Next Year, I'll Buy Her Some Earrings

My wife is an excellent cook-- creative, efficient, and unflappable. Her skills are crucial in the fall, when our house is extraordinarily busy. She's usually consumed by teaching elementary school math and science, running the community garden, and directing the school garden club. The boys and I are consumed by soccer. Despite these hurdles, she whips up meal after meal, day after day-- often without any help. This fall she worked around four soccer schedules: Alex played JV soccer, Ian played middle school soccer and for a club team, and I coached the middle school team and the in-town travel team. She's also the go-to person for help with school work (I'm more of a school work consultant, good for specific questions but not really capable of sustained service). Catherine times our family dinners around games, practices, and buses. She's the household MVP, keeping us full and healthy. We rarely ordered pizza.

Years ago, at the end of a similarly busy soccer season, Catherine went on a two-week cooking strike. She decided there was a lack of appreciation for all the planning, shopping, prepping and cooking she had been doing. It was a difficult period. The scab labor was unskilled, surly, and mainly underage. Negotiations were tense. Meals were lame. We survived but did not thrive. The boys and I learned our lesson: it is difficult to plan and serve delicious healthy meals all week. Though we learned our lesson, we didn't learn how to actually pull it off.

Last year when the season ended, we preempted any sort of labor dispute by announcing that we would do the cooking and dinner clean-up for a week. The end of the season coincides with Catherine's birthday, so not only did we avoid a cooking strike but we also provided her with a birthday gift. That's a win-win.

This year for Catherine's birthday, I upped the ante. Not only would I cook for a week, but I would also plan the menu and do the shopping. At the grocery store. Now I know-- truly know-- what it takes to cook various, creative, delicious and healthy meals for a week. It takes the planning skills of Hannibal, the scope and courage of Alexander the Great, and the confidence of Napoleon. And running a campaign like this is stressful, and the best way to relieve stress while you cook dinner is to imbibe. So you'll also need the liver of Winston Churchill.

The first step is to make a menu. Here is mine:

Sunday: green chorizo tacos

Monday: pasta, meat sauce, and sausage

Tuesday: leftovers . . . everyone had something planned

Wednesday: grilled shrimp, snap peas, and thin-sliced crispy potatoes

Thursday: grilled chicken, broccoli and rice

Friday: out to dinner . . . yes!

The second step was the hardest (behind butterflying, pounding, and marinating the chicken breasts . . . so gross). The second step was to go to the real grocery store . . . the big ShopRite in Edison. We have a small Stop & Shop in town which I can handle-- I know where things are and there isn't a big selection, but the big ShopRite in Edison is much cheaper than the Stop & Shop in town. Catherine gave me an out on this one: she said I could do the week's shopping at the smaller, more familiar store, but I decided it was time to man-up. If I was going to do it, I was going to really do it. She told me that there were a couple of products that wouldn't be in the main store. They would be located somewhere called "the annex." The "annex" was connected to the main store by a passageway akin to King's Crossing Platform 9 ¾. I would have to sprint towards an aisle of cat food and hope for the best.

There was a point during my shopping trip when I nearly broke down and quit. I almost shed tears. Seriously. You'd cry too. The store was huge, disorganized, and there were too many choices. I was in there forever, wandering. I actually found the annex (and bought some facial tissues . . . but I never found the 9-volt batteries). And even after all that time in the store, I still had to stop at the Garden Farm Market on my way home for produce because I couldn't find anything decent at ShopRite.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is menu.jpg

Why was it taking so fucking long to buy some basic shit? Why are food stores insane?

The new episode of Freakonomics tackles this question. In it, business Professor Michael Roberto makes a pitch:

ROBERTO: “I’d like to open a new kind of grocery store. We’re not going to have any branded items. It’s all going to be private label. We’re going to have no television advertising and no social media whatsoever. We’re never going to have anything on sale. We’re not going to accept coupons. We’ll have no loyalty card. We won’t have a circular that appears in the Sunday newspaper. We’ll have no self-checkout. We won’t have wide aisles or big parking lots. Would you invest in my company?”

This store sounds like a train-wreck. But it turns out that this is a successful business. It's a description of Trader Joe's.

I highly recommend "Should America be Run by . . . Trader Joe's?" It's Freakonomics at its best. The topic sounds boring: grocery stores. But there's a compelling narrative, and an explanation of how you can succeed in a low margin, super-competitive, rather bland business. Trader Joe's is killing it in terms of sales per square foot. How the fuck do they do it?

There are no sales, no discounts, no Whole Foods/Amazon algorithmic data tracking. When you enter the door, you've joined the club. It's kind of fun. Sometimes there's free coffee. There are lots of employees and they are instructed to drop everything and help you if you need help. The last time we were there, my wife couldn't find blue cheese. An employee told my wife that she would go in the back and find the blue cheese for her, and then she told my wife to keep shopping and I'll find you and give you the blue cheese. Brilliant. My wife continued to shop and because the store is small, with no annex, the employee was able to easily find my wife and give her the blue cheese.

During my ShopRite shopping epic, I wandered the meat section at for fifteen minutes, looking for ground pork. I was obviously bewildered. I stumbled on someone who might have been the butcher and asked him if they had ground pork. He said, "Nope. None of that today." Do they ever have ground pork? Could he go in the back and get some? Could he grind some for me? I have no clue and I didn't ask. He didn't offer any more information. I bought some ground turkey instead.

Trader Joe's offers a limited selection of each product and they may switch out a product at any time-- although they always have the staples-- but because the food is good and because you haven't worn yourself out looking for things, when the product you want isn't there, you might actually try something new. The store encourages experimentation. And it's small enough to browse but large enough to have everything you need (especially if it's a branch that sells alcohol). They have three kinds of salsa instead of seventy kinds. And they don't cater to everyone. There's an ethnic bent to the food and if you don't like it, you can shop elsewhere. I've only been inside a Trader Joe's once, and I was slightly overwhelmed-- but I get slightly overwhelmed when I enter any new place, especially when people are frantically buying things . . . it's because I vividly imagine the environmental disaster we are rushing towards. This is more of a "me" problem than a problem with Trader Joe's, and now that I've learned about the store through a podcast, I'm more inclined to go there. Ridiculous, but a little background knowledge goes a long way with me.

Trader Joe's is small on purpose. A typical grocery store carries 35,000 different items. Trader Joe's carries 3000. There aren't that many aisles-- I could walk up and down every single one without suffering a panic attack. And they rush you through the line. No weird interactions where you have to "borrow" the cashier's club card. I don't need to develop that kind of intimacy with someone I just met. If I see them on the street, am I obligated to lend them my umbrella? You don't have a card? Do you want to sign up? Uh . . . maybe? I made that mistake once. There's a Trader Joe's up the road from us now, in North Brunswick. I might go there. On my own. And buy some food. Coming from me, that's a bold statement.

Once I made the menu and purchased all the food, the week went fairly smoothly. Or it appeared smooth from my perspective. I only lost my shit twice. The reason for the smoothness was the lubricant: alcohol. I don't know how people who cook every night don't become raging alcoholics.

My thought process always went something like this: time to cut and pound the chicken! Yuck! Gross! You know what would help with a task this time-consuming and disgusting? Some music. And a beer. It's almost five o'clock.

The only night I didn't drink last week was Tuesday. Leftovers night. Soccer night. I now realize that soccer practice and the fact that my wife does most of the cooking are what stand between me and daily drinking. I know daily drinking doesn't always indicate alcoholism, but it's a step in that direction. And it makes you fat. If I had to cook every meal every night, with only my children to help (who are incredible at disappearing whenever there is work to be done) then my alcohol consumption would triple.

