Hippos Trump Everything

One of the things I love about reading is that it offers total unadulterated freedom of choice -- though I may have several books out from the library, and several more sitting by my bedside, waiting to be read, if I hear about something that piques my interest, I drop everything and commit wanton literary infidelity; I read whatever I want, when I want, without worrying about any recourse or repercussions; in other words, I'll break off a relationship with a book at the drop of a hat; this is the opposite of marriage (or my marriage anyway, as I'm pretty sure I'm forbidden to date other women -- not that I'm going to ask -- and I certainly can't engage in this sort of adulterous freedom with TV shows, because if my wife and I are watching a show, and I watch one without her, it's tantamount to cheating on her . . . and that's why when I heard that Jon Mooallem wrote a seventy one page article about the wild and ingenious plan at the turn of the century to solve America's meat shortage by farming hippos in the Louisiana bayous, I truncated all my previous literary relationships-- including getting to page seven in a new translation of Brothers Karamazov-- and immediately bought the article as a Kindle single on Amazon-- hippo farming!-- and it's well worth reading; there's megafauna, scouts, spies, terrorism, politics, subterfuge, feigned lunacy and plenty of hippo jerky (if you want a quick summary, then check out this Wired article on the article). 

How Not to Fix Your Car

When the little light comes on that indicates that your car is low on windshield washer fluid, not only do you have to purchase more windshield washer fluid, but you also have to open the hood of the car and pour the stuff into the washer fluid reservoir (which I haven't done yet -- my big bottle of blue washer fluid has been riding shotgun in my van for two weeks now).

It's Poop Week!

I may not rescue old ladies from burning buildings or dig wells for the indigent, but I did bag and toss at least ten piles of poop at the dog park last week (I think people get lazy about picking up the poop when there is snow on the ground, because it's hard to walk through the deep stuff, but I can't stand seeing a brown pile of poop defacing the pure white snow . . . which is mainly yellow and gray now anyway, from exhaust and dog urine).

Hero to Zero (in ten hours)

Thursday morning I woke up sore but satisfied, as the night before -- at our weekly Over-30 basketball pick-up game, I had one of the best shooting nights of my rather ugly basketball career . . . both my outside shot and my hook shot were on, which is a rare occurrence, and pretty much everything I chucked up went in; my team won five games in a row and got to stay on the court for ninety minutes straight, and so by the end of the night I was not only happy with my athletic prowess but also totally exhausted, and it was with these wonderful memories in my mind, that I went walking the dog on Thursday morning, and when I neared the dog park, I had to climb over a large pile of snow, and though I could clearly see that there was ice on the pavement below, I figured I could keep my balance when I touched down on it -- because I was a great athlete-- but I did not keep my balance-- not even close-- in fact, both my legs shot into the air (similar to this incident, except more spastic) and I landed squarely on my upper back, and then my head snapped back and hit the ice, and I saw stars and lost my wind, and made some weird yelling noises because I couldn't breathe and because it hurt so fucking much, and Sirius licked my face a couple times to make sure I was alive, and I'm hoping that this incident doesn't screw up my outside shot, but I have a feeling that it will . . . or at least I can blame this incident if my shot returns to normal next week (and there is a fairly happy ending to this story: though I felt shaky all day Thursday and my back and neck hurt, I made it out to the pub, and stayed rather late, and while this might not have been great for my liver, when I woke up Friday morning, after four hours of sleep, my back felt fine . . . and my students -- who thought I was going to be feeling it far worse the second day -- were impressed by my resilience; in fact, I may have boldly claimed to one class that I was "unbreakable" and asked a student to throw a chair at me . . . but luckily, this student did not comply with my request).

It's Been a Long Winter

Though I knew it was a bad idea, I tried to pick up and bag my dog's poop with my gloves on, because it was so cold and snowy, and -- of course -- I got poop all over my gloves . . . but, resourceful soul that I am, I used some snow to clean my gloves off . . . the very same snow which drove me to attempt to pick up and bag a pile of dog poop with heavy winter gloves on, an impossible task . . . and now my gloves appear to be clean.

Sometimes the Internet Teaches Me Valuable Things

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter was attacked by a swamp rabbit (and the administration could neither confirm nor deny if this rabbit was in any way related to the "killer rabbit" in the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail).

Serendipity, Baby

Though I didn't plan it, I ended up simultaneously reading Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life, by Alex Bellos, and Play Their Hearts Out: A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machine by George Dohrmann . . . and while there is no question that Brazil is crazy about soccer and America is crazy about basketball, the craziness exhibits itself in very different ways: Brazilians are superstitious, zealous, and obsessively festive about their national pastime (soccer fan clubs also participate in wildly gala and choreographed carnival events, where tattooed soccer hooligans organize thousands of costumed participants in synchronized marching and dancing) and creative to a fault with their gameplay, as illustrated by their incorporation of religion into the sport, their use of bizarre nicknames and their attempt at an "autoball" league in the 1970's . . . meanwhile, the story George Dohrmann tells of elite youth basketball players and their sleazy, despicable, but wildly successful coach Joe Keller paints a portrait of greed, consumption, high hopes, wild aspirations, hard work, hype, enormous success, great pressure, and epic failure . . . all in the milieu of middle school . . . the story is by turns compelling and infuriating, but the book is a must read, especially if you coach kids, and once you're finished, you can check Dohrmann's blog to see where the players from the book are now.

Dave Accomplishes His Goal

For the second time this season, I had to coach our rec basketball team alone-- normally I am the assistant coach, but the head coach couldn't make it-- and the goal I set for myself was simple: I wanted to call at least one time-out (the last game that I coached solo I forgot about the existence of time-outs-- probably because of all the years coaching soccer-- and so I did all my strategizing during in-bounds passes and free-throws) and so, though we were well ahead and I had already pointed this our to several players, I still called one time out in the first half, to point out that the other team was running a 2-3 zone, and that our ball-handler should penetrate through the middle, and then either shoot or pass it out to the sides . . . and I've decided that I've got no desire to be Bobby Knight and I will be happy when spring soccer season rolls around and I can go back to chatting with the players on my bench while we watch things happen on the soccer field that are so far away and chaotic that's there's really no reason to yell anything, as no one is going to hear you nor are they going to be able to react in time to adjust to what you say.

Like Finches, Only Wackier and With Guns

The This American Life podcast  "Good Guys" is a mixed bag, but the last story (Act 4) takes a turn into strange territory -- an anonymous soldier sent producer Sarah Koenig a number of recordings he made while on a tour of duty in Afghanistan, and he describes a group of men who joined the army not for love and country and patriotism, but instead to be able to experience the thrill of killing another human being . . . and while on some level this is disturbing, on another it makes me wonder if humans are just becoming more specialized, the way the finches did on the Galapagos Islands: now you can make your way in this world as a political pundit, a math nerd, an architect, a musician, a professional athlete, and as a killer . . . you can exploit your artistry, anger, rhetorical powers, mathematical skills,  good looks, ruthlessness, business sense, good will towards all humans, or any number of oddball human traits to earn money and gain fame and favor, so it makes sense that the killing niche will find its experts as well, and they aren't necessarily going to be doing it for the "right" reasons . . . in fact, if they are doing it for the "wrong" reasons, then they might be better at it (but also immoral) just like these guys were really good at making money . . . and if the niche exists, just as it would in an evolutionary matrix, something is going to move into it and exploit it, and you really can't blame people or animals or weeds or finches or whatever, if they do.

At Least I Don't Live on Backlick Road

It's hard to be a bad ass when you live on Valentine Street.

There Is No Bizarro Pub

Normally, the dads in my town go to the pub on Thursday night, and the locals and regulars tolerate us well enough, but Wednesday night, with another snow storm looming, Alec and I tried to drum up an early emergency pub night . . . but though we couldn't convince the regular Thursday night crowd of dads to attend, we went anyway; on the way we speculated that there might be a Wednesday night crowd of dads . . . guys we barely knew -- a bizarro version of our crowd -- with perhaps one friend of ours in common who had been moonlighting without telling us about the other parallel, bizarro pub group, but this was not the case; the pub was filled with regulars and locals (and this is the kind of place the opens at 7 AM . . . the kind of place where the regulars do a pot luck every Sunday for football, a real version of Cheers, with a softball team, a dart board, and an owner who grew up in town, owns the building, works the bar, runs back into the "kitchen" to make a burger or a cheesesteak or a fish sandwich . . . a real version of Sam Malone, only fatter . . . but he did play college baseball) and things seemed a little wilder and louder on Wednesday night, there was some dancing in the area that is congested with dads on Thursday night, and the regulars kept telling Alec and I "it's the wrong night!" and "it's Wednesday night!" like we got confused and came on the wrong day and so I'm thinking that when we get ten or fifteen dads in the place on Thursday, we really change the vibe and so it's good to mix it up once in a while.

