Reading Makes You Annoying

If you value your marriage, you won't read More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics, a Freakonomics style book with fascinating analysis of why shopping carts have increased in size, why daughters cause divorce, and why our jury system is so screwed up (and a hundred other knotty problems-- it's not as thorough as Freakonomics but it's entertaining in its breeziness) because apparently no one cares about these things, especially my wife, and while your friends and acquaintances will simply steer you away from your new found useless knowledge into other topics-- I brought up the fascinating conundrum of how shopping carts have been growing larger and larger each decade, and how no economist can pinpoint exactly why this is happening and my friend didn't even attempt to follow . . . he started talking about how some carts will tip when you jump up and lock your arms while other won't-- but your wife might tell you flat out that you're annoying (she might even tell you flat out that the only reason you read these books is for attention, because you love to know stuff other people don't know, and that's also the reason you voted for the Green Party, but that's another sentence).

First Things First: Football

An ambiguous (and poorly delivered) teaser on NBC before the Giants game last night: "Police search for a fourteen year old boy's killer . . . after the game."

Snotgreen and Soggy

This was a lame week off for me-- we didn't go anywhere because we had to supervise the kitchen construction (and we're broke and Catherine didn't have off Monday through Wednesday but I did) and it was cloudy and rainy all week, but I played soccer and watched soccer in the rain and drank plenty of beer and got our lawn to grow in nice and green where the workers filled in dirt and we took the kids to the beach on Saturday and it was foggy and misty and the sea was snotgreen and scrotum tightening and we've been living in one loud cramped room with our wee bairns so I'm going to pretend that we spent the week in Ireland.

Alex: A Young Hypocrite

Because Highland Park did not have a week off for fall break but I did, I caught a glimpse of my son's secret life at school: when his class lined up after recess, Alex was last, he barely made it before Mrs. Parham made her count and brought everyone inside, but once he did get in line he wasn't afraid to yell to the front, "Move it, move it-- let's go!"

Bang Pork Hump Sluice

While making plans for Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale I ran across two useful Shakespearean phrases: 

1) a rarely used but graphically descriptive term for making the beast with two backs-- "sluiced" . . . as in "I didn't think Mike had a chance with that leggy blonde he was talking to at the bar, but the next day he told me that he sluiced her in the supply closet" 

2) an excellent name for a nature documentary featuring animals humping and sluicing: "Bawdy Planet."

At Least Give Me A T-Shirt

I'm working my way through War and Peace for the second time, ostensibly because there is a new translation by the masterful Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, but also because I was slightly miffed that none of my "friends" threw me a party the first time I finished the book, as is traditional, so I'm hoping once I finish this time this oversight will be remediated.

Chuck D For President

My wife thinks I should be more excited about the historical significance of today's election results-- that I should reflect on the fact that African Americans began their American journey in chains and now a black man is going to reside in the White House-- but I guess I don't really see Barack Obama as a black guy . . . it's not like we elected Richard Pryor.

Put Me in Coach, I'm Ready to Pave, Today

JV Paving is an poor choice for a business name, especially when the sign is on Summerhill Road, across the street from the high school's junior varsity soccer field; when you're dealing with hot asphalt, you go with the varsity paving team every time.

This Court is Supreme

I am reading The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court because I'm a sucker for any book that promises to unveil a secret world . . . then I will know about the secret world and you won't (unless you read the book of course, but you probably won't, because you're lazy and maybe that's not even the title of the book and maybe it's not even about the Supreme Court)-- and also because it covers a period of time when I couldn't have cared less about the news-- my twenties, when all I cared about was me . . . and what bar I was going to-- so now I'm catching up with Clarence Thomas dissents and Clinton politics and Sandra Day O'Connor's lean to the left, AND I'm also learning cool facts: the gym on the top floor of the Supreme Court Building, where the clerks and interns (and Clarence Thomas, until he hurt his knee) often play hoops, is known as the "highest court in the land."

Did You See Saw?

Did anyone see Saw . . . I never saw Saw . . . I should see Saw . . . did y'all see Saw II . . . I should see Saw II too.

Fuck Quotations (and Typing)

Good news and bad news-- the bad news is that I am giving up on Dave's Quote of the Day (despite some help from my friends-- and I thank them-- it's no longer the project I envisioned: a log of the best things that I stumbled on in my desultory reading that I could look back on ten years from now, because I didn't have the patience to keep it up and I can't type fast enough to make transcribing text enjoyable plus Patrice O'Neil said that typing is kind of gay) but the good news is that now I will put ALL of my limited intelligence into the Sentence of Dave and this will mean better, clearer, wittier, and less stupid sentences for you, my loyal audience, and if you have made it this far into this sentence then you certainly are a member of my loyal audience, because no one else in their right mind would continue reading this atrocity.