The two nights that I grilled were a double whammy. I normally like to have a beer when I grill . . . it's quiet and relaxing out on the porch; I can look over my sprawling bamboo plants into Donaldson Park. The dog accompanies me and occasionally descends from the porch to chase a squirrel off the property. A warm grill on a cold night, it's the life. But I normally have one beer while I grill. Because my wife is inside managing the other things. The vegetables, the rice, the potatoes, making the salad. whatever. Reminding the kids to finish their homework. Meanwhile, I'm "grilling," which includes a lot of staring into the park and enjoying the fresh air. Occasionally, I'll flip something. But grilling when you are also cooking other things inside the house is not relaxing. It's frantic. And when you're in and out so many times, feeling the pressure to get everything ready at the right time-- doing math, subtracting the minutes that the potatoes will be done from the amount of time it takes to grill shrimp-- then you might grab another beer as you pass by the fridge . . . or another glass of wine. Or another tequila, lime, and seltzer. It's dangerous.

I only lost my cool twice. Once was when I tasked Alex with cooking the snap peas while I finished grilling the shrimp. He decided they were burning-- even though we agreed we wanted them undercooked and crispy-- and he poured a bunch more olive oil in the pan. The peas turned out fine, but sort of drenched in oil. I snapped at him over those snap peas, and I shouldn't have. I told him he should have asked me before doing anything so radical, but then I changed my mind. Chefs get irate in the heat of the moment. I apologized and told him it was good that he took some initiative. Normally when I cook, I ask Catherine a million questions and it drives her crazy. Cooking is experimental, and Alex went for it. Next time he might know better.

The other time I got annoyed is when I was serving dinner and Catherine was fooling around on the computer. The house rule is that you're not supposed to be fooling around on the computer when dinner is served. This house rule is mainly designed for me, so when I chastised her, I had an out-of-body experience. It was like I was her, chastising me.

I'm going to chastise myself now. Time to get off the computer and do the dishes. And miracle of miracles, Catherine has already done the grocery shopping.

Dave Has Changed Venues . . . So Long and Thanks for All the Comments!

First off, I'd like to thank all the folks that visited this blog over the years-- eleven to be exact; that's over four thousand posts . . . and I couldn't have done it without the comments, so thanks Zman and Whit and Lecky and Rob and Marls and everyone else who contributed thoughts and criticism to my drivel . . . lately, writing the daily sentence has become a chore and I've wanted to expand my horizons as far as a website goes, so I'm starting a new blog called Park the Bus . . . I've got one post up, which connects back to my very first Sentence of Dave post-- both Ur-posts are dedicated to my wife . . . the new venue is powered by Wordpress.org software, which seems vast and incredibly customizable and quite complicated, so who the hell knows what the site will look like in the end, but I'm excited to screw around with all the stuff; I might occasionally still use this blog for notes and ideas (and because it's a great resource for remembering when things happened) but I'm really going to dedicate my energy to slowing down, parking the bus if you will, and writing some longer pieces . . . so if you've got some time to kill, check out my first post, and thanks for all the visits and support.

Dave Has Changed Venues . . . So Long and Thanks for All the Comments!

Here We Are . . . In the Congo

I've explained what kind of woman my wife is, and now it's only fair that I turn my laser-like logic and self-reflective acumen upon myself.

What kind of man am I? Who's there?

To unravel this eternal question of character, I will rely on the classic Bud Dry commercial "Why is a good man hard to find?"

I'd like to thank my buddy Whitney over at Gheorghe:The Blog for recently reminding me how much I love this piece of our pop-culture past.

Before I get down to brass tacks, I would like to point out that this commercial is "classic" only in the modern sense of the word. Which isn't saying all that much. It contains one of my favorite bits of dialogue, ever . . . a piece of dialogue so good there should be a t-shirt for it (there isn't). Something far wittier than "WHERE'S THE BEEF?" A piece of dialogue that resonates deep within my (rather shallow) soul. But I'm certainly lowering the bar . . . because I'm stupid. Corrupted by modern times.

I say this because I'm in the middle of a true classic right now, George Eliot's Middlemarch, and it's hard to compare a thirty second Bud Dry spot to a novel of this caliber. Middlemarch is incredibly well-written, and-- inconceivably--it was written by hand. You can see some of the manuscript here.

A page of Eliot's Middlemarch

There's some revision of course, a few cross-outs and some inserted lines, but I think when Mary Anne Evans-- the woman behind the pen name-- began writing a sentence, she knew exactly where it was going, in terms of thought, rhythm, structure, and syntax.

And so she could produce sentences like this one:

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Classic stuff. Most modern sentences just don't measure up. Part of the problem might be that many writers-- including myself-- compose with word processing software. And so instead of concentrating on thoughtful sentences and paragraphs, which translate into thoughtful thought-out thoughts, we often get consumed with "presentational elements."

This phenomenon is occurring right now, as I fiddle with the text in the link, experiment with different image layouts, and use a Wordpress feature called "Blockquote" to emphasize the Eliot sentence. I'm also occasionally Googling things like "how do you take a screenshot on a Mac" and " what is the effect of word processors on writing?"

Does anyone not succumb to these sort of temptations while they are writing?

Despite the distractions, I will try my best to return to original question: what kind of man am I?

Certainly a digressive one . . . but aren't all modern technologically embedded men more digressive than we once were? The internet itself shoulders some of the blame for this, but the problem also might be baked in to the nature of a typical male. Men and easy access to infinite information might be a poisonous combination. My wife doesn't get up from the dinner table to use our desktop computer to Google the population of Peru or what year the Oklahoma Land Rush occurred. But I do this kind of thing all the time (despite family rules prohibiting this behavior). And not just at the dinner table. This happens when I'm teaching class, talking to my friends, sitting on the toilet. I want a piece of information NOW. And it's usually nothing life changing. Perhaps male hunter-gatherers were always wandering off mid-meal to seek a different grub or tuber than the one being served?

It's incredibly hard to maintain a steady stream of thought when there's always the temptation to follow some other niggling idea, an idea that's probably dumber and more trivial than the one you're actually trying to think about. And the internet constantly affords this luxury, so when you have access, it's harder to write long, beautifully constructed sentences like those in Middlemarch.

There's some hard data on this, but you're going to have to wade through a long comment thread on this English Language & Usage Stack Exchange forum. Or I can save you the trouble: some smart people have come to the conclusion that as time has passed, sentences in literature have gotten shorter and shorter. I've read my fair share of literature and I can confirm that the sentences in Tristram Shandy are generally longer than the sentences in Freaky Deaky. And Hemingway? That guy could barely type a seven or eight word sentence before he had to take a break and grab a scotch and soda.

Anyway, I have been told that when you're writing for the internet, you should keep your sentences short and sweet. Though I ignored this advice for eleven years, I've come to acknowledge that it's true. It's tiring to read on a screen. Short sentences, plenty of paragraph breaks, and white space are an internet writer's best friend.

I really wish that my Kindle Paperwhite had a better browser, so I could read internet articles and posts on a non-glare screen . . . but apparently, no one else wants to do this. The populous demands to see their algorithmically chosen ads in vibrant, persuasive color. The internet would be a totally different experience if it were in matte black and white. Less intense, more about the words, less invasive.

I have lost the thread. Enough digression. Let's get back to using this classic Bud Dry commercial to decipher my riddle-inside-an-enigma personality.

There are five archetypal men presented by the commercial:

Guy # 1

A lot of women find my looks intimidating? Do you?

Once upon a time, I believed I was better looking than my wife. Whether or not this was true is a matter of opinion, but it's debatable. Look at the picture below, and you can be the judge. (Note: this photo is just before young Dave and Cat left on a "just hair-do it" themed bar crawl . . . this was NOT our normal hair).

Currently, there is no question that my wife is much better looking than me. The hair on my head has migrated to my back, ears, and shoulders. So any connection I once had with this guy is long dead. That Dave is gone.

Guy #2

My mother makes the best brisket . . .

Once in a while, I run across a dude who has a really tight relationship with his mother. While I find Woody Allen movies humorous, I don't want anything to do with this guy in real life. Creepy.

Guy #3

There I was, there I was, there I was . . . in the Congo.

This is the guy. This is the dialogue. Brilliant. Classic. Moving. Though I recognize that he comes off as a total douche, I still feel a strong connection with him. He's got an interesting story to tell. He demands your undivided attention. He's probably not going to consider what you have to say, but at least you're in for an interesting ride. He's self-centered, he makes weird gestures with his hands, and he's got his chair turned backward . . . but on the plus side, he's passionate and he's traveled the world.