Sporting Drama is Nothing Like Valentine's Day

I'm not sure which is more outlandish, Sharknado or the second season of Homeland, but what I do know is that I need to temper the emotional roller coaster of Friday Night Lights with a dose of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, because sporting drama gets me choked up and teary eyed (unlike Valentine's Day . . . I was tasked with getting my wife a pair of slippers, and while I finally accomplished this, I had to go to several stores, as slippers are a hot item this winter; the guy at Target said, "sorry man, we're all sold out, we sold eight hundred pairs in three days" but I figured I could make that particular trip count for something-- as I hate going into stores-- so I went from the slipper department to the card department and picked out the perfect card with the perfect sentiment, since I certainly can't express myself (as evidenced by the poor and rambling structure of this sentence) but when the guy rang it up, I found, to my surprise, that the card I chose cost $7.50, which seemed absurd, so I didn't buy it, and had to go to another store . . . and it's not like I saved very much, I think I paid $4.95 for that card, but it was a matter of principle . . . I'm not paying more than $4.95 for a card).

This One Goes to 105 . . . So It's Five Better, Isn't It?

Amazon recently produced an editor's list of 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime and while I'm not making any accusation, this does sound suspiciously close to my list of 105 Books to Read Before You Die (Which Will Be Sooner Than You Think) and I did some in-depth analysis and I've decided that my list is much better than Amazon's list-- and this isn't only because I just read a rather critical article about Amazon's megalomaniacal economy destroying practices in a New Yorker article called "Cheap Words"-- it's also because I've read 67 of the books on the Amazon list-- which comes out to 67% of the list . . . 67/100 as a fraction, and while there are a few common titles between their list and mine (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Guns, Germs, and Steel; The Corrections; and The Golden Compass) and a few common authors-- Orwell, Marquez, McCarthy, Chandler, and Sedaris-- there is one irreconcilable difference between the Amazon editors and me, and this difference speaks volumes . . . the Amazon editors think you need to read Dune before you die, and I don't.

Easy Doesn't Mean Light

I am still searching unsuccessfully for a light read . . . one of my students gave me a copy of John Green's Looking for Alaska, and I'm a sucker for books about private school, especially if they contain pranks, but even though this book is set at a private school and even though there are pranks, and even though it is an easy read, and even though John Green is entertaining and convinced me to watch the light and fun delirium tremens film Harvey, this book is NOT light at all, but if you are looking for a quick, gripping and rather depressing read, then this book is for you.

Is This So Wrong?

My boys and their friend were building a snow fort in the icy slush last week, and they were obviously preparing for an apocalyptic snowball fight, but I warned them that the snow was not good for that, as it was hard and icy and if anyone got hit in the face with an ice-ball they were going to get hurt and cry, and then-- content that I had done my job as a parent-- I went in the house to relax, but thirty minutes later the front door flew open and my son Ian stormed in crying and screaming because Alex hit him in the eye with an ice-ball, and so I yelled at him for not heeding my warning (though I probably should have yelled at Alex, but Ian was closer) and he yelled back at "You're not supposed to yell at little kids when they get hurt!" and so now I am wondering if it's okay to yell at little kids when they get hurt if you warned them that the thing they were doing was going to result in them getting hurt.

My Wife, Who Is Occasionally Sarcastic, Has Made Our Children Jersey Strong

Last November, after a beautiful hike in Vermont, my wife said to the boys, with complete sincerity: "Thanks, I had a really great day with you guys" but my son younger son Ian didn't pick up the tone, and turned to his brother and said, "I think we're in trouble."

Snakes Can Be Heavy

After finishing George Packer's extremely depressing book The Unwinding, I decided to read something lighter, and so I turned to a book a student recommended called The Lizard King: The True Crimes and Passions of the World's Greatest Reptile Smugglers . . . and while I couldn't put the book down, as I wanted to find out if Special Agent Chip Bepler of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife could finally take down Mike Van Nostrand, the brash and blatant kingpin of American reptile smuggling, this book is definitely not light reading: Bryan Christy tells a tale of drugs, crime, corruption boa constrictors full of cocaine melting in a van, environmental devastation, obsessive herpetologists, crooked zookeepers, and a completely overwhelmed Miami division of Fish and Wildlife, with just three agents to cover South Florida, the Keys, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands . . . three agents to "investigate every illegal plant or animal that came through the port of Miami, by plane or by boat . . . three agents to police the waterways against manatee abusers . . . three agents to wade into the marshes before dawn to await duck poachers . . . three agents to watch over the Florida panther, three to stop Mexican restaurants from serving up sea turtle eggs, three to force beachside hotels to dim their lights so that the sea turtles that did hatch could follow the reflected light of the moon to the Atlantic Ocean instead of finding death in the artificial illumination of a well-lit parking lot" and not only that, the book ends with a funeral, but I won't spoil it since Sunswept Entertainment  is making a movie based on the story (and it seems they've turned Chip Bepler into a woman).

Metaphors in a Meta-Metaphor

George Packer's book The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America is a gripping and intimate account of what has happened financially and politically in America over the past forty years, told through the eyes of a diverse group of people -- ruined entrepreneurs and liberal activists, Newt Gingrich and Jay Z, Wall Street Occupiers and white trash, Washington insiders and visionary technophiles -- and while most of the book subscribes to the titular metaphor: unless you are one of the lucky ones, the ones that stand with the political and financial establishment, unless you are someone who goes with the political "flow" then you are fine, but the rest of America is unraveling; I warn you, the book is painful to read and it will cause you to feel ire and depression and indignation and outright anger . . . but there's nothing much you can do, you are either in or you are out, and if you are in, then there's no incentive to change things that are bringing you money and power, and if you are out, then you don't have any power to speak of, and you can't muster the energy and the force to fight the lobbies and the banks and Washington politics and Wall Street and globalization and corruption and corporate union-busting . . . but at least along the way, there are a few tangential metaphors that are more fun the the overarching general unwinding of our society; Dean Price, a tobacco farmer's son who is trying to create sustainable agriculture and biofuel in the South,  imagines the American factory farm poultry, those chickens so pumped full of chemicals that they are too big to walk on their own "served up and eaten by customers who would grow obese and eventually be seen in Walmart riding electric carts, because they were too heavy to walk the aisles of a Supercenter, just like the hormone fed chickens" and Packer explains how they brought judges out of retirement to go about the work of "clearing Florida's of half a million foreclosure cases. as earlier generations had cleared the mangrove swamps that made way for Tampa, and, finally, Peter Thiel -- founder of PayPal and and really rich dude -- uses a metaphor to show the general decline in attitude towards technology: he says that in the 1970's, best of the year sci-fi anthologies were full of stories where "me and my friend the robot walked on the moon" while now the trend in sci-fi is dystopian and fragmented (and The Hunger Games is the perfect analogy for what has happened . . . young folks, who will do everything their parents did, will not have access to the same economy and nation that privileged previous generations, and so they will be fighting each other to the death for the scraps) and Thiel calls this a "tech-slowdown" and he points out that most technological advances that have occurred recently have been in the imaginary binary world of 1s and 0s inside computers, not in the physical world; to summarize, this is an amazing depressing mess of a book without solutions, as it should be, but there are occasional bright spots: the Occupy Wall Street Movement and the perseverance of Dean Price in the face of a politically close-minded and corrupt world.

We'll Never Get to the Bottom of This One

My eight year old son Ian, who we regard as slightly shifty, woke up the other morning with chocolate on his face . . . but he didn't have any chocolate for dessert the night before, and so the only explanation is that he has a hidden cache of chocolate in his room, and that he ate some of it after he went to bed -- but I searched his room thoroughly and couldn't find anything (though we have found secret troves of candy in his room before, and so I had probably cause to conduct this search) and Ian insists that he didn't have any secret chocolate before bed . . . though he did bring up the possibility that he may have ate some chocolate while sleep-walking, and while I don't believe this for one bit, Ian is a tough nut to crack, and I don't feel like breaking out the water-board, and so we're just going to chalk this one up to poor detective work on our part and concede that we will never know the truth.

Hypothetical Soundtrack

If you feel the need to listen to music that evokes a nonexistent 1970's police show in which the heroes adeptly navigate the mean streets of their decaying city, and often have to cross the thin blue line in order to administer justice in a chaotic and amoral world, and then face repercussions from an oppressive and byzantine bureaucracy, a politically minded and data driven chief, and an apathetic force, then listen to The Crusaders album Free As the Wind . . . it's absolutely fantastic: play it straight through, and I promise you'll have a car chase (and more!) in your brain.

To The Guy in the Lexus Driving in Front of Me with Ten Inches of Snow on His Roof and Back Windshield:

You can't see me, because your back windshield is covered with snow, but I would like to inform you that I exist, and also that the snow blowing off your roof is creating a miniature blizzard and obscuring my vision, and though -- besides a small hole in your front windshield -- you've made no attempt to remove any of the snow from your car, I'd like to say that I forgive you, because I have been lazy and inconsiderate at times, and it would be hypocritical for me to feel otherwise.

