No Kings, Just Queens Assigning Chores (from out of state!)

My wife is away on a ladies' trip to Rhode Island (but she's still assigning me chores from out of state: water my garden, take my car to the car-detailing place . . . is this legal?) but in between pickleball, lying on the couch, and doing my wife's remote bidding--  

I still managed to find time yesterday to ride up to Morristown with Stacey to visit Cunningham and her toddler Quinn and attend the "No Kings" protest, which was pretty tame, honestly: no antifa organized leftist terrorism, no counter-protest, not even any rock-throwing . . . just some speakers and a fairly large but very orderly crowd carrying a bunch of signs . . . the only conflict that we saw was a young Matt Walsh wannabe wandering around with his cellphone asking people "what is a woman?" but then he wouldn't stay and engage with anyone-- Stacey said, "Aww . . . you haven't been with one yet?" and I yelled: "Don't watch The Crying Game! Then you'll really be confused!" and then I realized my reference was from 1992 and no one got it (except Stacey and this old lady next to us who called the youngster "a piece of shit"-- she laughed) but apparently the proper, conservative answer is "an adult human female" and once you start differentiating between sex and gender or bring up x and y chromosomes and social constructs, then you're an antifa indoctrinator or something . . . anyway, it was good to see so many people out at the various protests, peacefully protesting our piece-of-shit, anti-democratic, norm-breaking, possibly pedophilic, certainly pussy-grabbing, tariff-loving, polarizing, nepotistic, emolument abusing, insurrection inciting, felony pardoning, crybaby election loser, golf cheater, justice department weaponizing, EPA and Education dismantling, conspiracy mongering, media manipulating, journalism oppressor, lying, dog-whistling, race-baiting, shithole country hating, tax evading, bankrupt businessman, crypto charlatan, transactionally moral, quid quo pro corrupter, appointee of quacks and incompetents, penis-breath of a President (and I could go on and on).

Friday . . . Whew

To celebrate working all five days of this grueling five-day week-- and the 24,000 steps I accumulated over the course of the day, comprised of powerwalking and pickleball . . . plus a bike ride-- to commemorate this triumph, I am writing nothing of substance today.

Do the Right Thing (and Be Punished For It)

After school yesterday, the pickleball gang was meeting at the new pickleball courts in Buccleuch Park-- fourteen new courts!-- and Buccleuch Park is in New Brunswick, adjacent to the Rutgers College Ave campus-- so the perfect distance to bike ride from my house in Highland Park . . . this would be a great warm-up for my hamstrings and hips AND I wanted to do the right thing and not add more traffic and pollution to the general mayhem that is New Brunswick/Rutgers at the start of the semester so I took a look at Google Maps and noticed that the shortest route was one I had taken before-- you go across the Route 27 bridge from Highland Park to New Brunswick, and then you go past the homeless encampment and through a tunnel that goes under the bridge and then you take a narrow, overgrown, pavement path in between Route 18 and the south bank of the Raritan River-- and the path is definitely decrepit and ruinous and in disrepair, full of trash and overgrown with ragweed and poison ivy, but it's not closed-- so I rode this path, which I hadn't been on in many years-- since COVID?-- and I passed some sketchy looking holes in the fence and a homeless guy actually shooting heroin-- the needle was in his arm-- and I had to pass very close to him because the path was so narrow and I didn't want to fall down the cliff and into the river--

and I finally got to the stairs which lead to a bike path bridge over Route 18, and then this bridge connects to the Rutgers campus bike path-- but when I reached the top of the stairs, the gate to get out was chained and padlocked-- 