I've taken my share of shit for being this guy. My wife and I taught in Syria for three years and I have a lot of stories that begin, "There I was . . . there I was . . . in Damascus." It's insufferable, but I love those memories. I think as I've gotten older, I've gotten more aware about how self-congratulatory those stories are, and I rarely dust them off . . . but when I do: watch out. That guy is me.

I first saw that commercial in the early '90's, long before I had traveled the world, and I felt an instant connection to that weird bit of dialogue. He presented me with my destiny . . . to become that vociferously annoying little man. Luckily, my wife accompanied me on all those adventures, so she never had to endure me telling those stories to her (but she does have to listen to me tell them to other people).

Guy #4

Just a minute . . . okay!

This guy is '90's Donald Trump. He's buying high, selling low, and using his dad's money to get rich (or go bankrupt). I've got none of this guy in me. Zero point zero. I can't stand spending money on clothes, I constantly pass up opportunities to make more money (so I can engage in hobbies like noodling on my guitar, writing this blog, and coaching soccer). But I think it's important to recognize that this is a type of guy, and while I don't really know or hang out with this guy, I've got to acknowledge that guys like this probably control the government and the economy and how the Giants will do next season, and I've passed up my chance to be one of them.

I'll never have a larger sphere of influence. I'll never be that guy.

Guy #5

You gonna finish that?

At least that's what I think this guy says-- his mouth is full and he's also got a thick New York accent. I appreciate this guy's turned up collar, rolled up sleeves, weight-lifter physique, and forward nature. Plus, he's doing a good deed: he's keeping his girlfriend slender by eating some of her food.

I've definitely got some of this guy in me, though I try to corral him. I've learned to let my wife and kids finish eating before I swoop in and grab the remains . . . but this guy is always lurking in the back of my brain. I may look composed on the outside, but my inner voice is running this monologue:

That's a big pile of fries . . . doesn't look like she can finish . . . and Ian looks full too . . . I think there's still a piece of bacon on that burger . . . patience . . . play it cool . . . patience . . . he's pushing his plate away . . . don't look at it . . . maintain eye contact with the wife . . . okay, you've counted to ten . . . time to pounce . . . you've got to beat Alex to it . . . maybe you shouldn't have gotten the side salad . . . can they see the saliva is pooling in your mouth?

"Are you going to finish that?

No?"

Yes! It's mine! All mine! My cunning and patience has paid off! Now if I keep it cool, I can parlay this into even more food . . . even more food!

I'm ten percent guy #1, eighty percent guy #2, and ten percent guy #3 . . . and I'm fine with that. In the end, though, the lesson is another sentence from Eliot's Middlemarch:

“Confound you handsome young fellows! You think of having it all your own way in the world. You don't understand women. They don't admire you half so much as you admire yourselves.”

For a long time, I never understood why my wife wasn't more impressed with my snowboarding and soccer skills, why she didn't take more interest in my progress on the guitar. But then I realized, these are the things I admire about myself. She just wants me to help out around the house, do some of the cooking, and listen to her stories . . . which usually begin, "You're not going to believe what happened at work/the garden/the grocery store today!"

And then she names seven people I've never met and places them in an interconnected web of insult and indignation.

It's her version of the Congo.

Analysis of The Ur Post (Dedicated to My Beloved Wife)

Eleven years ago, I started writing a blog called Sentence of Dave. The premise was simple: rain or shine, I would write one sentence per day. The sentence might be short and sweet or it might run on and on. And while I didn't initially recognize the pun in the title, I soon realized that I had committed myself to a weird sort of imprisonment of chronology and structure. I generally embraced and enjoyed my self-imposed sentence-writing experiment (and I was always inspired by my fans, commenters, and critics).

Recently, however, writing the sentence became onerous, another chore. And I felt limited and rushed. So I'm trying something new. I'm going to take it slow and write some longer posts. I'm going to revise, ruminate, and procrastinate. Move at my own pace. Stall. Use periods. Park the bus.

The first post I wrote over at Sentence of Dave was dedicated to my loving wife. Here it is, in its entirety:

I am shopping for a new digital camera because my wife has a habit of leaving things on the roof of our car.

For good luck, I am once again dedicating this first post at Park the Bus to my wife. She is a wonderful woman: beautiful, loyal, smart, funny, and adventurous. I am lucky to have her. Unfortunately, she is also reckless and irresponsible, something of a menace. I need this longer format to truly explain what I mean.

To all appearances, my wife seems to be a diligent and dedicated elementary school teacher and mother. She helps run the community garden. She's a great cook with a green thumb. She eats healthy, works out, dresses sharp, and donates her time to charitable causes. But she's also the kind of person who will leave you a car with an empty gas tank. Below the line. No fuel at all. Not because she doesn't care about you-- I think most people would agree that she's a caring person. She will leave you the car on empty because she drives it around on empty. She's too busy running important errands for our family and the gardening club and her students and the elderly to stop for gas. And if you switch cars with her, and nearly run out of gas on the way to work ( while you are sitting in traffic because of construction) and call her-- your tone a little perturbed-- and give her a piece of your mind, and later on, text her some information, some completely innocuous and objective information about the consequences of using an internal combustion engine with very little gas in the tank, information about burnt out fuel pumps and kicking up sediment, then, oddly, you're the one who's going to be in trouble.

I'm a high school English teacher and my students-- despite the fact that they don't always read the assigned texts-- are often wise beyond their years in the ways of relationships. They vehemently advised me against sending those texts about sediment and fuel pumps to my wife. They told me it wasn't worth it. I explained to them that our Honda CRV was the second most expensive item our family-owned (a distant second behind our house) and it was my responsibility to inform my wife about these sorts of things. Because she was reckless. Not that she was alone in this manner of recklessness . . . I did an informal poll and though my evidence is anecdotal, I'm fairly sure that the world is equally divided into two kinds of people: sane folks who gas up when their tank gets down to 1/4 full and lunatics who drive around on fumes until their anxiety finally gets the better of them . . . or they actually run out of gas.

I could go on and on. My wife fills her coffee up far beyond what is normal or necessary. She walks around the kitchen with a meniscus of steaming hot liquid sloshing above the rim of the mug. Drinking coffee is supposed to be relaxing, a morning treat. A warm and tasty pick-me-up. Not an invitation for second-degree burns.

She does something similar (but less dangerous) with the dog's water bowl: she fills it up until the water is hovering above the brim and then cavalierly carries it across the room. She fills up the recycling bin in our kitchen so far above the rim that it's impossible to pull out the garbage/recycling drawer. For many years, she put large knives in the sink amongst all the dirty dishes (because she likes a clean counter). I actually broke her of this habit (but it took some bloodshed). Why does she do these things? Because she's got an incorrigibly reckless soul.

A quick mathematical aside: the relationship between a person's sanity and the amount of coffee they pour into their cup is the same as the relationship between a person's insanity and the amount of gas they have in their tank. I know formulas can be off-putting, but I think these equations are fairly simple and common-sensical.

the percentage you are sane = amount of gas in tank/full tank of gas

the percentage you are insane = amount coffee in cup/full cup of coffee

Running on fumes? Mathematically, you are 1% sane. Coffee cup filled to the absolute maximum? You are 100% insane.

The camera on the roof of the car; the empty gas tank; the overly full coffee cup, the overly full dog bowl, and the overly full recycling bin: these should all be entered as background evidence. What I really want to discuss is something that happened a few days ago. I was about to start teaching class, when my phone buzzed. There was a text from my wife and an accompanying photo. The text explained that our dog Lola had chewed up a bunch of papers that she had in her school bag. Student papers. Graded student papers. Essentially, the teacher's dog had eaten the students' homework. Damn close to Alfred Harmsmith's dream headline: "man bites dog."

