Wednesday with Thursday Vibes
The One True Message
If there's one idea I could pass along to the young people, to the next generation of humanity-- one piece of wisdom, one profound final thought-- and I know this goes against human nature, against the "endowment effect" and our possessive minds, this conflicts with our desire for ownership and our love of indignance and personal space-- I know it's a hard message to get across and an even harder one for people to implement-- but I believe! . . . I believe we can learn to do this, as a culture and a collective and it will be a great leap forward . . . so the thing I will say on my deathbed, my dying words, my legacy, is this: the left lane is for passing!
Hookah's There?
Dave (Almost) Coins Another Word?
Dave is Declared a Hero (of a particular sort)
I think for future generations-- so they understand what is happening around here-- I should describe just how much pickleball is being played . . . normally on a Friday afternoon, I would have already ingested several beers and be getting logy, but instead, I took a nap and I'm about to don my compression socks, visor, and knee-brace and head out with my buddy to the 7 -10 PM open play at Pickleball HQ . . . and then on Sunday, instead of playing in my normal indoor soccer game, I agreed to drive down to the Mercer Bucks Pickleball Club and was declared a "hero" for doing so-- it's a 35-minute drive-- because my brother desperately needs an eighth player in his game-- he plays with an elite bunch and most of them are playing in a tournament, so they needed an extra body . . . I was really trying to avoid getting involved in indoor pickleball, but they keep building places and my friends (and brother) keep getting involved in various games and it's honestly not the worst way to spend the winter because the weather is fucking awful.
Laying It On Thick
The way to teach "The Modern Moloch"-- a phenomenal episode of 99% Invisible about the mostly unknown story of how automobile lobbyists and auto club enthusiasts destroyed the modern American city with car-centric infrastructure, blaming pedestrians for reckless walking and removing them from the streets instead of shaping the road system around the idea of autonomous walking, vibrant street life, and public transportation (we link this source to another great essay on this topic, Rebecca Solnit's "Aerobic Sisyphus and the Suburbanized Psyche") is to make the cartoons from the 1920's about sacrificing children to the Ammonite god Moloch-- as there was a great deal of hatred towards cars during this time period, hatred that has been glossed over by the Trump-like revisionist history that portrays America as always having a love affair with the automobile, a narrative that is written by the winners and just not true-- but the reason we can't have nice things is the bad guys won . . . and seem to be still winning, as Trump is now promising to "terminate" congestion pricing in New York City-- and the orange dicktater will probably succeed because Eric Adams is in his thrall-- anyway, the way to get this stuff across to high school kids is to begin the lesson reciting a list of all the people I've known that have died in car crashes and then go on a very depressing field trip to visit the Emily Fredericks bench in the lobby, Fredericks was an excellent student of mine back in the day, and she was biking to work in Philadelphia and in the bike lane when she was struck by a distracted garbage truck driver (earbuds in, looking at paperwork) and killed-- a sacrifice to Moloch and so that we can have our wide and fast city roads and unprotected bike lanes . . . and of course, nothing happened to the guy who hit her, all charges dropped because like Eric Adams is in Trump's thrall, we are in the thrall of the automobile . . . and the lightbulbs were starting to go off over the heads of these subruban students, as they recognized the problems with Route 18 and the Ryder's Lane-- the hodge-podge of zoning, the fact that a giant new condiminium complex is being built but it is completely disconnected from all the surrounding shops and stores except by roads, so it won't even be possible to walk to Starbucks and the traffic will get even worse and it will be even harder to cross the street . . . what have we wrought?
Hip Hop Mic Drop
The Best Genre, Hands Down, Knives Out
Presidents' Day . . . Take It Easy
My wife and I did NOT buy a mattress on our day off today, but we did go to the gym (though my wife and I were both very sore from working out too hard yesterday and walking around like very old people) and then we went out to lunch, but while I took the next reasonable step in this progression and took a nap, my wife-- who was starting on this bent at lunch, showing me Pinterest pictures and saying things like "I work hard"--appeared in our bedroom while I was mid-nap . . . with a tape measure!-- she's got some grand plans for our bedroom, which I like to keep in the style of Jay Gatsby-- "the simplest room in the house"-- and while I already talked her out of a plant wall over our heads at lunch-- although I love a plant wall-- because I don't want a plant falling on me while I'm sleeping . . . and now I think she's calmed down for the time being and found a book to read on her Kindle and is getting into the spirit of a random day off.
