Happy Boink-Day?

If hardcore pro-life folks seriously believe that life begins at conception-- the moment when that one special sperm plunges into an enormous (relatively speaking) looming orb of an ovum, sparking the miracle of meiosis-- then they should start measuring their age differently; in the conception-begins-life camp, instead of celebrating your birthday, you should observe the day you were conceived-- and, consequently, these folks should consider themselves approximately nine months older than their current age-- of course, you can't call this new holiday a birthday-- so I humbly suggest "Boink-day" . . . although Boink-day applies more to parents than progeny, plus no one wants to think about their parents doing THAT . . . even if it did lead to your birth-- and while we're discussing this verboten subject, if you really drill down into what happened on your "birth" day, I regret to inform you that it involved your mother's (stretched out) vagina, and that's not something most people want to think about when they're blowing out candles and cutting a slice of cake

Nice Boognish!

I was walking the dog in the park this morning, slightly dazed from Ian's graduation party, when the mirror-shade-wearing, long-haired park employee covered from head to toe in tattoos yelled from his moving maintenance vehicle, "Nice Boognish, man!" in reference to the Ween-style Boognish tattoo on my ankle-- and then he rolled to a stop and we talked about the Ween discography, Gene Ween's drug problems, the possibility of one last album, the weirdness of the last album, John and Peter's Place in New Hope, his interactions with Dean Ween, the Asbury Park concert we both attended, and other Ween-related topics . . . and then I recommended he check out 100 gecs, of course . . . so the moral is: tattoos, they connect people, all sorts of people.

Holy Mother of Peanut Butter and Chocolate Miracle!

The College Writing Crew was embroiled in another meeting about the state of the Rutgers Expository Writing Course . . .  which will now by called College Writing because they are removing the Expository element . . . because it's racist?-- so we are thinking the changes Rutgers is making might be informed by documents like the NCTE Position Statement on Writing Instruction in School-- you should really browse through this very "woke" document to get a feel for what the fuck is going on in education . . . apparently writing is used as a "gatekeeping device," which contributes to inequity-- and so "writing instruction" should not focus on "the writing" and we should not "assess and evaluate" this writing-- but instead we should focus on the writers themselves AND if we are teaching kids logic and "reason, order and control, and directness of language" then we are being "Eurocentric" and "white" and we should instead promote "dialect that expresses their family and community identity, the idiolect that expresses their unique personal identity" and "multimodal" projects-- holy shit-- I thought documents like these were the product of super-liberal think tanks or something but they are obviously being adopted by more mainstream institutions . . . this is the kind of softball that keeps people like Jordan Peterson batting a thousand and turns well-meaning commonsensical folks in Republicans-- wild and weird stuff-- and not only is this insane because kids don't need to reflect on their identities any more than they already do-- but it's also going to promote the status quo because rich white parents are going to get their white kids tutored in the "Eurocentric" values of logic and reason and direct language-- and learning to write well which IS a difficult task-- that's why it's a gatekeeping task-- it's hard!-- and while kids do engage in lots of other kinds of writing-- Instagram posts and texts and Snapchat streaks-- that doesn't mean that they are academic writers-- just as we are ALL physicists . . . we can catch balls and accurately judge how objects will fall and understand how to drive a car at high speeds-- but that doesn't mean we should all be able to pass a college physics course . . . anyway, while we were discussing all this and figuring out the best course of action for next year, I sort of lost the thread of the meeting and said, "I wish I had a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup" and Stacey said, "I've got a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup!" and I was like WTF! and she pulled a two pack out of her bag and said, "A kid gave me this before Winter Break, is that okay?" and I said, "Yeah!" and we ate them and they were still totally delicious.