I informed my class of the bad news . . . which was especially bad for me because I am in charge of training our new dog and if she behaves badly then the responsibility is mine. This is not particularly fair-- I'm no dog whisperer-- but my wife does take on a lot of responsibility in the house, so I can't complain. If Lola screws up, I'm to bear the brunt of it. And my wife is still partial to our old dog, Sirius, who shuffled off this mortal coil last March. So there was no winning this one. Lola had screwed the pooch, and I was to take the heat for it.

The first text message my wife sent me about the paper-eating incident was light: she recognized and enjoyed the whole "our dog ate the students' homework!" aspect of the scene. But then she instructed me that if I left the house when everyone was still sleeping, as I did on Wednesday, then I should bring the dog back upstairs and close the gate so she couldn't roam the house and chew on things. She made it clear who was culpable for the chewing. Me.

The final reckless thing I'd like to discuss about my wonderful and loving wife is that she does not zip her bags. She does not zip her purse. She does not zip her school bag. She doesn't zip her laptop case. She doesn't believe in zipping. She likes the convenience of easy entry. (Insert filthy joke here).

I'm constantly zipping my wife's purse shut. Sometimes because it's hanging by a thread on a hook with seven other jackets. Or it's teetering over the center console in the car. She should have zipped her school bag shut. We have a young Rhodesian/lab rescue in the house, and she likes to chew things. When I noticed the unzipped bag in the photo, I asked my class if I should bring this to my wife's attention. This wasn't my fault! This could have been prevented! If she had taken precautions, if she had zipped her bag shut, if she had utilized Whitcomb L. Judson's marvelously pragmatic invention, then the dog wouldn't have chewed up her papers. I presented this argument. My students' answer was still a resounding "NO!" I should NOT text her about the unzipped bag.

I explained to them about the purse and the gas tank and the recycling bin and the coffee. They didn't care. It's not worth it, they informed me. Even my sophomores understood this. They were so adamant that I sort of followed their advice.

I am proud that I did not text my wife about the unzipped bag. I patiently waited to bring it up until later in the afternoon. It was Thanksgiving Eve, and once we had imbibed a bit, I pounced, the same way our dog Lola pounces on her rubber bone when you toss it across the room. It was a much better method than texting. My students were right. You can't text about something as delicate as this (I learned that during the whole gas tank incident). But I wasn't going to completely ignore the situation. I knew it wouldn't change anything, but my voice had to be heard. It's the same reason I sat down and wrote this long-winded post. It feels good to take notes, organize your thoughts, and get it all out. People need to know. My wife needed to know. And I will give her credit: she took it like a champ. She may have called me a few choice names, but then she was over it. We went out to the bar, saw our friends, and I had a story to tell.

I'd like to thank my wife Catherine for the inspiration and the material . . . your irrational behavior makes me love you all the more.

Dave's Not Here Man

Dave's unplugging for a while, just to see how it feels.

Dave's Not Here Man

Dave's unplugging for a while, just to see how it feels.

Snow: Good For Shit

If you step in dog poop in the yard (while looking for dog poop in the yard) then old slushy snow piles are a great way to clean your shoes (preferably your neighbor's old slushy snow pile).

Snow: Good For Shit

If you step in dog poop in the yard (while looking for dog poop in the yard) then old slushy snow piles are a great way to clean your shoes (preferably your neighbor's old slushy snow pile).

Pomegranate Justice

This morning, my son Alex skillfully and patiently extracted all the seeds from a pomegranate and put them in a bowl to eat; he then offered me some and as I took the bowl from him I wondered just what sort of crime it would be if I ate the entire bowl . . . I would obviously owe him more than just the price of the pomegranate (and I would never have the patience to extract all the seeds at once the way he did so-- to me-- the bowl of pomegranate seeds with no white gunk was essentially priceless).

Pomegranate Justice

What's in the Box?

I've been out hiking with the dog and I get home and open the fridge and I spy a box . . . a box in a bag . . . a styrofoam container-- and what's inside? what could be inside? what sort of leftovers? Thai food? I can't remember . . . yes! . . . leftover al pastor tacos and rice from La Catrina in New Brunswick . . . and so my breakfast plan transformed from the usual greek yogurt and peanut butter to a plate of pork, pineapple, rice, fried eggs and a tortilla . . . and it was delicious.

What's in the Box?

Slick Roads and Broccoli

I'm about to head to happy hour, so I don't have the time to capture the absolute madness of yesterday's snowstorm in New Jersey but the accidents, commute-times, and the road conditions were absolutely epic . . . I got home before the worst of it, but I couldn't get my van back up the hill on the south-side of Highland Park to pick up my kids from school (apparently this was a common problem on hills all over the state) and my wife didn't get home from her school until nearly 7 PM-- she volunteered to stay with the stranded students . . . buses and cars just couldn't make their way to the school-- and this was really stressful for me and the boys, because Catherine had planned on making beef and broccoli stir-fry and we were trying to prep everything so she could finish cooking when she got home but we were out of soy sauce and she kept getting delayed more and more and when we called her about the soy sauce and suggested perhaps she could stop on her way home and pick some up, she didn't take kindly to that suggestion . . . but she finally made it home, improvised with the prepped ingredients and whipped up a delicious dish (though the meat was a little chewy . . . I pounded it some with one of those tenderizing hammers but I guess Catherine packs more of pounding punch than me).

Slick Roads and Broccoli

Snow!

I tried dropping some hints with the secretaries in the main office but there were obviously no administrators in earshot-- and I also tried to foment rumors amongst the students and teachers in the hopes of a bottom-up emergent decision-- but despite my efforts, we didn't get an early dismissal . . . and it's still snowing buckets outside so maybe we'll have a delay tomorrow (and I'm not sure if "snowing buckets" is an expression but I'm not going to google it, you know what I mean).

Snow!

When Do I Get to Buy a Dune-Buggy?

This has been the year of spending money on expensive, sober-minded stuff: a sick dog, braces and a palate expander, a washer/dryer, and now a dishwasher (although we did buy a ping-pong table somewhere amidst the pragmatic purchases).

When Do I Get to Buy a Dune-Buggy?

Fantasy Football Explained (Using Status and Contract)

I love arming my students with the terms "status" and "contract" and then encouraging them apply these terms to whatever we are reading; there are status/contract motifs in The Merchant of Venice, Death of a Salesman, and The Great Gatsby and I also think the terms apply to the weird relationship between playing fantasy football and having a rooting interest in a professional football team; so allow me to take a page from one of lesson plans and explain: when you root for a particular team, because of where you were born or familial influence or whatever, then you possess the status of being a a fan of this team . . . you really can't change this-- perhaps you could be an ex-Giants fan, just as you can be an ex-wife-- but that status remains forever part of your past; on the other hand, fantasy football is all about temporary contracts that you make with your "team" and its montage of constituent players (and these players don't even have the knowledge that you've made a contract with them . . . nor do they know they are playing for your team) and these theoretical contracts are negotiated and broken from week to week and season to season, with little emotion to bind you to your team and your players; this is in no way similar to how you are bound to your status as a particular fan . . . the brilliance of fantasy football from a marketing standpoint is that it enlarges the purview of the once-casual fan well beyond their limited rooting status, and makes them more of a broker of contracts, a more focused consumer of football, without the emotional ups and downs of the old-time subjective supporter . . . a contract conveys professionalism, a contract is monetized and contains all due diligence, a contract assures rule of law and logic, and this is what fantasy football promises and delivers, you no longer have to suffer the caprices of your fate, you can strategize, formalize, capitalize and fetishize, while the fan is a dilettante, a simpleton, a rube, an amateur, limited who tunes in for the love of the game and the love of his or her team (and also often tunes out for the same reasons).