so after going through all the stages of grief and doing a lot of cursing-- I could SEE the Rutgers children and see the Rutgers buildings, but I could not escape the caged bridge and there was no way across Route 18 there-- it was a multi-lane freeway under and overpass with a high concrete divider in the middle-- so after much profanity, I texted the pickleball crew, told them I would be late-- and carried my back back down the stairs, rode the overgrown path, passed the homeless guy-- who had now set up a tarp and was shooting heroin again . . . I had to walk my bike past him so as not to run into him-- I said, "right behind you, man . . . the gate was locked!" but he didn't seem to feel my pain-- and then I biked all the way back to the bridge, crossed over into New Brunswick proper and biked through the College Avenue campus to the park, where I played some pickleball, and then I biked home in the ensuing darkness, using the New Brunswick bike lanes-- but there were some assholes parked in the bike lanes in places so I yelled at them-- and my next move is this: I'm going to write an irate letter to the city of New Brunswick-- they either need to indicate that this bike path is closed or they need to clean it up and open the gate-- but this anecdote is a microcosm of our bike paths in Middlesex County-- there are some decent ones but none of them connect particularly well and there are always dangerous unprotected sections and it's really not viable to bike places unless you're willing to risk your life . . . so that's one of the many reasons everyone is in their car creating traffic (some of the other reasons are that people are stupid and people are lazy).

The Call Is Coming From Inside the Hat!

After I play pickleball, I hang my sweaty baseball caps on the clothesline across our back deck so that they can air out and dry-- yesterday, just before I went down to the park to play, I grabbed a hat off the clothesline, put it on my head, and then I went inside my house to fill a water bottle . . . and while i was filling the bottle, I felt a lump on my head and I felt the top of the hat and there was a bump-- but the bump was inside the hat . . . weird . . . so I took off the hat and felt my head . . . no bump-- very weird-- but then I looked inside the hat and there was a large spider in there, which had been sitting on my head, causing this lump in the hat . . . and, perhaps because I was all alone, I was surprisingly calm, despite my intense dislike of spiders, and I shook the spider into the sink and squashed it (and then checked my head for other spiders, but I was in the clear).

My Back, Unlike World Liberty Financial, Is In the Red

My back is no longer back in the black-- it's in the red, deep in the red . . . so I should NOT have played three hours of pickleball yesterday, nor should I have read the news-- as far as I understand it, Trump pushed out US attorney Erik Siebert because he refused to pursue "trumped up" charges on James Comey and replaced him with an inexperienced beauty queen named Lindsey Halligan AND Trump also essentially received a quid pro quo bribe from an Abu Dhabi investment fund, to the tune of a 2 billion dollar investment in World Liberty Financial, and then the Trump White House reversed restrictions on the export of Nvidia AI computer chips to the U.A.E.-- though I guess this deal hasn't gone through yet becuase of security concerns, but still WTF?-- and, worst of all, my classroom is especially dank and smelling of mold because it was so unseasonably hot and humid over the weekend . . . such a Monday.

My Back is Back in the Black

I was out of commission for a day, but now my back is back in the black so forget the hearse because I never die-- I played three hours of pickleball today, stiff back and all-- basically, I've got nine lives and I'm abusing every one of them, so look at me now: dinking and slamming and winning hand battles . . . I'm just making my play and I'm hitting a wicked backhand flick as a speed-up as well, so don't try to push your luck, just get out of my way-- perhaps my back is back in the black because I hit the sack early last night-- but even one day of rest is too long for me, it's been too long and I'm glad to be back, with my gang, going out with a bang, looking at the sky and realizing it's time for lunch.

Lo & Behold! David Playeth Around the Pole!

In the Book of Acts, God instructs Ananias to meet Saul on "the street that is called Straight" in Damascus-- Mark Twain calls this the only joke in the Bible-- because Straight Street is a actually a winding road, so though it is called Straight, it is actually serpentine-- hysterical in the context of that book-- and sometimes, whence the street is not straight then you must wind how you may . . . such as when David smote the pickleball that was travelling very wide and thus David smoteth the ball around the net-pole and into the field of play, making David victorious both in the eyes of God and the eyes of men.

