We went ziplining down the mountain yesterday-- this was the first time for me but my wife and kids did it in the Poconos; however, they said our first "practice" run was much longer than the longest run back home; the lines got longer and longer, one of the was a kilometer, we zoomed over the La Fortuna waterfall and a deep jungle chasm before plunging into the bush . . . a little scary but mainly exhilarating and certainly big fun, we did 12 lines in all and there was lots of hiking through the cloud forest, our guide said he once saw a jaguar while riding one of the lines during the early morning safety check; after lunch at a local joint we returned back to the spring fed pools and water slides and our boys made friends with some kids from Florida; their dad was a friendly very well traveled businessman and accomplished surfer, he had lots of information about Costa Rica but he was something of a one-upper; his family had gone rappelling down a waterfall in the morning and when we told him we went ziplining he said that the only place to go was around the mountain in Monte Verde because they have a 1.5 km line, which is .5 longer than one kilometer; he also told us where the BEST surfing wave is in Costa Rica, it's near where we are headed but not exactly where we are headed . . . he said the place we are going is good, but not the best, and then -- I'm not making this up-- he told us they were headed out for pizza, and he had made reservations at the best pizza place, Cafe Mediteraneo, and ee told him we had great pizza at Anchio-- which was true, it was better than most pizza in the states-- and he said he heard that was good but not as good as the place they were headed . . . I have to stress he was supernice about all this and I was probably setting him up a bit and he might have amiably one upped a bit more if his son hadn't wiped out on the wet stairs and hit his head and scraped his elbow (I did not mention to him that my kids were running on the stairs with his kid and did NOT fall, because one upping something like that is kind of mean).
Full disclosure: we would have avoided waiting hours in Chilamate for the student protests to dissipate if I wouldn't have been "one hundred percent sure" that the way to Arenal was via Puerto Viejo-- I was a bit turned around in regards to my mental map and did not check Waze-- so by the time we figured out, or I should say my wife and kids figured out, that we were headed the wrong direction it was too late and our route was blocked; but we made it to the Arenal volcano region before dark, the road was smooth, the kids slept, and we stopped at the Iguana Bridge, from which we spotted some iguanas and a colorful Jesus Christ lizard-- they are so bright that when you see them, you exclaim "jesus christ!" And they can also run on top of the water; we experienced some cognitive dissonance when we got to Los Lagos resort, as we had been staying in a ramshackle open air joint that was slowly being engulfed by the rain forest and Los Lagos is an impeccably manicured collection of cabanas climbing Arenal and has several beautiful pools of various temperatures, fed by volcanic hot springs, a bunch of waterslides-- some dangerous and one full of scalding hot water-- a bridge you can jump off, a wet bar in a giant hot pool-- I had a local Costa Rican pale ale called Toro that was delicious and a general upscale family resort vibe; we hiked all around the volcano yesterday, the lesser traveled Peninsula trail down to the lake was particularly excellent, we saw turquoise hummingbirds, Montezuma orondolas, giant magpie jays, the broad billed mot mot, and others we could not identify and then we hiked the main loop to the old lava from 1992 and climbed the the viewpoint where we saw a pitcher plant but could not see the volcano-- apparently , because this is the cloud forest, you rarely see the volcano, though it is looming right above the trail and the resorts; the kids asked a lot of questions and it made me realize I don't have the slightest idea how volcanoes work, this one is still active so you can't get close but I'm not sure if there is lava right inside it or you need a shift in tectonic plates to send some magma out; I will do some research; anyway, after four hours of jungle and lava hiking, we stopped in La Fortuna for a giant meal at the Rainforest Cafe-- a little local joint not to confused with the bigger ersatz Rainforest Bar on the main drag; the food was great and filling, I had the casada lunch plate with tilapia and Alex had the same with steak, casadas are usually around five or six dollars and come with rice, beans and several sides, Catherine had fried plantain chips and guacamole and an empanada and Ian had two empanadas, and the empanadas were huge, three times the size of one at home-- so we have been only eating two meals a day here, both places provided enormous breakfasts with lodging and then we get so stuffed at late lunch that we having been eating dinner; while food isn't dirt cheap here, at the local places it is inexpensive and Imperial beer is always two dollars and we really love the typical meals and no one has had stomach issues-- aside from when I ate a bunch of very spicy pickled peppers from a glass jar-- I will also say that after a long day of hiking, it's really nice to relax in a hot spring fed pool, it's bizarre-- there's a bunch of these resorts on the way to Arenal and they all have infinite hot water; I am also enjoying the AC, but I can't stress how nice the weather is, we haven't worn sunblock yet; also, when Catherine ran out to get our laundry and some coffee, the road was all stopped up so we parked and just above the road, on an exposed branch, was the most active sloth I've ever seen, climbing around, grabbing stuff, all in full view and we finally got a view of the volcano just before dark, the clouds cleared for a moment and the cone was visible, minutes later it was gone, shrouded in gray.
I'm tired and there's too much to report today . . . I will do a full summary tomorrow, but you'll be happy to know we discovered the source of the awful stink and it wasn't emanating from my person, it was entrenched in my hat-- so I washed it; also, Costa Ricans always back their cars into parking spots-- perhaps to make quick escapes from lava amd flash floods-- so if you want to look like a local and avoid having someone break into your car, back it in.
We did our last excursion in the Chilamate region this morning, or so we thought-- we took a hike in the spectacular Tirimbina Wildlife Refuge; first we crossed 264 meter hanging bridge to get to the east side of the Sarapiqui River and then we climbed into the dense forest, I was the only one totally decked out for the jungle, wearing pants tucked into my socks and longsleeves, which was a good idea because of the numerous bullet ants on the trees and the trail, my kids had on shortsleeves and Catherine was wearing Capri pants so they were lucky to avoid being stung; Ian also miraculously spotted the bullet ant's favorite prey, the glass winged butterfly, which was pretty much wearing a cloak of invisibility, aside from a red blotch below its transparent wings; Ian has great eyes and also picked out tiny frogs and other little creatures but Ian's most incredible sighting of the day was a large viper just below the trail-- it was either a fer de lance or a hog nosed viper-- and he also found a smaller one ON the trail nearby, I moved it off the trail with a stick before it sank its teeth into my wife's exposed leg; I will post the video soon enough; the rest of the hike we were surrounded by howler monkeys but saw none, but we did see a pair of Marail guans, which might be relatively rare and then when we headed back to the Eco Retreat to check out, but we ran into a student protest blocking the road so we took a bunch of pothole strewn back roads and circumnavigated it and then when we checked out we ran into the same protest, a vague movement against the new president and we couldn't get to the highway so we ate and it rained spectacularly so we figured the protesters had given up but they didn't and there is no other way to go to get to Arenal so we retreated back to the Eco Retreat and we are stuck here indefinitely, waiting for the protest to end, but it may be a while because apparently it is teachers and students, and the teacher's union-- who have been fomenting strikes and protest quite often-- are not to be trifled with.
Serious rain last night and this morning in Chilamate, which was a good thing for both the jungle and our river rafting trip-- we charged down the Sarapiqui, which was flowing fast due to the downpour; lots of big rapids and we also plummeted over a smallish waterfall; Catherine was the only member of our group to fall out of the raft, I got to play the chivalrous hero and pull her back in; when we stopped for a rest, everyone jumped off a cliff into the river, even the tentative Belgian couple that accompanied us in the raft; I can't stress enough how pleasant the weather is, the humidity isn't as bad as New Jersey and the rain is keeping things cool, at some points on the rafting trip we were even chilly and last night we slept under the sheets (and mosquito netting); on the river we saw lots of birds, by the lodge we found a couple of enormous rhinoceros beetles, and the kids apparently found a red-eyed tree frog in our bedroom while we were at the lodge, they used a towel and Ian's sock to capture it and return it to the rain forest; we then at a huge and delicious meal at Rancho Magallanes: roast chicken, pork loin, fried plantains and black bean dip and Imperial, of course; then Ian and I took a nap and Alex and Catherine got lost in the jungle, I went out looking for them but turned around when it started raining, they had crossed several rickety bridges when my wife realized it might get dark-- it gets dark at 6 pm here because we are close to the equator-- so they jogged it in and my wife grabbed s celebratory beer from the shared fridge . . . it's raining again as I write this and we are relaxing the the airy main area, which is connected by covered walkways to all the rooms and cabins and hostel, the Chilamate Eco Resort is a great place to be when it's raining.