On Milk Related Things

Last Thursday in the English office, I rejected the tastiness of Chantal's kale and banana smoothie because the consistency was too milky, and this led to the inevitable discussion about milk related things, and the fact that I have never drank a glass of milk, not even a glass of chocolate milk, nor have I ever had a milkshake (Kevin thought this was absolutely impossible and wanted me to provide witnesses to verify this patently absurd statement) and when I claimed that I wouldn't even try Nitro Milk Stout beer because -- though I know it contains no milk-- it has the word "milk" in the title and thus makes me think of milky things, Kevin became determined to penetrate my defenses, and he succeeded . . . he thought of the one thing with "milk" in it that I do love: Neutral Milk Hotel.

Gummy For Men

I am embarrassed to admit that I love gummy candy . . . gummy bears, gummy worms, gummy coke bottles . . . you name it, but I rarely indulge in these festive, colorful treats because I feel absolutely absurd eating them; no adult man can maintain any sort of dignity while sucking on a gummy peach ring, and I think there are other men that feel the same way-- other closeted-gummy-men-- and so there must be a market for macho gummy treats: gummy chewing tobacco, gummy seeds, gummy pork rinds, etc.

This is as Close to Archimedes as I Am Going to Get

I am certainly not a physicist in any sense of the word -- my "eureka" moments are usually very abstract -- but last week, while I was coaching a youth basketball game, I figured out how something works in the physical world; my thought process began during a game when our team was slaughtering the opposition, we were really racking up the points, and what surprised me was how often the shots were falling into the basket -- we always seemed to be getting the roll -- but upon further observation, I found that this was often the case . . . little kids make a fair amount of the shots they put up, if they hit the rim . . . and this is my best explanation as to why this is so: when an adult shoots a basketball, the arc of the ball usually rises far above the height of the basket, and then the ball plummets down towards the rim-- it's like the ball is being dropped from five feet above the basket-- and so if it hits wrong, it's got quite a bit of momentum, so it's going to "brick" and bounce wildly from the hoop, but a little kid shot typically just clears the rim . . . the point where the ball is at an actual standstill -- the apex-- is just above the basket, and so it hits the rim with very little impetus and has a much better chance of remaining on the rim, and possibly rolling in.

Kids Aren't Half As Annoying When You Are Playing Ping-Pong With Them

Nothing makes me happier than the fact that my kids are now proficient at ping-pong . . . cracking a cold beer and knocking that ball back and forth is as mindless and stress-free as parenting gets.

If Everyone Else is Juicing, How Can I Compete?

I recently learned that a number of people in my English department are "juicing" and have been at it for quite a while . . . they are drinking daily concoctions of kale, carrots, bananas, berries, yogurt, spinach, lime, and other healthy foods . . . and no one informed me of this shocking development (in fact, I learned about it rather randomly when a perfectly sensible guy said he was thinking about purchasing a $400 dollar Vitamix blender, which astounded me, but I then learned that everyone in the room -- five people -- were all liquefying vegetables and drinking them) and so now I'm wondering if I have to start drinking my vegetables just to keep up with the other teachers, who are obviously going to reap incredible benefits from these glowing green smoothies: clear complexions, full heads of silky hair, super-cognitive speed, boundless energy, the disappearance of hang-overs, and other various superpowers . . . but I don't really want to start slurping kale and carrots for breakfast, so I'm going to hope that it's just a phase, and that everyone will go back to eating normal crap soon.

Roger, Do It For the Children! (Or Most of the Children, But Not the Children in Shakespeare Class)

It's time once again for my annual epistle to Roger Goodell, beseeching him to move the Super Bowl to Saturday, and this year the impact of Super Bowl Sunday is worse than normal . . . typically, I start teaching Hamlet the Monday following the Super Bowl, which is difficult enough, but this year, because we've already had three snow days and the semester is off kilter, the Monday following the Super Bowl is an exam day . . . and a few of my students are stressing out because they have to stay up and watch the Super Bowl and they also have to take two exams the next day (luckily, this won't effect my period two class, though they have their exam on Monday morning at 7:26, because it's my Shakespeare class and they have admitted that they DO NOT watch football . . . when I asked if anyone knew the details of Peyton Manning's cervical fusion surgery, they all looked at me blankly, and a very smart girl said to me, "this is SHAKESPEARE class -- we don't know things like that.")

Lack of Sentence and an Idea for a T-shirt Wrapped into One Half-Assed Fragment of Thought

Last week, I had a really great idea for a sentence while I was talking to Alec at the pub, but the next morning, I couldn't remember it (and while that is an atrocious sentence, as far as content, the theme itself would make a great t-shirt: Dave went to the pub and all I got was this lousy sentence).

Facebook Stock Plummets! Dave Buys New Snowboard!

You don't need to read Dave Eggers' overly long and polemical book The Circle to know that Facebook is a vast evil time-suck that trivializes your life, robs you of your privacy, and makes you very stupid (and -- full disclosure -- I just sold some Facebook stock short, so I'm hoping that the rest of humanity reaches this conclusion too, and rapidly . . . and if this Princeton study is any indication, then -- like an infectious disease -- the Facebook epidemic will soon wane, as folks become immune to its infectious qualities and I will make hundreds of dollars).

FOOD!

Sometimes, I get so hungry that I've got to eat before I sit down to eat.

It's Good to be the Cook

The Danish film A Hijacking taught me three things: 1) if your ship is taken by Somali pirates, everyone on board -- including the pirates -- is held hostage by the ransom negotiations 2) if you're trapped on a boat, nobody in their right mind shoots the cook 3) Somalis and Danes drunkenly singing "Happy Birthday" in English is really creepy.

You Might Only Want to Read 1/2 of this Sentence

The folks at work claim that my braided belt is from the '90's, but that's not true -- my braided belt from the '90's disintegrated long ago, and this braided belt is relatively new and I bought it at Kohls . . . and I really tried to wear a more fashionable belt but the problem with non-braided belts is that there are a limited number of holes, and so if you gain or lose a few pounds, or eat a giant lunch, then there might not be an ideal belt setting for your particular girth at that moment, and I like to buy my pants a little big, and so I actually need a belt to cinch them at the waist, because I'm not buying the pants big for my gut-- which isn't all that big-- I'm buying the pants big for my butt, which is ample and round, and needs room to breathe.

Batting A Thousand (Sort of)

I saw three ex-students out-of-context in the span of three days and nailed all of their names:

1) saw a girl I had many, many years ago at a concert at The Saint in Asbury Park-- where her younger brother was playing drums in a band with one of my colleagues-- and though she is over thirty and has a kid and a house and a mortgage, she was far more surprised that I have kids and a house and a mortgage . . . "Mr. P. is all grown up!" was her reaction;

2) saw a dude I taught a few years ago stocking beer at the fancy beer store -- although I this one was a Texas-leaguer, as I only remembered his last name;

3) and, finally, an easy one . . . I saw a girl I taught last year lurking in the high school parking lot (there's nothing lamer than hanging around the high school once you've graduated, but -- to her credit -- I think she was waiting to give someone a ride).

Not Surprising . . .

Building a cardboard box in which to ship a banjo is harder than you think.

Despite All the F*%king Grading, There Are Some Fun Things About Being a Teacher

One of the great things about being a teacher is that you get to teach people things, and so when I show Marshall Curry's fantastic documentary Street Fight to my students it is ostensibly to teach them about politics, but the actual reason I show the film is so that when Cory Booker's campaign manager compares Sharpe James to former D.C. mayor Marion Barry, I get to pause the film and explain to my students about Marion Barry: who he was, what he did, and how-- despite what he did-- he got elected again (and it's a great excuse to say "crack cocaine" in class, which is always a crowd pleaser among the high school seniors . . . and I must warn you, if you're one of those people who like to watch movies in silence, with no pauses or interruptions, then you should NOT take my class, because I consider showing a movie in class more of a performance art: you are seeing a movie with Dave, who might pause it at any time to comment, or might not even bother to pause it . . . it's the educational version of Mystery Science Theater 3000, without the robots).

A Loooooooong Week for Ian

By Wednesday afternoon of last week, this was the list of Ian's infractions at school, as reported by his very forgiving and patient teacher on his behavior sheet: putting his middle finger down (instead of up, he claims he was taunted into doing this, but he knows better), putting the cap to the glue stick up his butt and then giving it to someone, getting caught erasing the details about the middle-finger episode and the glue stick/butt incident and so not only did his behavior sheet include an addendum (written in pen) describing those two previous incidents, but it also explained that Ian claimed that he "accidentally" erased that part of the note -- though he admitted to me that he did this in order to get in less trouble, and -- finally-- he got into an argument with Lucy and called her a "buttface buffoon."

My Wife and I Agree on How Not To Lose Your Shit

When I go to the gym, I leave my wallet and cell-phone in the glove compartment of my car because I think that there is a greater chance of my gym locker being broken into rather than my run-of-the-mill gray Toyota min-van, and I asked my wife what she does, and she uses the same strategy . . . for the same exact reason (though she drives our run-of-the-mill Subaru) and since my wife and I rarely agree on questions of logic, I am guessing that we are doing the smart thing for this scenario.

