On my way home from school the other day, I was able to snap a picture of an endangered species: the extraordinarily rare, extremely literal, proud and unreserved, completely-on-the-nose, totally lacking self-awareness Jaguar owner (and Jaguar vanity plate owner) who never learned the lesson Chip Kidd presents at the beginning of this TED Talk.
The Chinese Curse
What’s on your mind, Blair?
video photo feeling
What’s on my mind? Do you really want to know, Face-suck?
Or do you just want to mine my data?
What’s on my mind?
The Chinese Curse, that’s what. May you live in interesting times.
October 31st, 2020. Interesting times. Four more days until the election. Two more months left in this mess of a year.
Interesting times suck. I can't get them off of my mind. Or out of my mind.
But maybe, I can change things. Have some control. Do some lexical magic.
At least over you, my so-called Facebook friends . . . in my so-called life during this so-called pandemic. Maybe you’ll pass my incantation along and this year will turn itself inside out.
What if I could cast a spell?
Dissipate this weary hell?
I should at least give it a try. My mom used to do tarot readings. I might have some kind of gift.
Hocus-pocus, maybe I can learn to focus?
Zuckerberg’s clairvoyant vision
Find this with your algorithm:
Make my post go super-viral
Pull us from this deadly spiral.
It was the year of twenty-twenty,
It is the year of twenty-twenty . . .
Twenty-twenty, twenty-twenty
Why do you rub me
in this way?
Why can’t you love me?
You push and shove me
Day by fretful day by day.
Boil and bubble, Trump is trouble,
O Lord don't let him win the double
Yes! Let my soul turn to lead
and sink to hell if he were dead.
If he were dead, if he were dead.
Banish these thoughts from my head!
My busy brain should not be fed
By such bitter vengeful bread.
Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posies
covid covid we all fall down . . .
Safety, safety, safety first
Safety dance, the Chinese curse
Living safely is the worst
But is it better than the hearse?
Lady liberty not Trump tower
Used to give our country power.
Hippies filled their hair with flowers.
Now . . .
abortion makes Coney Barrett sour.
Blues and reds, they all glower--
Children at the border cower.
They say the pen is mightier than the sword.
But what if the Populus is polarized and bored?
Pandemic, plan-demic
A fiction Democratic.
You have my word
November third
It disappears like magic.
Meatpackers work, shoulder to shoulder
The policy gets colder and colder.
Carcass, virus,
virus, carcass . . .
Cut that meat or they will fire us.
Covid covid, we all fall down.
Black lives matter, blue lives matter,
George Floyd’s ashes we must scatter.
Pitter-patter pitter-patter
The blood of Rayshard Brooks did spatter--
Tasers, guns I’ll take the latter.
Breonna Taylor’s door got battered.
Some say the world will end in fire,
But for migrant workers,
ICE will suffice.
That’s great, it starts with an earthquake,
Birds and snakes and aeroplanes,
Dave Chapelle is not afraid
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn
While the outback burns and burns.
It’s the end of the world as we know it,
Grandma don’t feel fine at all.
Covid covid, we all fall
down.
Fly of Pence, tongue of Stone,
Bannon’s nose hair
Kushner’s throne
Ivanka’s fabric
Mnuchin’s money
Tongue of Miller
Pompeo’s arm
Mix these for a deadly charm.
Yes! Let my soul turn to lead
and sink to hell if he were dead.
I make this bargain readily,
Like Faustus with Mephistopheles . . .
I wear my mask and then I sneeze
Don’t stare at me, pretty please.
Here we are now, entertain us.
TV shows to make us famous,
Social feeds will try to change us
We bare our souls, can you blame us?
Bail out the airlines and the banks,
To Donald Trump we give our thanks.
The rest of us must share the wealth--
And hope he subsidizes health.
Plumes of smoke, tear-gas, fire
Men in armor, guns for hire
We're all so very very tired
But am I preaching to the choir?
Twenty-twenty when you end
Will our fractured country mend?
Or have we gone around the bend?
I see two paths, both portend.
