Ignoring the Unspeakable

Today was an apt day to finish  Omar El Akkad's book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (a title which reminds me of a book I read about the Rwanda genocide called We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families) since the news is filled with unspeakable gun violence and mass shootings-- which Americans will be ignoring soon enough-- Akkad wants people to stop looking away from the horror, especially the horror in Gaza, perpetrated by what he views as the ugly business of imperialism, supported by the U.S. military industrial complex, political machinery, and media . . . here's a passage from the end that gives an idea of his tone:

One day there will be no more looking away. Looking away from climate disaster, from the last rabid takings of extractive capitalism, from the killing of the newly stateless. One day it will become impossible to accept the assurances of the same moderates who will say with great conviction: Yes the air has turned sour and yes the storms have grown beyond categorization and yes the fires and the floods have made life a wild careen from one disaster to the next and yes millions die from the heat alone and entire species are swept into extinction daily and the colonized are driven from their land and the refugees die in droves on the border of the unsated side of the planet and yes supply chains are beginning to come apart and yes soon enough it will come to our doorstep, even our doorstep n the last coded bastion of the very civilized world, when one day we turn on the tap and nothing comes out and we visit the grocery store and the shelves are empty and we must finally face the reality of it but until then, until that very last moment, it's important to understand that this really is the best way of doing things. One day it will be unacceptable in the polite liberal circles of the West, not to acknowledge all the innocent people killed in that long-ago unpleasantness.

it is rough stuff and an especially controversial topic around my area because we have both a sizeable Jewish and Muslim population, there are people on both sides of this issue, and I don't see any resolution other than more violence, suppression, terrorism, displacement, starvation, military incursions, explosions, and horror.

More War

 

Another dark episode of We Defy Augury . . . some thoughts (loosely) inspired by Daniel A. Sjursen's book "A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism" -- I got so bogged down in the shit in this one that I've decided to take a break and perhaps pursue a different idea for a podcast-- because I really don't want to make an episode based on the book I'm reading now, Omar El Akkad's indictment about the liberal media and governmental response to the Israel/Palestine conflict One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This  . . . his point, that the logical, moral position is not halfway between the right and the left-- as they are both ignoring reality-- and the center is as morally repugnant in it's policy and more milquetoast and unfocused, especially when atrocities are being committed and a people are being displaced and destroyed . . . I'm about two-thirds of the way through and I don't see a happy ending to this story, now or in the future.

If You're Getting Up Early, You Might As Well Shoot the Ball

While I normally avoid Route 18-- it has been under construction for years-- I will sometimes gamble and take it when I'm playing early morning basketball, as there's less traffic at 6:15 AM-- but today, instead of lane closures, the entire road was closed and so I arrived at basketball late and angry and had to sit the first game-- but this did give me time to warm up, and either the extra shooting practice or my road rage inspired me and I made my first five shots, all three pointers-- so five in a row for the fifty-five year old-- which made the youngsters very excited . . . but they also started switching off and covering me very tightly . . . so I took a couple more NBA range shots, which oddly, went long, perhaps because I've been ingesting creatine and I'm super jacked-- but whatever, it's quite fun to have the hot-hand once in a while.

Trump: Making China Even Greater

I'm not sure I fully understand all the layers of irony and absurdity in the latest economic news, but Trump seems to be offering American farmers (particularly soybean farmers) a 12 billion dollar bailout because  they have been adversely affected by his unilateral implementation of tariffs-- especially on China, which used to buy U.S. soybeans-- so we're using taxpayer money generated by the tariffs, which decreased exports, to bail-out the farmers-- who will have to store the soybeans or sell them at a deep discount-- creating market instability and the need for government assistance; meanwhile, China has found other suppliers and has also made its way into other markets, partially fueled by the absence of the United States in these markets because of Trump's tariffs-- so China has increased its trade surplus by over twenty percent, to the tune of a trillion dollars . . . meanwhile the United States is running its usual trade deficit (which doesn't seem to be influenced in any particular way by tariffs and has to do with other economic forces) and apparently many large businesses have been absorbing the costs of the tariffs but come January there may be cost increases to reflect this . . . this is all above my pay grade but it seems to me we should want China to be buying stuff from us-- such as soybeans-- but I also understand that globalization has its costs (thus, our populist president) but I think the genie is out of the bottle and it's too late to turn back the clock, so we want to be as involved in the global market as we can be . . . but what the fuck do I know, I'm just a dog (sometimes, for an extra treat, Dave has me write his blog).