Sports: The Reason Why I Don't Invent a Bunch of Cool Stuff for the Internet

While reading George Packer's fragmented and arresting book about the fragmentation of America (The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America) I learned why I am not more like Peter Thiel -- who has a long list of entrepreneurial and technological achievements, among them co-founding PayPal-- because to get hired by Thiel you not only had to be "incredibly smart" but also "without distracting obligations like wives and children or time-wasting hobbies like sports and TV . . . one applicant was turned down because he admitted to enjoying shooting hoops."

If . . . Then . . . But

Wednesday morning . . . 5:45 AM . . . and it's so foggy that I can't see the end of the road-- if I wasn't with my trusty canine companion, it would have been very spooky and that's the great thing about having a dog, you always have someone to accompany you on a walk, no matter the situation -- but, of course I should point out, if it wasn't for my trusty canine companion, I wouldn't have been walking around in the fog at 5:45 AM, I would have been in bed, or indoors, and that's what's not so great about owning a dog.

Layers and Layers of Irony and Failure

Nothing makes me more unhappy that enforced pep (you may remember my difficulties when I was compelled to "Dress Like a Holiday") but rather than suffer the ire of certain female members of my department, I now begrudgingly go along with whatever spirit theme is chosen, and so on Wednesday, I wore the required uniform -- black shirt and pants, glasses, and a beret (I only wore the beret momentarily, for "check in," but that's still pretty spirited for me) -- and our department followed suit . . . we were supposed to be Beatnik poets, but I thought some people looked like French painters and others looked like college graduates . . . but we did well enough with our department unity to tie the business department, and since the math department came up with this contest idea, they administered the tie-breaker . . . a math test . . . mano a mano . . . by someone chosen from the department, and so --ironically -- my department chose me to take the test, because though I am the least spirited member of the department, I am pretty good at math (and even taught it, long long ago) and so this set-up the wonderful possibility that the person who really didn't want to "dress like a holiday" would end up being the department spirit hero . . . and so I e-mailed the math teacher administering the tie-breaker and we set up a time and she told me to bring a calculator . . . and that's when I realized that this might actually be a math test and not some math riddle or math trivia quiz or something fun and spirited . . . as we were dealing with the math department, not the English department, and this made me a bit anxious, and it turned out I was right: I had to take a ten question quiz with algebraic equations and number lines and solution sets . . . and this test, in mathematical terms, was 0% fun, but I still felt confident taking it (which means nothing . . . I always feel confident when I take math tests and I've gotten some really abysmal math grades in my life) and I remembered all my acronyms: SMATO (subtraction means adding the opposites) and Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally and FOIL (first outside middle last) and was proudly reciting them to the proctor of the test as I did the problems, and -- for a moment-- I thought I just might be the least spirited department hero ever . . . Cinderella story, underdog victory and all that, but my lack of spirit must have caused some kind of karmic justice; I got a 90% on the quiz-- pretty good, but not good enough, as the guy from the business department got a perfect score (and I really should have got them all right too, but I missed a pair of absolute value bars in the first question, I think I saw them as parentheses, and -- always my problem in math -- I didn't check over my work well enough) but I'm going to try to parlay this ostensible failure into a success . . . I am so distraught and humiliated at my crucial role in our defeat that I can't bear to take part in any other spirit days, or it will remind me of the trauma of this one (that's my story and I'm sticking to it . . . and if there is a moral to my woeful tale, it is this: if the math department says that they are giving you a math test, it's going to be a math test).

Persistence and Patience Pay Off (When You're Dealing with Poop)

A few months ago, I rode through some dog-poop and the poop got all wedged in my bike's knobby tires, and I didn't feel like scraping the poop off the tires with a stick, or spraying the poop off with the hose, so I decided to let the poop alone (winter was approaching) because it was cold, so I figured it wouldn't smell, and I knew once I rode my bike enough, the poop would take care of itself and fall off on its own . . . and now -- months later -- my tires are finally poop-free (aside from a few globs of poop on the edge of the front tire, but I'm sure that will work its way off soon enough).

Caloric Categorization

The only healthy snack that satisfies me is a quartered apple with globs of peanut butter on each slice-- but sometimes I pour chocolate chips onto the peanut butter, and then I'm not sure if it's still a healthy snack, or if it has crossed the line into the territory of a "dessert."

Two News Stories People Can Relate To . . .

I'm plugging away at After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead and though I've read more than a few books on this topic, I'm still learning a lot from Alan S. Blinder (did you know that the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act probably didn't have much effect on crisis? fascinating, right?) and while understanding the never-ending saga of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown of 2008 is close to being a job, not all news stories are so dense and difficult; last week was especially good for engaging and easy news . . .  first there was the "polar vortex," which everyone enjoyed talking about-- I enjoyed all the fun facts: parts o Minnesota are colder than Mars! New Jersey is colder than Antarctica! and Alaska!-- and the other great story (especially if you live in New Jersey) is Bridgegate, and while I don't think Chris Christie is stupid enough to be directly involved in this fiasco, I sure hope he is . . . and everyone I know is rooting for this outcome as well-- it just seems like the act that will define him-- and it's so much easier to understand traffic and revenge, as opposed to economic policy . . . and if you're one of the seven people in America who hasn't seen the John Stewart bit on the topic, check it out.

If I Could Leave You With One Profound Thought . . .

If you like "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus" type stuff (men are waffles and women are spaghetti?) then you have to listen to the first act of This American Life Episode 14 (Accidental Documentaries) where you will hear a husband and a wife sending an audio "letter" to their son in medical school -- the tapes were made in 1967, but they were discovered long after the parents died and the son gave Ira Glass permission to use them on the air . . . but if you don't have time for the entire episode, then go twelve minutes in and there is a fantastic Carlin-esque baseball/football type point-to-point comparison of how men and women communicate . . . mom is discussing spirituality, her depression, and how much faith her husband has, and then there are quick cuts to the dad telling corny jokes and talking at length about some weird machine he is building in the basement for the family business . . . though these two are married, they aren't even living in the same universe and then twenty four minutes into it, dad leaves the son with one last "profound" thought, which is priceless (I played these bits for my high school classes and they loved them).

Dave Invents a Phrase: Parental Capital

Once upon a time, I learned not to take family viewing recommendations from people without kids, but I completely forgot this lesson a few weeks ago-- and when the twenty two year old student teacher suggested the animated comedy Bob's Burgers . . . she said the show is "cute and sweet" and not as crass as The Family Guy, and she's right, but it's still completely inappropriate for my kids -- there's lot of sexual innuendo (including geriatric sexual innuendo) and plenty of jokes about venereal disease, flatulence, cannibalism, dinner theater and other offensive topics . . . and, of course, it's their favorite show ever and because I set the precedent and let them watch it, I can't rescind this without losing major parental capital (and I'm glad, because Bob's Burgers is the first thing that they like to watch that I totally enjoy, Dr. Who is okay, but still a bit campy for me . . . and I'd also like to state that I think I am the first person to ever use the phrase "parental capital" as a parallel to "political capital" and I think the analogy is not only apt, but also super-awesome).

I Prefer to Watch

The difference between coaching soccer and coaching basketball is the difference between watching a squadron of fighter jets and piloting one of them.

Some Thoughts on Radishes, Red and Black

Apparently black radishes are not the same as red radishes . . . I thought I was getting away with something at the vegetable market the other day, when I bought black radishes instead of red radishes-- because I like red radishes and the black ones were a lot bigger, so I figured it would be more radish with less washing and peeling, but black radishes are more like a turnip-- kind of woody and starchy-- and you can't eat them in big chunks, the way I eat red radishes (people in my office think it is weird that I eat sliced radishes and Laughing Cow cheese, and when I explained to them that radishes are delicious, some of the teachers tried them, and one sarcastically remarked: "that's a flavor?")

If I Had A Million Dollars . . . I'd Probably Lose It in the Market

Though it's no literary masterpiece, I highly recommend What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars; Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan give a candid account of Paul's meteoric rise and fall in the futures industry, and along the way, you learn the difference between a gambler, a trader, a speculator, and an investor . . . and why speculators suddenly decide they are actually investors (just after the stocks they own take a nosedive) ; this is a book about human psychology and how it needs to be subverted in order to be successful in the market; the secret is to be like Ayn Rand -- when she was asked if gun control laws violated the Second Amendment, she said: "I don't know, I haven't thought about it" . . . but it's really hard to take that sort of objective and rational approach when you're dealing with your money.

If I Were Subjunctively Rich

People who are not rich usually have an "if I were rich" statement, and this statement is usually designed to show that if this person happened to become rich, they wouldn't be terribly ostentatious and vain and gauche with their new found wealth . . . for example: if I were rich, I would just want to throw big parties for all my friends . . . if I were rich, I wouldn't want a new house, but I would redo my kitchen . . . and so my version of this statement is: if I were rich, I would get a massage every other day (every day sounds too greedy, which is why I say every other day, so I don't sound so extravagant with my hypothetical money).