Leverage Works the Same, Even If You Are Old (Mass is Mass, and I've Got Big Ass)
I really hustled today at indoor soccer-- and it paid off, I scored a goal and had a huge assist to keep our team on the floor-- but I am realizing that my only weapon against younger, quicker players is my substantial mass . . . in the open field, all I can do is contain you young motherfuckers, but if you get caught near the boards, I am winning that battle-- and it's too embarrassing to call foul on someone my age.
Beware!
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles . . .
I am back in Jersey-- flew in last night and I went to work today-- it was nice to return to normalcy and high school kids-- but my knee and back and shoulder hurt from the traveling . . . plane seats have gotten absurdly small (and I thought I was going to get seated next to the beautiful Swedish woman in front of me in the boarding line-- she was tall, slim, blonde hair, sporting a headband, and wearing skin-tight white pants and crop top t-shirt-- but I was not so lucky, I was one row short of sitting next to her and instead I had to stuff myself into the seat next to a very stout woman with a wet cough, whose thigh and arm rested on me most of the flight . . . oh well) and after enduring the stress of dealing with my dad's passing, sleeping on a weird mattress in a room with my brother--who snores-- and an incessant light from the breezeway, and then the car ride to the airport, the cramped flight, and then the shuttle bus to the mini-train to the big train-- and I did get lucky there, the train to New Brunswick was two minutes late and I just got there to catch it-- my body was very stiff and sore today . . . but my students were sympathetic and cooperative and they knew I was a little off-- I can't wait to get a full night's sleep in my own bed, without having to worry about an alarm.
End of an Era
My dad passed away last night, down here in Naples, Florida-- a place he loved-- and he will be missed, by his friends, family, wife, and colleagues . . . he truly led an illustrious life-- a distinguished career in corrections and as a criminology professor . . . his progressive ideas, consultant work, jail design, prison educational implementation with football great and activist Jim Brown, and his work as an expert witness in prison logistics and best practices-- I often helped him with the writing of the expert culpability report and wow, you want to stay out of prison if you can help it, some wacky shit goes on in there-- but my dad did his best to allay those awful prison stereotypes and make prison a safe place for rehabilitation, not mayhem . . . my dad was also a great athlete-- a star-swimmer, a lifeguard, and a baseball, basketball, and football player and he taught me and my brothers to catch, throw, bat, shoot, and hit a golf ball . . . he loved family vacations at the beach, Cape Cod and Sea Isle City in particular and he was a patient and supportive father and the same as a grandfather, and always such a fan of my boys Alex and Ian, always at their tennis and soccer matches, and supporting them in all their endeavors-- he always expressed how proud he was of his family, he had a wonderful relationship with all my cousins, and he had a plethora of friends in both Naples and Monroe-- he made the best of the rare form of parkinsonism that plagued the last five years of his life, and even while suffering through all that bullshit, he was larger-than-life and his attitude and sense-of-humor were exceptional . . . we were lucky he passed the way he did, without becoming a tragic figure and truly burdening my mom beyond her cababilities, and instead he will remembered fondly as the legendary "Guy" from New Brunswick, who went a long way . . . I will truly miss you Dad and I couldn't have asked for a better father, and as my son Ian texted me: "he was the best Poppy I could have asked for."
The Waiting (Is the Hardest Part)
Not much news here-- my dad is now comfortably unresponsive in the hospice center across the street from the hospital and slowly giving up the ghost-- but it is a strange trip to Florida for me, as I haven't been anywhere tropical for a long time, so alternating between hospital settings and resort setting is very surreal . . . most of my time here has been spent hanging out with my mother and brother in various hospital settings, watching my dad fade away but then-- when we take a break from the hospital-- I've been walking through manicured gardens and splashing in warm swimming pools in my mom's development in Naples and the weather is the polar opposite of New Jersey, or perhaps the antipodal opposite of New Jersey-- which makes this all very weird (for me, but not for the health care workers down here, who are incredibly professional and compassionate and I think very used to these kinds of scenarios, considering the average age of the people in this town).
At Least He Bet the Eagles
I talked to my dad on the phone last night during the Super Bowl and he was totally coherent, though he had recently fallen and hit his head and broken a rib-- and this coupled with the state of his lower body (weak and slow because of micro-strokes, afib, and a rare type of lower body Parkinson's) made it impossible for him to get out of the house to the nearby Super Bowl party -- which is why I gave him a call, I knew he was watching the game alone-- but when my mom came home at halftime, really just moments after I talked to him, she noticed he was behaving oddly and it was because he was having a massive stroke . . . so he's not at all in a good way right now and my brother and I are flying down to Florida . . . this getting old business really sucks (but that last chat I had with him was a good one, and he was happy that, like me, he bet the Eagles).