Everyone Got Some Help

After listening to many episodes of Andrew Hickey's "History of Rock Music in 500 Songs" and reading a fair amount about the influences and origins of Shakespeare's plays, one thing is clear: art is collaboration, often with the people who came before you (even if you don't want to give them any credit).

Youth . . . It's Determined by When You Were Born

Today, one of the morning basketball players said to me: "You're a veteran teacher . . . when did you start teaching?" and I said, "1995? 1994?" and he said, "OK, that's two years before I was born-- so how has teaching changed since then?" and I gave him a rather long-winded answer, which involved living through the digital revolution, starting out with books and paper, ending with computers, on and on and on-- and by the end of my answer, I was ready to retire (but instead I went to my Music and the Arts Class and told them they needed to have more arguable points in their essays—they were being very hesitant to offer their opinions, so I told them, "look, we're not talking about abortion or politics, it's just music" and then we read Carl Wilson's essay "Celine Dion and Me" and I had all the students write some music on the board that would thoroughly embarrass them if other people heard them actively listening to this particular music-- like if they were blasting it out their car windows-- and we all had a good time . . . although several kids wrote 100 Gecs, and I love 100 Gecs—but I still wasn't offended because it's only music).

Heading Out to the Park

Singing "walking the dog, walking the dog" to the tune of Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law" makes taking my dog out in the frigid weather slightly more bearable.

I Live in a "High Brow" Town!

 Highland Park (and my buddy Craig) recently made Fox News-- because Highland Park High School has a "Socialist Club"-- but the best thing about the utterly pointless article isn't that my town is full of radical liberals (although it IS the most liberal town in Middlesex County, yet we still have Turning Point USA Club . . . you can't prohibit a school club for political reasons) but the best part is that our town is referred to as "well-to-do" and "high brow"-- which is absurd, considering close to 40 percent of the school students are on free-and-reduced lunch and our grocery store isn't a Wegman's or a Kings or a Whole Foods or even a Trader Joe's, it's a SuperFresh (nor do we have a Wawa or a 7-11, we have a Fresh Mart) but it's still very nice of Fox News to inflate the worth of our real estate . . . thanks!

Ardnakelty: Things Behind Things Behind Things

In Tana French's thriller, The Hunter, the rural Irish mountain town of Ardnakelty reminds me of the newish Bon Iver tune "Things Behind Things Behind Things"-- and retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper is pulled farther and farther into these rings within rings (this is the second book in the series, the first is The Searcher) and you know what happens once you get pulled in, it's tough to reach escape velocity; an evocative, slow-burn about how gossip and history and small-town mores can sometimes fuel animosity, violence, and worse (and I believe I have now read the complete of ouvre of French, who many conisder our greatest living mystery writer . . . I think I am one of them).

Carbage

After lunch, I walked out to my car because I knew I had some gum there, but when I reached into my little gum pouch, I realized that the thing I felt was a used piece of gum that I had stashed there and never tossed out, not a fresh piece, which was both gross and disappointing.

Common Nothing

Years ago, I would give my students on "life quizzes"-- little fun tests on facts that most of society considered common knowledge . . . and I remember they would always struggle with the boiling point of water (in Fahrenheit) and I could understand why-- 212 is not the most memorable number-- but I recently learned that now the vast majority of high school students also do not know the freezing point of water . . . they were in the ballpark with their guesses, which usually ranged from 16-30 degrees but only about a quarter of them knew that it was exactly 32 degrees Fahrenheit-- so perhaps they are quietly quitting the American system of measurements and adopting the metric system?