Ian Demands Content

My eight year old son Ian would like me to report to you that on New Year's Eve, while he was fast asleep on an air mattress several feet away from me, I heard him laughing uproariously in his sleep (and this was excellent to hear, far less creepy than hearing someone talk in their sleep, and far less dangerous than sleep-walking . . . read this fascinating book for more on this theme).

More Than Your Typical Serial Killer Mystery

The Cold Cold Ground, by Adrian Mckinty, is so much more than your typical police-procedural-hunt-down-the-serial-killer mystery; it is set in 1981, amidst "the troubles" in Northern Ireland, and Belfast is close to complete anarchy . . . Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop (or "peeler") works on an entirely Protestant force, and has to investigate a killer targeting homosexuals while navigating a byzantine world of IRA heavies, hunger strikes and the death of Bobby Sands, Protestant Militia groups, and angry unemployed locals . . . but the book still has a sense of humor (quite a bit more than this film) and some romance between the murders, riots, and explosions; a quick read that takes you back to a chaotic time with which Mckinty is extremely familiar: nine severed hands out of ten.

Too Close For Comfort

I stumbled on a website called Thoughts of Dave and this really worried me -- is he the original Dave? -- but luckily he's not the original Dave, I am the original Dave, as his first post was in December of 2007 (The Ultimate Martini Recipe) and Sentence of Dave started WAY before that . . . in November of 2007.

Dave Solves a Grammatical Mystery All By Himself

Ironically, though this blog is a grammatical nightmare, I solved a grammatical mystery without referring to the internet: I was reading Alan S. Blinder's book After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead and I noticed that in the phrase "an FDIC insured bank" there is the use of "an" before a consonant -- but a consonant in an abbreviation-- and I wondered why this was so, and then I remembered when Keanu Reeves says to Patrick Swayze "I am an F!B!I! agent" in Point Break and you also say "an X-ray" and "an NBA game" but you say "a WNBA" game and it is because when you say the name of certain consonant letters . . . and you only do this in abbreviations . . . then these consonant letters begin with a vowel sound (so for "F" you say "eff" and for "X" you say "ex" and for "N" you say "en") and so the article matches the sound of the letter, not the designation of the letter, and creates an interesting exception to the rule (or at least I find it interesting, but I'm sure most of you are asleep by now).

My Children Weren't the Only Animals in Florida

I would never visit the Naples Florida area again -- too much driving, too much development, too many strip malls, and too many cars -- but the paradoxical thing is that in between car rides (and boat rides) we saw an enormous amount of flora and fauna; we visited several parks (including Delnor-Wiggins State Park, Barefoot Beach, Keywaydin Island, Big Cypress National Preserve, and Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary) and here is an incomplete list of the stuff we saw: Cuban brown anoles, Cuban tree frogs, snowy egrets, ladyfish, lizard fish (apparently, you can put any word in front of "fish" and it is a legitimate fish) blue runner, mangrove snapper, spanish mackerel (we were catching these fish in a boat, and as we reeled them in the dolphins almost ate them, and -- according to my dad's friend-- the owner of the boat-- dolphins occasionally jump in the boat chasing a fish . . . and after we caught the fish, we fed them to the dolphins, which was very fun) a bunny, a bald eagle catching a fish, osprey, pelicans, cormorants, LOTS of big alligators, a baby alligator, a wood stork, a hawk, blue herons, green-backed herons, tri-colored herons, a yellow-crowned night heron, vultures, ibis, sandwich tern, kingfishers, woodpeckers, raccoon, big turtles, snook, alligator gar, a giant water spider, and a school of rays (which Alex and I saw while standing on a paddleboard, and from that vantage point you realize that there's all kinds of stuff swimming around you in the gulf, and that it's best not to think about it).

My Kids Are Those Kids?

So there you are, relaxing poolside, reading a book or closing your eyes for a quick nap . . . and you hear a family with a couple of kids arrive and they absolutely ruin the vibe: these kids are loud, and they fight, they splash with the intent of blinding each other, they bicker violently, scratch and dunk each other, attempt dangerous stunts, dive where they aren't supposed to dive, run where they aren't supposed to run, and whip a ball at each other instead of playing catch with it, and then they finally have to be reprimanded by their parents . . . and I am very sad to report that these kids are my kids, and wherever they go, they destroy whatever mood existed previously, and no matter what we do -- short of beating them senseless in public -- my wife and I can't get them to stop being like this; I think because they are so close in age, they live in their own little universe . . . they don't notice other people or their surroundings, and perhaps someday this will be a benefit -- they certainly aren't self-conscious -- but right now, they are the scourge to anyone lying in a lounge chair with a book.

One Fish Two Fish Blackfish Blue Fish

I highly recommend the documentary Blackfish, which focuses on the dangers of keeping killer whales in captivity (especially one particularly large and incorrigibly uncontrollable whale: Tilikum) and my wife and kids loved it too, but I should warn you to strap yourself in, as there are some graphic moments: you see some footage of the attacks (and seventy killer whale attacks have been documented, all of them occurring when the whales were in captivity), including the recent one where Dawn Brancheau is killed (but while director Gabriela Cowperwaithe allows you to witness more than Werner Herzog does in Grizzly Man, the footage is just to get an idea of what the whales are capable of, and stops short of being a gratuitous snuff film) and you will also see a killer whale penis-- my son Ian commented: "that wiener is bigger than me"-- and learn about the killer whale version of impotence (male dorsal fin collapse) and while my son Alex's review of the film was flawless: "epic but scary," my younger son said the movie was "awesome" but he only gave it "four and a half stars" because "it was missing something" and it turned out that what he thought was missing was "really good" footage of the attacks . . . but once my wife and I explained to him that these were real people that died, and that their friends and family might be watching the movie, then he understood why they didn't show the entirety of the violent scenes; this film is eye-opening and compelling, and it will certainly make you rethink your trip to SeaWorld (or the ersatz Canadian version, SeaLand).

Dave Resolves to Do Some Stuff

This year, I resolve to write shorter sentences . . . terse, grammatically correct sentences . . . sentences that are brief and full of pithy wit and wisdom, and I'd also like to lose a few pounds (actually, more than a few . . . I want to lose 13 pounds) and I would also like to finish my album and learn to play piano and I want to lose my temper less with my children (unless they really deserve it) and I'm also going to appreciate the holiday season more and not gripe so much about materialism and consumerism and the environmental disaster that is wrapping paper, and I'm not going to lie any more either.

Perhaps These are the Best Sentences of 2013!

Negligent and lazy readers, here is your chance to catch up on a year's worth of Sentences by Dave ^TM and while these "winners" were chosen rather arbitrarily, I think they will give you a good idea of my best work in 2013, which is no worse than my worst work in any other year . . . and so, without further fanfare, here are some of the sentences of the past year that might be better than some of the other sentences of the past year . . . depending, of course, on your personal taste and predilection for this sort of thing . . . as there is no way I could could actually predict what sentences you personally would prefer . . . so let's just say that these are my favorite sentences of 2013:

Best Absurd Question and Answer;

Best Real Question and Answers;

Best Political Commentary;

Grossest Medical Anecdote;

Kids Say the Darndest Things;

Kids Do the Darndest Things;

Best Sentence About Dressing Like A Holiday;

Most Awkward Moment of Dave;

Dave's Greatest Athletic (and Pathetic) Moment of the Year;

Cheesiest Poem of the Year;

Alex Succumbs to Peer Pressure;

Tacos, Racism, and the Circus;

Best Incident Involving Hot Peppers (To Witness, Not Experience);

Best Attempt at a Motif;

Dave's Dumbest Moment of 2013;

Dave's Greatest Moment of 2013;

A Real Moment That People Claimed Was Fictitious;

and finally,

Something Valuable for Children.

It Is On

My eight year old son Ian and I have a long term bet: he must beat me at ping-pong before he turns thirteen years of age, and the stakes are two pounds of high quality chocolate; the interesting thing is that if I wasn't so proud, I could easily win this bet by simply refusing to play him in ping-pong until he turns thirteen years of age, but of course, I won't do that, both because it would be "cheap" -- Ian's term for this strategy -- and also because I know that my future in athletics is limited, and that soon enough my kids will be able to outplay me at soccer, basketball, snowboarding, and tennis, but even as I age, I should be able to fend them off at games like darts, corn-hole and ping-pong (perhaps indefinitely . . . my goal is for my children never to beat me at these particular games . . . so that long after I am dead, they will have to say to their own children, "you know, I never once beat your grandfather at ___________" and if they lie about this and there is an afterlife, then I will certainly go poltergeist on their asses until they admit the truth, with no obfuscation, and perhaps -- if I am a very skillful poltergeist -- then I will even beat them at these games from the grave (that's actually a fantastic idea for a not-so-scary horror movie . . . a guy takes his family to an isolated Maine hotel for the off-season and goes crazy because he can't beat a trash-talking ghost at ping-pong).