Fantasy Football Explained (Using Status and Contract)

Let's Get Naked (Statistically Speaking)

Charles Wheeler likes to get naked . . . he's the author of Naked Economics, which I highly recommend, and I also enjoyed Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data, which is full of fun facts and lots of number sense (and it will make you think about all the times you are offered either percent of increase or a number, when you really need both to make an assertion) and here a some random moments I enjoyed:

1) texting while driving causes crashes and laws banning texting while driving may also cause crashes because people can't stop texting while driving, but if there's a law against it, then people will hide their phones down by their crotch and take their eyes off the road;

2) people who buy carbon-monoxide monitors and little felt pads for the bottom of their furniture almost never miss credit card payments;

3) the top 100 grossing films only makes sense when it's adjusted for inflation . . . Hollywood likes to tell the story that each new blockbuster movie is so good it has blown away all the older films, but they like to list the gross (nominal) ticket receipts, not the real, adjusted receipts: here is the real list . . . The Exorcist makes the top ten and Jurassic World makes the top 25 so this list isn't any more cultivated than the gross profit list (though it's less homogenous);

4) our data sets are getting more and more predictive . . . people who buy birdseed are far less likely to default on their loans, but if we can identify drug smugglers 80 times out of 100, is it okay to harass those other twenty people over and over? so statistics generally leads to ethical dilemmas . . .

5) the most dangerous job stress seems to be jobs that have "low control" over their work situations . . . which makes me happy, because teaching and coaching feels highly stressful at times, but I always have control over what's happening . . . but this is only true if we trust the regression analysis, which is the most powerful statistical tool in existence, but very difficult to do well;

6) because you can screw up regression analysis in a number of ways: you can use regression to analyze a nonlinear relationship, you can screw up correlation and causation-- buying birdseed does not cause you to have good credit, those two things are simply correlated-- you can complete reverse the causality, you can omit variables, you can have variables that are so highly correlated that you can't extricate them from each other, you can extrapolate beyond the data, and you can have problems with too many variables;

7) Wheeler concludes with a quick overview of some real-world problems that are going to need clear statistical analysis: the future of NFL football, the rise in autism, the difficulty in assessing good teachers and schools, the best tools for fighting global poverty, and personal data privacy . . . if you're looking for a fairly in depth take on statistics, with more formulas and math than a Freakonomics or Malcolm Gladwell book, this is the one for you.

Let's Get Naked (Statistically Speaking)

I Rate This Film 0.0

Friday night, my family sat down together and watched Animal House . . . first time for my kids (they are 13 and 14 years old) and I haven't seen John Belushi imitate a zit since 1991, when I watched the film in it's entirety several dozen times in one summer (we were living in a shithole in Nags Head, I disconnected the cable, and the only movies we had on VHS were Animal House and Spinal Tap . . . so most nights we alternated, although we occasionally watched both in the same evening) and I'm happy to say the comedy really holds up (my son Alex had a three word review: "That was awesome!") but there are more gratuitous boobs than I remembered . . . I guess there was no internet porn back then so people had to get their gratuitous boobs in R rated movies.

I Rate This Film 0.0

Living on the Meniscus

The final ingredient in my wife's cup of coffee is a healthy dollop of danger . . . while I like to keep my hot beverages well below the rim, she fills her mug right up to the top, a meniscus of hot liquid quivering in the air above the cup . . . and this is before 8 AM.

Living on the Meniscus

Just When You Thought it Was Safe

I'm pleased to say-- though many of the ladies in the English department might not agree-- that the incessant high school soccer discussions will continue in my general vicinity, as both the school at which I teach (East Brunswick High School) and the town in which I live and coach (Highland Park) are Sectional State Champs in Central Jersey (in Group IV and Group I respectively) and while nearly all the other high school teams are done, East Brunswick and Highland Park are now headed to neutral fields to try to win it all: congratulations to all the players and Coach McKibbin and Coach Roig, great job extending the season and the concomitant soccer-related discussions.

Just When You Thought it Was Safe

Indolence Abetted by Dog

There is no better nap than when your dog is just outside your room, sleeping at the head of the stairs, guarding your indolence against all intruders.

Indolence Abetted by Dog

There is no better nap than when your dog is just outside your room, sleeping at the head of the stairs, guarding your indolence against all intruders.

Happy G:TBday!

In honor of fifteen years of taking life less seriously over at Gheorghe: The Blog, my buddy Whitney got real serious about being less serious and-- in a fit of expansively effusive generosity-- sent all the members of the site a couple of thoughtful gifts . . . this was a concerted effort, after ascertaining all our addresses, he then warned us about an incoming package and instructed us not to open it until G:TBday . . . because of all the ominous emails, we all imagined the worst: pipe bombs, blackmail photos and Gwyneth Paltrow's head . . . but the gifts turned out to be oddly thoughtful and quirkily sentimental; I got a Big Lebowski script (signed by Jeff Bridges . . . the Dude himself!) and a Jim Zorn jersey (signed by the King of the Scramble himself!) and you can read about the rest of the gifts here.

Happy G:TBday!

Dave Throws His Vote Away

In honor of yesterday's post, I voted for Madelyn Hoffman today . . . go Green Party!

Dave Throws His Vote Away

In honor of yesterday's post, I voted for Madelyn Hoffman today . . . go Green Party!

Happy Midterm Elections!

Every America of voting age should be required to listen to the new episode of Freakonomics: America's Hidden Duopoly which gives some serious reasons as to why the relatively rational Median Voter Theorem doesn't apply to America any longer-- the best way to imagine the Median Voter Theorem is to think of a long beach, which is the continuum of American voters-- and two ice cream vendors (with trucks) which represent the Democrat and Republican parties and while the vendors might position themselves at the far ends of the beach-- which indicates radical liberalism and radical conservatism-- then they can't capture much of the middle vote . . . the walk is too far, so naturally, the ice cream vendors should move towards the center because then they can capture more and more of the middle of the continuum because the radical voters on the far edges have no choice (in a two-party system) but to walk to get their ice cream . . . but this implies that if the ice cream trucks remain very far to the right or the left, then an ice cream truck can open shop in the middle and win the election . . . Tyler Cowen offers a number of reasons why this theory doesn't work, and this new episode of Freakonomics clarifies the argument; veteran business competition expert Michael Porter realized that our two party system is not a public service, it's a political industrial complex . . . and the thing the Democrats and Republicans are best at is not serving their constituents or serving the American people as a whole, the thing they are the best at is cooperating to create policy and protocol to prevent any outside forces from impinging on their duopoly; like the battle between Coke and Pepsi, the duopoly war gets great media coverage and generates its own feedback loop of coverage, but unlike Coke and Pepsi, there is no Dr Pepper . . . and the Democrat and Republican parties have done a great deal to ensure this; Porter cites five forces that could ruin a duopoly:

1) the threat of new entrants;

2)the threat of substitute products or services;

3) the bargaining power of suppliers;

4) the bargaining power of buyers;

5) and rivalry among existing competitors;

and the voting consumer is pretty much screwed in every category . . . neither party has to worry about an independent, and can often dissuade party loyalists merely by mentioning the spoiler effect-- if you vote for an independent, you're just throwing the election to the other party, which then has all the power and will use it to gerrymander maps and stymie any diplomacy or bi-partisan agreement; we've got no bargaining power as voters and only the extremists in each party are willing to supply money and people for the cause . . . it's basically two ice cream vendors who don't give a fuck about most people, provide shitty, biased ice cream, and exist by convincing people there's no reason to walk so incredibly far for ice cream and that that ice cream vendor is a terrible human and there's no chance of better ice cream along the way because they've convinced the town not to allow any other vendors . . . it's a bad situation, but the episode has some solutions-- we could vote the way Ireland does (listen to the new Radiolab for more on that) and use "rank choice voting" and then re-tally the votes until there's a consensus, tossing out extremely partisan choices that can't get fifty-percent of the vote . . . anyway, both parties love to say that our democracy is broken, but that's a ruse and they don't believe it-- our democratic system is fantastic at keeping Democrats and Republicans in power, something that worried John Adam . . . this system assures us that almost everyone who runs will be the same, that there will be no bi-partisan agreement-- there wasn't with Obama and there isn't with Trump-- and neither party cares because they know there's no alternative, so they cater to their base, knowing that the rest of the rational middle ground consumers have no bargaining power and have to make a choice between the lesser of two evils . . . there are bi[artisan groups working on solutions, but it is rough going because Democrats and Republicans alike don't want to cede any control to bi-partisan committees or non-partisan committees . . . they want to wait their turn and then take power back, the way we've been doing it for a while now . . . Seattle tried another interesting solution, which may not have worked perfectly, but it's a start . . . anyway, happy mid-term elections and recognize that if you vote Democrat or Republican, you're really voting for the current political industrial complex and for more of the same bipolar vitriol and more of the same atrocious customer service.