Ugh . . . Wake Me Up For Thanksgiving Break

So that's that . . . our beach vacation is over, and it's time to get back to the ol' routine: I'm fat from eating and drinking in goblin mode for a month (and not walking or running up and down any hills . . . the beach is very flat) but I got up early this morning, drove down to Hamilton and played pickleball with my brother (and jammed my hip somewhat . . . we'll see if the naproxen fixes that issue) and now I've got to clean some toilets, prove to my mortgage lender that I have hazard insurance, put away laundry, figure out what the fuck I'm doing in school next week, and eat a bunch of salad . . . wake me up when September end (and allergy season is over: my nose is a bit stuffy since I returned to Highland Park-- apparently there's a lot less pollen and ragweed at the beach). 

Only in Jerzee: The Theme Continues

Yesterday, I went to play pickleball at Wardell Park-- it's a fifteen-minute drive from the beach and a well-organized, busy place, but the skill levels of the players are a bit random: some decent players, some old folks, and some wild cards . . . but there was one solid player I had some good games with the other day and he grabbed my paddle and put me in his group and then when we went out on the court and I assumed we were splitting up because we were the best players but he had other ideas-- so this guy, a big Mediterranean-looking dude, he said to me, "over here shradool" or something like that-- it was one of those made up Sicilian words that my father always used as a catch-all-- and this guy looked a bit like my dad (thirty years ago) so that was something and then I realized that he just wanted to mercilessly crush everyone and that's why he adopted me as a partner and the game started and we were playing an athletic lefty who I had played before-- a decent player but mainly a banger-- and my partner leaned over to me and said, "all this guy does is smash the ball, so don't return his serve like a pussy" and I was like: "okay" because who wants to hit a return of serve like a pussy?

Salt Life

A cool, cloudy day here at the beach so I'm back at the coffee shop-- but this time, taking some advice from my wife, I have ordered my coffee "for here," and so I get it in a little blue mug, and then I can get a refill . . . anyway, lots of adventures in the past two days-- I oculd really get used to living down here:

1) yesterday, Stacey came to visit, and we spent some time at the beach, and then we went out for drinks and food in Asbury Park;

2) we visited the Black Swan for all-day Tuesday happy hour-- all alcohol is half off-- so we had some fancy drinks and apps . . . get this, in ANOTHER refurbished bank-- so I'm writing this sentence in a refurbished bank in Ocean Grove and we had drinks in a refurbished bank in Asbury-- fucking wild-- and while the food and drinks were great, Stacey and I did feel a strange and very random tapping on the metal foot rail but we couldn't exactly figure out which bar patron had the nervous feet;

3) then we went to Barrio Costero, the upscale Mexican joint, for Taco Tuesday-- three tacos and a spicy margarite for $15-- which is a deal at this place-- and there was no room at the bar so the hostess seated us at the "chef's counter" and we watched the kitchen in action-- it was quite impressive and I certainly got my money's worth-- I asked the head chef a lot of questions (she was saying "hands!" not "hits!" and the spritzer was full of lime juice) and we noticed that EVERYTHING was prepped and labeled, so they were really just assembling and cooking, for the most part-- an excellent experience;

4)  this morning, I shook off the alcohol and took Lola to the Asbury dog beach-- she enjoyed that . . .

5) after the dog park, I geared up and made the short drive to Wardell Park for some pickleball-- as usual, everything was organized and there were some decent players-- I ended up playing for nearly three hours;

6) post-pickleball, I cooked up some leftovers, collapsed on the couch and I read my Tana French novel until I fell asleep-- 

7) Catherine got home from her book club outing in Bradley Beach, and she's making some eggplant parm in our tiny kitchen-- she made the sauce yesterday with tomatoes from her garden and now she's prepping the white eggplants (also homegrown) and I took a lovely picture of this-- it's not easy to work in this little kitchen so that's why I cleared out (too many cooks=no good) and I did get a free coffee refill (but the AC in this old bank sucks).

How About Another John Cena Cameo?

My family is at the beach— and while it’s not quite the same without my dad— still, the weather is nice, the water is warm, I’ve already played basketball with the boys and pickleball in Avalon, and last night, we were all tired and didn’t go hang out with my cousins, instead we watched The Office, which was a family favorite back in the day, and we reminisced about when comedy was comedy— unlike the new season of The Bear— a show which used to be at least a little bit funny but has gotten more and more depressing with each season.