Long day in Chilamate so this sentence is going to be rambling and utilitarian; we slept through a 6.1 earthquake, had the best breakfast ever at the Chilamate Eco Lodge-- pineapple and papaya tasted better and different than at home, spicy sausage, some kind of apple bread, rice and beans, Costa Rican coffee, and lots of other treats-- then we took a morning hike with Carmela, a college student and aspiring naturalist and saw baby herons, flycatchers, toucans, kingfishers, hummingbirds, poison dart frogs, and many other birds and it rained like we were in the rain forest, then we went to the Sarapiqui swimming hole and I swam out into the coursing river while the kids mastered a rather scary impromptu rope swing, then lunch at a local place: rice, beans, chicken, chuleta de tilapia, yucca, a giant chalupa, then we went to a little grocery store for snacks and beer and I had a very awkward conversation in Spanish with the cashier about the whereabouts of an ATM and my fucking kids-- who take Spanish-- were of no use but the ATM turned out to be just outside the door and then we went on an astounding chocolate tour and tasted and saw the entire process, we cracked the fruits, sucked on the sour flesh, ate the bitter center, smelled and ate roasted chocolate, ate pure chocolate mashed into paste, drank pure chocolate and water, and learned to taste the difference between hand made and industrial . . . chocolate will never be the same, and then we saw a sloth in a tree and two great green macaws and now we are headed back to river to swim and I should point out we have no screens on our windows in our incredibly spacious top floor of the rambling eco lodge and while we can hear the howler monkeys and know they are just beyond our porch, we still have not seen one.
At 3 am this morning we took an uber to Newark airport, then a flight to Ft. Lauderdale-- which was delayed-- then we just caught the connector and flew to San Jose, Costa Rica, rented a car, and drove several hours north, through the volcanic mountains and the cloud forest-- we saw a coati-- and, 14 hours later, we finally made it to the rain forest and saw a toucan (but the highlight of the trip was the Claro guy at WalMart, who helped me set up Costa Rican sim cards in our phones for 45 minutes . . . nicest guy I've ever met while traveling).
If you've got a broken toenail that is painful to the touch and needs removing, is it better if you do the clipping yourself or should you let someone else do pare it?
Beth Macy's book Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company That Addicted America puts a human face on addiction, recovery, prescription drug abuse, and the many paths that lead to heroin addiction-- the book pulls no punches and shows that culpability for the epidemic is myriad:
at the root is Purdue and their practices of unnecessarily flooding the market-- especially the rural market-- with millions of pills that put people in the throes of addiction;
our byzantine healthcare system that has no real plan on how to quell the epidemic;
the misguided notion that twelve step and twenty-eight day programs can realistically combat morphine addiction;
the ongoing and senseless debate about Medically Assisted Treatment-- some Puritanical folks don't think you should combat addiction with drugs, even though MAT is the option that works the best;
the places hit the worst are the places that were hit the worst by the crumbling economy, the places with the highest unemployment rates and the most physically demanding jobs;
Trump's public policy hasn't addressed the healthcare side of this issue;
the dopesickness;
etcetera . . .
Macy does not paint a pretty scene out in western Virginia, but her main point is that anyone can become addicted-- it's not the result of some deep-set character flaw that leads the lowest of the low into this life, these aren't the bottom feeders of society that would have succumbed to some other vice . . . opioid addicts can be the most successful, the most charming, the most professional people, but once they go down this road-- which four out of five times starts with prescribed medication-- then it is very difficult to turn back, and it will take all the resources of our families, communities, churches, temples, health care workers, doctors, drug companies, and government to turn the tide of opioid addiction-- the book is a must read, along with Sam Quinones Dreamland . . . while Quinones explains the big picture, the entire macro-system of how pills and heroin are distributed, Macy zooms in and details the individual lives affected by the crisis-- how the parents, families, and community leaders in the hot zone are fighting the drug companies, the healthcare system, and the morphine molecule, fighting on behalf of the addicted and the recovering, but mainly fighting for the overdosed and the dead.
I thought I learned this lesson many years ago, in college, when I ate at the Wendy's Superbar before an intramural football game and put in a very poor performance at cornerback, but when Ian insisted he wanted Chipotle before his soccer game yesterday-- and he said he only wanted a bowl, not a burrito-- I agreed . . . but apparently a bowl full of rice, barbacoa meat, and sour cream does not sit well when you're playing left mid on a wide field.
Last night we tried some new things from Deli Garden: two types of chicken korma-- one was peppery and the other one had some coconut in it . . . a korma is "a mildly spiced Indian curry dish of meat or fish marinated in yogurt or curds," which sounds kind of weird, but it was quite tasty . . . Stacey and Ed made the call, which is why it's nice to order Indian food with lots of people, because then you try new things-- if I googled the definition of korma and saw the word "curds" I definitely wouldn't have put the order in.
My town has banned plastic bags and while this feels like a good thing, there are actually a number of problems with this small step toward sustainability-- when plastic bags are banned, sales of heavy trash bags go up, and producing paper bags and canvas totes may be even worse for the environment than manufacturing those little lightweight plastic bags-- but I will say this about the ban: it's got me thinking and feeling shame . . . yesterday on my way home from acupuncture, I stopped at the grocery store to grab some seltzer (I'm trying to drink less beer and I like my tequila with a splash of lime seltzer) and I forgot to bring one of our reusable reusable canvas tote bags, so I had to ask for a paper bag-- shame!-- and then I took a look at what I was buying and it was flavored bubbly water . . . inside plastic-- shame!-- and just before I stopped at Stop & Shop, I went through the Dunkin' Donuts drive-thru and got an iced coffee-- normally I go inside and refill my reusable cup, but it was raining and I was lazy, so my coffee came in a plastic cup with the Yankees logo on it (Made for Pinstripe Pride) accompanied by a plastic straw -- shame upon shame!-- and while it's going to be tough to change all these little habits, the first step is recognizing them (and realizing that if I were more of a man, I wouldn't need to cut my tequila with flavored bubbly water).
I was very wrong when I thought that Donald Trump-- laughingstock and punchline, bankrupt buffoon-- could never be elected president; I tried to understand, I read this George Saunders piece and lots of other stuff, but now I realize that a lot of this reporting was biased, reported by folks that didn't take Trump seriously; now we know the truth, and though it took xenophobia, Russian meddling, fake news, conspiracy theories, character assassination and some outright racism, Trump figured out how to win . . . and he very well may win again; The Daily covered Trump's Re-election Rally and they didn't cherry-pick the gaffes and bumbling, instead they played masterful clips of Trump playing the crowd, making them feel special, making them feel like Trump is their way inside a corrupt system-- and then they talked to Trump supporters-- and not the insane, angry folk-- they talked to calm, rational people who love his agenda, people who want a wall, people who don't like immigrants, people who don't want gun reform or abortion, people who love the fact that Trump is appointing pro-life and conservative judges, people who don't believe a word of the "liberal fake-news media" . . . people who bought William Barr's pre-spin on the Mueller Report, people who are informed, but informed by totally different sources than I generally peruse (despite the fact that The Week tries to cover the liberal and conservative perspective, they don't go deep and weird enough on the conservative side) and so I feel very indebted to the New York Times for painting a more accurate picture of a Trump rally, he is a force to contend with and his supporters believe in Trump and believe in what he stands for . . . I find this shocking, but if you go 17:45 seconds in, when Trump has the audience cheer for what slogan and theme he should promote in this election, you can see why these people love him, his populism, his eschewing of political correctness, and his ability to say what people want to hear-- whether it's true or not-- so while I'm rooting for intellect over rhetoric, for Elizabeth Warren's thought out plans, her statistics and logic and ideas, I'm probably very stupid for rooting for this, for thinking that brains can defeat Trump's emotional brawn . . . anyway, listen to the podcast and tell me what you think.
