray Thursday
I took a mental health day yesterday and it turned out to be quite productive-- I cleaned two bathrooms, went to the gym with Ian-- he was actually able to play a little basketball on his reconstructed ankle-- and then Ian and I fixed a broken light pull switch in a ceiling fan, a two-man job if there ever was one (he flipped fuses in the basement until the fan stopped and then it took four hands to take the fan case apart; hold it the bottom part; strip the wires; remove the old pull string switch; replace and reconnect the new pull string switch; and then reassemble it) and we rewarded ourselves with a sushi lunch and then I took a nap-- later my wife and I watched episode two of Get Millie Black-- highly recommended-- but then reality loomed its ugly head . . . when you take off a Wednesday, you have to go to work the next day-- and it's not even Friday!-- and this morning was frigid and dark and bleak and I am really struggling to see the dim light of Spring Break, which is many months away-- so I started my class today with the movie clip to symbolize how I was feeling: Bill Murray giving a "Groundhog Day" weather outlook, "You want a prediction about the weather . . . I'll give you a winter prediction: It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life."
Our Team Only Had Nine Available Hands
Yesterday morning I made my triumphant return to 6:30 AM basketball, and while I was certainly limited in my movement because of my gimpy knee and unable to "help" on defense (which is my euphemism for fouling the fuck out of anyone who enters the paint in my vicinity) I was in fine shooting form (at least at the start of the session, my shot got progressively worse as my knee grew stiffer) and I drilled three long three-pointers in a row to lead our team to victory in the first game . . . and what a team it was-- I was limping around, Jeff has a strained calf-- and Frank, the old and venerated retired AD who is in his 70s and probably shouldn't be participating in the first place was coaxed into playing one game-- and I didn't notice until we began that Frank was wearing one glove, one green fluffy winter glove . . . and this is because he recently had surgery on his hand and needed to protect it-- needless to say, he did not shoot, dribble, or touch the ball-- but then he gracefully bowed out, undefeated, and we picked up Kyle, a fast, strong twenty-five-year-old athlete-- so all was good-- and then I learned that another player on the court was in his twenties and I was like: this is not fair, I think anyone in their twenties should have to be handicapped, like a jockey that's underweight, and wear a weighted vest.
A Costco No-go
According to my neighbors Pernille and John, you never want to make the mistake that I made yesterday: you never want to go to the Edison Costco on a Monday (because the store is so crowded on Saturday and Sunday that, in a Yogi Berra-esque paradox, no one goes there on the weekend so they all go on Monday . . . also, I think some shoppers permanently reside in the store-- I surmised this by the way they amble about with their carts, like they've got absolutely nowhere to go).
Medieval Times, Good Times?
I just finished a new episode of We Defy Augury-- ten reasons Medieval Times were better times than you might have imagined . . . thoughts loosely inspired by Ian Mortimer's history book Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages Matter, Christopher Buehlman's fantasy novel Between Two Fires, and Connie Willis's science fiction novel The Doomsday Book;
Special Guests: Jim Carrey, Matthew Broderick, Janeane Garofalo, The Beastie Boys, George Carlin, Rick Moranis, MF Doom, the Monty Python Troupe, Kiefer Sutherland, 100 Gecs, Metallica, Arya and the Hound, Jimmy Walker, the Wu-Tang Clan, and medievalist professor Dorsey Armstrong.
The Knee Holds Up
I am pleased to announce that I played over an hour of indoor soccer this morning-- despite my wonky right knee-- and while I can't really drive a ball with my right foot, I was able to run, trap, and pass-- which is all you can ask for . . . but importantly, I got to see the soccer gang again-- I haven't played for a year-- and while there were a couple of new faces, it was mostly the same old guys . . . and we're just getting older.
Yet Another Reason I Hate Fucking Cars
Like most rational aesthetes, I find the Tesla Cybertruck to be a hideous and bulky eyesore, but it seems there is a way to level up the offensiveness of this sheet metal behemoth . . . and that is by adding an on-the-nose vanity license plate label which identifies what kind of car the license plate is adorning (in this instance, CYBR1) and this, of course, falls into the same category of objectionable taste as wearing a Weezer t-shirt to a Weezer concert-- you just don't do it (nor do you wear a Dungeons and Dragons t-shirt to a session of D&D, as I once pointed out to my older son) unless you write something witty, ironic, and meta . . . perhaps I could get a vanity plate for my Sportage that says "Kia Pet" or this Cybertruck owner could get a plate that reads "Pedo Boy" or "Compensating for my Tiny Penis."
Aspirational Actions
Instead of doing "Dry January," I am going to listen to more of Art Pepper's cool jazz and J Dilla's comprehensive catalog.
O! The Irony! The Hypocritical Unreliable Irony!