Happy Midterm Elections!

Boom Goes the Book

Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World Class Metropolis by Sam Anderson is a platinum-level-must-read for American men (and hairy-chested American women) and when I list the topics, you'll understand why I make this claim-- and these manly topics are all woven together in a rocket-fueled tapestry of a narrative . . . a manly tapestry:

1) Oklahoma Thunder basketball during the Westbrook, Durant, Harden era and the post-Harden Reconstruction;

2) the Land Rush of 1889 . . . retitled by Anderson as either the "Chaos Explosion Apocalypse Town" or "Reckoning of the Doom Settlers: Clusterfuck on the Prairie;

3) the Sooners, who actually had the gall and wherewithal to cheat at the Doom Chaos Apocalypse Town Clusterfuck;

4) tornadoes, extreme weather, and the men and women that predict and chase these monstrous storms;

5) Clara Luper and the Oklahoma City Civil Rights movement;

6) city planning and the tension between top-down bureaucracy bottom-up up emergence;

7) enigmatic, experimental, anomalous and loyal native OklahomanWayne Coyne and his band The Flaming Lips;

8) domestic terrorism and a tragic explosion more devastating than the original formation of Oklahoma City;

and if there's nothing on this list that piques your interest, then I've got nothing much to say to you; this is the book of the year (and maybe the book of the last ten years . . . I loved it!)

Boom Goes the Book

Sentence Postponed Due to Hirsuteness

Catherine and I are off to my cousin Keith's wedding, so though I have a lot of rambling run-on sentence type thoughts they have been superseded by the categorical grooming imperative (the hair on my face was just as unkempt as the hair on my back).

Sentence Postponed Due to Hirsuteness

Dave Summons a Hackerlike Miracle

My wife just told me fantastic news: the school computer system erased all the teacher conferences she scheduled for our son Ian and now the time slots are all filled up by other people . . . this rectifies an impending marital conflict, as the Highland Park boys varsity team is playing in the State semi-finals on Monday night-- which is when the conferences were scheduled-- and I told my wife that i was not going t attend the conferences because of this conflict and she told me that I was "a slacker parent" and if I stuck to my guns and skipped out then I was certainly going to be in the doghouse-- but now there aren't any conferences to attend . . . I'd love to say I hacked into the school computer system and erased the conferences myself but I couldn't code my way out of a paper bag, so we'll just have to call this a November miracle.

Dave Summons a Hackerlike Miracle

Dave Stubs His Toe on an Invisible Box

My right quad is sore but I'm getting better and better with each attempt (although I'm not nearly good enough yet to post) but someday soon I'm going to achieve my newest wildest dream . . . I'm going to step on an invisible box and then I'm going to hop over it.

Dave Stubs His Toe on an Invisible Box

Fred Armisen is the Democratic Inversion of Donald Trump

The Undiscovered podcast episode "Party Lines" is the best piece of non-partisan political commentary I've heard in a long time (especially since Dan Carlin hasn't put anything out for a while) which means that very few people will be interested in what they have to report; the show explains a new mathematical method to determine how much gerrymandering has gone into a particular voting map (and the answer is usually "a lot") and the groundbreaking method-- like the method of throwing a cornhole beanbag-- is beautiful in its simplicity; votes are tallied and then a computer draws a trillion feasible voting maps and re-tallies the actual votes in regards to these particular borders, so you can see lots and lots of results and determine a few things:

1) what probably should have happened,

2) what's in the realm of possibility,

3) and what's an absurd result because of rigged maps . . .

this method is so beautifully elegant that it has passed through the Pennsylvania Supreme Court (though Trump advised Pennsylvanians to "challenge" the new map, as the "original was correct" . . . but we know Trump isn't so good at math) and while the Supreme Court is avoiding the issue (probably because gerrymandering helps Republicans right now) they won't avoid it forever, because as soon as Democrats take power, the conservative court will make the logical ruling and trust the numbers; Democrats and Republicans both love to gerrymander, it's just that Republicans control everything right now, so they need to gerrymander while the gerrymandering is good, which I totally understand; my other political thought today, which is a bit of an aside, is that, after much reading, discussion, and research, I've decided that most folks voted for Trump to give the middle finger to liberals and the political establishment-- they don't care about his lack of experience, his policy on healthcare, or his crass buffoonery . . . in fact, his crass buffoonery, unsolicited and stupid lies, lowbrow language, braggadocio, old man whiteness, racism, sexism, unwarranted confidence, clueless sensibility, and general un-hipness is exactly what Trump supporters love about him, because they know this will trigger absolutely irrational unseated anger in intellectuals and liberals-- there is no one more underserving of attention and power than Donald Trump, and therefore he is the perfect candidate to elect . . . so I tried to figure out who would be the perfect liberal candidate to trigger all the same emotions in conservatives and it's obviously not Barack Obama-- Obama actually got elected, because he's too on the nose . . . he's nerdy and intellectual, but he's black-- his saving grace-- because no conservative wants to be that overtly racist in this day and age, so I think the Democratic inversion of Donald Trump is Fred Armisen, he's ironically uncool, indecisive, apologetic but still kind of an asshole, unflinchingly liberal, empathetic, utterly nerdy, capable of weird indignance, and-- like Portlandia-- an inside joke that only liberals get.

Halloween is a Test

I have nothing creative in the tank, as I'm using all my willpower to not eat the Reeses peanut butter cups in the closet.

Will Lab-grown Chicken Still Be Slimy?

Handling raw chicken is almost gross enough to make me become a vegetarian (but not quite).

The Cheez-it Chompspiracy

I'm not a big fan of orange foods (aside from oranges, which I love) and while I'll occasionally munch on a carrot or sample a sweet potato, purely because I know they are salubrious, what I really truly and passionately despise are orange processed foods-- especially foods with weird orange dust that coat your fingers, such as Doritos and Cheese Doodles . . . my children know they can't eat those two orange foods anywhere in my vicinity, without the consequence of receiving a nutritional diatribe; one of the orange foods that I am trying to (unhappily) tolerate are Cheez-its . . . they're totally disgusting and barely qualify as victuals but my kids like them and as long as they don't take them out of the kitchen or eat an ungodly amount of them, I try to withhold my ire . . . but the classroom is a different place entirely, a place of intelligence and education, so when I noticed a charming, athletic, and intelligent student of mine chomping away at some Cheez-its, I immediately launched into a processed food lecture . . . and then I noticed a girl behind her was also snacking away . . . and she had a bag of Cheez-its and when I asked if this was planned, yet another female student lifted her own bag, the third bag of Cheez-its in a fifteen foot vicinity and these students insisted that they brought the snacks independently, and that there was no Cheez-it conspiracy between the three of them, and they were good students, honors students, so I believed them . . . and I'd like to add that I really like cantaloupe, especially if there's a slice of prosciutto wrapped around it.