If there were some sort of Emmy or Tony for HVAC guys, I would award it to Steve Maruscsak Heating & Cooling-- not only did they come in with the lowest bid (and highly recommended) to install a ductless mini-split, but they also sorted out an insane mess of electrical problems (which caused some electronic problems) and got our AC up and running today; in other good news, our dog was well-behaved around the guys while they finished the install, and our son is feeling better and his bloodwork seems to be okay-- although they are still checking for Lyme's . . . which makes me nervous, because it was Lyme's diseases that canceled this Costa Rica trip last year- our old dog Sirius came down with a bad case, which ruined his kidneys and eventually killed him-- but he had another tick disease on top of that one and Ian's symptoms sound more like a virus or bad growing pains . . . so let me end this rambling nonsense and get back to brushing up on my (nonexistent) Spanish.
A day full of First World Problems: torrential downpours, a sick child, a visit to the doctor, a visit to the blood lab, a broken ductless mini-split, a visit to the orthodontist, baffled HVAC guys, faulty wiring from the last ductless mini-split install, a school cooking project, a broken color printer, a visit to the bicycle repair shop, a canceled orthodontist appointment because of a sick child, worries about a sick child and an imminent soccer tournament and an imminent Costa Rican vacation, blood lab results (negative on most everything bad but still checking for Lyme's and mono) but the hope is that tomorrow will bring some First World Solutions . . . a SIM card to fix the ductless mini-split, and perhaps a flu diagnosis and some drugs to fix the sore child, my wife has a color printer at work, etc.
David Frum's book How We Got Here: The 70's . . . The Decade That Brought You Modern Life-- For Better or Worse takes a "conservative" look at the decade when the radical ideas of the '60s completely permeated American life, but it's an older brand of conservatism, one of "pragmatism, character, reciprocity, stoicism, manliness, hardness, vengeance, strictness, and responsibility"-- not the new corrupt, Machiavellian Trump/McConnell version-- so Frum acknowledges that great progress was made in many areas of human rights and expressiveness, but he also takes a hard look at the costs; Frum begins by running through the crime, the corruption, the many many scandals-- Watergate was the tip if the iceberg-- and the secrets: the Pentagon Papers, the revelations about JFK (wiretapping MLK) and Lyndon Johnson (starting the Vietnam War over the Tonkin incident) and Nixon, of course-- and the many many more from Tuskegee to plots with the Mafia and CIA to overthrow Castro, and J. Edgar Hoover and the CIA working without oversight, the FBI monitoring many many Americans-- often at the president's behest-- scandal upon scandal, crime upon crime-- this is when 60 Minutes was the number one program and for good reason . . . it made me realize that I grew up in the hangover of this tumultuous decade, the Reagan years-- so I missed out on all the fun, the sex and drugs and new age lingo, the superstition and narcissism and disco-- my generation got AIDS and video games and Reaganomics-- but we also got free markets and deregulation (for good and bad) and missed out on crime and terrorism and gas-lines and horrible inflation and general paranoia . . . Frum blames the turmoil of the 1970's, the terrorism, the smashing of values, the conflict of a demilitarized children vs. their militarized parents, on three things-- the Vietnam War, desegregation, and inflation . . . and while he acknowledges that many things in America were worse in the past-- the racism, redlining, the homogeneous society, the lack of economic creativity, the treatment of the environment-- he also takes the pragmatic conservative position that family and employment, and things like loyalty and conformity gave a purpose to many poor and embattled people, and that assimilation instead of fragmentation, while oppressing diversity, does help with order .. . the 70's was when modern America emerged, technological, diverse, environmentally conscious, litigious, regulated, rights-oriented . . . and while the pendulum may have occasionally swung back, the 70's moved the nexus and so "the past never returns, no matter how lovely it was-- but onward, away from the follies and triumphs of the 1970s and toward something new: new vices, new virtues, new sins-- and new progress."
Last presidential election, I was so frightened by a Donald Trump Presidency that I broke from my normal silliness of always voting for the Green Party and endorsed Hillary Clinton-- I listened to a great interview with her on The Weeds and tried my best to contrast her policies with Trump; I wrote all this down and I'm certain my thoughts had absolutely no effect on the election or anyone's voting choice-- if you're reading this, I'm probably preaching to the choir, and the few people I know that did vote for Trump did so because they loathed Hillary Clinton and couldn't separate the person from the policy; now The Weeds has done an in depth interview with Elizabeth Warren and I really like everything she says: she wants to fight corruption and lobbying; she wants to tax the biggest fortunes in the country and use the money for childcare and college debt and early childhood education and the opioid crisis; she truly believes that there is an enormous wealth gap and that a thinner and thinner slice of the population is being represented by political power; she is critical of Wall Street speculation; she promises to stop mining and frakking on federal lands and believes that climate change is something needs to be addressed; she believes in the power of government agencies-- the agencies that Trump has crippled and gutted-- such as the EPA and the Consumer Financial Protection Agency she is interested in Medicare for all; she does not lean Democratic Socialist, in fact she identifies herself as a Democratic Capitalist-- which makes me happy-- Warren believes in the power of markets as long as there are clear rules and arbiters; but Warren does not believe markets belong in public education and healthcare; she has ideas about zoning and redlining and housing; she's a nerd (her book recommendation is Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty . . . which I enjoyed but never finished, it's voluminous) and basically I thought she was super-smart, well-spoken, has a real purpose and plan, and reflects the ideas and values that I respect and that should work for the vast majority of Americans . . . of course, I thought the same thing about Hillary Clinton's policies, so take this with a grain of salt, but I'm giving her my full endorsement and not going to bother learning about any of the other twenty-three Democratic candidates (and I suggest you do the same . . . and I wish I could just blithely vote for the Green Party, but that ship has sailed).
Yesterday was the end of the year picnic (my partner and I performed well in the annual corn-hole tourney-- we double lost in the finals because it was double elimination and we hadn't lost all afternoon . . . we had previously beaten this team 21-0 but we choked with it all on the line . . . perhaps it was all the donated Victory beer or maybe it was divine retribution for dropping my partner from last year-- Chantal-- and picking up Kristyn-- a sporty softball coach from another department, causing everyone in my department to root against me) and now we're off to my cousin's ordination . . . so perhaps next year, if we make to the finals again, I can pray and the Big Man will give some extra consideration.
My younger son turned fourteen today and his birthday also commemorates the approximate purchase of our current home-- and what a fourteenth year of home ownership it's been; this year we had to replace our washer/dryer, our dishwasher, our ductless mini-split air-conditioner, the ceiling tiles in the basement, and our dog . . . and speaking of dogs, I had a miraculous revelation on the way back from Ian's birthday dinner at Shanghai Dumpling (which was a miracle in itself: no wait!) and this revelation occurred while we were discussing our eventual return from our trip to Costa Rica and just how insanely happy our dog will be upon this return-- if and when we do actually return-- and so I told Ian about my favorite moment in the Odyssey, when Odysseus returns home in disguise after being gone for twenty-years of epic adventures and he runs into his dog Argos, who was obviously a pup when he left Ithaca, and-- despite the disguise-- Argos recognizes his master and dies of happiness . . . and it always struck me as odd that a dog would live for 20+ years, as that's highly unlikely, but I just recognized that this is an ancient Greek dog, and so it was probably not bred very much, unlike our genetically stunted purebreds of present times, so it was closer to a wolf than a dog and had a much longer lifespan.