Triumph at Triumph
Yesterday was the first Saturday in a while that my wife and I were both healthy, so we took the train to Princeton (with Connell . . . it was the first time he ever rode the Dinky!) and first we stopped for an espresso martini and some snacks at the Dinky Bar and then went to the new Triumph Brewery location in Palmer Square-- inside the old Princeton Post office, an astounding renovation of a spacious 1930s building-- and I am pleased to report that both the beer and the food are excellent-- I liked both their IPAs and their dry stout, Connell doggedly stuck to a hand-pumped amber Celtic ale, and my wife had the pilsener and a delicious pear martini; as a bonus, they have live jazz every Friday and Saturday from 5-8 PM in the lounge . . . there are two bars, one in the basement-- it has a ratskeller vibe and there are plenty of TVs tuned into sports-- and then the upper bar amidst the restaurant seating, and that's where you can see and hear the jazz . . . anyway, this is a great spot-- nothing quite like it in the area, I don't think-- and taking the train to Princeton is much faster than driving (and driving home last night would have been treacherous-- we had to walk to the train station through a bizarre icy slush that stuck to your boots, while being constantly pelted with freezing rain-- and the walk up the hill back to Highland Park was like trudging through frozen wet sand . . . really weird).
My Dog is Probably a Heathen
While it's impossible to truly delve into the mind of a dog, we can always speculate-- and it's been a long cold winter, so I've spent plenty of time on the couch observing my dog and I think she has what might be called a pagan mentality-- she's always doing ritualistic behaviors in the hope that they will have some effect on her world and the generally benevolent gods that control it-- I think she knows that to some arbitrary extent, her world is controlled by inscrutable deities, and so she tries to sit a certain way, or stare a certain way, or turn in circles so many times, in the hopes that this will produce food-- of course, at times, she attempts to take matters into her own paws and goes on the offensive, but we usually foil those attempts-- although she did get a cookie out of my wife's school bag the other day--and I think she knows that she exists in a polytheistic universe, with many strange gods, some human, some technological-- like the dishwasher, which always contains lickable items-- and while she knows she can't control technology, she will try different strategies and rituals depending on which humanoid gods are present, in the hopes of diving providence in the form of a treat, but all of this is so random, so uncontrollable, and because she can't speak (though she does try) she has to communicate through other symbolic actions, in the hopes that they produce good fortune.
Hump Day Existentialism
Today we started a new text in College Writing, a chapter from Rebecca Solnit's book Wanderlust entitled "The Aerobic Sisyphus and the Suburbanized Psyche" and so I took the kids through the myth of Sisyphus and how in Greek times, the Sisyphean task of rolling the boulder was punitive, but then how Camus adopted Sisyphus as the mascot of existentialism and the idea that "the realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning" and then I challenged the kids to come up with ideas of how our lives are absurd searches for meaning and identity because-- unlike back in the old days, when if your dad made barrels, then you were probably fated to make barrels . . . which, on the one hand is rather restrictive, but on the other hand, relieves you of a lot of doubt and anxiety-- but we are modern humans and our fate, according to Satre, is wide open and there's no higher power to guide us, so our existence precedes our essence, which he explains thusly:
What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.
and then I challenged the students to come up with examples of how our lives are absurd searches for our essence-- but my examples were the best:
-- I'm going to Harvard to play football!
-- I just drove my car to the gym and I got so tired working out that I can't get any of this yard work done.
Dave's Shot is Breezin'
FunTimes
Two interesting (and rather frightening) things we were told at our faculty meeting today:
1) do not interfere with uniformed Federal Agents (particularly ICE agents) if they show up on school grounds (I did not need to be told this-- I make it a policy to never interfere with uniformed Federal Agents)
2) always behave as if a student might be surreptitiously recording you-- and remember they can piece together pieces of conversation to make it sound like you said something you didn't-- and a confirmed HIB (harassment, intimidation, and bullying) charge results in a loss of a pay-step . . . and HIB is not based on objective behavior but instead on the harassment, intimidation, or bullying being "perceived" by the victim.
The Hegelian Trumpalectic
tone, attitude, or methods, just remember, there will be an eventual synthesis of some of Trump's more obnoxious objectives and maybe, eventually, some sort of halting progress.