Republicans: Mad as Hell (Just The Way They Like It)

The Weeds provided a great explanation for the growing political polarization in our whacked-out nation with their episode "Republicans control everything, and they're mad as hell" . . . Republicans should be content and proud of their victories and marching forward on various conservative reforms with a coordinated consensus, but instead they are angry about everything-- the caravan, abortion, immigrants, environmental protections, the rights of consumers, football players expressing their first amendment rights, conservative voices being silenced on college campuses-- and the reason for this anger may be that even though they've galvanized their political party (through gerrymandering and the fact that rural areas are overrepresented mathematically in our voting system) they have no traction in the media and culture . . . despite, Republican political power, the media and cultural hubs of NYC and coastal California will not bend the knee; coastal elites and the entertainment industry (aside form Kanye) ridicule and lampoon Trump and his party; meanwhile, Millennials-- even conservative Millennials-- are less racist, more tolerant of gay marriage and transgender people, more open to immigration than older conservatives, and they are more willing to support socialist policies that might actually help young people navigate healthcare, college, and the labor market . . . many college campuses are more liberal than ever and the Republicans just can't seem to get anyone intellectual to respect them and listen to them . . . so they remain angry and embittered, despite the fact that they are running the country and could have a great impact (or perhaps will have a great impact in deregulating all sorts of business, banking, and environment policy) but instead of having an open dialogue about these issues, Republicans will keep pushing wedge issues like the caravan and the wall and abortion, so they can get mad as hell and lament the fact that the culture won't reflect their policies (conservatives may also be angrier in temperament due to psychological reasons, because most conservatives are concerned more about "purity, loyalty, and authority" than most liberals).

Thus Endeth the Week

Parent/teacher conferences, a couple of away games, a puking player on the bur ride to South Amboy, forgotten socks by my son at South Amboy (so he had to share socks) and a bleeding player on the way home from South Amboy, Pub Night, a hard fought loss this afternoon, dinner with my family for my brother's birthday, and a bunch of other stuff . . . an epic week, so I'm rooting for this blustery Nor'easter to cancel all the weekend stuff.

Female Hillbilly Escapes the Heartland

Sarah Smarsh's Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth is a more poetic, even harder luck version of J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, and while at times I got mired in the details I still think this is a worthwhile and important read, especially for effete liberal middle class folk like myself that can barely understand the way 60 million rural people live in our vast and economically imbalanced shitshow of a country; the image that becomes a metaphor for Smarsh's youth is when she goes to pet some half-feral kittens, though she is worried that her scent will repel the mother cat from her young: "I reached out and patted a furry head . . . the head rolled away from the small body, leaving a track of blood on the concrete floor," and her dad explains that "a possum or a fox got 'em" and gnawed all the heads off the cute little kittens; while in suburbia, we care for and protect our puppies and kittens, on the farm in Kansas, that's not the case . . . Smarsh has a true "free range" youth and she was lucky to survive it and move into the middle class; while there are moments of unadulterated fun and her parents are not stereotypical rednecks, nor are they stereotypical conservatives, she is often surrounded by drunks and addiction, violence and transience, and she has a hard time-- despite her great intelligence-- finding her educational groove; the foibles and flaws of the folks surrounding her could generally have been softened by money, but there was no money to be found and so Smarsh realizes that "I was living in an environment full of what society had recently discovered was dangerous: the smoke, the fried food, the unbuckled seat belts . . . but I didn't know the half of it: sugary diets that led to cavities, noxious glue in the walls of cheap houses, nitrates from farm runoff in our drinking water, insecticides on the wind that shimmered down from crop-dusting airplanes" and-- without the ability to move, seek healthcare or help-- that these problems have blossomed into "obesity, diabetes, meta-amphetamine addiction, and opioids overprescribed by the same doctors who were supposed to help," and Smarsh grapples with the fact, that due to shame, racism, and pride, people where she lived voted against their best interests and backed Reagan and the Republicans, who were interested in gutting environmental protections, ending the possibility of small family farms, and erasing the promise of affordable healthcare and rural school funding, and anything else that would help the people in her impoverished predicament; America-- especially the Republican party-- has shamed the poor for being poor, despite the fact that we've created a system that has incredible benefits for the winners and incredible costs for the losers, even if the losers work hard every day, so hard that their bodies disintegrate and they have no way of healing themselves; Smarsh points out that there wasn't stereotypical sexist behavior in this world; women suffered violence from drunken and broken men, but they also made the big family decisions, left when they felt like it was time to leave, did work that was just as difficult as the men, and partied as hard as the dudes . . . it's a good book and beautifully written, but it's a tough pill to swallow and the easy answer is for us economically stable folks on the coasts is to say: "they voted for this and they got what they voted for," but these policies aren't good for any of us-- there by the Grace of God goes I-- and the newest one is how the Trump administration has undervalued the social cost of carbon emissions . . . absurd, awful, and will hurt those that live close to the land and don't have the option to up and leave it more than it will hurt the rest of us.

A+ in Chest Hair

Yesterday we had a half day of school with the students and then had to return at 5:30 PM for the dreaded parent/teacher conference night . . . before I left for work for the second time, I threw on the same clothes I had worn in the morning: khaki pants and a festive red plaid button down shirt, I then drove back to EBHS, watched some of the soccer game-- the weather was warm and beautiful-- and then headed to my classroom to chat with parents; after six or seven conferences, I had a break, so I went to the bathroom and when I looked in the mirror, I noted that my button down shirt was unbuttoned beyond my normal level (and my normal level of unbuttoning is already in the "casual" zone, as not only do I have tenure but I also have a thick neck) but tonight I was unbuttoned to a place most people would call "club" and I had shown these parents some serious chest hair . . . and it's well past beach season, so it was pretty unkempt.

A+ in Stealing

I had a bit of a Willy Loman moment yesterday when my son Ian opened his book bag and produced one of the soccer balls I instructed him to steal from gym class, and I then commended him for his initiative . . . I had just finished teaching the play and quickly remembered the moment when Willy condoned Biff's "borrowing" of the football from the locker-room and then later wondered why Biff ran off with Bill Oliver's fountain pen; I'd like to think this situation is slightly different but you will have to be the judge; last week, my soccer team told me that the gym class has been using three balls that belong to our travel soccer team-- we have practice at night on the school turf and sometimes we leave a ball or two behind, and these balls are then impressed into service for the school (despite the fact that they have our team name and the assistant coach's name on them) and so I told my team that we have to get those balls back, as the ball bag is rather depleted . . . and, of course, Ian was able to smuggle one out of class and bring it back to its rightful home . . . it was probably a bad way to go about getting the balls back, especially because in the past Ian has been involved in some sketchy situations at school, but I'm still proud of his moxie (and glad to have another ball in the bag).

Like Father (Unlike Father)

Alex took his sweatshirt off at the restaurant last night and I was sitting on the same side of the table as him and I said, "Look at this!" and then I took off my fleece and-- surprise!-- we we wearing the exact same powder blue "Moab Utah" t-shirt, but Alex wasn't as excited as I was . . . in fact, he put his sweatshirt back on.

A Good Day to Fly a Kite, Not Chip a Ball Over the Flat Four

Wind: the hot sauce of weather (we had to play on the waterfront in Elizabeth today and while the temperature was a deceptive 47 degrees, the high winds really spiced things up).

Dave is No Longer a Puppy

I tired myself out tiring the dog out.

Less Drama, Crisper Salads

Winter skipped the whole "coming" thing: it's here (especially in the English Office, which lost heat this week because a boiler pipe went . . . it was so fantastically cold inside that I was bringing random teachers in the hallway in just to feel it . . . our boss had to leave because she couldn't bear being there for an extended time, and we felt really stupid complaining it was too cold because we spent so much time last month complaining that it was so hot).

Nothing Like a Captive Audience (When You're Feeling Your Oats)

My first period creative writing class is comprised of eleven girls and one boy (and me) and this one boy wrote a wonderful personification piece (inspired by Sylvia Plath's "Mirror" and this gem from the New Yorker) from the perspective of a diamond engagement ring that was rejected once, stored away for a few years, and then got a second chance and found success . . . after the author read it aloud, I heard a few grumbles from the ladies, so I asked them-- knowing it was a loaded question-- if anyone had a problem with a recycled diamond ring, and then the festivities began . . . because hell hath no fury like a woman scorned with a secondhand ring; apparently, you should buy a "new" diamond specifically for the new person you have in mind (despite the fact that this "new" diamond is already 1 to 3.5 billion years old) and this led to a lot of good-natured early morning debate, and the ladies had to endure my various rants about strip-mining, the DeBeers conspiracy, the overhang, blood diamonds, rampant materialism, and the influence of the media on a saturated, overpriced market . . . in the end, we all agreed that it was a fun way to start the day, though I had little or no success convincing any of these women to forego engagement rings (and then, as an added bonus, a senior in my comp class said that people were getting sick because the weather dropped forty degrees in two days, so I got to call her "grandma" and lecture the class about why we actually get sick more when it's cold (it's mainly because viruses survive better in low humidity . . . although I also found some reasons that contradict my lecture-- perhaps when our feet are cold then our immune system doesn't work as well . . . so I'll have to apologize tomorrow for calling her "grandma," as perhaps the whole old-time "don't go outside with your hair wet" faction is right).