My rule-of-thumb for jazz is this: if there are lyrics, it probably sucks . . . and this holds true for a song I heard on WBGO this afternoon, Rosemary Clooney singing "If Swing Goes, I Go Too" . . . on top of the lousy lyrics, this song has the added irony of negating itself, the song actually wills itself out of existence-- making it all the more odd that WBGO continues to play it-- because Clooney claims that she can live without breakfast and polkas and soap operas, but if swing music falls out of favor, then she'll just up and die, which she did-- swing music faded (aside from a brief revival spearheaded by the Squirrel Nut Zippers) and Clooney lived up to her promise and kicked the bucket in time with her favorite music, she lived from 1928 until 2002-- and this is a grim reminder of just how ephemeral pop music is, the sounds you just can't imagine living without-- whether it's The Cure or Black Flag or The Beach Boys or Hector Berlioz-- they will soon pass from favor, then be regarded as antiquated, and finally disappear from the public consciousness entirely.
Everyone in my office is talking about the HBO show Chernobyl, and while I tried to avoid it-- I watched a few minutes of the first episode and found it unbearably grim-- the tidal wave of acclaim and the fact that my kids were interested in a historical docudrama swayed me; I ended it up loving it, of course-- especially the scene where the filthy miners all touch the clean and dapper Ministry of Coal, and my kids love the show as well, or I should say that they love to yell at the show-- which is understandable, as folks informed and uninformed alike are behaving so cavalierly around enormous amounts of radiation and, equally frustrating, the Russian government is more concerned with information control, propaganda, and secrecy than the welfare of it's own people (the Russians are not particularly happy with this portrayal) and while I generally can't stomach watching medical disasters, this show is so good that I've gotten inured to all the melting skin-- it's a little like The Walking Dead in that regard-- and my family even survived (and partly enjoyed) the episode that mainly concerned itself with animal control, i.e. the packs of radioactive dogs that needed to be shot and disposed of (during that section, instead of yelling at the screen, my kids yelled at our dog, commanding her not to watch, lest she be traumatized).
Lola sprained her wrist chasing squirrels this morning-- or that's what I arrived at after a thorough inspection of her front leg and paw . . . at least I think it's her wrist . . . it's on her front left leg, so it's probably her wrist, not her ankle-- it bends like a wrist-- and it would make sense that dogs have two wrists and two ankles, that's the way it looks . . . but some quadrupeds have four wrists-- monkeys?-- and some have four ankles: rhinos?
While I'm generally loath to admit our Colander-in-chief has any sort of strategic vision for our country, I think he might be ahead of the curve on Weaponized Interdependence; this is the down-side to globalization and both economists and politicians -- especially Trump-- are starting to explore the ramifications and tactics of an interdependent world, a world where countries were pushed by globally competitive free-markets and institutions like the IMF and the World Bank to specialize in what they could produce as efficiently and cheaply as possible and sell it on the world market-- this was supposed to limit warfare-- countries that trade together don't want to blow each other up-- but now countries are recognizing that belligerence can be enacted by disrupting supply chains, enacting tariffs, and banning certain technologies . . . a nice example of this is the battle between the U.S. and China over Huawei cell phone chipsets . . . I don't fully understand this battle, all I know is it sounds petty, detrimental to consumers and workers, and a black mark on diplomacy . . . but Trump seems to have a real handle on this tactic, so kudos to him.
Each and every school day, my wife makes lunch for the boys and me: these lunches are generally healthy, delicious, and various, and I am the envy of all my colleagues; this is no easy task, and while she is counting down the days to summer-- when she finally gets a break from the early morning prep routine-- she is finishing the year strong; yesterday she prepared an especially elaborate cooler of food for me to consumer over the course of the day . . . there was hummus and snap peas (fresh from her garden) for snack, along with a container of cherries, and then for the main dish, a taco salad with fresh beets and greens-- along with all the accoutrements . . . grated cheese and salsa and taco meat, all in their own separate containers; in fact, there were so many different plastic containers that once I finished my meal, I couldn't figure out how to get them back inside my compartmentalized lunch cooler-- there was absolutely no way to fit them all, it was like a clown car . . . seven containers and two ice packs popped out but there was no way they were all getting back inside; I called my boss from her office and told her I would be unable to teach for the rest of the day, as the problem looked insoluble, but she wasn't particularly moved by my dilemma-- she told me to go find a math teacher to help me-- but after much persistent wedging and shoving, I finally got them all back inside and transported them back home so my wife could do it all over again . . . and I'd like to dedicate this sentence to my wife and her lunches (we just had our 19 year anniversary, so she's been doing this for a LONG time).
Yesterday, with the help of my older son, I replaced the hydraulic hatch supports on my Toyota van-- there was only one moment of panic, when Alex did something weird to the ball joint-socket . . . but he was able to hold up the tailgate-- which is quite heavy-- and I was able to pry the hinges loose with a flat-head screwdriver and slip the balls in the sockets and now the back hatch of my van is no longer a death-trap dull guillotine.
We were in Act IV of Hamlet today, right after Hamlet blindly slaughters Polonius, chops up his body, and scatters the pieces in the castle-- Hamlet is then confronted about this grisly situation, and he glibly explains to King Claudius that "Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots," and so I played the bit of The Lion King when Mufasa explains to Simba about the whole "Circle of Life" and asked what Mufasa skips-- it's all the decay and decomposition-- and we got to talking about maggots for a moment and I told them a college tale about when my buddy Rob put a half-eaten roast beef sandwich on a filthy table, threw a newspaper over it, and there it remained . . . and two weeks later, when I picked up the newspaper-- looking for the crossword puzzle-- instead of a roll full of roast beef, there was now a roll full of writhing maggots; one of the students said, "They grew there because of the meat, right?" and a few other students seemed to agree with this hypothesis, so I had to stop the presses, press pause on the teaching of literature, and start teaching science-- luckily, another student had paid attention in Bio class and explained to the class that the Theory of Spontaneous Generation had been refuted in the 19th century and that we now know that mice don't magically spring from bales of hay and maggots are the larval form of flies.
We were in Act IV of Hamlet today, right after Hamlet blindly slaughters Polonius, chops up his body, and scatters the pieces in the castle-- Hamlet is then confronted about this grisly situation, and he glibly explains to King Claudius that "Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots," and so I played the bit of The Lion King when Mufasa explains to Simba about the whole "Circle of Life" and asked what Mufasa skips-- it's all the decay and decomposition-- and we got to talking about maggots for a moment and I told them a college tale about when my buddy Rob put a half-eaten roast beef sandwich on a filthy table, threw a newspaper over it, and there it remained . . . and two weeks later, when I picked up the newspaper-- looking for the crossword puzzle-- instead of a roll full of roast beef, there was now a roll full of writhing maggots; one of the students said, "They grew there because of the meat, right?" and a few other students seemed to agree with this hypothesis, so I had to stop the presses, press pause on the teaching of literature, and start teaching science-- luckily, another student had paid attention in Bio class and explained to the class that the Theory of Spontaneous Generation had been refuted in the 19th century and that we now know that mice don't magically spring from bales of hay and maggots are the larval form of flies.
It only took me two days to read James Clear's book Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones . . . oddly, while I was reading the book, I kept feeling that I should get up off the couch and start implementing his methods to improve my life . . . I will do a longer post on his philosophy and methodology and how I immediately started utilizing his ideas, but I'm too tired to do so right now because we had a lovely but exhausting "non-instructional" day at my high school to celebrate the Relay for Life cancer walk-- there was volleyball and frisbee and corn-hole and football and spike-ball and kickball and plenty of walking around the track in the sun, but before the outdoor events began we had to do some goofy icebreaker activities in our morning classes: a rock paper scissors tournament (I lost) and a discussion exercise in which you had to write an open-ended question on a notecard and swap with people; the James Clear book was on my mind and I was feeling particularly annoying and didactic, so my question was: If you did not spend all your free-time on your cell-phone, what amazing abilities would you possess?