Questions of Grammar

Yesterdays post revealed a thorny dilemma: when you are referring to a scene in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, then do you say the final scene of Of Mice and Men (e.g. the final passage of War and Peace) or do you simply say the final scene Of Mice and Men . . . since Steinbeck has given us a free "of," I chose to be elegant and use it and not put another "of" in front of the title Of . . . and now I've got the word "of" stuck in my head and it's weird, because it's pronounced "uv" and if you say it enough times, it starts to lose its meaning and just sound like some sort of primitive exclamation: uv uv uv . . . and there's nothing on the internet to settle this pedantic absurdity so I will promise to never mention it again (unless someone actually knows the answer).

Tragedy is Often Tragic (Can You Sing a C Sharp?)

I'll never understand why school so often privileges tragedies over comedies . . . kids read Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth rather than Twelfth Night . . . and though Cannery Row is Steinbeck's best novel, that's not the one that is taught . . . and there's nothing worse than a bunch of teary eyed ninth graders listening to the final passage Of Mice and Men, when George has to shoot Lenny, and then explaining to them that sometimes, if you're a really good friend, then you have to shoot your buddy in the head, so he doesn't have to spend the rest of his days in a primitive mental institution undergoing electro-shock therapy and torturous restraint . . . Twelfth Night and Cannery Row are both about parties, however, and I guess pedagogical folks don't consider that educational (unless the party happens in The Great Gatsby, and the result of the partying is the Death of the American Dream, which is suitably tragic and outweighs any possible joy and fun in the book . . . and then there's Lord of the Flies, another fun book full of vines and creepers and tragedy, but at least there's one joke: Jack says he should be the chief of the stranded boys because he is in the choir and "can sing C sharp").

I've Got my Eye on You

All you people who drive into the park (any park . . . I've seen you people in Donaldson Park, Johnson Park, Thompson Park,  Roosevelt Park, and every other park that I have frequented on a regular basis) and sit in your car for a while and then drive out of the park . . . without ever leaving your car . . . I want you to know that I am watching you and you seem really sketchy and whatever you are up to, my dog and I are going to catch you at it and deal with you as we see fit.

Yet Again, Dave is Wrong

Why didn't anyone tell me you can't put non-stick pots and pans in the dishwasher?

You Can't Just Ask People Why They're White

I am a fan of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcasts, and in an episode about the Spanish-American War he calls Teddy Roosevelt "a heavily imperialistic, racist version of Peter Pan . . . always leading a troop of kids on an adventure" and that Roosevelt "would make Archie Bunker look like a liberal" BUT Carlin points out that you've got to "grade racism on a curve" because racism was such a pervasive part of society . . . and so I think people should go easy on Megyn Kelly -- while she does claim that a fictional character based upon a saint who was either Greek or Turkish was actually white -- she doesn't want to perpetuate any violence against ersatz non-white fictional versions of the icon, and while she is rather vehement about Jesus being white, when he most certainly swarthy and Middle-Eastern in complexion, and was probably even darker brown than Arabs are now (since there was no sunblock back then and he walked around outside a lot) but in the grand scheme of racism, desiring long dead religious figures and icons of greed and consumerism to look exactly as you look isn't such a big sin . . . so with the curve I'll give Megyn Kelly a C-, more for being stupid than actually being racist.

I Would Fail This Test

If you'd like to work in a South African gold mine, three miles beneath the earth -- then you'll have to contend with the free-fall terror of the "manwinder" -- a contraption which gets the miners down to where they need to be, and you'll have to deal with the creepiness of the "ghost miners," a "rabble of impoverished men" who penetrate the mines, abetted by criminal gangs, and then live in the mines and steal gold ore (they stay down for months at a time, until their skin turns gray -- and folks smuggle down wives, prostitutes, and food for them, in a lucrative black market) and you'll suffer the extraordinary heat and humidity, but before you get to experience all this, you must perform step exercises in a "test chamber" in order to see if your body can cool itself efficiently, and then and only then do you get a 14 day trial period in the mine . . . and my body can't regulate heat very well, so I don't think I'm going to change professions (I'm learning about this in Matthew Hart's new book Gold: The Race for the World's Most Seductive Metal).

Mystery Percentage Uncovered!

One of the great things about Mark Twain is that he achieved the job he desired as a youngster he watched the gargantuan riverboats steam past his home town of Hannibal, Missouri and as a young man he achieved his dream and become the pilot of one of those boats (the romance of it wore off fairly quickly, unfortunately) and so my class was discussing what percentage of people actually become what they wanted to be when they were young (a ballerina, a pilot, a basketball player, an astronaut, a princess, a teacher, a paleontologist -- that was mine, etcetera) but I couldn't find any information on the topic until this morning, and the students and I guess that the number would be low (2% to 10%) but while one article calls the results "depressing" and I'm not sure about the methods of the "Official LinkedIn Blog," I still find it fairly optimistic and reassuring that (according to this fairly small sample of a very homogenous cohort) one in three people achieve what they consider their "dream job" (and although I like teaching, there's no way I'm in that group . . . I wish I could set my own hours and work with my hands and excavate interesting sites . . . but I don't want to roam the desert -- too hot -- I think I'd like to be a plumber).

Seven Books for Reading (with Corresponding Pictures!)

If you like to read books, then head over to Gheorghe: The Blog to peruse my list of the seven best books of the year . . . and even if you don't like to read, you can still head on over because I've included pictures!

Sometimes It's Best to Do Nothing

I lost my little black iPod months ago, but I didn't panic . . . I didn't accuse the cleaning lady of stealing it or blame my children for losing it, nor did I run out and buy a new one or tear our house apart trying to find it  . . . and (miracle of miracles!) my wife recently stumbled upon it, in the oddest place: sitting inside a high kitchen cabinet, perched on the edge of the shelf, amidst jars of salsa, Ramen noodle soup, peanut butter, chicken broth, mac & cheese, and crushed tomatoes . . . I must have needed one of these items and put the iPod down as I grabbed it . . . or maybe not . . . I'll never know exactly how it got there, but this is going to be my new method for finding things that aren't imperative to my life -- just wait until the problem solves itself.

Dieting With Rage and Apostrophe

I withstood the temptation free bagels in the main office, tantalizing heaps of cookies in the English office and a prominent display of Reese's Christmas Trees at Wawa using this simple method: every time I laid eyes on the food, I let loose with a stream of profane expletives . . . in my head, of course, and I directed my angry interior monologue at the stuff I didn't want to consume . . . and while I can't print what I said and retain the good taste of this blog (ha!) I can assure you that occasional cursing is good for your health and well-being (but if you use profanity all the f*cking time, then you become inured to the benefits, so try to watch your mouth unless you desperately need to relieve some stress).

Chestnuts Roasting on a Vaporized Cloud of Rocks and Asteroid

While decorating our tree, the boys and I unanimously decided to forego the Christmas carols and instead listen to this fantastically vivid Radiolab podcast called "Dinopocalypse", which turns the previous theory of extinction on its head . . . according to the scientists in this production, dinosaurs did not shiver and starve to death under a shroud of cataclysmic dust, instead something far more fiery and awful happened when a chunk of the Baptistina asteroid collided with the earth 65 million years ago (although NASA now believes that it wasn't Baptistina, but some other unknown asteroid, but . . . who cares, listen to the podcast because it's extraordinarily dramatic and apocalyptic).

Motivation and Consciousness (and Socks)

After I get out of the shower, on the weekend, I'll throw on some clothes -- but not socks -- and then I'll go downstairs to do whatever . . . but I know that invariably, I will want socks, but I neither put them on then, when it is convenient, nor do I carry a pair of socks downstairs with me, to put on when I will inevitably need them (and Saturday morning, when I realized this ineffective habit, I still did nothing to correct it).

Rashomon and Football

Collision Low Crossers offers an alternative to the typical sport's story; there are no underdogs or last second heroics in this 460 page book, instead there is a level of detail about the preparation, professionalism, camaraderie, complexity, turbulence, violence, itinerancy, and hopefulness of NFL football season that is "transformative . . . powerful and unexpected," not only for the players and coaches, but also for author, Nicholas Dawidoff, as the reporter practically lived with the Jets in 2011, so he could write something deeply reported . . . the book was transformative for me as well, and I will never view professional football in the same way again; Dawidoff explains it best in this passage: "Here they all stood together but existed in efficiently separated little worlds . . .There was a Rashomon quality to how differently everyone experienced much that went on in football . . . the daily interactions and even the games had alternative versions for the various players and various coaches."