Yes, two roads diverged in yellow wood . . .
One repulsive, one not so good
Three roads, four roads, five roads, six,
There will be no easy fix
Epstein’s minors turn their tricks.
Safety dance, safety first
Safety is the Chinese curse
Will November make it worse?
What rough beast slouches towards Washington to be reborn?
Once I pondered weak and weary, on a scientific theory
Then I learned of QAnon and thought: “Fuck yeah! IT IS ON!”
Now I fight the pedophiles,
Me and Trump, we do battle
The rest of you are sheep and cattle
Do your research on Seattle
Protesters, they mass and gather
Law or chaos, would you rather?
Widening on the turning gyre,
the center cannot hold
Things fall apart, it’s getting cold
The virus once again grows bold
Airborne particles
Fake news articles,
Winter is coming, enjoy the carnival.
My thoughts grow wild, I can’t control them,
I wish that I could turn them off,
I wish I were allowed to cough
I wish that I could turn them off
I wish I were allowed to cough
until my lungs come out my ears and throat
The devil is inside a goat
Bubble, bubble Trump is trouble
Will he be elected double?
Twenty-twenty, a dozen more?
Will he change the terms to four?
Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan
Let’s enact a travel ban!
Illhan Omar and AOC
Want us all to work for free.
Socialism . . . not for me . . .
We mourn the mighty RBG.
Twenty-twenty, you have offended,
But in a year, will all be mended?
Perhaps we have just slumbered here
While these visions did appear?
No . . . this is no idle theme--
It’s not a dream, it’s not a dream
I give you full consent to scream.
Stop these thoughts, away begone!
Yet they continue on and on . . .
What’s on my mind, Facebook feed?
I can’t choose which way to proceed.
I cannot do a single deed.
I’m paralyzed and by booze and weed
Safety safety, safety first
The safety dance, the Chinese curse
Living safely is the worst
My brain won’t stop until it bursts.
I poke and scroll on my phone
There’s no such thing as home alone.
O lord I feel so weak and weary, fatigued and futile, eyes so bleary,
My mask lies soiled and forgotten, dirty, dusty smelling rotten
Fallen from the special spot on my car mirror to the floor--
Now I need it, I must retrieve it, I’m on an errand to the store.
But can I enter? Dare I enter? I do not want to touch the door--
The doorway entrance, a deadly sentence, full of germs I can’t ignore.
What’s on my mind?
Only this and nothing more.
Facebook-- make this post go super-viral,
Release me from this deadly spiral,
I’m feeling mad, my mind is wild,
Like a surly red-faced child--
I want to stomp and throw a tantrum--
Redrum, redrum! REDRUM!
Murder mayhem bloody-mary
Twenty-twenty, you shock and scare me
Like some spider black and hairy.
I can’t sleep my way through this disaster
Twenty-twenty: you are the master
Of my whirling anxious brain--
Release me from this grisly reign.
Dash these thoughts against the stones,
Let them live among your phones,
Free me from these dreadful times
Cast this spell, release these rhymes.
What’s on my mind, what’s on my mind?
It was the year of twenty-twenty,
It IS the year of twenty-twenty.
Only this and nothing more.
Post
If you need a cure for the pandemic/election blues, put the new Tom Petty reissue Wildflowers & All the Rest on shuffle and let the fifty-four (!) tracks wash over you . . . the original album is a masterpiece, and this sprawling, epic, and intimate collection of live tracks and demos, songs that were intended for another album and outtakes will take you to another world . . . another planet really, where Petty still lives and things are a whole lot mellower.
This week has been a black hole of endless parent-teacher phone conferences, college recommendations, online training, tech support-- my device had a number of rogue apps on it, digitizing the curriculum, and soccer (but I did get some positive feedback: a couple administrative notes in my mailbox telling me to stop signing-in and signing-out at the same time . . . I sent a couple more irate emails-- which is becoming de rigeur for me this year-- and I was told that this is for building safety and security . . . so then I went to sign out at the end of the day like a good citizen-- though we haven't had to do this in my twenty-five years of teaching . . . and I learned that we don't have to sign out this week because of parent/teacher conferences!)