Can't Buy Me Love (Or Waterboarding)

According to most figures, the Iraq war has cost us nearly 600 billion dollars, and in the end it may ultimately cost us in the neighborhood of three trillion dollars, but if you want to know the true cost (and you aren't squeamish) then watch Standard Operating Procedure, the new Erroll Morris documentary about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

You Had to Be There (But Here It Is Anyway)

Two big laughs in the English office this week, but you probably had to be there: someone put a quotation on the public whiteboard in reference to Todd Whitaker, the slick positive-thinking Evangelical-style presenter the district hired last Friday (he gets 10 grand plus for a day's work and his licensed DVD costs $449)

"a good teacher complains about the price of staff development, but a great teacher shuts up and gives me her fucking money"

and another teacher drew (and colored!) a very funny comic, but again, you might need to be an English teacher to appreciate it-- the conceit is that a fetus in a jar has come after school to make up a quiz on Hemingway's short story "Hills Like White Elephants" and the teacher tells the fetus to "take as much time as you need."

Why Is My Wife in That Cabinet With That Guy?

Nothing is cuter than a toddler's malapropism (Daddy look, I scissored the paper!) but what about when your wife, after a drawn-out negotiation with the cabinet guy, says "I really smooched him" instead of "I really schmoozed him"-- is this a cute Freudian slip or should I take it as an admission of infidelity with a woodworker for the sake of a discount?

Dave's Economic Knowledge Goes Out the Window . . .

I had to read every paragraph twice, but I finished David Smick's The World is Curved: Hidden dangers to the Global Economy (The Mortgage Crisis was Only the Beginning) and for two hours after I completed the book, I understood securitized mortgage assets and the value of hedge funds and the trillion American dollars China has hoarded and the importance of transparency and an investment system that encourages entrepreneurial risk and a whole lot of other economic information, but no one had the common sense or curiosity to ask me about it during my "window" of knowledge, and I wasn't able to bring it up in conversation-- my wife doesn't fall for that ploy (hey honey, while I was taking out the trash I started thinking about what would happen if Japanese housewives tied up their savings in illiquid investments . . . did you ever wonder how that would affect the global economy?) so now the knowledge is gone, it has floated into the ether, along with other useless things I have read like the history of the Vikings and the mathematics of island geography.

It's Best Not To Complain

If you read yesterday's post, then you'll be happy to know that when I ordered two eggs and cheese on a roll (salt pepper ketchup) at the White Rose System, and the cook misheard me and gave me TWO entire egg and cheese sandwiches (I thought it was weird that it cost $4.49 but didn't say anything) instead of one sandwich with two eggs on it, I didn't give the extra sandwich back-- instead I remained silent and ate them both.

I Like Porkroll Too . . .

It's always disturbing to see someone who was once in shape and now has grown obese; for example, I saw the full-lipped red haired aerobics instructor from the now razed YWHA-- who, back in the day, was semi-attractive, despite her liberal use of lipstick, and certainly filled her spandex outfits provocatively (if your taste is a bit zaftig)-- but now she's obese, she waddled up to the counter at The Park Deli and ordered THREE pork roll egg and cheese sandwiches, I thought there but by the Grace of God goes I.

Somewhere, The Future Has Passed

I've been busy writing songs-- in anticipation of getting a new computer so I can get back into home-recording, but when I slotted this lyric in for an easy rhyme I really thought I had stolen it from another song: "and the future is someone else's past," but I Googled it and it's not . . . is it possible that no one has used this cliche as a song lyric?

The Joy of Paraxene

My four year-old son Alex experienced the joy of getting his first allusion-- he knew that the music playing during the start of Chicken Little, while the water tank rolled juggernaut style through the town, was a reference to Indiana Jones and the infamous boulder, and I understood and empathized with his joy, the joy of getting the joke, the joy of seeing the light, the joy of Paraxenes once he found his way out of the canyon.

Soffit Talk

This is what I have learned from our kitchen addition/dining room/bathroom/playroom renovation project: when your house is really really cold in the morning, even the most hyper-active of children sleep late (I have also learned that the soffit is the "armpit of the house).