Unintentionally Dry January (But Not Sand Island Dry)
Thinking is Dead
I am having an existential crisis today, perhaps exacerbated by the fact that I feel kind of lousy-- I just tested positive for COVID-- and this diagnosis is amplifying the feeling that life is futile, we are all decaying flesh, and we have designed technology to replace what we once thought was unique about the human mind and spirit-- the inciting incident for this existential crisis happened this morning, when I went to school early to photocopy my Creative Writing mid-term prompt about the film "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" so that the kids would have to handwrite the answer because I didn't want them looking up stuff on Google and ChatGPT but then I fed my prompt into DeepSeek, the new, free high-powered Chinese AI-- and the prompt is pretty basic, just something to get the kids writing about a really complicated and interesting film:
How does the film use unreliable narration to explore relationships, memory, and time? What does the film ultimately say about our identity, our perspective, and the way we get along with people?
and, no surprise, DeepSeek gave an astute and organized and thorough answer to this prompt-- but an answer that sounded like AI-- parallel structure, abstract vocabulary, statements made with subtopics in groups of three-- but then I asked DeepSeek to summarize this answer in two sentences and use lots of profanity and it produced something that doesn't resemble AI at all:
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" uses its mind-fuckery of unreliable narration to show how relationships are a messy, chaotic clusterfuck of distorted memories and emotional bullshit. The film dives into the raw, fucked-up truth that love isn’t about perfect memories or clear-cut facts—it’s about the messy, irrational, and deeply human shit that keeps pulling people back together, no matter how hard they try to erase each other.
and this worries me, it means that there's no way to tell if the students are using AI-- now they can prompt it to sound much more human than previously-- and I think this means we have to rethink English/Language Arts class entirely-- it also depresses me that the skills I've spent my life developing can now be farmed out to a computer-- ideas that took my stupid brain hours of meditation and reflection can now be produced in a fraction of the time -- so I think we're going to have to have some difficult conversations about what learning and school is going to be like in the near future-- we could go the Luddite route-- the school is a gym for your brain route-- and do everything on paper and get rid of the computers . . . or we could turn kids into AI synthesizers, where they cull the best ideas from AI and develop them . . . or we could give up on teaching writing entirely and make English class more of a speaking and communicating class . . . but this stuff is evolving so quickly that it's breaking my brain-- it's also fun to ask DeepSeek "why is Jane's Addiction so fucking good?" and require it to use profanity in the answer-- I'm sure this Chinese AI broke a lot of copyright laws in its "training" but it really seems to know about everything (and how to swear realistically while telling you everything).
You Never Know What's Going to Offend Our AI Overlords
Holy shit . . . my wife and I are passing viruses between us-- the origin of which is most likely all the stupid children in our respective schools, coughing and blowing their noses and wiping snot on every surface-- and teaching is NOT a good job when you are sick, especially when it's a double mid-term day and you're going to spend five hours in a room with students and you have no voice . . . but at least I tapped into DeepSeek, the new deep-discount made in China AI that will list "five awful things about Donald Trump"-- unlike Google's Gemini, which avoids political discussion . . . but don't ask DeepSeek about what happened in 1989 at the Tiananmen Square demonstration, or you'll get stonewalled; although I did get DeepSeek to rattle off a bunch of general problems with China's one-party, undemocratic, censorship-prone, human rights violating government-- before it rescinded all the text and said, "Sorry that's beyond my current scope . . . let's talk about something else."
Heavyweight vs Lightweight (But They Are Both Kind of Orange)
The Rumble of the Federal Funding Freeze . . . in this corner, weighing in at 244 pounds, we have Donald Trump and in the opposing corner, weighing in at 1/4 pound, we have the U.S. Constitution-- and folks, this should be a chaotic, litigious, and slow-moving fight, with Trump delivering plenty of shots below the belt to our most venerated but embattled document.
It's Mainly Dark in Here, But I Can See the Light
This is the time of year when I feel like a mewling infant sliding down the birth canal, trying to emerge from the darkness of winter, slowly heading toward the light of spring-- and I will get there, but it's going to be painful (for all involved, including Mother Nature).
Louis C.K. Kills
HP Sees CK
Heading out (with a large contingent of my town and other various friends) to see Louis C.K. at The Stress Factory.