Some items I'd like to note for posterity about our home JV soccer game against South Plainfield on Wednesday:
1) we started the game with exactly eleven players because of sickness and a couple injuries;
2) our goalie was injured so my older son Alex-- one of our best defenders-- had to play goalie (he's a good goalie, but he hasn't played there in years, since he broke his thumb)
3) twenty minutes into the game, Max sprained his ankle, so we were down to ten players;
4) any time players are sick, we wonder if we are all going to wake up with coronavirus (so far, so good)
5) playing with ten is brutal-- Jake ran so much that he needed a sub . . . but I reminded him that we didn't have any subs; he told me he was going to puke and I advised him to get back defensively and just stand there; instead, he ran off the field and put his head into the trash can and threw up for a minute or two-- this was in full view of the fans-- and then, heroically, he went back into the game;
6) my son Ian has grown a couple inches and put on ten pounds in the last two weeks, which is great, but his feet are killing him-- they're a couple of sizes too large for his body-- so he couldn't really run by the end of the first half;
7) Ian went into the goal in the second half-- he hasn't played goalie since he was a little kid-- so this is the first game that both my children have played goalie in the same game;
8) we lost 5-0 . . . the best thing about Highland Park is you get plenty of playing time . . . but that can also be the worst thing about Highland Park;
9) Alex and I raced up to see the end of the varsity game . . . it went into overtime and we lost 2-1;
10) there were plenty of injuries on the varsity squad as well; a player got cleated in the temple, another may have broken his leg, another got a wicked cramp, etc.
11) I forgot the corner flags at the JV field and I didn't realize this until I was walking the dog in the park the next day . . . but luckily they were all still there; it's nice to live right next to the field at which I coach;
12) the next day at practice we had 19 able-bodied players-- for both JV and varsity-- and Ian didn't make until the end. his feet started to hurt again;
13) Ian came to acupuncture with me Thursday night-- I'm proud of him, as the first time is a little scary . . . he said the only needles that hurt were the ones she put in his ears, so maybe this will help his feet . . . or he's got bone spurs;
14) we got rained out today . . . a godsend, so maybe we will be healed and rested for Monday's game.
New Jersey has finally reached coronavirus nirvana: we now meet the criteria for our own travel ban (10 cases per 100,00) and all New Jersey residents must quarantine all the time-- to infinity and beyond-- you can't leave your zip code nor can you exist within it.
Some of you may have noticed that I'm back to single-sentence format over here-- and I'm struggling to even produce a measly sentence a day-- hybrid-virtual school is so mind-numbing and soul-crushing (and mainly, produces so much eye-strain) that I can't bear to look at another screen; yesterday, after the usual digital circus, we had TWO meetings . . . the first was a faculty meeting, and I loaded this meeting up on Zoom on my phone because I had to take my son over to the orthodontist so he could get impressions for a new retainer (the dog ate his old one) which he was paying for because he had been warned to put the thing in the case . . . this was going to cost him $285 dollars (but our orthodontist gave him a 50 percent discount, so he lucked out) and as I was driving over-- in the pouring rain-- trying to listen to the faculty meeting on my headphones, we got put into "break-out rooms," so then I was chatting with other teachers-- while driving in the rain-- and then I passed the orthodontist office, which is right on Route 27, a busy road, and spun around; Ian hopped out and crossed the street and then they took us out of the break-out rooms and then Ian started frantically waving to me and I opened the window to find out why he was doing this-- it turns out that he had forgotten a mask, and the rain was coming down in sheets and the traffic was so dense that he couldn't get back across the street to get a mask from the car and meanwhile I hit some button so that I was sharing my screen with the 200+ people at the meeting and the principal wasn't too happy about that so he was telling me to unshare and chastising other people for whatever was going on in their backgrounds and the vice-principal was fast asleep in his office--on camera-- and Ian got across the street and got his mask and I managed to stop sharing my screen and then I had another meeting after that where some folks declared this whole escapade as "unsustainable" and now I've got a "Video Protocol" meeting on Microsoft Teams in ten minutes, which will overlap with soccer practice, so this should be interesting as well.