Today in Creative Class, we started our unit on first-person/unreliable narration, but I somehow got off-topic and while I was in the midst of describing the awful car accident my children and I witnessed on Tuesday and warning the students about the perils of walking, biking, and driving on Rutgers campus in New Brunswick and reminding them to really take their time going through intersections, even if the light is green-- right in the middle of diagramming all this on the whiteboard, a particular gym teacher poked her head into my classroom and she chastised me for something that happened yesterday . . . and I immediately knew how what she was about to say was going to fit the lesson-- because yesterday afternoon, when I was racing out of the school parking lot at the end of the day, I ran through the stop sign and cut her off-- and this happened several times previous because I'm a bit reckless when I'm trying to escape the school grounds-- so she censured me for my driving, I apologized profusely and I promised it would never happen again and then she left and I turned to the class and said, "You see my hypocrisy here? The unreliability in my narration? I'm warning you about being careful at intersections and meanwhile, I'm a hypocritical menace . . . we are all biased and unreliable narrators!" and then I was inclined to say "That's a wrap, you can all go home" but there was still 56 minutes left in the period, so I had to keep teaching but now I am truly going to take my time at intersections, I have learned my lesson twice in as many days.
There Are No Cheetos in Europe
You'll have to do your own research because I can't really make sense of all the available information, but on the newest episode of Derek Thompson's podcast Plain English Michael Cembalest (Chairman of Market and Investment Strategy for J.P. Morgan Asset Management) says that Europe allows 44 chemicals in its food while the U.S. allows over 700-- and he explains that's why it's not a great idea to invest in Europe-- too many regulations-- but that's why their food tastes so good . . . and if you attempt to confirm these numbers, you get all kinds of weird facts and figures-- Europe allows 300 food additives while the US allows over 3,000-- and there are readily available lists of various whiteners and fillers and dyes and preservatives and carcinogens and other dangerous chemicals the US allows as food ingredients, which Europe does not allow-- I don't really know what to make of all this information, but maybe I'll continue to invest in US companies, but seriously think about moving to Europe when I retire (if all the chemicals don't kill me first).
I Hate Fucking Cars
The boys and I were having a lovely Orthodox Christmas-- we went to the Y and played some basketball and then hit La Catrina for lunch, but on the drive home, when we got to the intersection of Hamilton Street and George Street-- where Hamilton turns into Johnson Drive-- the Zimmerli Museum was on our left-- we got a sober reminder of the ephemerality of life . . . the light was green and I was just about to enter the intersection when a medium-sized red car came FLYING down George Street (and this is a street with college dorms on it) and this red car smashed into the back of a white car that had just proceeded into the intersection-- the very car in front of us, and this spun the white car into the concrete wall in front of the Johnson and Johnson property (thank god no one was standing at this intersection waiting to cross, a spot that my son Alex walks through every day on his way to work) and the airbags went off inside the white car and I got out and (carefully) crossed the intersection to see if the people were all right and Alex and Ian called 911 but luckily there happened to be a couple cops nearby who immediately took control of the scene-- maybe they were already in pursuit of this vehicle? which would explain the high speed on this road?-- and because the white car got clipped in the rear of the car, not the driver side door, the two women in the car looked like they were in decent shape-- the passenger was fine and the driver looked stunned but she responded to my voice and the side airbag probably kept her from hitting her head-- meanwhile the red car that ran the light doing 40 or 50 mph on this 25 mph street was up ahead on the side of the road-- it hit another car and came to a halt and the the police checking that out-- and the weird thing is this wasn't a yellow light turning red situation, the red car had a solid red light-- so Alex surmised that perhaps the red car driver panicked and hit the gas instead of the brake-- something that occurs all too frequently and is often blamed on "sudden uncontrollable acceleration" but is actually caused by someone stomping on the wrong pedal . . . whatever the reason, this crash scared the shit out of the three of us and we all agreed to take it slow through every intersection, whether driving a car, on foot, or riding a bike-- because of the existence of idiots and the half-assed manner in which our automotive based world is designed-- although honestly, this happened so fast and chaotically that it would have been difficult to avoid even if you were paying close attention nd driving defensively and all that and we were very lucky that we weren't in the intersection when this happened-- we were moments away-- and the last time I saw anything like this was over a decade ago, and I still remember it like it was yesterday.
