Something For The Moral Relativists
In his new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker traces the decline of human sacrifice, and suttee in particular (the now illegal practice of a Hindu widow "willingly" cremating herself on her dead husband's funeral pyre ) and this was British Commander Charles Napier's brilliant retort to this custom: "You say that it is your custom to burn widows . . . very well . . . we also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them . . . build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows . . . you may follow your custom, and then we will follow ours."
The Causal Pathways of Johnny Cash
I am slogging my way through Steven Pinker's new and very thick book called The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined and it's worth the slogging; for example, after a densely statistical section on the civilizing influence of women in the Wild West, Pinker sums up with this bon mot: "When they held constant all the factors that typically push men into marriage, they found that actually getting married made a man less likely to commit crimes immediately thereafter . . . the causal pathway has been pithily explained by Johnny Cash: Because you're mine, I walk the line."
Well Duh . . .
So this is annoying: for a week, I didn't drink beer and ate only healthy food, and I felt great . . . I had lots of energy, didn't have any flatulence, slept well, woke up early, started recording music again, had more patience with my kids, more energy in the classroom, and lost some weight . . . but I'm thinking it's just a fluke and doesn't indicate anything at all, so I'm going to return to my normal eating and drinking habits.
Long Live Dave's Butt
In a Feature That You Hope Will Never Recur, I take a long and hard look at my buttocks: once upon a time I was strong enough to "press the stack" on many universal weight machines in the gym, but those days are gone; now the only complete stack I can press with ease and for multiple repetitions is on the glute machine . . . my butt is the last castle standing in a once great kingdom.
My Son Thinks He Is A Hedgehog
It's impossible to remember what it's like to be a kid . . . your body lives in a world of a different scale and your brain, though ignorant of much of the world, is flexible and free; case in point, last week I was watching my kids play tag, and my youngest son Ian, who is six, was running along, just behind a pack of kids, and without breaking stride, he flung himself into a forward roll and then-- in one motion, reminiscent of Sonic the Hedgehog-- he popped out of the roll and continued running along . . . and now this has become his signature move while running-- his bit of flair-- but when he was teaching his brother Alex (who is only a year older) how to do the move, Alex looked like he was going to break his neck-- and so I gently told him that he might need to practice on a mat in gym class before doing it like Ian at full bore, and Alex, surprisingly, agreed . . . and he rarely agrees with anything-- but even he realized that he was getting older and not quite as indestructibly creative as his younger brother.
Wisdom About Carrying Groceries
As I've gotten older, I have learned that it is usually best to take two trips.
Like Caddyshack, Except With Children
Parents: you might not have time to read this really long, excellent article on raising kids (All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting) because you are probably busy carting your kids to soccer or to the doctor, or changing over winter clothes or a dirty diaper, or washing out bottles or dirty ears, and so I will summarize the thesis for you: you might not be happy about raising children until you are on your death-bed, but until then it's up in the air . . . and this reminds me of what Carl the Groundskeeper reveals about his golf match with the Dalai Lama in Caddyshack . . . the Lama attempts to "stiff him" on their bet but Carl stands up to him and demands some kind of reward for his victory: "Hey Lama . . . how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know and he says, 'Oh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your death bed, you will receive total consciousness,' so I got that going for me, which is nice," so-- all you parents out there-- we've got that going for us, which is nice.
Ring the Bells, Ring the Bells . . .
Let is be known that on the eleventh day of the twelfth month of the eleventh year of the Third Millenium Anno Domini (that's right, it is the third Millenium) I scored 101 points on the Thirty Second Blitz mode of Tiger's super-awesome game Bulls-Eye Ball (and my wife and kids thought this to be a super-excellent score, but they need to check out the dude in the video . . . he uses both hands!)
Natural Beauty At Hacklebarney
Last Sunday was absolutely beautiful-- as sunny and warm as a December day could be-- and so Catherine and I took the to Hacklebarney State Park for a hike, and on the way down the ravine we took the low road, clambering over rocks so we could get near all the tumbling waterfalls and when we popped our heads over the crest of a large boulder we saw something unexpected: a girl in a skimpy blue bikini at the base of the falls (pictured above) and I immediately thought: Polar Plunge! but then we noticed a guy with a camera and another guy with a tripod and I thought: Hot Model in a Photo Shoot! but upon closer inspection the "model," sported a couple of ugly tattoos above her flat and rather untoned posterior, and though she was buxom, she also had a protuberant beer belly . . . not that she was hideous or anything . . . but when you see someone doing a bikini photo-shoot in December, you expect her to be a professional; so the question is, why were they taking these photos and how will they be utilized?
Poison Ivy, Jesus, and Leprosy
I'm not a regular church-goer (or even an irregular church-goer) but in preparation for Christmas I do break out our children's Bible and read it to my kids at bed-time, and we were just getting to the verse where Jesus heals the leper when I thought of a way to make this a bit more real for them, so I pointed out that my wife's horrible case of poison ivy was similar to leprosy (perhaps leprosy-lite?) and that it would be nice if Jesus was around to lay hands on mommy and heal her suppurating wounds and then I read them the story and their reactions were ridiculously close to my own thoughts and certainly show that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree: Ian said, "That's not real, that's fake, that couldn't happen," and I told him that we can't be sure because the story is very old . . . but it does seem rather unlikely, and then Alex-- who has never heard me utter these words-- said, "I don't really like stories about crazy diseases because then when I go to bed I start thinking about them and how I might have them," which is exactly how I feel about such stories and the reason I don't read books about medicine . . . but I told him that he doesn't really have to worry about leprosy these days and that poison ivy is a far more pressing matter.