Fuck the TikTok Ban, Go Whole Hog and Revise Section 230
There has been much speculation about Mark Zuckerberg's recent "pivot" towards some Trumpy changes to Meta's content moderation policy and the removal of all fact-checking on his platforms-- and the constantly fluctuating state of TikTok has also got the social media world in an uproar, but I think it's time to do something more radical in this arena and rewrite Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act sop that platforms are responsible and can be sued over what they "publish"-- as they ARE publishers with proprietary algorithms that determine what goes viral-- and it's certainly not always accurate or innocuous stuff . . . it's not until we acknowledge that everything on social media is suspect, often a conspiratorial abyss, frequently misinformation and/or propaganda, and promoted in ways to merely keep users scrolling, not to provide the highest quality content and that perhaps our society would be more civilized and social without social media in its current form.
Dave Fails at Revenge, But Succeeds at Civilized Society
Yesterday morning, I tried to exact my gentlemanly revenge for this foul deed-- when I got out of my car, I spotted the shoulder-length blonde hair of the culprit as she was walking along the front of the building towards the side door; walked briskly to the door so that I got there well ahead of her; opened the door, and waited; and then, as the culprit rounded the corner I noted that this was another nameless woman with shoulder length blond hair-- people are really bundled up because of the cold and it's hard to differentiate between thirty-somethings with should length blonde hair-- but this was definitely NOT the woman who didn't hold the door for me-- but despite not exacting my revenge, things turned out just fine: she thanked me for holding the door for her and we had a normal, civilized conversation about the weather as we walked to the office to sign in.
What's Scarier Than a Savage Pitbull? An Enormous Savage Pitbull
If you're looking for a dumb (but highly entertaining) read about a smart guy, check out Joe Ide's mystery novel IQ . . . it's about a young ghetto detective (a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Encyclopedia Brown) with a tragic past who gets involved in a case featuring rappers, entourage members, bodyguards, gangs, guns, drugs, sordid women, LA shysters, and a very large pit bull . . . the plot is a purposeful nod to Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Some Fine Day, Vengeance Will Be Mine
So yesterday I was hustling across the parking lot and into the school building-- and I was not wearing my jacket or gloves or anything because I leave that stuff in the car-- and it was cold, single digits, and I was maybe fifteen feet from the door and this teacher (I don't know her name but I'm going to find it out) was at that distance where any civilized person would hold the door, especially because we made eye contact and she could see I was moving with some determination and alacrity-- but she glanced at me and then she slithered in, she opened the door the minimum amount and squeezed through, leaving me literally in the cold-- now even if she didn't feel like holding the door, she could have given it a good shove, so it opened completely and I was close enough that I most likely would have been able to grab it before it shut-- but she didn't even do me that courtesy . . . unconscionable stuff . . . and so I have plotted my revenge (which is a dish best served cold, and it is butt-ass cold in New Jersey right now) and it will happen thusly: I will keep my eye out for this woman, and one day when I am ahead of her in the parking lot, I will walk briskly to the door-- so there is a great distance between us-- and then instead of NOT holding the door open, instead of slithering in-- which would be childish and predictable-- I will hold the door open-- I will hold the door open for an uncomfortably long time-- and while I stand there, chivalrously, waiting for her to walk all the way across the parking lot, I will make eye contact with her, and I will smile, and I will say "after you" and then let her pass through the door while I stand valiantly in the cold and then she will know that vengeance is mine and her fate is to be filled with shame and mortification.
A Very Special Episode of We Defy Augury
Special Guests: The Bicycle Man, Conrad Bain, Nellie Bowles, David Gelles and Austyn Gaffney, Leighton Woodhouse, The Rivieras, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Delta smelt, the gang from Full House, and the gang from WKRP in Cincinnati.
Trump
Dave Keeps Overdoing It (Physically and Literarily)
Dave Probably Overdid It
I completed my old man three-sport-in-one-week triathlon last night-- my friend Ann and I defended the challenge court for 90 minutes at the Picklejar, before we got tired (and the dudes we were playing hit her with several wild drives, including one to the chin) and I generally felt pretty good on my knee, but then I had trouble sleeping-- I rarely do sports at night and it was hard to get comfortable-- and though I loosened my leg up at the gym and grocery shopping at Trader Joe's (which was insanely crowded because everyone is worried about the incoming snow but I put my earphones in and listened to some Chris Joss, this French multi-instrumentalist funk musician who has an incredible catalog of instrumental funk-tronica albums . . . I can't believe I just discovered this guy because he will now be the soundtrack of the majority of my life!) but now I feel lousy and I'm running a low fever and I'm wondering if I either overdid the sports this week or if I'm getting sick.