Those of you who are appalled by Donald Trump's downplaying of his COVID case and treatment, those of you who are thinking: How could he not acknowledge all those that didn't receive experimental monoclonal antibodies? How could he not sympathize with all those that lost loved ones because they didn't have a team of doctors at their disposal?
those of you who can't figure out how a reptile got elected President . . . a man with no sense of irony who had the gall to Tweet this:
Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.Last night, after a long week of virtual/hybrid school and soccer, we watched Train to Busan, a South Korean zombie flick that combines the "fast zombies" of 28 Days Later and the fight-your-way-through-a-train action of Snowpiercer into a perfect cocktail of apocalyptic mayhem and magic . . . I had a Creative Writing class with one actual real-life student in it on Friday and she wrote about how she liked movies but she had never seen Pulp Fiction or any Quentin Tarantino film and explained that she was probably never going to watch any of his films and I told her she was nuts and missing out and I asked her why and she said she refused to watch them because a certain kind of pretentious film-buff guy would always lose his mind when she said she had never seen Pulp Fiction and she loved the reaction-- it made her laugh-- and I said, "I'm THAT guy!" and then I told her she should at least give Reservoir Dogs a try (because I'm that guy) and then I asked her for a film rec and she said she liked Train to Busan and though we were all very tired, we watched the whole thing (except for Alex, who eschews horror movies) and everyone loved it . . . including my wife, who made an apt comment at the end: "You see . . . the pandemic could be WAY worse."
During the pandemic, we're considering every game we play a win-- but today's trip to Middlesex was a tough one . . . it was the third game of the week and varsity got spanked 5 to nil and my JV squad was a wreck; we lost 4-0 and I've never run on and off the field so many times for injuries--many of which were already present before the game and were compounded by extreme effort against an excellent team-- here's a quick rundown: Tyler with an ankle sprain,; Ian got the wind knocked out of him and has plantar fasciitis; Anthony twisted his ankle, Sebastian with a tender hamstring; Theo had trouble with his back and also got close-lined; Max got elbowed in the eye; Jake has turf-toe, and Eric has a pulled groin . . . with only thirteen players on the roster, these numbers don't add up (but it was still better to have an adventure and lose rather than the alternative . . . so despite the drubbing, we're staying positive: at least we are getting games in . . . there are plenty of games being cancelled . . . especially at East Brunswick, where I teach; also, my son Alex played the game of his life at left back . . . it was a full throttle assault from Middlesex because we had no midfield).
While reading Agatha Christie's first published novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, I was in the same boat as Hercule Poirot's rather guileless companion (and the narrator of the story) Arthur Hastings; the plot is a bit byzantine for my taste-- so many possibilities, so many characters-- and if you are a bit dim-witted (like Hastings and me) then you will certainly think this:
“Still you are right in one thing. It is always wise to suspect everybody until you can prove logically, and to your own satisfaction, that they are innocent."
and I suppose Christie plays fair-- if you follow the clues then you can unravel some of the mystery-- but Hastings doesn't feel this way and neither did I:
“Well, I think it is very unfair to keep back facts from me.”
“I am not keeping back facts. Every fact that I know is in your possession. You can draw your own deductions from them. This time it is a question of ideas.”
I even missed this utterly simple education (and I hate the heat and I'm really not fond of fires . . . I should have picked up on it)
“The temperature on that day, messieurs, was 80 degrees in the shade. Yet Mrs. Inglethorp ordered a fire! Why? Because she wished to destroy something, and could think of no other way."
in the end, the inscrutable Hercule Poirot decides that romance must be the final arbiter of morality, which is kind of cute (considering an old lady got poisoned) and he reasons thus
“Yes, my friend. But I eventually decided in favour of ‘a woman’s happiness’. Nothing but the great danger through which they have passed could have brought these two proud souls back together again."