Let's Get Our National Priorities Straight
Once again, my wife has contracted a serious case of poison ivy and I am wondering what the hell our government is doing about this stuff-- which grows everywhere in New Jersey and inspires far more terror in me than any other threat I can think of . . . I can't walk in the woods without feeling paranoid that I'm going to get it, and shouldn't our great nation-- which is determined to fight the good fight against terrorism-- be working hard on a cure or inoculation or something for this incredibly toxic urushiol oil, which is so potent that it only takes a quarter ounce to give everyone on earth a rash (according to this, it only takes one nanogram to give some people the rash, and it is the most common allergy in the country) so let's take this stuff seriously and either try to eradicate it, cure it, or weaponize it . . . who is with me?
Where's Johnny?
Catherine's 40th Birthday Bar Crawl went wonderfully . . . and though we only crawled to three bars (Doll's Place, The Golden Rail, and The Corner Tavern) a good time was had by all-- plenty of conversation, beer, darts, pool, and fake mustaches and some first-timers got to experience the Rutgers Grease Trucks (who knew you could order a BLT?) and the only hitch in the evening was when we realized we had lost Johnny G. somewhere between eating grease-truck sandwiches and walking past the train station-- we assumed Johnny was with Marls and Sarah, trying to catch the last train . . . but when they came down from the platform there was no Johnny-- but after a cryptic text to Whitney, he was able to flag a cab down and beat us home-- and Whitney and Jenny had already broken into our house because they couldn't muster the energy to make the walk back and had also flagged down a cab . . . perhaps I will organize a bar crawl with more peregrinations for my 42nd Birthday, which is coming up in March: just enough time for me to recover this crawl.
Girls are Gross
Paul Feig-- who wrote the fantastically funny memoir Superstud: Or How I Became a 24 Year Old Virgin as well as numerous other excellent TV shows and films . . . including Freaks and Geeks-- entered a competition of his own creation with his new movie Bridesmaids . . . he obviously set out to out-raunch the typical male gross-out comedy-- with females-- and he certainly succeeds; the result is very funny but don't watch it the way I did, while eating a bowl of chocolate pudding, or you'll come close to retching.
New Tricks For an Old Dog
You can teach an old dog a new trick, but it's not fun to watch him learn it . . . in fact, it's downright painful, but after a tutorial from one of my 8th-grade players and close to a million awkward, ugly, and clumsy tries, I finally successfully completed the "around the world" soccer juggling move . . . I did it twice in one day and I haven't been able to do it since (mainly because my right knee is killing me, due to all the failed attempts).
Fear . . . That Wonderful Motivational Tool From the Past
Teaching is harder now than it once was-- educators have to be engaging instead of handy with the paddle.
Short Term Memory Problem
I rounded the corner yesterday morning and found my son Alex attempting to shove the bathroom door open, but Ian-- while in the act of defecating-- was pushing the door the opposite direction, an impressive feat while seated on the commode, and so I asked Alex why he felt the need to get into the bathroom while Ian was engaged in his morning constitutional and Alex said that he needed to brush his teeth and he couldn't wait "because he would forget to do it" and so I told Alex that it is a "rule of the world" that you never interrupt anyone in the act of defecation and the fact that he couldn't remember to brush his teeth in five minutes was his problem, and that he needed to work on his memory and not bother Ian, and Alex told me that he had a hard time remembering to brush his teeth because he had "so much to do, like get dressed and eat breakfast" and I guess that is a lot of things for a seven year old to think about, but I didn't have the heart to tell him that as he grows older, it will just keep getting worse and worse.
Taco Lunch With All The Fixin's Makes Dave Happy
Last week, with some help from my wife, I brought a complete left-over taco lunch to school, and I ate it at cafeteria duty; I think my fellow cafeteria monitors were impressed and jealous when I finally finished pulling out the array of small containers and plastic bags from my lunch cooler: taco shells, fresh home-made roasted tomatillo salsa, guacamole, yellow rice, taco meat (which I heated in the cafeteria microwave) and grated cheese; my Taco Count is up to 190 so I'm going to take it slow for the next month so I can eat my 200th taco as 2011 winds down . . . and my New Year's Resolution for 2012 is going to be more abstract and require a lot less less counting.
Happy Birthday Catherine (So Glad You're Not Barking Mad)
My lovely, charming, beautiful and-- most importantly-- sane and logical wife turns 40 today . . . and, after watching the new Errol Morris documentary Tabloid, which revisits the story of the "manacled Mormon" and his purported kidnapper and lover, Joyce McKinney, you will realize that the most important thing in a relationship is not the charming and beautiful part, but the sane and logical-- so if you want to appreciate your sane and logical significant other, then spend 90 minutes with Joyce McKinney, who was certainly beautiful and charming, and certainly had a strong and passionate love for a certain chubby Mormon missionary named Kirk Anderson, but as for the sane and logical part . . . you'll have to be the judge; I won't reveal the rest of the story, but it has more plot twists than a John le Carre novel and Erroll Morris captures plenty of documentary gold along the way: five cloned dogs out of five.
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