Let Freedom Explode Loudly All Night

Most of my post-Independence Day was triumphant and celebratory: I returned to full force on the pickleball court, despite my sketchy hamstring and I celebrated my recovery with some beer and tequila at my friend's pool . . . but this celebration was interrupted by a phone call from Ian-- he found our dog panting and shaking in the bathroom and thought she was very sick, so I drove home to check her out but she was simply hiding from the bombs-- there's been fireworks goign off for days and she's losing her mind because of this-- she's getting more anxious about loud noises and she gets older-- and so am I -- last night I woke with a start and asked my wife who was knocking at our bedroom door, which is a scary thing to ask someone who is currently dreaming-- but it was just more fucking fireworks . . . maybe we should celebrate Independence Day with voter registration or a historical reenactment of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence . . . something less loud and more dog-friendly.

Hello Humans!

Now that we've entered the AI revolution, it's highly improbable that anyone other than my good friends will end up in the godforsaken corner of the internet-- there's no reason to follow a trail of digital breadcrumbs to a weird space like this, as Google now provides a linkless AI answer to any query-- the internet is becoming more like Walmart and less like a digital version of the Route 1 Flea Market and while this is convenient, it's also sad-- because there are amazing human stories of resilience and perseverance out in the world . . . I've been writing this blog with a pulled hamstring, which now seems to be recovered enough for me to play pickleball tomorrow-- I tested it out at the gym today with a variety of sprints and starts and stops, and now I'm writing this blog, tired and sweaty and a bit sore, something AI will never be able to claim . . . unless it sometimes feels its heatsink getting hotter and hotter and impairing its computing abilities?

Embrace the Absurdity

I played indoor pickleball this morning at an open play and ended up paired with a fairly skilled but very surly man named Sergei-- we were winning games, but he was far more concerned with telling me all kinds of things about where I should be and what shots I should and shouldn't take-- I think he forgot we were planning giant ping-pong with a wiffleball.

D.P. Phone Home

So yesterday I believed that my crappy-Android-phone fell out of my pants pocket and was lying prone on the pavement in the high school parking lot, most likely run over by automobiles multiple times-- and once I realized this, when I got home from school, I decided not to drive back to the school and rescue my phone from this fate because 

1) I hate driving 

2) my phone is an ancient piece of shit

3) pickleball-- 

so I figured I would leave it to whatever fate befell it and then when I got to school today, I would see if someone picked it up and turned it in or if it was still intact on the ground near my parking spot-- but when I used Find My Android this morning, Google no longer reported my phone being in the school parking lot but instead just outside my house . . . weird . . . and so I thought maybe it fell out of my car when I got home-- and this would explain why the podcast played all the way home yesterday-- so I set my phone to ring and then went outside and it turned out my phone was not outside my car, but inside it-- it fell down under the driver seat-- and while I swore I looked in the car yesterday, I guess I didn't look in this spot and I also think I should get a different colored phone case (mine is black) because it blends in with the interior of my car and the main thing about this stupid incident is I won't be getting on iPhone anytime soon so for the foreseeable future my wife will have to deal with all the GIFs in the basketball group chat.

What Comes Around Phones Around

I confiscated a student's phone today, which is always an ordeal, but it's the fourth quarter, and at this point, they should know better-- and then when I got home from work, I couldn't find my phone-- but I knew it was either in the house or in the car because I listened to a podcast on the way home . . . but when I used Find My Android, the computer reported that my phone was still in the East Brunswick High School parking lot . . . which was weird but I guess my car downloaded the podcast and played it even though my phone fell out of my pocket-- and it definitely fell out of my pocket because I had it in this weird little phone pocket in my work pants-- usually I wear cargo pants that have velcro sealed pockets but I have this one pair of Dickie's pants with a weird little open pocket and this morning, I was going to put my wallet in it this little pocket but I was like: "my wallet's going to fall out of this stupid pocket" and so I put my phone in the stupid pocket, because I don't care about my cheap-piece-of-shit-Android-phone and it turns out I made a good decision . . . and I didn't feel like driving back to school and searching for my phone because I had a pickleball commitment so I'll find out tomorrow if my phone is intact and in the parking lot, or crushed in the parking lot, or in the school office-- and if it's crushed or lost, then perhaps I will get an iPhone so I can join the AM basketball group chat and my wife won't have to get so many stupid GIFs from all my basketball buddies.