Our ductless mini-split died the other day, but I'm considering lack of AC on our ground floor "practice" for our forthcoming trip to Costa Rica-- I've probably got such a good mindset because:
#1) we're lucky enough to be going on a trip to Costa Rica;
#2) our ductless mini-split is 21 years old;
#3) the weather has been unusually decent;
#4) I'm also enjoying the lack of AC in my classroom at school . . . I thought it would be the opposite, because all my colleagues in the English Department teach on the second floor and they finally received AC window units this year, so I thought I would be insanely jealous and angry, but their air-conditioners aren't working all that well: they are loud and the filters are already filthy and my buddy Kevin is claiming he got sick from yelling over top of his and breathing in the dirt-ridden air . . . so I'm happy -- for the time being-- opening the windows and adjusting to the warm weather (which isn't particularly warm yet).
I'm hoping to write a longer review of this literary adventure over at Park the Bus, but I'd still like to formally announce that I have finished reading Death's End, the mega-epic conclusion of Cixin Liu's sci-fi trilogy that began with The Three Body Problem . . . this was some challenging reading for me-- while I love reading about science, I'm certainly not science-minded . . . I got straight D's in chemistry-- the series actually begins historically, with the news of an impending alien invasion, told from a Chinese point of view during the Cultural Revolution but by the end of book Liu is delving deep into quantum physics; in book two-- The Dark Forest-- the narrative forays into the game theory of diplomatic tactics in the wider universe (which is not pretty) and book three-- Death's End-- is a tour-de-force of both style and imagination (there are a sequence of lush and symbolic fairy tales nested in the middle of the novel, plenty of hard sci-fi, memorable characters and conflict, and-- finally-- a wild and surreal meta-physical journey to the end of time and space) and while this is aspirational reading and it took me a long time to finish, I still recommend the series (but sadly, confetti did NOT shoot out of the book when I completed the final page).
Our dog Lola might have some Rhodesian Ridgeback in her (or she might not) but the way she squares off against this Eastern Box Turtle is certainly indicative of her lion hunting heritage.
H.L. Mencken is the genius who actually discovered the Theory of Relativity, when he famously remarked that “A man's satisfaction with his salary depends on whether he makes more than his wife's sister's husband," and while I wish I could be more abstract and metaphysical-- like Einstein-- Mencken's characterization is far more accurate; so I was incredibly pleased to find out that on the list of the 50 New Jersey schools with the best SAT scores, my town (Highland Park) came in at number 14, which is incredible and kind of strange because we're a very diverse town with a wide variety of economic situations and we don't offer all that much in the way of AP classes at our high school (because we're small) and what was especially pleasing-- as Mencken predicted-- is the fact that we came in ahead of the school that I teach at (East Brunswick, 24 on the list) and East Brunswick is an academic powerhouse that offers a plethora of AP classes (some kids take five of them in one year!) and we also came in just ahead of Chatham, which is a relatively homogenous and quite wealthy town that is the home of several of my friends (and one particular star commenter) and while I'm not sure why this is so and it doesn't make any sense, it still makes me feel good (in a relative way, of course).
While I'm really proud of my son Alex-- he's in 9th grade and he's not so big (I think he's just starting to hit puberty) and he really scrapped his way up the tennis ladder this season (despite chipping his thumb playing goalie for his travel team) and-- because of injuries and school trips-- he got to play in a number of varsity matches; Highland Park is a tiny school but we have an exceptional tennis squad, so in the county we play in the highest division (Red) against the biggest and best schools and this prepared us for the state tournament, where we play schools our size-- and for the first time in eight years they won the entire state in their group (Group 1) and while Alex traveled to those matches, he didn't play-- but this enabled the team to play in the Tournament of Champions against the winners of all the groups and because of an injury, Alex got to play second doubles-- and while the entire team got beaten soundly, they played well and Alex learned a great deal-- but I'm most proud of myself, because I trained both my kids-- despite the fact that I'm not a tennis instructor and I didn't even play high school tennis (although my brother played in college, which has helped) and over the weekend, I analyzed Alex's serve and fixed it, and he said he served really well today and the only time they won was when he was serving . . . so while I can't figure out if I'm more proud of Alex for his skill and tenacity or myself for my patience, accurate practice hitting, and ability to glean tennis information from YouTube, this is a good problem to have (I just wish I could give myself a lesson and smooth out my own two-handed backhand).
When we went to the shelter to adopt our dog Lola, the caretaker claimed she was a Rhodesian Ridgeback mix . . . and this sounded awesome to me, as they are athletic dogs that were used to track lions-- but now that I've seen a few real Rhodesian Ridgebacks (and had a Ridgeback owner tell me that Lola is "zero percent" Rhodesian) and studied photos of other dogs, I'm fairly certainly that she's a Pit Bull Lab mix-- which is a good thing to be-- and she might even have a bit of Mexican Street Dog in her (a very very coveted and prestigious breed of dog).
On Saturday morning, my son and I carried our 56 inch Samsung DLP big screen TV out of the basement and put it to the curb -- the TV still works, but there's a number of white dots propagating across the screen and to fix this you have to replace the chipset, which is expensive-- and the big Samsung TV sat at the curb all day Saturday and Sunday-- no one grabbed it-- and then Sunday afternoon we went to my parents for dinner and when we returned, the big TV was gone . . . but there was a little TV left in it's place! . . . so either someone picked up the little TV off of a curb and then saw our TV and was like: that TV is bigger! and so they switched TVs or perhaps they took our big TV and brought it home and then realized they had no place to put their little TV and so they drove back and put it on our lawn . . . it's a real mystery and one that will probably never be solved, but whatever the reason, it made the whole family laugh really hard.
On Saturday morning, my son and I carried our 56 inch Samsung DLP big screen TV out of the basement and put it to the curb -- the TV still works, but there's a number of white dots propagating across the screen and to fix this you have to replace the chipset, which is expensive-- and the big Samsung TV sat at the curb all day Saturday and Sunday-- no one grabbed it-- and then Sunday afternoon we went to my parents for dinner and when we returned, the big TV was gone . . . but there was a little TV left in it's place! . . . so either someone picked up the little TV off of a curb and then saw our TV and was like: that TV is bigger! and so they switched TVs or perhaps they took our big TV and brought it home and then realized they had no place to put their little TV and so they drove back and put it on our lawn . . . it's a real mystery and one that will probably never be solved, but whatever the reason, it made the whole family laugh really hard.
When you're feeling down and out, it's important to compare your situation to someone from a different time period; for example, if I lived during the Middle Ages, I probably would have spent the vast majority of my life with dysentery, diarrhea and scurvy; slept in a room along with fleas, rats and livestock; never taken a hot shower or put on clean clothes fresh out of the dryer; and considered myself lucky if I avoided leprosy or the plague . . . now aren't you feeling good about yourself?
When you're feeling down and out, it's important to compare your situation to someone from a different time period; for example, if I lived during the Middle Ages, I probably would have spent the vast majority of my life with dysentery, diarrhea and scurvy; slept in a room along with fleas, rats and livestock; never taken a hot shower or put on clean clothes fresh out of the dryer; and considered myself lucky if I avoided leprosy or the plague . . . now aren't you feeling good about yourself?
The boys and I made a side-by-side photo-reproduction for Catherine for Mother's Day, and while she appreciated it immensely (especially the Photoshop work my son Alex did to make the scale parallel) there are a few noticeable differences-- if you've played PhotoHunt, then I'm sure you can spot them (but I'll put the answers in the comments).