VIRTUAL SCHOOL: REGULAR SCHOOL
1) online shopping: the mall;
2) watching porn: sex;
3) YouTube: the movies;
4) watching Jaws: shark attack.
It goes without saying that my hopes and prayers are with President Trump . . . I wish him a speedy recovery from COVID-19 so he can return to the important work of rolling back E.P.A. rules limiting toxic waste from coal plants; if Trump were to grow heinously ill and die, then coal-fired power plants might not be able to conveniently dispose of wastewater laced with lead, selenium and arsenic . . . if Trump were to be incapacitated and placed on a ventilator, who would champion the cause of contaminated rivers and streams?
Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope Hardcover is a tough read; Pulitzer Prize-winning husband-wife-super-journalist team Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn trace the lives of a number of Kristof's childhood friends, all from the vicinity of Yamhill, Oregon and they end up reporting on income inequality in America . . . one of my favorite phrases I learned from the book is "talking left and walking right," which a number of successful liberal families employ . . . they are all for divorce and abortion and legalized drug-use, but rarely need these in their own lives-- it seems conservative values about family and school make the difference in who escapes poverty in places like Yamhill . . . anyway, here's a couple of excerpts that I pulled by taking a photo of the page with my phone and then opening that photo with Google docs . . . the Google AI "reads" the photo and does a decent job making it text:
Here's one way of looking at what happened: Daniel was injured on the job, and then doctors in and out of the military prescribed highly addictive opioids that got him hooked. That was because the government, through lax oversight, empowered pharmaceutical companies to profit from reckless marketing. Once Daniel was addicted. didn't try adequately to help him, but rather spit him out, and the became a target not of public health efforts but of the criminal system. The government failed him, blamed him, and jailed him.
A couple of generations ago, the United States rewarded veterans by affording them education and housing benefits. More recently, the United States helped get veterans hooked on drugs and then incarcerated them.
* * * * *
We Americans are a patriotic tribe, and we tend to wax lyrical about our land of plenty and opportunity. "We have never been a nation of haves and have-nots," Senator Marco Rubio once declared. “We are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves, of people who have made it and people who will make it." We proudly assert, “We're number 1!" and in terms of overall economic and military strength, we are. But in other respects our self-confidence is delusional.
Here's the blunt, harsh truth.
America ranks number 40 in child mortality, according to the Social Progress Index, which is based on research by three Nobel Prize-winning economists and covers 146 countries for which there is reliable data. We rank number 32 in internet access, number 39 in access to clean drinking water, number 50 in personal safety, and number 61 in high-school enrollment. Somehow, "We're number 61!" doesn’t seem so proud a boast. Overall, the Social Progress Index ranks the United States number 25 in the well-being of citizens.
I just took an early morning trip to Planet Fitness-- my first visit to the gym since early March-- and it wasn't much fun . . . working out in a mask is uncomfortable (even my fake flappy mask) and all the joys of the gym are gone-- I like to circuit train: move from machine to machine, station to station in a fast and chaotic fashion-- if I wipe the equipment down it's in a perfunctory manner . . . but if I'm on something for one set, then I usually don't wipe it down at all-- but now it seems like you are expected to wipe stuff down (or at least pretend to) and I also love when the gym is a bit crowded, there are people to look at-- cute women, fat people, ripped people, people doing weird exercises that you might want to emulate-- but it was fairly desolate this morning . . . so I froze my membership until December; judging by the rising case counts in New Jersey, gyms will probably be closed by then, making this decision much simpler (for a better-written version of this, head to Medium).
My son Alex said the strangest thing yesterday:
"I wish I were a little worse at ping-pong so I could have more fun playing with my friends"
and I'm not sure if this is the kind of thing that warrants therapy, but obviously-- in my family-- I don't tolerate poor table-tennis play . . . if you're not going to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of the women then why would you play?
When the aliens sift through the wreckage of our civilization and find my son Ian's battery-powered skateboard, this will be their analysis: "This object looks like a lot of fun, but if the battery runs out while you are zooming up a hill and the skateboard stops suddenly, the laws of physics will cause the rider to wipe-out" and the aliens will be exactly right . . . luckily, Ian was wearing a helmet and so he only suffered road rash to his knees, elbows and hands . . . but I think he should only use this contraption on flat ground (with grass nearby).