I Need to Stop Losing My Temper (But My Kids Also Need to Stop Doing Stupid Shit)

Catherine was at a cooking class last night, so I was in charge of dinner-- but she kindly ran to Costco and bought us two rotisserie chickens, so I didn't have a whole lot to prepare; I made some green beans and heated up some store-bought mashed potatoes (yuck) and put one of the rotisserie chickens on a baking sheet in the oven, and a few minutes later, once it was hot, I took it out of the oven and told the kids to come-and-get-it . . . meanwhile, as the kids started spooning out green beans and potatoes, I carried the other rotisserie chicken down to the extra fridge in the basement, not thinking that anything could go wrong during my momentary absence, but when I got back upstairs, my fourteen year old son Alex was carving the rotisserie chicken with a big knife-- and this was not the problem . . . his other hand was the problem-- as he was holding the chicken in place with, of all things, our big red fabric oven mitt, and once he carved some meat, he grabbed it with the thumb and paw of the mitt, and this mitt was absolutely filthy-- it's an oven mitt, for Christ's sake-- so it was filthy before he started fondling the chicken with it and now it was moist and filthy and soaked with rotisserie chicken fat and this simultaneously grossed me out and pissed me off, causing me to launch into a profanity laced tirade about common sense and culinary hygiene, after which I showed him how to use a fork . . . and then I apologized and told him I shouldn't have lost my temper over something so ridiculous, and he apologized for being really stupid and we all agreed that the oven mitt is NOT for handling food.

Hey Stacey, A Good Podcast is Better Than a Bad Book

Jonathan Goldstein's podcast Heavyweight is by turns poignant, acerbic, mock-epic and-- of course-- funny . . . it generally has a very different tone than Malcolm Gladwell's often epically profound podcast Revisionist History, but each series has an episode that tackles the fickle and arbitrary nature of human memory; Gladwell's take on this theme is "Free Brian Williams,"a heavy tale of an NBC news anchor who told a war story that wasn't true and the consequences this false memory had on his career and reputation . . . Goldstein's version is a comic masterpiece, "#16 Rob" is about character actor Rob Corddry's attempt to convince his family that when he was a kid, he broke his arm (or did he?) and it's worth saving for a long drive with the kids . . . it's exactly an hour long and worth every minute (and I would recommend this podcast to my stupid friend Stacey, except that she's given up listening to podcasts and instead started reading/listening to books during the time she used to listen to podcasts-- she made this resolution because she started listening to a bunch of stupid podcasts where comedians waxed philosophical about how important comedy is and she wanted to break the habit, but I think she threw out the baby with the bathwater-- of course it's admirable that she's reading so much and I'll begrudgingly admit that she's compiled a huge list of books she conquered this year-- but still, listening to a good podcast is better than a reading bad book . . . and "Rob" is a really good podcast, certainly better than the last book I read).

Don't Blame Me . . . I Was Doing Laundry

I would like to point out, for the record, that I finished Christina Dalcher's dystopian feminist novel Vox in a laundromat . . . because the first half of this book seems designed to make women really angry at white men, for oppressing and subjugating them-- so I found it both ironic and appropriate that I was doing the kind of work that men in the novel freed themselves from when they shackled their women's voice boxes . . . women in this Fundamentalist Christian/Extra-Trumpian near future of this novel are forced to wear word counters on their wrists, which only allow them 100 words a day-- if they speak over the limit, then they get shocks of increasing severity . . . this book is the opposite of The Power in scope, quality, and theme; The Power is true sci-fi, the world is the main character and it is comprehensively evoked by Naomi Alderman, while Vox is a bit half-baked, the Pure movement version of Christianity and the surrounding corrupt politicians more of a caricature than a possibility-- although perhaps that's what people said about the Taliabn when they were just getting started-- and the larger themes of the book get lost in the plot, big ideas about how society can make children become monsters, how communication is the cornerstone of our society, and how Socratic dialogue between all people propels knowledge and civilization forward are pushed to the wayside as the story becomes a laser-focused, plot driven thriller (where, ironically, in the end, a bunch of men come to the rescue . . . it's a bit out of nowhere) and the science-fiction is lost in a world of chivralic fantasy . . . I finished because I wanted to know what happened-- which isn't saying much-- and while the premise had some potential, if you're looking for a dystopian feminist manifesto, try the aforementioned book The Power or the classic The Handmaid's Tale . . . or even the wacky Charlotte Perkins Gilman fin de siecle utopian novel Herland (I'd also like to point out that out of the several dozen people I saw come through the laundromat, I was the only one with a book . . . everyone else was either watching the weather on the TV or poking at their phones).

Capsule Reviews

I almost forgot to write a sentence today because Cat and I got so wrapped up in the Amazon series Forever . . . I can't tell you about it without ruining things (unlike the fantastic Netflix show I watched with my kids earlier in the evening, Adam Ruins Everything . . . a show in which Adam everything everything about everything, ruining these things but also enlightening you) but my advice is this: watch the first three episodes of Forever in one sitting and then decide if you're going to proceed.

It Would Be Thirteen Years

Here's some more house stuff that you might eventually learn, but-- unfortunately-- by the time you learn it, you won't get too many future chances to put your knowledge to good use . . . but perhaps some lucky homeowner will stumble upon this post before it's too late: if your contractor installs the stacked washer/dryer laundry center and then builds the bathroom cabinets, then thirteen years later, when the stacked washer/dryer laundry center breaks and you need to have it removed so a new one can be installed, there's no guarantee that the stacked washer/dryer laundry center will fit between the sink and the cabinets and then you'll have to rip out the cabinets, reschedule the installation, and make another visit to the laundromat.

Thanks Weather Gods!

The weather gods have responded to my plea for some decent fall weather, so I'm going to go outside and enjoy it; I'll write something profound once it starts raining again (and I have a feeling my sentences would be a lot shorter and a lot more vacuous if I lived in San Diego).

Dave Appeals to the Weather Gods

Hey Weather Gods . . . I know you're listening . . . I'm on a sentence-writing-strike until we get some fall weather up in here!

Touch Typing = Coffee with Sugar and Creamer

The unemployment rate is low right now, but there are problems with the numbers-- they don't accurately represent all the people-- and it's a lot of people-- who have dropped out of the job market entirely: these people aren't retired, they aren't employed, and they aren't seeking employment . . . and they are mainly men; a recent episode of Hidden Brain attempts to explain one factor of this phenomenon . . . some of the sectors of the economy that are booming are regarded as "women's work," and men are having a hard time moving into these jobs; the episode-- entitled "Man Up"-- focuses on nursing, and how the men who have made the transition often need to compensate with extra-manliness because (unlike femininity) manhood is "hard to earn and easy to lose"; I never thought about this all that much until I listened to this episode, but I certainly work in a field that could be considered "women's work"-- I teach Creative Writing class!-- and I'm used to working side-by-side with women, and-- more often than not-- I've had a woman as my boss; I always thought of this as a perk of my job-- we have lots of smart, charming, attractive women in my department, but I also might compensate about certain things to accentuate my manliness: whenever my buddy Bob types anything-- he's a fantastic and flamboyant touch typist-- I give him a hard time for excelling at something so feminine, and whenever my friend Terry puts sugar and creamer in his coffee, I tell him that a man drinks his coffee black . . .on the whole though, it's fun to work with a bunch of women and it's easy to be the funniest person in the room (because women aren't all that funny) and if there's ever a heavy object that needs lifting or a tight jar lid that needs unscrewing, I'm at the ready.