The boys and I made a side-by-side photo-reproduction for Catherine for Mother's Day, and while she appreciated it immensely (especially the Photoshop work my son Alex did to make the scale parallel) there are a few noticeable differences-- if you've played PhotoHunt, then I'm sure you can spot them (but I'll put the answers in the comments).
These days, whenever I read a book, I end up taking a nap (and if I read a book at the end of the day, I take a really long nap and my alarm wakes me up for work).
These days, whenever I read a book, I end up taking a nap (and if I read a book at the end of the day, I take a really long nap and my alarm wakes me up for work).
I finally watched Zombieland last week-- I had been meaning to watch it for years, mainly because it stars East Brunswick alumnus Jesse Eisenberg, who I generally consider to be the poor man's Michael Cera but he's great in this movie, as are Woody Harrelson and Bill Murray; the movie is what happens if The Walking Dead had a baby with Fight Club and then those two movies get divorced and then The Walking Dead gets remarried to Sideways and those two raise the child . . . or something like that, I'll ask my friend Stacey to figure it out (movies having babies is her purview) but anyway, it's funny and entertaining and the whole family loved it: 8 double-taps out of 10 (and apparently there's a sequel on the way).
I finally watched Zombieland last week-- I had been meaning to watch it for years, mainly because it stars East Brunswick alumnus Jesse Eisenberg, who I generally consider to be the poor man's Michael Cera but he's great in this movie, as are Woody Harrelson and Bill Murray; the movie is what happens if The Walking Dead had a baby with Fight Club and then those two movies get divorced and then The Walking Dead gets remarried to Sideways and those two raise the child . . . or something like that, I'll ask my friend Stacey to figure it out (movies having babies is her purview) but anyway, it's funny and entertaining and the whole family loved it: 8 double-taps out of 10 (and apparently there's a sequel on the way).
Yesterday afternoon, I took the dog for a spin around the park adjacent to my house on my new rollerblades and I'm pleased to report that she was very well-behaved-- to celebrate, I stopped back at the dog park for Dog Park Happy Hour . . . while I cannot reveal the name of the park that hosts this Dog Park Happy Hour, for fear that the park rangers might descend upon it, apparently every Friday afternoon (once it gets warm) the dog park crew brings coolers of beer and wine so that they can imbibe while the canines frolic; a retired teacher from Staten Island offered me a Long Trail IPA-- my favorite!-- so I couldn't refuse . . . a few moments later my son Alex called me, asking for a ride home from tennis practice and I told him I couldn't get him for a while, and so he should either start walking or call his mother because someone had given me a beer at the dog park and I hadn't finished it yet; he said: "Dad, they told us in Health Class that you should never accept alcohol from strangers" and I told him that was very good advice (with the exception of Dog Park Happy Hour).
Yesterday afternoon, I took the dog for a spin around the park adjacent to my house on my new rollerblades and I'm pleased to report that she was very well-behaved-- to celebrate, I stopped back at the dog park for Dog Park Happy Hour . . . while I cannot reveal the name of the park that hosts this Dog Park Happy Hour, for fear that the park rangers might descend upon it, apparently every Friday afternoon (once it gets warm) the dog park crew brings coolers of beer and wine so that they can imbibe while the canines frolic; a retired teacher from Staten Island offered me a Long Trail IPA-- my favorite!-- so I couldn't refuse . . . a few moments later my son Alex called me, asking for a ride home from tennis practice and I told him I couldn't get him for a while, and so he should either start walking or call his mother because someone had given me a beer at the dog park and I hadn't finished it yet; he said: "Dad, they told us in Health Class that you should never accept alcohol from strangers" and I told him that was very good advice (with the exception of Dog Park Happy Hour).
While I'll still be writing all my long-form stuff at my new blog, Park the Bus, I think I'm going to resurrect Sentence of Dave for my more mundane (yet still incredibly brilliant) thoughts . . . I figure I owe it to humanity to write down as much stuff as possible before I shuffle off this mortal coil-- so that future generations can use my words live morally, happily, and wisely (especially all my knowledge of Food Safety).
While I'll still be writing all my long-form stuff at my new blog, Park the Bus, I think I'm going to resurrect Sentence of Dave for my more mundane (yet still incredibly brilliant) thoughts . . . I figure I owe it to humanity to write down as much stuff as possible before I shuffle off this mortal coil-- so that future generations can use my words live morally, happily, and wisely (especially all my knowledge of Food Safety).
After I go to the pub on Thursdays and drink beer and laugh with my friends, my habit is to come home, make a snack, and watch Cheers . . . a show where actors pretend to drink beer and laugh with their friends in a pub (and Cheers used to air on Thursday night . . . weird, right?)
After I go to the pub on Thursdays and drink beer and laugh with my friends, my habit is to come home, make a snack, and watch Cheers . . . a show where actors pretend to drink beer and laugh with their friends in a pub (and Cheers used to air on Thursday night . . . weird, right?)
I've been recently appointed the King of Food Safety in my household. This is because I am the only person in the house that knows The Golden Rule of Food Perishability. I have it memorized.
Last Monday we decided to have tacos. But Monday is a very busy night for us. Soccer, tennis, zumba, etc. So two of us had to eat at 5:30 PM and two of us had to eat at 8 PM. This was a food safety dilemma fit for King Solomon. I had to figure out what to do with the meat between the split feedings. Someone not versed in the Golden Rule of Food Safety would have left that stuff out, allowing it to become a Petri dish of multiplying bacteria. But I know better. And I was in charge. I refrigerated the meat and then reheated it for the second mealtime.
Safety first.
I have also been designated as The Biggest Hypocrite in our house, and I have something to report an that front as well. Even though I am the King of Food Safety, I do not subscribe to Divine Hygiene. I recognize that I can make mistakes (and I reflect upon them).
Today, when I got home from school, I conducted a thorough investigation of our dog's "hot spot." Do not be confused. She is not a sexy dog. This is canine terminology for a raw sore that won't heal because of incessant licking. She has one of these "hot spots" on her groin, she licked it raw during the doldrums of the recent rainy days.
Here it is:
Lola's festering sore
My investigation was both visual and tactile, and I am pleased to report that the spot is no longer oozing pus-- or maybe just a slight bit of pus, but it's certainly not festering-- and the sore mainly felt dry to the touch. So it's healing.
I was so pleased with her progress, that I grabbed a celebratory bag of potato chips, sat down in the good chair, put on a podcast, and started chomping away. After I few minutes, I realized I hadn't washed my hands after sticking my fingers in her raw sore. So I got up and washed my hands (though I realized it was too late, far too late).
I do this belated post haste handwashing all the time (and I'm sure my readers do it as well). I replace the ballcock assembly in the toilet, go downstairs, toss the old ballcock in the garbage, see a cookie on the counter, eat the cookie, and then realize I haven't washed my hands. Then I rush to the sink and wash my hands, like the washing can retroactively remove the bacteria from the food, though I've already swallowed it.
This is medieval logic, similar to the belief that if you rub a special ointment on a dagger that has caused a wound, you will heal the wound. I will keep you posted on the consistency of my diarrhea.
The English teachers in my department have been arguing about Game of Thrones minutia all week-- some people aren't happy that Daenerys finally exercises the nuclear option with such cavalier disregard for civilians-- but I think she's just making the best of things. She realizes she has no allies, and decides that inspiring fear is her best course of action. It's the utilitarian ethics of Hiroshima, and while it's horrific (and depicted as so) she does it so that there will be mercy “toward future generations who will never again be held hostage by a tyrant.”
Perhaps Winterfell will be Nagasaki?
And if you don't want to think Realpolitik, then there's also the fact that John Snow wouldn't kiss her . . . hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
All this conspiracy and betrayal and loss has is enough to flip the coin of her madness switch. There's enough of an objective correlative for her to behave the way she does. She is down to her last dragon.