Friday Potpourri
Cold and Gray Thursday
I took a mental health day yesterday and it turned out to be quite productive-- I cleaned two bathrooms, went to the gym with Ian-- he was actually able to play a little basketball on his reconstructed ankle-- and then Ian and I fixed a broken light pull switch in a ceiling fan, a two-man job if there ever was one (he flipped fuses in the basement until the fan stopped and then it took four hands to take the fan case apart; hold it the bottom part; strip the wires; remove the old pull string switch; replace and reconnect the new pull string switch; and then reassemble it) and we rewarded ourselves with a sushi lunch and then I took a nap-- later my wife and I watched episode two of Get Millie Black-- highly recommended-- but then reality loomed its ugly head . . . when you take off a Wednesday, you have to go to work the next day-- and it's not even Friday!-- and this morning was frigid and dark and bleak and I am really struggling to see the dim light of Spring Break, which is many months away-- so I started my class today with the movie clip to symbolize how I was feeling: Bill Murray giving a "Groundhog Day" weather outlook, "You want a prediction about the weather . . . I'll give you a winter prediction: It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life."
Our Team Only Had Nine Available Hands
Yesterday morning I made my triumphant return to 6:30 AM basketball, and while I was certainly limited in my movement because of my gimpy knee and unable to "help" on defense (which is my euphemism for fouling the fuck out of anyone who enters the paint in my vicinity) I was in fine shooting form (at least at the start of the session, my shot got progressively worse as my knee grew stiffer) and I drilled three long three-pointers in a row to lead our team to victory in the first game . . . and what a team it was-- I was limping around, Jeff has a strained calf-- and Frank, the old and venerated retired AD who is in his 70s and probably shouldn't be participating in the first place was coaxed into playing one game-- and I didn't notice until we began that Frank was wearing one glove, one green fluffy winter glove . . . and this is because he recently had surgery on his hand and needed to protect it-- needless to say, he did not shoot, dribble, or touch the ball-- but then he gracefully bowed out, undefeated, and we picked up Kyle, a fast, strong twenty-five-year-old athlete-- so all was good-- and then I learned that another player on the court was in his twenties and I was like: this is not fair, I think anyone in their twenties should have to be handicapped, like a jockey that's underweight, and wear a weighted vest.
A Costco No-go
According to my neighbors Pernille and John, you never want to make the mistake that I made yesterday: you never want to go to the Edison Costco on a Monday (because the store is so crowded on Saturday and Sunday that, in a Yogi Berra-esque paradox, no one goes there on the weekend so they all go on Monday . . . also, I think some shoppers permanently reside in the store-- I surmised this by the way they amble about with their carts, like they've got absolutely nowhere to go).
Medieval Times, Good Times?
The Knee Holds Up
Yet Another Reason I Hate Fucking Cars
Aspirational Actions
O! The Irony! The Hypocritical Unreliable Irony!
There Are No Cheetos in Europe
I Hate Fucking Cars
The boys and I were having a lovely Orthodox Christmas-- we went to the Y and played some basketball and then hit La Catrina for lunch, but on the drive home, when we got to the intersection of Hamilton Street and George Street-- where Hamilton turns into Johnson Drive-- the Zimmerli Museum was on our left-- we got a sober reminder of the ephemerality of life . . . the light was green and I was just about to enter the intersection when a medium-sized red car came FLYING down George Street (and this is a street with college dorms on it) and this red car smashed into the back of a white car that had just proceeded into the intersection-- the very car in front of us, and this spun the white car into the concrete wall in front of the Johnson and Johnson property (thank god no one was standing at this intersection waiting to cross, a spot that my son Alex walks through every day on his way to work) and the airbags went off inside the white car and I got out and (carefully) crossed the intersection to see if the people were all right and Alex and Ian called 911 but luckily there happened to be a couple cops nearby who immediately took control of the scene-- maybe they were already in pursuit of this vehicle? which would explain the high speed on this road?-- and because the white car got clipped in the rear of the car, not the driver side door, the two women in the car looked like they were in decent shape-- the passenger was fine and the driver looked stunned but she responded to my voice and the side airbag probably kept her from hitting her head-- meanwhile the red car that ran the light doing 40 or 50 mph on this 25 mph street was up ahead on the side of the road-- it hit another car and came to a halt and the the police checking that out-- and the weird thing is this wasn't a yellow light turning red situation, the red car had a solid red light-- so Alex surmised that perhaps the red car driver panicked and hit the gas instead of the brake-- something that occurs all too frequently and is often blamed on "sudden uncontrollable acceleration" but is actually caused by someone stomping on the wrong pedal . . . whatever the reason, this crash scared the shit out of the three of us and we all agreed to take it slow through every intersection, whether driving a car, on foot, or riding a bike-- because of the existence of idiots and the half-assed manner in which our automotive based world is designed-- although honestly, this happened so fast and chaotically that it would have been difficult to avoid even if you were paying close attention nd driving defensively and all that and we were very lucky that we weren't in the intersection when this happened-- we were moments away-- and the last time I saw anything like this was over a decade ago, and I still remember it like it was yesterday.