Sometimes it's Best NOT to Watch Your Children

It's hard for me to watch my boys on the sled hill -- they make one horrible decision after another (they call it "extreme sledding" but it mainly involved a lot of jumping on each other, jumping in the way of sleds, going down backwards, building ramps, not paying attention to other people, walking right up the middle of the hill . . . oblivious to all the other kids sledding, lying in slushy puddles, fitting as many people on a tube as possible, wrestling and shoving snow in each other's faces, and riding down the icy part of the hill standing on their sleds, so that they face plant in horrible ways (Ian lost a tooth on Saturday and scraped his cheek and forehead raw on Sunday) and so I've found the best course of action is not to watch them.

Now That's Juxtaposition!

Nicholas Dawidoff's fantastic football book Collision Low Crossers has the words "recrudescent" and "slapdickmotherfuckers" on the same page!

Ice Is Slippery (Tonka Truck Reux)

I was walking the dog early last Wednesday morning-- all the snow had frozen solid and in many places the sidewalks were coated with a sheet of glistening ice-- so I should have been more aware of my footing, but I was thinking about remembering to send back a Netflix disc that we had left in the blur-ray player and so I didn't notice when I got to a spot where a steep driveway intersects the sidewalk, and I stepped onto a patch of ice, and because of the slope, my left foot shot straight into the air, and it seemed as if I was going to fall backwards and slam the back of my head on the curb, but I whirled my torso around as hard as I could, and tucked, and I managed to spin my body on its horizontal axis while I was in mid-air, so instead of landing on my back, I landed on my arms, which were braced for the fall, but my lower body hadn't fully gyrated in synchronicity with my upper body-- it was slightly behind -- and so I came down on my bad hip, the hip that I injured last spring in a similarly incredible athletic move that did not happen during an athletic event . . . another incident that no one saw, but had their been a witness, would have gone down in the annals of sporting history for time immemorial.

It's Hard to Spell "Kristyna"

Kristyna -- the aforementioned fund raising queen -- not only raises more money for the holiday toy and clothing drive than the rest of our department combined, but she also outdoes everyone in the way of Christmas spirit: she has four Christmas trees in her house, all decorated (the "beautiful" fake one, a live tree "that entered the mix this year" and two little ones . . . which are for her two little children . . . or more specifically, the little trees are for the ornaments her little children made, ornaments which she does not deem worthy enough to adorn the "beautiful" tree).

Deep Breaths . . . Deep Breaths . . . F*ck It, It's Swearing Time!

First, I admonish my child for spending an insanely long time in the shower, and then -- when he finally gets out of the shower -- I notice that his hair isn't wet and, despite efforts to the contrary, I lose my shit.

Can a Good Book Make Me a Jet Fan?

Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football, by Nicholas Dawidoff, is so well written and so full of vivid and insightful detail, that I don't even mind that it's about the Jets; the narrative runs from the extremely familiar -- Rex Ryan rents a giant house in the Outer Banks and he extends "an open invitation to the other Jets coaches and their families to come for a stay, play games like corn-hole toss and washers . . . all he asked was that each family choose one night to prepare dinner for everyone" to things you'd never know from watching football on Sunday: in the 2010 playoff game when the Jets beat the Patriots, it appeared that the Jets were porous against the run, but that was actually "intentional . . . allowing New England a reasonably effective series of runs that distracted the Patriots from what they did best: pass" and the multifarious mysteries of a sport where eleven players are doing eleven different things . . . the 2009 Jets gave up only eight passing touchdowns, but in 2010, when they had two great cornerbacks (Revis and Cromartie) they gave up three times as many . . . was it lack of pass rush? had paired-man coverage become too predictable? was Cromartie jealous of Revis? . . . answers are hard to come by, but the coaches put in 120 hour weeks trying to figure it out, and that's what this book is about -- what goes on during all those hours at the facility, in one sense, the book is barely about the players at all.

Eschatological Ruminations

We looked at several apocalypse tropes in my Creative Writing class last week -- an excerpt from Chuck Pahahniuk's Fight Club; the first pages of a fantastic book about the earth's orbit slowing (The Age of Miracles) and the David Bowie song "Five Years", which is a really long time to think about an impending apocalypse (what would you do? five minutes or five hours is easy, but five years?) and the morning after I did this lesson, I happened to listen to an episode of 99% Invisible called "Game Over" which got me all choked up -- and this was while I was walking the dog at 6:00 AM and shortly after my weeping in the dark, I ran into this big African American dude that I play basketball with (he's a garbageman and was reporting to the public works building, which is next to the dog park) and he'll always talk your ear off -- so I went from picking up dog poop to nearly bawling to removing my headphones and chatting in the dark about his back injury in the span of seven minutes, which is a lot of stimulus for me in the morning and my brain nearly suffered an apocalyptic apoplexy, but I recovered and then played the podcast for my students that day -- the show describes the end of a utopian digital world (The Sims Online) that had a cult following of very dedicated "players" that were really just hanging out and socializing, and there is a wonderful tape of the "DJ," a real human that spun music on a Sims radio station, in the final moments of the game, bidding his online buddies a tearful farewell as the Sim people freeze up, the houses and trees gradually blink out of existence, and finally, a server error message replaces the thriving little digital universe -- and this has made me have a rather selfish thought, that rather than die alone as most of us will, of a stroke or cancer or heart disease or falling down a well, instead I'd rather go out in a major cataclysm: an asteroid, a plague, man-eating ticks from space, whatever . . . because then at least everyone will be in it together (and I'd love to listen to the radio while it's all going down).

Percentage Breakdown of the First Season of 24

I know I'm a bit behind the times, but I finally finished the first season of the acclaimed TV series 24, and I've computed the exact percentages of all the major tropes and themes . . . here they are:

22% suspense;

14% drama;

16% suspenseful drama;

11% gratuitous Elisha Cuthbert footage;

0% jokes;

5% chasing;

17% hiding;

0% giggling;

10% amnesia . . . seriously, amnesia;

4% furrowing;

7% peeking;

0% Commedia dell'arte.

It's Hard to Spell "Asphyxiate"

I often have to remind myself that I have clever children -- they read lots of books and can do math -- but when we are in the car, and they can't answer simple "trivia" questions such as "Which month starts the New Year?" and "What day is Christmas?" it gets a bit frustrating . . . but they did know the answer to one question: "What did the Indians tell the Pilgrims to bury with their corn seed?" and the answer is dead fish, of course, and my kids said that they remembered this fact because I told them when we were burying their pet fish in the backyard, after the fish committed suicide by jumping out of the tank and asphyxiating (and I would like to point out that I spelled "asphyxiate" right on the first try, even though I felt like I was just typing a random jumble of consonants).

Christmas Shoes (and the Holidays) Cause Me to Behave Badly . . . But I Can't Remove These Things From Our Society

I'm not sure how I avoided it, but I never heard the song "Christmas Shoes" until last week -- the song was a topic of conversation in the English office, because apparently my friend Eric threatens to sing the song to his classes if they don't donate money for the toy and clothing drive . . . and this threat works -- and so some of the women in the office (including Krystina, the fundraising queen) made me listen to the song so that I would become more motivated to raise money for poor children (this was not logical in the least, and I'm pretty sure they knew how I was going to react, but I think they take perverse pleasure in yelling at me) as my students were chastising me for not "trying hard enough" or "offering enough incentives to donate" to which I replied: "If I have to promise to give you brownies so you'll donate some money for impoverished children, then you are all horrible people," and -- predictably -- the song made me angry and deranged, instead of jolly, though I must give the song credit, as it's an amazingly bad piece of art, the kind of thing you couldn't write as satire if you wanted to, and it has sent me full tilt into un-godly materialist consumer culture Xmas ranting season, though I really wanted to scale that whole side of my personality down and try to focus on the nearly non-existent "chillaxing" side of my personality, which perhaps with some nurturing can become more prevalent at this supposedly "wonderful time of the year..

Mind Your PQ

It's only fair that I make a full and candid declaration of my "media bias" to my readers, so they can have some perspective on my opinions -- and so I took an incredibly boring 40 question quiz created by "media bias expert" Dr. Tim Groseclose, who believes that mainstream media is slanted to the left and that this slant is having a major impact on the American mind (though I believe that the mainstream media, like any other corporation, is giving the people the stories they want -- and so therefore a reflection of the American mind . . . because if you want conservative news, you know where to get it) and my PQ Survey results (83.2) indicate that I'm fairly liberal -- somewhere between Joe Biden (80.5) and Hillary Clinton (87.6) -- but the quiz seems very one dimensional; if I were to guess, I think I would be a libertarian in respect to people's rights, somewhat conservative in market economics, radical in terms of environmentalism -- though hypocritical about it -- and socially liberal . . . but now I have no idea what I am (aside from an 83.2) but one thing the quiz does point out is how divided our government is . . . though the questions aren't terribly nuanced or exciting, the voting statistics are interesting in themselves (and I also took this quiz, and it labelled me a Working Class Warrior . . . which is absurd, since I'm an elitist pedantic bastard).