So let's stop arguing about a fantasy saga, and open our eyes to reality. Winter is NOT coming. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is making the best of it.
Like Daenerys, he's exercising some rather sketchy utilitarian ethics, but no one in my department is losing their shit over what he said: "“Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade . . . this could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days.”
Summer is coming.
And Pompeo is loving it. He made these remarks at a summit of the Arctic Council, which is comprised of eight representative countries bordering this region and several indigenous groups that live there. He was NOT preaching to the choir. There was no alliance. For the first time ever at the Arctic Council, there was no joint declaration. These countries and peoples aren't really interested in the upside of global warming. They're too close to the hot zone.
Pompeo wouldn't mention climate change by name, of course, but his point was: if the climate is changing, then let's make the best of it. Some future generations will live in devastation and epic floods, but others will enjoy economic prosperity. Smooth sailing through ice-free polar seas. It may take something apocalyptic to achieve this, but future generations will get their plastic goods from China even faster.
Daenerys has a better build for the hot weather than Pompeo, but you have to admire the both of them: optimistic and inspired, even in the face existential defeat.
I am certainly a hypocrite. There's no question about that. But I'm still entitled to my thoughts and opinions, even if they contradict my actions. Sometimes a compelling idea outstrips the operating system of the brain that tries to install it. So you get some cognitive dissonance, some contradictory behavior. And it's not unbecoming. It's not annoying. It's inspirational.
I occasionally eat pizza that's been left on the counter overnight. Despite this, I still believe I am an inspirational figure. A figure who has done some reading, checked his sources, and just wants to pass on that information. But it's information no one (especially my wife) wants to hear. She may be able to shut me up on this topic in the house, but she can't stop me from blogging about it.
I can find nothing to contradict this Golden Rule of food safety. Despite this, I am BANNED from discussing this topic in my house. Censored! The Danger Zone!
For the record: it's not a sin, it's not a waste, it's not a criminal offense. If food has been in "the danger zone" for more than two hours-- and the "danger zone" is defined as 40 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit-- then you should toss it. Your food has become a Petri dish of exponential orgiastic bacterial procreation. The bacteria population on this food is doubling every twenty minutes.
No one wants to hear this. Including my wife. Everyone wants to "pack up the sandwiches" that have been sitting out for five hours (slathered in mayonnaise) because it would be "a waste" to throw them away. And no one wants to read (or hear) about exponential bacteria growth. And you can't smell bacteria, even when they're hastily copulating.
Bacteria going at it . . .
Though I know this rule, I admit I'm a bundle of contradictions. I eat food off the floor; I double dip chips; and when I'm at a barbecue, I certainly eat food that's been sitting out too long. But when I do this stuff, I do it with the knowledge that I'm rolling the dice. And I know what the result might be. My wife should know as well. We lived in Syria for three years, where food safety is not a priority, refrigeration is poor, human excrement is used as fertilizer, the water is not particularly potable, and fly-covered meat is often displayed hanging in the window of the store.
Some Syrian meat just hanging out . . .
We suffered every kind of intestinal distress in the book. I got giant intestinal roundworms. We had frequent bouts of diarrhea. But those memories have faded from my wife's mind. I have included some bonus photos of Syrian butchery and meat at the end of this post (they are not for those with a weak stomach) to show you how lucky we are to have such hygienic food in America. I doubt my wife will look at them or take them to heart.
My wife thinks it's strange that I'll scoop out some yogurt into a bowl and then realize I have to feed the dog, so I'll put the yogurt into the fridge for the few minutes that it takes to feed the dog. I don't want the yogurt to to get warm while I'm doing the chore. She thinks I'm insane. I think I just truly appreciate the miracle of refrigeration. In the good old days, people used to die from drinking milk.
The people in the English department are split on this. Some people are grossed out by food that has been left out. Stacey just doesn't care. She'll eat fried chicken that's been sitting on an end table all night (being licked by her dog). Her opinion: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I get it, but I need to do more research on public opinion. I need talk to some of the science and health biology teachers and see what they think.
But like I said, I'm a hypocrite. I'm not afraid of being critical of other people who I think are behaving too obsessively about food safety.
The Illustrative Anecdote
Thursday night, a bunch of us were sitting outside at Pino's, quaffing beer and bourbon, eating gourmet chips ( provided by the Deatz . . . thanks Deatz!) when a woman walked up to the table and offered us fresh baked cookies. They were leftovers from a political function happening inside. You shouldn't take candy from a stranger, but this woman seemed trustworthy.
Everyone grabbed a cookie. And then things got embarrassing. My friends were just bonkers for these cookies. Grown-assed men, giggling over treats. It was weird and sad and silly. Pathetic, really. Especially because when I bit into my cookie, I realized those dark blobs weren't chocolate chips, they were raisins. It was the most deceptive (and disgusting) of cookies: oatmeal raisin. Yuck.
But everyone loved them. I couldn't harsh the buzz. I couldn't criticize the cookies. The guys were writhing in ecstasy while stuffing chunks of raisin-laden oatmeal into their pie-holes.
So I palmed my half-eaten cookie, reached into the gourmet chip bag for a chip, and left it behind. Voila! Now I didn't have to explain why I didn't finish my cookie. It was hidden in the chip bag. The chips were pretty much finished. Everyone's hunger was sated. No one would ever find me out. I didn't have to go on some weird rant about expectations and raisins. I could let the party continue, unimpeded by my grouchiness. Like a child slipping vegetables into his napkin and then surreptitiously tossing the napkin into the garbage, I had-- rather immaturely-- disposed of something I found unappetizing, without causing a scene.
The guys went inside to hear the band, leaving Paul and me at the table. We chatted for a bit, and then Paul reached into the gourmet chip bag for a chip and he pulled out my half-eaten cookie. He was disgusted. Appalled. I had contaminated the entire bag of chips! It was like I put my whole mouth in the bowl!
I mocked him for his squeamishness. We were at the pub! It was men's night! We were drinking and eating! It was my half-eaten cookie, not some random, unknown entity. Me! My mouth germs were fine!
Paul wasn't having it. And while I continued to berate him, I understood his position. Because I am a hypocrite.
Bonus Photos
Proceed at your own risk . . .
Eid al-Adha in Damascus
The next day, the flies came in droves . .
It's hard to find fresh camel head in Jersey
How long can you leave a cooked head at room temperature?
The long and short of this post is that I recorded a new song. Here it is:
And here is the story behind the music . . .
A few weeks ago, I was strumming Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again" on my back porch, as is my right as an American citizen. I got to this portion:
Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway;
we're the best of friends,
insisting that the world keep turning our way . . .
and our way, is on the road again
Willie Nelson
These lyrics struck me as an incredibly upbeat, romanticized, and optimistic description of the road. What could be more fun than going on tour with Willie Nelson? You'd hang out with his band of gypsies, getting drunk and stoned. You might invent the Willie Nelson joke. Perhaps you'd even get so fucked up that you'd miss a show. No worries. Just be cool to the fans. Normally the road can be a tough place for a touring musician. Rock and pop stars really do die younger than other folks. Willie Nelson (85 years young) is a pickled anomaly.
And so as I was sitting on my back porch, singing about Willie Nelson's yellow-bricked road to good times, I remembered Cormac McCarthy's take on this. His brutal father/son novel The Road. And I wondered if I could combine the two. If I could write a moderately upbeat song about a dystopian journey on a road both real and allegorical, a road symbolic of the difficulty of escape in our technological surveillance society, but with the possibility of outlaw friendship and salvation.
No zany band of gypsies on this road . . .
I knew I wasn't breaking new ground. The road is one of the most common metaphors for life's journey. It's been used variously: Frost's two roads that diverge in a yellow wood. Tom Cochrane's hackneyed "Life is a Highway." Jack Kerouac's rambling adventures of infinite possibility. Steinbeck's more mundane Travels with Charley. And Ray Midge's absurd and existential road trip in The Dog of the South.