Very Short and Cheap Field Trip

Today in my English 12: Music and the Arts class, the kids were diligently reading and taking notes on a chapter from Susan Roger's excellent book on the formation of musical taste, This Is What It Sounds Like: What The Music You Love Says About You, when a student raised her hand and said, "Spotify Wrapped came out today . . . can we get our phones out and look at it? This is a music class!" and I thought for a moment and overcame my aversion to ever letting the children touch their cell-phones and said, "Sure" and we grabbed our phones and went outside into the freezing cold-- because Spotify is blocked on the wifi inside the building and we don't really get cell reception inside (unless you are close to a window) and we stood in the brisk winter air and shared our favorite genres (Jazz Funk for me) and our favorite artists and and our most listened to songs and all that and it was a lovely five-minute field trip (until we all got very cold and went back inside to watch the morning announcements).

Sage Advice from Ferris Bueller and Hamlet

It's twenty years to the day since my youngest brother passed away-- this time frame is shocking to me, but as Ferris Bueller reminds us: "Life goes pretty fast, if you don't slow down and look around once in a while, you could miss it"-- so here's to slowing down and enjoying the time we have, and as Hamlet reminds us (after he survives his pirate adventure and prepares to duel Laertes) sometimes we can't slow things down, they become impending and inevitable so "the readiness is all"-- we don't know what life will throw at us, or when things will happen, so all we can do is enjoy the good times and be prepared for the worst. 

Right Back To It

We now enter the three-week slog before Winter Break-- and while some of us teachers might not make it until the end and will end up crying under our desks, broken and despondent, amidst piles of ungraded essays, I am determined to give it the ol' college try and try to teach through these dark days with energy and alacrity-- but today was rough, I attended the 7 A.M. early morning faculty meeting (to avoid staying after school) and then planned and graded my ass off during my prep, essentially became a game-show host second period for a spirited lyric-fill-in game, and then taught Creative Writing mock-epic tone and fairy tale tropes so they could have some fun writing a story, and then went back to grading synthesis essays during my study hall duty . . . my back hurts, my eyes hurt, my brain hurts . . . and that's only day one.

Happy Birthday and Happy Thanksgiving . . .

Today is my wife's birthday, and there have already been TWO birthday miracles:

1) our local and venerable candy factory, Birnn Chocolate, actually made a batch of dark chocolate raspberry jellies-- they are by far the best in the known universe . . . honestly, most raspberry jellies made in America taste quite gross (apparently these taste more like the European version) but for whatever reason, Birnn rarely makes them and we haven't had them in years-- this is odd, since they are by far the best thing that they make . . . but I am no chocolatier and times are tough on the choclate front-- apparently, because of global warming, ageing trees, and gold mining, there is a cocoa bean crisis and quality chocolate (and cocoa beans) are hard to come by-- I learned this from the Asian lady that has worked at Birnn for many, many years-- she gave me an entire lecture on the current global state of chocolate and cocoa beans;

2) I managed to clip and upload my favorite cinematic Thanksgiving scene-- a moment from the excellent Thanksgiving movie Pieces of April-- if you haven't seen it, it's worth a watch-- excellent ensemble cast, and a funny, poignant, dysfunctional-family-over-the-holidays story with a brilliant plot . . . I'm sure I broke some copyright laws in posting this scene-- I had to pirate the file, then convert it, then load it into iMovie, then clip the appropriate portion-- but I've been searching YouTube for it forever, and no one has ever posted it-- so this is my contribution to the digital disaster-- I hope someone enjoys it.

IT's True, Tomorrow IS Another Day . . .

This morning, I started screwing around with a very special digital something that I wanted to post today, but then I got sidetracked and forgot all about it-- perhaps tomorrow?

Black Friday = Dark TV Show?