The Goldfinch

Though antique furniture is not my "bailiwick" and though Donna Tartt's picaresque novel occasionally "maunders" along in the metaphysical voice of the narrator (Theo Decker, a.k.a "Potter" according to his Russian buddy Boris, a nickname that is highly apropos) the book is mainly a Dickensian roller-coaster ride through disaster, friendship, a terrorist attack on the Met, art theft, the seedy underside of Vegas, drug addiction, alcoholism, furniture restoration, coincidence, and unrequited love . . . it is ambitious, well-written, and plotted to keep you turning pages, or in my case, increasing the font size of my Kindle so I could finish the book in an insane marathon session (it is nearly 800 pages long and it is worth the commitment).

Nerding It Up (German Style)

My family has outstripped Monopoly . . . the house we rent in Vermont has the German board game Settlers of Catan, and while last spring when we didn't have the fortitude to figure out the rules (despite the fact that I had only heard rave reviews about the game) this time the boys and I were determined, and we attacked the game with blitzkrieg furor, and learned as we went, and we all decided that it may be the best game ever (and we even taught mom!) and Catan certainly rivals RISK (while being more cooperative, fun, strategic, random and tactical than the "game" of world domination) and now my kids want it for Christmas, and I want it too . . . but I am wondering if this will send them down a scary path of cardboard chits, lead figurines, multi-sided dice, and larping conventions.

Humblebraggadocio or Idiocy?

I spent two days in Vermont snowboarding without securing the back of my bindings -- and my excuse is that they are rather new, I bought them at the very end of last season and only used them once, and they are a different type of binding (they are Gnu "fast entry" bindings and have a lever you have to initiate on the back to lock them) and I forgot that part of the entry -- so I rode Stratton from top to bottom without being strapped in, and it didn't bother me all that much (aside from the bottom of my right foot hurting from a lot of pronating . . . but then I noticed the lever and remembered what I was supposed to do with it (although the top of one was snapped off, probably because it was hanging loose and got clipped) and so I will leave it to you to determine if you respect me for my exceptional balance or wish to denigrate me for my absolute lack of understanding of my own equipment (and my wife had to help me figure out the lace system in my boots, which I've had for two years, and could remove for the life of me, resulting in some rather loud and embarrassing profanity in a family friendly ski lodge).

Well Earned Treat

Junk food is bad for you, except when it isn't.

Black is Beautiful?

Black Friday uses a positive connotation of the color black -- this is the day when retailers go from "being in the red" to turning a profit -- but Black Monday and Black Tuesday refer to infamous market crashes and use black to refer to the darkness accompanying the event . . . and then, of course, you can be back in black, the man in black, or none more black  . . . it's a very versatile color, or lack thereof.

Rdio Knows Me Better Than My Friends (and Pandora)

How did I survive this many years without listening to Finnish surf rock band Laika and the Cosmonauts?

A Side Dish For Sirius

We braved the storm Wednesday afternoon and motored up Route 87 to our favorite spot in Vermont, and when I took the dog out Thursday morning for a Thanksgiving romp in the snow, he enjoyed a delectable vacation treat: he flushed a mole out of a snow-covered pile of hay, chased it down, and gobbled it up (despite my best efforts to get him to spit it out) and while I was a bit worried that it might make him sick, he suffered no ill effects from eating this shovel-footed rodent, which was certainly fresh, and now I know that we don't need a cat to keep our house free of mice.

Bring the Noise (Algorithm)

A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder explains that a little disorder is often more beneficial than organization -- and while we know this to be true in many systems, from evolution to business -- for many people, it's hard to accept this in day to day life . . . we think we need to be more organized, and rarely compute the cost/ benefit analysis of getting organized, and feel guilt over our messiness . . . but sometimes, when things get to clean, we need to manufacture messiness: once cell phone technology got sophisticated enough to filter out all background noise (something engineers loved, because it enabled less transmission of information, and therefore longer battery life and greater channel capacity) the phone companies ended up having to create a mathematical technique (e.g G.711.II) to add"comfort noise" and they had to do this for three reasons

1) when background noise is removed you can hear faint voice echoes, which is unnerving;

2) background noise indicates that the call is still happening, otherwise, whenever there is a pause in the conversation, it sounds as if the other person hung up;

3) at an unconscious level, we desire background noise and the absence of it is disorienting . . . "our brains rebel at the unnatural neatness."

Slow and Steady Loses the Race (When You're Competing Against a Kenyan)

An excellent Radiolab podcast called "Cut and Run" explains why a small area in Kenya produces so many incredible long distance runners (five American high school students have run sub-four minute miles . . . ever . . . while in one class in one school in Kenya, there were four kids who did it) and the program also explains why I get so fucking hot in the summer -- Kenyans generally possess a "nylotic" body type -- tall, slender, and with very long and tapered limbs -- and this body type sheds heat well and people who live in hot and dry climates have often evolved in this manner . . . and I am neither tall nor slender, and my limbs are stubby and thick (Popeye forearms and bulging calves) and while this is good for lifting things, it is NOT good for shedding heat . . . but that's not the only reason that the Kenyans from this region are great runners: for the final piece of the puzzle, you'll have to listen to the podcast, but I will tell you that involves circumcision and a pointed stick (and American runners aren't going to catch up to the Kenyans any time soon, judging by this statistic).

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Giving Heuristics the Finger

I finished Nassim Nicholas Taleb's new book Antifragile, and while I can't say it was fun and delightful, like a Malcolm Gladwell, I will say that it is a book you must read -- while Taleb is no great stylist, his thinking is logical, powerful, anti-establishment, anti-intellectual and apolitical -- which is refreshing; while this book frequents some of the same financial territory as The Black Swan, Taleb also ranges far, wide, and crazy with his thesis about systems that gain from volatility versus systems that are fragile, systems that fall apart in volatile times; I love what he has to say about books and technology . . . he explains that probabilistically, they age in an opposite fashion from humans: when you see an old human, you infer that he will probably live less time than a young human, but you should think in the reverse in regards to technology and books -- the longer the item has been around, the longer it probably will be around . . . we are stuck with cars and bicycles and cups and chairs for a long time, and the same with Shakespeare and Homer and Herodotus (Taleb tries only to read books that have been around for a long long time, and he claims only to drink things that have thousands of years of trials: coffee, tea, wine and water . . . he is a wacky guy) and what his philosophy ultimately comes down to is that you can only trust opinions from people with "skin in the game" and so he hates managers and governments and large institutions and pundits (especially Thomas Friedman, who he claims helped encourage the U.S. to invade Iraq, though he himself wouldn't be put in any danger if this happened) and pretty much anyone who doesn't have their own money on the line each and every day . . . he's brash, obnoxious, smart, frustrating, and also offers some diet and weight-lifting tips along with the finance and philosophy.

Two Blasphemous Statements in One Day

I'd choose to visit Philadelphia over New York City any day of the week (and weekends) and while there, I would rather eat a roast pork sandwich with sharp provolone and long hots from DiNic's than a cheesesteak with onions from Jim's Steaks . . . so kill me.

An Endorsement of Bar Culture from Jimmy Stewart and a Giant Rabbit

My boss recommended this You Tube video by author John Green to inspire seniors struggling to write their college essays, and not only does it offer some great advice about how to view your life, but it also teaches you how long one million seconds are and reveals the significance of the classic Jimmy Stewart movie Harvey, which is about an affable tippler (Elwood P. Dowd) and his best buddy -- a six foot three inch invisible rabbit (which is the embodiment of a mischievous Celtic "pooka") -- and this film is one of the weirdest I have ever seen; it is oddly gripping, and my kids watched it in its entirety . . . if you like Jimmy Stewart and you're in the mood for something funny and whimsical that also makes you feel good about frequenting pubs and taverns, then this is the movie for you.

Surfing in the Jungle

So my students were working in groups -- connecting this podcast to this article with some help from Neil Postman -- and I was reading nature essays and just finished a vivid one about a trip to Tanzania and an encounter with a hungry lion, and so I yelled over the din to the girl who wrote the piece: "You went on safari! Wow!" and she looked up from the MacBook Air she was using (we have a cart of ten MacBook Airs for classroom use) and answered "No, I'm on Google Chrome" and I yelled, "No, I mean you went on a safari!" and she said, "No, I didn't go on Safari, I'm using Google Chrome" and I yelled, "NO! You really saw lions! You went on a safari!" and then we both simultaneously realized that we were treating the class to an impromptu farce.

Primitive Struggles of Digital Man

Last week, after a year of touting Spotify, I had a sudden resurgence of interest in Pandora -- soccer is over and I actually have some time in my house now, and so I want my computer to spit out jazz guitar and ambient music and trip-hop songs while I do non-soccer things like reading and cooking and helping the kids with their homework -- but then I started to do some research, and there are some other music streaming services that do things similar to Pandora: Grooveshark, iTunes Radio, Google Play and the one I am liking the most so far: Rdio . . . I can't find any definitive opinions on which is the best, and so I am experimenting with all of them, in the hope that I will find one I really like and then actually pay for it (to assuage some of my guilt for pirating so much music in the past) but the big picture behind all this difficult "research" is this: in 2013, you don't need to own music.