Weird Energy on a Weird Monday/Friday
Giants vs. (Second String) Eagles
Dave Speculates on (Probably) the Dumbest Use of a Quantum Computer (It's All Probabilistic)
Some Things That Are Completely Different
If you're looking for some batshit crazy apocalyptic sci-fi, I highly recommend Robert Charles Wilson's novel Spin-- I won't even try to explain all the consequences of the "spin membrane" that is mysteriously placed around the earth (by a mysterious superior alien race that scientists refer to as The Hypotheticals) but the stars go out early in the book and then some very well-depicted political and psychological and scientific chaos ensues-- and the book really makes you think about time, as a concept-- the book is the first in a trilogy (but apparently the other two books are not as good, so I'm going to skip them) and if you've read or watched The Expanse series then you'll find some familiar themes-- and if you're looking for a batshit crazy surreal almost sci-fi movie, you might like I Saw the TV Glow, a mesmerizing story about two disaffected teens in the 90's who share an obsession with a strange supernatural TV show called The Pink Opaque . . . the fictional world of the show begins to bleed into the "reality" of the of Owen and Maddy's constrained suburban lives-- and Maddy's complete and utter acceptance of this alternate reality sends her on a quest to find her true identity and gender, a quest that Owen is reluctant to embark on or even comprehend-- it'sa film full of weird imagery, awkward moments, and fragmented horror.
It's Already Thursday!
Dave Carries On Carrying On
Yesterday, on the last day of 2024, the usual themes unfolded-- I was sore from my second shingles vaccine but I went and played pickleball anyway-- wearing my knee brace of course and some KT tape on my Achilles tendon-- and I'm glad I went because even though I was a little sluggish, for one brief moment I was quick and coordinated, and I chased down a very wide ball and hit a crisp and perfect "around the pole" shot-- and then I took a much-needed nap, but still felt kind of lousy from the stupid shingles shot, but rallied enough to drink some mezcal at the neighborhood New Year's Party . . . so while I'd like to make some 2025 Resolutions here, things such as: I'm actually going to change my diet and lose weight; I'm actually going to start stretching every day and do all the recommended exercises to preserve my body and I'm going to give up alcohol during the week, at this point, realistically, these things are probably not going to happen so this year I'm just going to try to do the same shit I did in 2024, and continue to rinse and repeat until things really get Yeatsian and truly fall apart.
The Books Dave Read in 2024
1) The Dreaming Jewels by Theodore Sturgeon
2) More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
3) They Walked Like Men by Clifford D. Simak
4) Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz
5) Welcome Home, Stranger by Kate Christensen
6) All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries #1) by Martha Wells
7) Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries #2) by Martha Wells
8) Dark Rivers of the Heart by Dean Koontz
9) The Charm School by Nelson DeMille
10) Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer
11) Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
12) The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
13) Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America's Suburbs by Benjamin Herold
14) The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World by Damon Krukowski
15) Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
16) The Fifties by David Halberstam
17) Outside the Gates of Eden: The Dream of America from Hiroshima to Now by
Peter Bacon Hales
18) A Year in the Life of Shakespeare:1599 by James Shapiro
19) One Good Turn (Jackson Brodie 2) by Kate Atkinson
20) Sentient by Jeff Lemire and Gabriel Walta
21) Faithful Place by Tana French
22) Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present by Fareed Zakaria
23) The Detective Up Late by Adrian McKinty
24) When Where There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
25) The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
26) The Man in the Flannel Gray Suit by Sloan Wilson
27) A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz
28) Banal Nightmare by Halle Butler
29) The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz
30) Perfect Little Children by Sophie Hannah
31) The New Me by Halle Butler
32) The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz
33) Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz
34) Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay
35) The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay
36) A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
37) Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman
38) Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages Matter by Ian Mortimer
39) Fuzzy Dice by Paul Di Filippo
40) The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory by Andrew Bacevich
41) Supernova Era by Cixin Liu
42) Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
43) The Wych Elm by Tana French
44) Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
And We're Back . . .