Miracle at the Wawa

Yet another sentence set at the Wawa-- and NOT at the Starbucks, I might add . . . there are ZERO sentences on this blog set at Starbucks because I've never been inside a Starbucks . . . I refuse to spend that much money for coffee and-- if I followed Cunningham's orders-- this Miracle at the Wawa might not have happened at all because she wanted me to pick her up some kind of crazy sugary barely caffeinated drink at Starbucks (she's pregnant and not drinking coffee) but I told her I wasn't going to Starbucks and I would pick her up anything she wanted as long as it was at the Wawa and we had an interesting debate/discussion  in front of her AP Lang. class and then I drove to the Wawa to get a sandwich and to pick up a very complicated coffee order for Stacey; I ordered my sandwich on the little touchscreen and then I built Stacey's drink, which consisted of half a 20 oz. cup of some frothy extreme caffeine Mocha Wake Up out of a big multi-multi-nozzled machine, then 1/3 cup of dark roast from the regular coffee urn, and then a dollop of Irish Creme coffee creamer . . . and then I got in line and while I was standing there, holding her giant complex coffee drink, the little cardboard band that keeps you from burning your hand broke and her 20 oz. coffee slid through the broken band and fell and-- without even thinking-- I dropped my hand two feet down, lightning fast, fucking lightning fast and I caught the cup-- and did not spill a drop-- I caught the cup with exactly the right amount of force so that it fell no farther but I didn't crush it-- it was a fucking miracle-- and-- Testify!-- the guy behind me in line saw the whole thing and he was like, "That was amazing" and I said, "Yeah, that would have been a big mess" and I was very glad that someone Witnessed this Miracle and I am certainly a Blessed Figure on this Earth.

Xmas Eve Miracles!

This morning, my older son Alex and I went to the Piscataway Y and played some basketball-- his game has gotten better because he's playing so much pick-up ball and Rutgers and my unconscious outside shooting picked up exactly where I left off yesterday morning . . . we were playing two-on-two and I think I shot 80% from beyond the arc-- it was ridiculous . . . and then to add to the miracles, Catherine botched another idiom in her inimitable style, when she told Alex she "didn't want to hear any comments from the popcorn gallery."

It's a Miracle . . . Now Shut Up and Do Your Work

We were brainstorming topics for an informational presentation in my Public Speaking class and some boys wanted to do a speech about how "Helen Keller isn't real" and I was like "what?" and they  told me they just didn't buy it-- how could someone who couldn't see or hear write books and I told them the one thing I remembered about Helen Keller-- that the teacher poured some water on her hand and spelled out "water" and they were like "what about 'the'? how did she learn the word 'the'?" and I was like, "I don't know! go do some research" and this class is split in two by the lunch period, so I brought this up in the English Office and Cunningham was like "yeah! how did she do all that? how could she learn all those words?" and I was like "you need to go sit with the stupid boys in my Public Speaking class" and Cunningham was like "how could she learn all the words?" and I said, "they put stuff in her hand and spelled it" but now I was starting to doubt myself because that sounded absurd . . . and she was like "how did she learn abstract concepts?" and I said, "you pour water over her hand and spell 'water' for a couple days, and then one day you pour hot water on her hand and spell 'betrayal'" and then I spent the rest of my lunch period researching Helen Keller and apparently her teacher spelled millions of words on her hand, and she used a braille typewriter, and she felt cheeks and mouths and lips for vibrations to learn what words sounded like and there were always doubters of her abilities but she repeatedly proved them wrong and rode a bike and flew a plane and went to college . . . and I'm not exactly sure how she did all this, but I'm pretty sure she is real-- but I'm still hard-pressed to explain how it all happened.

Mean Streets and Not-So-Mean Streets

I couldn't find my car keys this morning but we solved the mystery-- Ian left them in the car door last night . . . and the van was parked on the street-- a street where cars are occasionally broken into-- so it was something of a miracle that the car was trashed, stolen, taken for a joy ride, or something worse . . . but we don't live on streets as mean as those I detail in the new episode of We Defy Augury: Ghettoside vs. Murderbot . . . check it out, it's my best one yet.

Heat Related Memory Loss Miracle!

Folks reported they were on my face yesterday when I left the workshop, but I searched the car and the house and everywhere else high and low and my new Zenni specs were nowhere to be found-- until I checked the pocket of the sports bag and there they were! but why there? Why . . .

Acupuncture and Miracles

I tried to play soccer this morning and I was foiled again-- my left calf and my right upper glute are both knotted up, and it's affecting my hip and I'm a trainwreck . . . but enough about me and my problems, on to the miracle: so I get home from soccer, limping and angry, my body in complete rebellion, my soul descending into the darkness that is midlife for an athlete, and after hearing my lamentations, my wife tells me to make an appointment with her acupuncturist, and I'm at the end of my rope so I actually follow her advice, look up the number, and call the acupuncturist, and after a bit of chatting, she's comfortable enough with me to share a weird revelation . . . apparently when I called her, she was sending a text and a photo-- a text thanking someone for recommending a local soccer program and a photo of her little daughter playing some soccer . . . and she was sending this text/photo to my wife and she said when my call came, her hair stood on end and she wondered if the person calling her could be related to the person she was sending the text/photo . . . and I am!