Mainly Lame Day Off

No school for me today because of Eid al-fitr-- my wife had no school as well but she's on a lady's long weekend in Savannah, so I decided to optimize all my terrible shitty chores into one day: I did some lesson planning (I'm underwater) and our taxes (we owe a shitload) and went to Costco (costly trip, but on the bright side, it wasn't particularly crowded) and cleaned up the house, then I took a break and went to the gym and shot baskets and lifted weights and played some pickleball-- but now I'm in the home stretch, cleaning the bathrooms and then, finally, I need to shave, shower and do the netipot-- allergy season has arrived . . . and THEN I'm going to lie on the couch and read my Longmire mystery.

Pickleball Initiates the Severance Procedure?

During these troubled times, certain subjects are hard to bring up in social settings because of the controversy and awkwardness these topics engender-- for instance, I play a lot of pickleball with my friends Ann and Craig but we are NOT allowed to bring up pickleball in mixed company because everyone else gets annoyed, so Ann refers to it as "the game that shall not be named" and we do our best to keep our pickleball gossip on the DL . . . it's also hard to discuss current TV shows because of the general fragmentation of media-- no one is watching the same show at the same time and so you don't want to spoil anything, or talk about a show that no one has seen-- I truly miss Fridays at work the day after a new Seinfeld aired on Thursday night . . . there was something for everyone to discuss-- anyway, my wife is away in Savannah and so I hitched a ride to the brewery with Ann and Craig yesterday, so during the car ride, we were able to talk about pickleball and a TV show without being chastised-- we have all been watching Severance (but we had to curtail the conversation once we got to Flounder because we were meeting people) and then, at the end of the ride, Ann articulated her theory that synthesizes pickleball and Severance . . . she said that playing pickleball with all these various groups of people we've met, is like going to work in Severance . . . it's kind of wonderful, you just show up, you have these fleeting relationships with these people, but you really don't care that much about them because they're not part of you're "outie" life-- or that's not exactly true, your pickleball self cares about them quite a bit during the session and you see them quite often, yet you know nothing about their childhoods or outside lives and you don't think about them during your outie life and they don't think about you, you only know if they have a good backhand or fast hands at the net-- there's really no time or space to chat, it's not like golf-- it's a fast-paced game with lots of switching partners-- and then once the session is over, you barely remember what happened-- that's the nature of the game . . . it's not soccer or basketball where you might remember two critical plays, instead you hit the ball a zillion times, and you often felt like a hero and you also often felt like an idiot, so it all evens out and you remember nothing except it was a time-- but there are glitches in the severance, of course, because after Ann revealed her theory during the car ride, we saw a pickleball guy at the brewery!-- and we had a brief but awkward conversation about when and where we would next be playing pickleball and then he wandered away and we did not pursue further interaction, for fear of reprisal from Lumon.

Spring: Time to Shed Some Clothes (and Some Body Fat)

As usual, with the end of winter comes the annual "it's time to shed a few pounds and get in shape" portion of the year-- my wife and I are going to stop eating dessert after dinner while watching TV . . . which was perfectly acceptable behavior this winter because it was dark and cold and bleak-- but now the dark-times are over and it's time to shed the fat-- and my wife listened to some lady on a podcast (who might be an orthopedist? I would ask her, but she's in Savannah on a ladies' weekend) and this lady doctor on the podcast said it's all about various types of movement and that during the course of each week you should:

1) do four 45-minute walks-- you don't need to do crazy amounts of cardio;