When the aliens sift through the wreckage of our civilization, they will certainly be impressed (and bewildered) by our vast variety of electronic charging cables . . . after stumbling upon a tangled trove of these wires, an especially perplexed insectoid from Andromeda will turn and click to his friend, "They obviously understood electricity, but why did they make it so hard to harness it? Why? Why?"
At school yesterday, I got quite close to this fox that was hanging out on the softball field . . . then someone informed me that maybe I shouldn't be approaching wild animals that don't exhibit fear . . . they might be rabid; I told my class about this encounter with a possibly rabid animal and showed them the photo and one of my students said, "That's not a rabbit, it's a fox" because I was wearing a mask and when you are wearing a mask, the words "rabid" and "rabbit" sound identical, so I had to say the word "rabies" and talk about foaming at the mouth and Old Yeller and a bunch of shots in the stomach and all that . . . and the takeaway is that teaching with a mask on is absurd (I'm recording stories that I usually tell in class beforehand, without a mask, and then playing them for the class . . . so then I'm watching myself tell a story with the students, it's surreal).
One of the teachers in our household was complimented doubly today-- the district tech team saw this person's virtual teaching set-up and they were astounded (they called this person McGyver) and then when they were leaving the building the district tech people commented on the beautiful landscaping around the school and they were informed that the very same teacher runs the gardening club and did all the landscaping-- so this teacher is killing it both indoors and out; the other teacher in our house received an admonitory note from the principal today because this person missed the digital faculty meeting on Monday (this person may have slept through the start of the meeting, totally forgotten about the meeting and then drove his son to the orthodontist . . . so that when he received a text that the meeting was happening, it was too late to attend) and I'm sure you can guess who did what (especially since I just planted some lovely bamboo clusters all along our fence line).
There's a new hashtag of ideas that begin "it took a global pandemic" and I've collected a few of them here . . . thanks to all the contributors-- if anyone has any ideas, throw them in the comments . . . I might make this a post for Medium;
1) it took a global pandemic for us to learn how fun it is to drink with far-flung friends on Zoom;
2) it took a global pandemic for us to realize there's still some systemic racism in America;
3) it took a global pandemic to learn how fast you can traverse distances in central New Jersey when there is no traffic;
4) it took a global pandemic to truly value quality home appliances, especially the dishwasher;
5) it took a global pandemic for me to plant more bamboo along our fence line;
6) it took a global pandemic to motivate me to do mosquito control in my backyard;
7) it took a global pandemic to realize how unsanitary and disgusting schools are;
8) it took a global pandemic to get me to subscribe to the NYT and start doing the daily crossword;
9) it took a global pandemic for me to learn the joy of online poker;
10) it took a global pandemic to cross the street and avoid everyone and not be judged as a total douchebag;
11) it took a global pandemic for me to fix the crazy-ass chip in my front tooth because I kept seeing myself on Zoom;
12) it took a global pandemic to get alcohol to go;
13) it took a global pandemic to discover just how misanthropic and introverted you could be;
14) it took a global pandemic to recognize what a pain-in-the-ass timesuck club soccer is;
15) it took a global pandemic for people to start doing jigsaw puzzles . . . yuck;
16) it took a global pandemic to get people to wash their hands after going to the bathroom . . . yuck;
17) it took a global pandemic for New Brunswick to realize it's fun to close down George Street to traffic, put a bunch of bands out there, and let everyone eat and drink in the road;
18) it took a global pandemic to find out who believes in the scientific method and randomized gold-standard double-blind trials;
19) it took a global pandemic to truly understand how incompetent Donald Trump is . . . or maybe not, maybe he's been exactly the same level of incompetence the whole time;
20) it took a global pandemic to realize it's more fun to wait in the parking lot with your dog, rather than in the vet's waiting room . . . which is always a disaster;
21) to be continued.