Go Eagles?
Timothee Chalamet Should Stay in the Desert
I really hate the idea of a modern musical biopic-- the newest one is about Bob Dylan . . . A Complete Unknown-- because if you want to see a movie about Bob Dylan, just watch Dont Look Back and observe the man himself, not a Bob Dylan impression by someone who wasn't even born when Dylan was the voice of a generation-- I can understand a movie like Amadeus or Lisztomania because there's no film of those folks, but I refuse to see Ray and Walk the Line and Rocketman . . . it's much more fun to see a film about a fictitious band, like Spinal Tap, or a fictitious band that becomes a real band, like The Commitments, than it is to evaluate a musical impersonation for 120 minutes (and the most fun of all is when a tribute band nails all the songs, but looks nothing like the original musicians).
Knee Update (Breaking Knees)
My knee is working pretty well now that they drained the fluid, so I got to play some pick-up basketball with my son Alex yesterday at the Piscataway Y, which is always a blast-- my three-pointer was on and Alex can cut to the basket and use his right or his left, and I know I won't be able to do this forever-- pump fake an outside shot and then pass the ball to my son going to the cup, so I've got to enjoy it while I can-- and then my wife and I headed out to see Nosferatu-- which is fabulously grim and dark and very well conceived, but a bit long-- and since we purchased tickets ahead of time, we thought we were showing up late, after the coming attractions, but it seems no matter how late you show up to the movies, there are always many many trailers-- the 2:30 PM showing didn't actually start until 3 PM . . . so by the end of the movie, my knee was a bit stiff and I limped out of the theater and into the darkness-- when the film began the sun was out but once we left the theater, it was not safe, Nosferatu's shadow lay across the land.
Which Wych Elm?
Christmas Day Stats? Is That a Thing?
The Decline and Fall and Reclining and Icing and Draining and Rising Again of Dave's Right Knee
Right Knee Stuff, Part Two
Thus Endeth the Birthday
These Photos Literally Symbolize the Seasons
You'd Think We've Have Teleportation By Now
You'd think it would be easy to connect your phone to two Bluetooth speakers at the same time, so they play the same music simultaneously-- or let me phrase that, I thought it would be easy to connect my phone to two Bluetooth speakers at the same time, but I'm not a computer engineer so I don't understand how Bluetooth is designed and the limitations of this technology . . . so I Googled this conundrum and here's the problem:
1. Bluetooth's Client-Server Model: Bluetooth operates on a client-server model where one device (your phone) acts as the client and the other (the speaker) as the server. This means your phone can only establish one active connection with a single speaker at a time.3. Bandwidth Limitations: Bluetooth's bandwidth is limited, meaning it can only handle a certain amount of data at a time. When trying to send audio to multiple speakers, the bandwidth might not be sufficient to maintain a high-quality connection to both speakers simultaneously.
4. Latency and Synchronization: Even if you could send audio to multiple speakers simultaneously, there might be a delay in the audio reaching each speaker, leading to a noticeable lag or out-of-sync audio experience.
Seven Things For Reading
Some Compromise . . .
Am I Special? Or Just Gross? Or Neither?
Does everyone else fling little white specks of food onto the bathroom mirror when they floss their teeth, or just me?
The Medium is the Scooter
Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan said: "the medium is the message" and I think this is particularly true in sports: in the 1930s, the golden age of radio-- baseball, horseracing, and boxing were the most popular sports in America and these were the perfect sports to describe in an audio broadcast-- they are easy enough to narrate, there are slow moments either before or during the action so there's plenty of room for anecdote and description (I grew up listening to Phil Rizzuto tell stories about his barber during Yankee broadcasts) but as televisions got bigger and gained higher and higher definition, basketball and football gained popularity-- these are games where everyone is moving around at once and you need to see the action-- and you can choose where to look-- you can check out the defensive formation, or the blocking scheme, or the guy posting up in the paint-- it's impossible to narrate it all so it lends itself to a visual medium . . . and the internet appears to lend itself to sports gambling and fantasy sports, where people don't even bother with the narrative of an individual game but instead watch clips and short videos and consume statistics-- and TV has tried to keep up with this with the NFL Red Zone and such, which is essentially football coverage on crack . . . and who knows what the next medium will be for consuming sports-- flying your own drone over an event or being in a 3-D VR stadium-- and then who knows what sport this medium will lend itself to-- perhaps croquet will make a comeback.
Looks Like I Love Donald Trump?