I hope my Willie Nelson/Cormac McCarthy-inspired-mash-up twists and turns differently than those roads that have come before, but in the end it doesn't matter. I enjoyed the journey of recording the song (despite the fact my studio is a bit of a mess right now . . . we're preparing for a massive garage sale, but after we clean things out I'm really going to get organized down there).
This is where the magic happens:
Abbey Road it's not . . .
I was also inspired by my buddy John, who just finished recording an entire album. If he could record all that, I figured I could get one song done, despite the mess. Here's one of his Aloha Salvation tunes. His music is in stark contrast to mine (and not just because it's good).
The Road, Again . . . Lyrics
When you run don’t look behind you, We will be hot on your trail.
You can hide but the flies will find you. We have spies in the atmosphere.
And you can cut the ties that bind you, But you can never prepare for the road . . . On the road, you will grow lonely and old.
On the road again, on the road . . . No band of gypsies to help shoulder the load, On the road.
Go rogue, but let me remind you: Our eyes are everywhere.
Parallel the life you once knew Cultivate a dead eyed stare
And you can break the chains that confine you, Annihilate the traits that define you, Eliminate the things that remind you, But you better prepare for the road
On the road, you will abandon your code On the road again, on the road . . . Some kindly soul could take you into the fold on the road.
My family recently watched two coming-of age movies: Jonah Hill's Mid90s and Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade. They both capture the lonely awkwardness of middle school (the former from a female perspective and the latter from a male perspective).
These are tough movies to watch, especially if you've got a genuine awkward middle schooler living in your house, enduring these very particular struggles (and we do). Middle school was a long time ago for me, but these films (and my son) remind me that it's a tough age, odd and half-baked. There's this inchoate desire to want to be something and want to belong to something, before you've become anything. Before you know what that something is.
Eighth Grade begins with a video: Kayla's advice vlog. But it's really self-help. No one is watching. Kayla mainly lives inside her phone. Her forays into the outside world are awkward and ugly. She encounters traditional mean girls, who are more adept at living in the real world-- mainly because they are better looking-- but even the mean girls still shield themselves from the ugly reality of middle school with technology.
Kayla has several unpleasant confrontations with people in meat space: a middle school crush who turns out to be a pervert, a creepy senior boy, and a couple of bitchy girls. She handles all of the situations with as much grace as she can muster, and learns that there's a bigger (and possibly better) world just ahead, in high school (that will have it's own perils and pitfalls, digital and analog).
Ostensibly, Mid90s is the more hardcore movie of the two. It certainly hearkens back to the gritty documentary feel of Larry Clark's Kids.
Eighth Grade begins with Kayla's amateur video . . . because with the advent of the cell phone, amateur video is ubiquitous. Mid90s ends with a video, and it took some time and work to make. This symbolizes the difference between the two worlds.
Fourth Grade-- who aspires to be either a film director or work at the DMV like his dad-- diligently compiles footage for the length of the film. The video takes hard work and complete dedication. Fourth Grade is the only one filming. The rest of the gang lives out their life on the streets, and they live large. There are no cell phones to disappear inside, to buffer reality. They do it all in public: skate, trespass, drink, do drugs, party, evade the police, fight, and bond.
Stevie, the twelve year old at the center of this story, frequently gets beaten up by domineering older brother. Stevie takes some hard hard falls. He gets hurt, he recovers. He gets hurt for real.
Both films are about that protean time when you might be anything, anyone. And which is the better place to experiment and explore (and possibly get hurt). Reality or social media?
Which is worse? Which is better?
Should youngsters develop their identities in digital space, like Kayla does? There are so many scenes in Eighth Grade where she's so terribly alone. Her dad tries to help and understand, but it's like he's talking from another planet. Her emotions are real, but she's in no actual danger. We know she's going to pull through and flourish in high school (but that's not the case for everyone . . . social media has been linked with depression).
Mid90s abounds with real danger. Some of these kids are not going to make it. But they're having a helluva time skating and partying. And some of them are learning lessons. Ray goes straight-edge and decides he is going to make it out. He's got aspirations and has given up on the drinking and slacker nihilism. Fuckshit, not so much. And Stevie is a coin toss. But they're all going to have amazing memories of a wild time when they skated, hung out, partied, and seized life by the balls. And no one remembers anything from the internet.
Maybe I'm making too much of this. Maybe social media is just another teen fad, like skateboarding. The rest of us old people, searching for eternal youth, have appropriated it. Maybe we'll all wake up in a few years from this fever dream of posting and liking and trying to go viral, and think: what the hell was that? And the kids will lead the way out. They'll start doing something else. VR sports. Massive holographic sculptures. Levitation.
Or I could be totally wrong. Maybe social media really is the crucible where future generations will form their identity. And what is the role of adults in these worlds? We know what to do when kids are skateboarding and drinking and doing vandalism. We yell at them, call the cops, run them off. It's easy enough. The kids scatter and go somewhere else to hang out.
But the internet is too big for that.
Maybe when this generation sees the effects of the social media lifestyle-- the vacuous distracting time-suck; the lack of concentration; the depression and loneliness and FOMO; the lack of anything substantive, memorable or insignificant-- they will change. Most of us have learned by now that if the internet was a book, no one would buy it or read it. Case and point: this shitty, half-thought out post. It's self-help, like Kayla's video, but putting it online gets me to think harder. It helps me work through it. But does the rest of the world need to see it? Probably not.
So things might change. People might wake up. I have hope for that. What gives me the most hope?
Crack cocaine.
Crack gives me hope. Or the lack of crack. Because the social media environment of the internet might be like the rise and fall of a heavily abused drug. Which particular drug? It doesn't matter. The podcast The Uncertain Hour has been doing a detailed history of the opioid crisis. They began with an episode about the crack epidemic of the 1980's.
What happened to crack?
One theory is that the reason the abuse of certain drugs rise and fall is that it takes a certain amount of time to see the devastating effects of addiction to that drug. Crack was supposed to destroy our nation, but people saw the effects: crack babies and crack dens and crack addiction, the drug was stigmatized. Crack still exists, but it's not an epidemic, not even on the radar. The same with acid. People saw the effects and most stopped. Hopefully, the same will happen with heroin, fentanyl, and oxy. People will get educated, get woke, and move on.
Could the same thing happen with the internet? Will some future generation collectively shut off the screens, dust off their skateboards, and head out into the world? Recognize the banality and stupidity of flicking through tiny images?
My older son was certainly inspired by Mid90s. But he was already a skateboarder, with his own rig. The film was preaching to the choir. He likes to film himself doing tricks. He rides around without a helmet. He lets our dog pull him while he's on his board. It's totally dangerous and he's going to get hurt. He's already been hit by a car, and he wasn't even on his board. It's scary, so I don't watch. But I still think it's probably better than living inside a phone. The trouble inside a phone is more abstract, but the emotions are real. And stuff posted on the internet can go viral, it can get amplified. And it has the potential to be permanent. A broken arm heals, but you never know on the internet. Some of that stuff never goes away.
Still, I'm not sure where I stand on this. Doing stuff on the internet can be fun and creative and rewarding, just as doing stuff in meat space can be the same. There's potential and danger in both zones. And both zones often bleed into each other.
One of the best takes on this is the Atlanta episode "The Woods." Check it out. If adults struggle to navigate between reality and social media, how are middle schoolers supposed to figure it out?
Analog and binary and the stuff in between. Mainly, we are left with questions.
Which is a safer space for kids? Which one is healthier and more relevant? Which space is better a place for experimentation? A better place to form your identity?
Are these even our questions to ask? Maybe not. The kids will figure out. I hope I'm around to see what evolves, but I know my understanding will be biased. I'm too fucking old to get it.