2) lift weights twice a week but lift heavier than you might normally lift . . . 3-5 sets of weight you can put up 4-6 times;

3) twice a week, do four repetitions where you run "as fast as you can" for 30 seconds, then let your heart return to normal and do it again-- so four sets of these each session for a total of eight sprints a week;

and I like this routine as I can work this stuff in around pickleball, basketball, and soccer, but I did the fast running on Wednesday, at the park, and while it was fun and not all that hard while I was doing it, it was a longer sprint than I've run in a while-- full court basketball requires sprints but they are three or four second sprints-- same with indoor soccer-- and on Thursday and Friday my right quad was occasionally cramping up, maybe every eleventh step-- which made for some humorour walking around-- but my leg recovered and I felt great at pickleball this morning . . . I did the heavy lifting Thursday and my shoulder is a bit sore, but again, I survived at pickleball today, although my shoulder started to hurt when I was hitting into the wind, there was a stiff breeze today, and you had to whale the ball . . . so we will see how this new routine goes-- my guess is I will either get injured soon and be a total disaster or I won't get injured and get super-jacked and super-fit and everyone will be so impressed by my physique that they will put a statue of me next to Rocky at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Dave Clocks This Metaphorical Tea

Today was metaphor day in Creative Writing-- I reviewed the types of metaphors (simile, personification, etcetera) and I gave them a way to remember the difference between synecdoche and metonymy that I thought of this morning in the car-- and it is car related-- with synecdoche, you use part to represent the whole-- so "check out my wheels"-- while with metonymy you use an association to represent the idea, so "check out my ride" and then I gave them a couple of metaphorical quotations to unravel:

Language is fossil poetry (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Prose is the museum, where all the old weapons of poetry are kept (T.E. Hulme)

and some of them got the  collective point-- that a dinosaur is older than a fossil and the weapon is older than the museum and so living breathing interesting poetic language becomes dead fossilized prose and we barely notice it--then we had a fossil poetry fill-in-the-blank challenge-- I have a quiz with fifty body part metaphors-- eye of a needle, head of lettuce, safe by a hair, save face, sticks in your craw, etcetera-- they are easy for old people but quite difficult for highschool students . . . and then I went over how there are dead metaphors all around us-- when you call someone bright or brilliant or a clear thinker or lucid, you are comparing them to the sun or a lightbulb-- and when you call someone sharp or keen or they have an acute wit or make a good point, you are comparing them to a blade-- and thus the word "clever" derives from the word "cleaver"-- and we went over runny noses and running faucets, which run like a river-- but running motors run like a horse . . . which is why car engines are measure in horsepower . . . and then things got interesting because my first period class is smart and they started thinking of recent examples: many of them paradoxical . . . if you're "the shit" it's great but if you're "a piece of shit" it's bad . . . you can spill the tea or you can clock that tea . . . someone said, "I'm not a monster" because being a monster is bad -- unless you're a "beast" on the basketball court; the party can be "lit" or "fire" and those are probably related to smoking weed and those are good, or you can be on fire, which is good, but it's not good to be fired or burnt or cooked-- those are bad-- although if you're "cooking" then that's good; being hot is good and being cool is good, but being "mid" or cold is not so good; if you "ate" or you "served," you did well-- but if you got "served" you need to appear in court-- and "ate" is so popular that if you did well, they might say "4 plus 4" or "one more than seven" and if you're chopped, that's bad-- you're ugly-- and the chuzz are chopped whores, and if you did it well and finished strong, they don't say "mic drop" anymore, the kids say "period" or "point blank period" and there's a new one for old people that I really like, when you are playing pickleball, if someone speeds up the ball at you and you bend your body out of the way and dodge the ball and it goes out of bounds, you "matrixed it" and then we speculated about how the kids of the future would be doing a fill-in quiz about "clocking the tea" and "that party was lit" in the same way that they did a quiz on old phrases like "skeleton in the closet" and those kids would be using some new incomprehensible metaphorical slang and the cycle would continue.