Weird Energy on a Weird Monday/Friday
Strange things were afoot at EBHS today-- unlike most schools in the vicinity, we are off tomorrow for Orthodox Christmas (because we have a large number of Coptic Egyptian students) and so today felt like both a Monday and a Friday-- one day week!-- and to exacerbate the strangeness, we had a weird schedule because of an elective fair, which means I had to spend an inordinate amount of time with my 25-student sophomore honors class-- and while they are quite nice and academically diligent, they are also very energetic, chatty, clueless, and unlearned in the ways of mankind-- and I'm used to teaching seniors, who at least know how to pretend to be normal people-- and on top of all that, it snowed all day and so the students were flipping out about that (admin released the seniors early so they could slowly drive out of the parking lot-- for most of these kids, it's the first time they're driving in snow) but despite all this, we managed to finish Godzilla Minus One in Creative Writing class-- I cried-- and I even managed to grade a few essays through the tears-- which was the purpose of showing the film, I need to grade, but I always get sucked into the movie-- and now tonight is a mini-Saturday, so I'll enjoy the Rutgers/Wisconsin game and tomorrow is a mini-Sunday, so the plan is: head to the gym with the boys and then take them out to lunch . . . thank you Julian Calendar!
Giants vs. (Second String) Eagles
Difficult rooting conundrum today: The Giants played the Eagles and while I would like to start rooting for the Eagles, because of my South Jersey roots and Saquon Barkley, I don't think I have it in me to ever root for the Eagles over the Giants (but I do think I can muster some rooting strength for the Eagles in the playoffs since the Giants are eliminated) but then today's game because even more of a perplexing puzzle because in one sense, all Giants fans were rooting for the Giants to lose today so they could get a better draft choice-- but it was impossible to root for the Giants to lose to the Eagles, even the second string Eagles-- just because you can't turn that shit off . . . but I was still kind of psyched when Reed Blankenship grabbed Drew Lock's final toss and ended the game in the Eagles favor . . . there's always next year.
Dave Speculates on (Probably) the Dumbest Use of a Quantum Computer (It's All Probabilistic)
As far as I understand this recent quantum computing breakthrough-- which is not very far at all-- but from what I do grasp, the possible reason why the computer can do such complex computations so quickly, computations that would take a normal computer more than the life of the universe, is because the quantum computer is harnessing alternate realities and doing parallel computations in the multiverse-- so if I could get a hold of one of these computers, perhaps I could access the various sentences Alternate Daves are writing in various alternate universes and select the best of these alternate sentences and essentially subcontract my work out to the multiverse (which is quite different than relying on AI to write my sentences, which would be soulless and derivative . . . but harnessing the thinking power of infinite Alternate Daves, that's something much more on brand).
Some Things That Are Completely Different
If you're looking for some batshit crazy apocalyptic sci-fi, I highly recommend Robert Charles Wilson's novel Spin-- I won't even try to explain all the consequences of the "spin membrane" that is mysteriously placed around the earth (by a mysterious superior alien race that scientists refer to as The Hypotheticals) but the stars go out early in the book and then some very well-depicted political and psychological and scientific chaos ensues-- and the book really makes you think about time, as a concept-- the book is the first in a trilogy (but apparently the other two books are not as good, so I'm going to skip them) and if you've read or watched The Expanse series then you'll find some familiar themes-- and if you're looking for a batshit crazy surreal almost sci-fi movie, you might like I Saw the TV Glow, a mesmerizing story about two disaffected teens in the 90's who share an obsession with a strange supernatural TV show called The Pink Opaque . . . the fictional world of the show begins to bleed into the "reality" of the of Owen and Maddy's constrained suburban lives-- and Maddy's complete and utter acceptance of this alternate reality sends her on a quest to find her true identity and gender, a quest that Owen is reluctant to embark on or even comprehend-- it'sa film full of weird imagery, awkward moments, and fragmented horror.
It's Already Thursday!
While it was not fun to get up early and get dressed and make lunch and walk the dog in the dark and drive to school and make photocopies and finally start grading those synthesis essays, it was fun to see my friends and colleagues and chat about winter break-- and this was even more fun when one of my fellow English teachers reminded me that it is Thursday-- even though the day really had Monday-vibes . . . so this was more of a "soft opening" of the school and next week we'll really get down to business and learn something.
Dave Carries On Carrying On
Yesterday, on the last day of 2024, the usual themes unfolded-- I was sore from my second shingles vaccine but I went and played pickleball anyway-- wearing my knee brace of course and some KT tape on my Achilles tendon-- and I'm glad I went because even though I was a little sluggish, for one brief moment I was quick and coordinated, and I chased down a very wide ball and hit a crisp and perfect "around the pole" shot-- and then I took a much-needed nap, but still felt kind of lousy from the stupid shingles shot, but rallied enough to drink some mezcal at the neighborhood New Year's Party . . . so while I'd like to make some 2025 Resolutions here, things such as: I'm actually going to change my diet and lose weight; I'm actually going to start stretching every day and do all the recommended exercises to preserve my body and I'm going to give up alcohol during the week, at this point, realistically, these things are probably not going to happen so this year I'm just going to try to do the same shit I did in 2024, and continue to rinse and repeat until things really get Yeatsian and truly fall apart.
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