We joined my mom yesterday for a fairly mellow Thanksgiving—the first one without my dad—but we had plenty of good Pilgrim food that he would have enjoyed . . . and this morning, on Black Friday, my wife is watching the darkest of shows, a Netflix series called "The Big C," which is about a mom dying of cancer . . . I'm not sure why she's doing this to herself, but she says she likes it— I also noticed that the great character actor Oliver Pratt is once again playing the husband of a victim of cancer (he also played this role in the excellent Thanksgiving movie Pieces of April) but as for me, after reminiscing about my dad and my brother yesterday and all the other folks absent from the table, I'm more in the mood for "The Chair Company" or "The Big Bang Theory."

Thanks, Andrew Hickey!

I am thankful for all the usual things, of course-- family, friends, a steady job, shelter, hot water, a loyal dog-- but I am also thankful that Andrew Hickey, creator of the absurdly detailed and comprehensive podcast "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs," has finally arrived at Led Zeppelin-- I just finished his two part "Dazed and Confused" episode and it was quite a journey-- at the start he mentioned The Zombies album Odessey and Oracle and I had to listen to that for a few days-- it's fantastic chamber pop-- and a similar thing happened in an earlier episode when he introduced me to The Beach Boys album "Wild Honey," another music rec from Hickey I'm quite thankful for . . . anyway, I think there will be more songs that I'm interested in from this point forward and his song-by-song analysis of the first two Zeppelin albums and the entire story in general illustrates what a wild scene was happenign in the late 1960's-- musicians collaborating, competing, stealing songs from each other, stealing songs from blues musicians, then distorting them, putting their own spin on them, claiming them as their own-- leading to a tangled web of credits and plagiarism and payouts and future lawsuits and fantastic music.

Future Crossing Guard!

This morning, as I was weaving through the back roads on my way to work (because all the main roads have been under construction) I came to a STOP sign in front of a fairly crowded school bus stop and a middle school kid who was crossing the street in order to get to the crowd of kids at the bus stop outstretched his arm and gave me the hold-up sign-- he must have been worried that I didn't see him, or that I didn't know he was about to cross the street and that I would run the STOP sign and hit him-- and then when he got far enough across the street, he gave me the thumbs-up sign, as in: now it's safe to go and you won't hit me and I found this very endearing and helpful and this kid definitely has a future as a crossing guard or an assistant ref or an airport tarmac crewman or a sign language interpreter or some other job that requires well-timed body language.

Two InterestingWorks of Art To Help You Get Through The Week

I've come into contact with two oddball works of artistry this week, and I am enjoying both immensely:

1) The Zombies' 1969 album Odessey and Oracle-- while I knew a couple of tunes on this album: "Time of the Season" and "A Rose for Emily"-- I certainly never listened to the album in its entirety, but I heard Andrew Hickey mention it favorably during his comprehensive, super-detailed podcast A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs and so I gave it a shot and I truly love this album-- although I suppose it's slightly psychedelic, to me it seems more like a cross between The Beach Boys and a less raucous, more baroque version of The Sgt Pepper-era Beatles . . . anyway, I highly recommend giving it a listen, it's a fantastic collection of well-structured, catchy, and genuinely profound songs;

2) The Chair Company, an absurdist Tim Robinson comedy in the style of Detroiters and I Think You Should Leave Now . . . but even more so-- this is a show I have to watch alone, as my wife does not tolerate Tim Robinson comedy, but I find it wonderful-- Robinson plays Ron Trosper, a mall designer who suffers a public workplace fall due to a malfunctioning chair and gets sucked into a conspiratorial corporate mystery-- this is a workplace comedy, but unlike The Office, where the zany antics of Michael Scott and his staff make the workplace into something beautifully hilariously funny, in The Chair Company, work seems to be destroying these characters, reducing them to screaming, cringey disasters-- but there are also slapstick moments, genuinely emotional moments, and instances that are just suprising and laugh-out-loud funny . . . but only if you dig Tim Robinson.